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Nik Sharma Profile picture
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18 Jun, 10 tweets, 3 min read
After spending >$47M on digital advertising for CPG brands, it's clear that the majority of brands still have no clue what they're doing.

Here are 3 things I believe will always be true in advertising, and that can help you build a better customer journey: 🧵
1. Advertising is very similar to stretching a photo in Microsoft Word.

The more you stretch the image (read: spend with paid media), the blurrier it gets.

But, if you have a high-quality image (read: great brand equity), it doesn't get *as* blurry as you stretch.
As you increase spend on paid media and focus on ROAS/Revenue, you want to re-invest into other functions of the business just as much:

• Customer service
• Supply chain optimization
• Content
• Product expansions/merchandising
2. You must treat your customer like Kim Kardashian walking a red carpet.

As the brand, you must have everything that she could ever need, at that moment, right there, ready for her.
When you bring a new potential customer to your site, oftentimes without much context, you cannot expect them to learn about your brand, find + read reviews around your site, do their own research, and eventually buy your product.

Do the work for them.
3. You have to be extremely native to the platform you are distributing in.

Whether it is a billboard, a Facebook ad, a TV commercial, or a Tik Tok video, etc., you must understand the platform's experience, gestures, thumb movements, and context.
You would never use a Snapchat from your brand as a billboard.

Similarly, you cannot expect a TV commercial to perform well as a Facebook ad and expect it to do well?
I send out insights, learnings, and thoughts like this in my weekly newsletter, every Sunday.

This entire thread was just the intro paragraph to the email. The rest was 🔥.

Join 15,000+ founders, marketers, investors, & operators for free: nik.co/subscribe
If you love threads,I also wrote a thread on how I conquered working with creators in a way that is a win-win-win (brand, influencer, customer) situation.

It'll also drop your acquisition cost by about 40%. Check it out here 👇
Lastly, for more awesome insights, learnings and tips, please follow me!!

➡️@mrsharma⬅️

✨ thank you ✨

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Nik Sharma Profile picture
19 Jun
This is how I would make an extra $5,000/month with just 8-10 hours of work.

Most people have no clue how to set up ad accounts and pixel their websites to get started.

Time for a thread: 🧵
There are two (almost) absolutes when someone is starting a new direct-to-consumer business:

1️⃣ A @shopify website
2️⃣ Paid social ad accounts (FB, Pinterest, Snap, Tik Tok, etc.)

With few exceptions, everyone should be setup from the beginning across all these platforms.
Brands typically set up their own Shopify stores (either themselves or an agency)

But, they rarely create and set up their ad accounts (✨opportunity✨)

At least, in most cases, not until it's time to turn these ads on.
Read 15 tweets
Nik Sharma Profile picture
1 Apr
When I was at hint water, a few years ago we ran a marketing test that has now become an industry-standard marketing tactic:

We worked with influencers, not for their following, but for their content, and dropped our customer acquisition cost by 40%.

Here's how you do it 👇🧵
Identify creators who are great communicators talking right into the camera.

The best ones, like @saradietschy or @GabbieHanna, make you feel like they are sitting right in front of you.
In this partnership, you're looking for 3 things:

1. The influencer should truly love the product (if not, it doesn't work)

2. A testimonial-UGC style video

3. The ability to run the ads through the creator's handles
Read 9 tweets
Nik Sharma Profile picture
4 Mar
The easiest thing you can do as a brand to drop your customer acquisition cost by 30-40%:

Create beautiful landing pages to educate, story tell and give your consumer a reason to become a part of your brand.

Here's a thread of some incredible landing page examples:
You can get the @SharmaBrands landing page guide, to see exactly how we do it, as we did for all these examples in the thread.

dropbox.com/s/665nl28fkhx6…
JUDY Emergency Kits

get.judy.co/shop-judy-prep…
Read 11 tweets
Nik Sharma Profile picture
2 Jan
A common mistake I see amongst brands is they often neglect the investment into building a consistent affiliate revenue channel for their stores.

Affiliate marketing costs (on avg) only 10% of what you gather in revