The Service That Turned a Brand's Worst Summer Into Its Best.

[00:00:00] Roberto: Yeah, so Marketing Moments, as the, the title would suggest, it's anything that would build buzz around a brand. So we kind of already pointed out a couple of things. So sales product launches also get involved or get rolled into Marketing Moments. So yeah, sales, product launches but for the most part it's just testing new offers, just trying to see an- another way to unlock growth for any brand with the, the philosophy around being well, we, we've got a couple names around this.

[00:00:27] So, Joy calls it LOCK, I call it COAL. So COAL staying standing for content, offer, acquisition funnel, and landers. So those are your fourth pi- four pillars of growth.

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[00:01:34] Richard: Hey, folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, director of digital product strategy here at Common Thread Collective, and I'm joined today by a very special guest, a first-timer on the pod, Roberto Fink, who's one of our profit engineers here at Common Thread Collective.

[00:01:47] Roberto works primarily with our PE seven or profit engine seven-figure brands. And particularly, he's, he's been a guiding light for our Marketing Moments program that we've been running for a few months here at CTC. And for those of you who don't know what Marketing Moments is, essentially what this is, is a service where we will essentially create a new marketing moment for you.

[00:02:07] So that could be, I don't know a sale, it could be some sort of maybe not a product launch, but you can, you can dig a little bit more into ex- the specifics of what a marketing moment looks like. But the idea is we create a new revenue moment for your brand, and then we create the-- we build the landing pages and the creatives to support it.

[00:02:24] And, and this goes back to sort of a broader philosophy that we have around developing these revenue spikes throughout the course of the year. So, recently I think Joey and Taylor maybe talked a little bit about how this is evolving and, and some of the ways that we're changing this for our seven-figure brands and beyond.

[00:02:41] And so Roberto's gonna talk with us a little bit about that today. So first off, Roberto, how are you doing, man?

[00:02:46] Roberto: Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Doing great. And yeah, awesome.

[00:02:52] Richard: Great. Excited to chat a little bit about it here. So let's let's, let's get into it. So talk, talk about how our Marketing Moments... Well, A, I mean, I, I kind of stumbled through explaining it, but maybe explain a little bit more about like what is our Marketing Moments program, and then what is this evolution that you're kind of leading the charge on here?

[00:03:09] Roberto: Absolutely. Yeah, so Marketing Moments, as the, the title would suggest, it's anything that would build buzz around a brand. So we kind of already pointed out a couple of things. So sales product launches also get involved or get rolled into Marketing Moments. So yeah, sales, product launches but for the most part it's just testing new offers, just trying to see an- another way to unlock growth for any brand with the, the philosophy around being well, we, we've got a couple names around this.

[00:03:37] So, Joy calls it LOCK, I call it COAL. So COAL staying standing for content, offer, acquisition funnel, and landers. So those are your fourth pi- four pillars of growth. And we believe that you constantly have to test into these four pillars, like trying to unlock better CRO or content or an offer or different ways to acquire your customers.

[00:03:58] Now, the theory behind a Marketing Moment or the, the, the, the thesis statement was, is there a way where we can develop a service to help support brands test all, if not all, most of these pillars and help them unlock growth simply just to, one, be on forecast, then two, like I said, just not only be for- forecast but also stay on forecast.

[00:04:22] And yeah, so that, that was the, the initial thought around it. We've had some really, really good suc- success cases around it. But yeah, that's, that's kind of the, the basic statement around Marketing Moment.

[00:04:34] Richard: Yeah. So you, you talked a little bit before we hit record about some of the ways that it, it's evolved and, and a lot of that has to do with fundamentally we've been running into an issue where we weren't able to get the creative volume that we needed for certain brands. Now, for maybe for an eight-figure brand, it's a little bit, quote unquote, "easier," even though it's never easy to produce thousands of assets a month or whatever.

[00:04:55] But for seven-figure brands, that, that's an issue we're running into. And of course, as we've we've said it a million times on this podcast creative volume and creative diversification is the answer. So talk to us a little bit about how we're sort of solving for that for seven-figure brands.

[00:05:11] Roberto: Yeah. So we've got a great team of static designers to help us support with all of the marketing moments. So for context each brand that signs up for this service gets two marketing moments every month, and for each marketing moment you get one landing page and 20 creatives. Typically we, we skew a little higher, so 20 to 25 all designed with our designers.

[00:05:33] We also have a creative strategist behind the scene to come up with copy and sort of m- make sure we've got diversity in the creatives because it's not... the key is not just creative volume, but it's also creative volume times diversity. You can't have all of the creatives look the same. Yeah, so we, we've got that going on, and we also have a great team of developers to help us build any landing page around those marketing moments.

[00:05:56] For the most part, we we, we've turned these landing pages as ghost pages, so these are purely, for the most part again just acquisition funnels to acquire new customers for these brands. And then in turn if these offers click or become bangers we turn them into evergreen. And, and it's, it's happened a few times now.

[00:06:21] Richard: Nice. Okay, so then-- Well, well, so 'cause, 'cause we had mentioned before, like, then the ways that we're-- 'Cause that, that was the standard, right? Like, so when we started the marketing moments, it was one landing page, 20 creatives, 20 to 25 creatives. So talk about how that's changed a little bit

[00:06:32] Roberto: Yeah. Initially marketing moment was designed to test offers when there was a natural moment happening. Think Labor Day, think Father's Day. And that would be incremental growth for a brand on top of whatever they were already testing or launching at the time. We've since evolved to start t- testing more evergreen offers.

[00:06:51] So we've... like I said, we've, we've started doing product launches. We've started doing offers evergreen offers on the side. Not not in sup- not, not in tandem with any natural moments like Labor Day and so on. And if even though we didn't we, we didn't tie them together with any of those natural moments, they, they still end up working quite well.

[00:07:14] So the... just to back up for a second, the reason we wanted to tie in marketing moments to an event was to more or less guarantee success. It's helps speed up the process of learnings. You get more data and then from there you can make faster and better decisions as to should you turn this into an evergreen offer or should you go into your next offer? But we've since then transitioned to more evergreen content

[00:07:41] Richard: Right. So, so I mean, I guess that's overall the idea, right? Of like shifting the creative production flow to support e-evergreen as well as, A-and the idea then is to, to create like a consistent, constant stream of testing, right?

[00:07:56] Roberto: Yes

[00:07:57] Richard: So, talk to us a b- little bit about then you mentioned in some, some, our sort of pre-show notes here around the hit rate versus the industry average for some of the creatives that we've been testing.

[00:08:06] So talk a little bit how those tests shook, shake or shook out, and then why you think that we kind of r- got those results.

[00:08:15] Roberto: Yeah. So it's, it's, So the, the hit rate that I that I've mentioned, it's not just on the creatives themselves, it's sort of the, the hit rate of the offers themselves of the entire package. So landing page plus creatives, plus the offer that we've developed. Now, what we've found is that for all of the brands that have signed up for this service, we've had at least one unlock for them.

[00:08:37] Whether it's incremental spend for them, better efficiency higher AOV, better click-through rates and of course now I'm, I'm spacing out, but spend, conversion rate, ROAS, AOV, and click-through rates. So those were the main metrics that we were tracking. Across all of the brands that have signed up, we've had at least one unlock for them which has been incredible because now we can take these learnings into the next iteration of tests, whether it's, hey, should we be bundling more things together?

[00:09:02] Maybe we can get away with not as many bundles. Maybe pull back on some of the gifts that we're doing. Maybe we don't have to do a 30% off. Maybe we can do 20%. And then have that iteration cycle going on. And this is not just on, on the offer itself, but also on the creative side where we, we start to analyze, hey, what were the top-performing creatives during this moment?

[00:09:23] Why were they the top-performing ones? Well, how can we take these learnings and then apply them to the next set of of tests that we're going to run? And same thing on the, the CRO side. So the devs, they go through the landing page, see, hey, what worked? What did not work? Why did it not work? Did we maybe give too many options to customers?

[00:09:41] Do we have to cut away options from customers to get better conversion rate? And yes, overall it, it's been a very, very interesting cycle and it- honestly, I, I've been blown away by some of the results that we've had. Kind of going back to, to the, the, the core philosophy about the four pillars of growth.

[00:09:58] Like if you want to grow a brand if you're a brand owner and you, you're looking for growth, you have to test those four pillars: content, offer, landing page, or acquisition funnels. And with the offer, we're able to ha- to tackle three of those four pillars consistently

[00:10:12] Speaker: Most paid social teams run dozens, hundreds, even thousands of ads. They haven't been able to experiment with landing pages at the same scale because traditional A/B testing makes the team wait for every new test to reach statistical significance. Meta can quickly figure out which ad to show to whom.

[00:10:28] Lutiq does the same thing after the click. Generate on-brand pages in Lutiq or add pages you built with Claude or ChatGPT. Lutiq predicts which landing page each click should see to maximize conversion rates so you can test more ideas and scale much faster. You'll expect a significant lift in conversion rates.

[00:10:48] CTC listeners get $25,000 in Lutiq platform credits. Start with a no-platform-fee proof phase. If Lutiq proves lift and you continue, the credits apply to future platform fees. Claim the offer at lutiq.com/ctc. That's L-U-T-I-Q dot com slash ctc.

[00:11:05] Richard: as we talk about this, it's like, I mean, okay, so we're just- we make creative, we make landing pages. What, what about this is special or sets it apart from other, let's say, creative agencies who are doing this type of work or CRO agencies, that type of thing? Like, what's, what's the secret silver bullet or whatever that's causing this sort of these great results across these metrics?

[00:11:30] Roberto: Yeah. Well, one, it's our insatiable desire to be on forecast and beat our forecast, right? So that's number one. So you've got some of the smartest and brightest people on the back end trying to figure out what's the best offer for your brand, and sometimes it's just a simple discount. Sometimes it's a bundle.

[00:11:49] Sometimes it's a gift with purchase, whatever it may be. So that's number one. Number two is we have more context to the brand than any other pr- any other agency or person has for for our clients, meaning oftentimes we know the, the margin profiles and what works, the, the AME or to spend relationship a lot better than the brand owners themselves.

[00:12:11] So we can we can create offers that have a better margin profile than what they're currently running, and it would still make sense across the board, meaning, All right, we may have to cut this part if that's okay.

[00:12:25] Richard: No, no, no. That's-- I, I hear what you're saying, though. we have some understanding of their

[00:12:31] Roberto: Yeah,

[00:12:31] Richard: right? Like, you're able to kind of push the line on break even a little bit more or something like that,

[00:12:36] Roberto: Exactly. So we've, we've, we've got the context around the, the P&L of the brand, so we're able to create offers that are oftentimes margin- on the margin basis more profitable for the brands and also allow us to bid at the higher CPA in the auction.

[00:12:53] So considering, I, I think Taylor and Joy talked about it a few podcasts ago if you're entering an auction your CPA obviously going to be super important to compete against all of your other brands, and we're able to come up with offers that try to at least tackle one of these areas and improve overall performance.

[00:13:11] So that's the second part. And the third part is we've got an incredible team of developers and designers. So some of them have worked with some of the largest DTC brands a- around the world. We were able to get them on board, and they b- fully believe in the program and have done some incredible work so far

[00:13:28] Richard: Yeah. So, I mean, I, I think that that second point is worth, worth pointing out a little bit more of, of just this idea because of the, the data set that we have access to, our understanding of your brand's financials, we're able to-- so if, if we were to say, like, run this program without any understanding of what the sort of kind of baseline industry CPA we would need, need to target in order to win in the auction, if we didn't have that understanding, none of these would really work even if the offer was, quote-unquote, "good" or people responded to it.

[00:13:55] But what we're able to do is have some understanding of like, yes, the AOV in your i-industry or, or rather the target CPA in your industry ought to be maybe 150 bucks, but your current AOV is just, is 80, let's say. And we'll put together an offer that gets you to that number in terms of the AOV, but also is an offer that works and obviously for-- kind of hits all the other points that you need to hit with an offer.

[00:14:16] I was curious, like, if you have any specific examples of offers that you've run across all of the different sort of Marketing Moments packages that you've produced any offer that was like a huge creative unlock or sort of unexpected or interesting or worked when you didn't think it would.

[00:14:34] Anything that surprised you?

[00:14:36] Roberto: Actually, yes. There was a there was a men's grooming brand that we worked with. We launched an offer we, we launched back-to-back offers basically in July and also August. And typically July... June, July, August for the brand specifically, they've never been very profitable during these time periods.

[00:14:54] Just demand is down seasonality-wise. It's, it's just not a good period for them. This year with the Marketing Moment Live, it's the first time they've actually turned a profit, and not only that, they actually grew year over year, and not only year over year, but also month over month. So coming out of a, a good period already, they were able to grow and set them up perfectly going into Q4 as well.

[00:15:14] So it's been an incredible unlock, and it was a simple gift with purchase, right? We looked at the margin profile. We, we saw, hey, we know that this product set works really, really well. We see that this is also a really popular product. Well, is there a way to make this work as a gift with purchase?

[00:15:28] And while margin-wise it wasn't the best offer, but we had a theory that conversion rate would improve significantly in that case to offset any loss of margin. And in, in this case it did. So it ended up... so during this time period, the campaigns where these offers were live accounted for about 75% of spend off the account

[00:15:48] Richard: Yeah. That, that's interesting. Yeah, 'cause I think that's also, like, a good example of, like, what marketing moments is for of-- So there, this is like a down period, and everybody has their sort of seasonal down period usually during the summer. And in the case of this brand, it sounds like what you're able to do is, like, find a moment, create a moment within a, a part of their kind of part of the year that's usually a valley for them, right?

[00:16:10] Like, you're able to come in and turn a valley into a peak, and that's part of what we're offering here is not just, like, improving on not just improving on sort of the offers that you're usually running during the times when they're working already, but actually taking the down parts of your kind of revenue cycle and, and turning them into peaks.

[00:16:27] So that's a great example of that. I was gonna ask what was it? Oh, yeah. So, so particularly for, like, a seven-figure brand, and this is gonna be kind of my last question here, is what... A- and obviously, like, the solution if you want to kind of create a marketing moment like this is to go to commonthreadco.com, hit the Hire Us button, and let us know you wanna talk to us.

[00:16:46] Now, if you're a seven-figure brand, maybe you're not quite in a position to do that yet. What is-- Like, what's the f- one thing that you can do about your kind of offer strategy? What's, like, the one tactic that you would put into place to start building towards something like this?

[00:17:02] Roberto: Honestly, the, the key is just to keep testing. Whatever it is, just keep testing, right? It's I- oftentimes what we see is brands get kind of bogged down like, "Hey, I don't know how to do this. I don't know. I'm kind of okay here, I'm kind of okay there but I can't tie it all together." Just take the step and do something, right?

[00:17:21] That's kind of the, the path forward. A lot of the brands that we've worked with in the, the past two and a half months, or sorry, in the last three months, they kind of already had an idea what s- what they wanted to run. They had a decent idea as to what they, what they thought would work well and we executed on those ideas because obviously we, we get approval of the offers that we're, we're thinking of running.

[00:17:43] And oftentimes they, they do incredibly well. So to kind of summarize all of this, just keep testing. That's the, the, the, the only guarantee is if you want to be stagnant and kind of you're okay with the profile, don't do anything. But if you want to grow, do something, right? That's, that's basically the statement.

[00:18:02] Richard: Yeah. It's a, it's as good, good general life advice. Like Nike says, "Just do it." And I think that's that's fundamentally what this is about. And if you want help doing it, then you know who to call. Comethruco.com, hit the Hire Us button. Talk to Roberto and his team. They would love to put something like this together for you building a creative flywheel for you that's both based on marketing moments and evergreen.

[00:18:23] But yeah. Any, any last thoughts? Anything else you wanna share with us, Roberto?

[00:18:28] Roberto: No. Just keep testing and we'll see you around when you're seven figures.

[00:18:32] Richard: That's right. Cool. All right, folks, I think that's gonna do it for us. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time

[00:18:39]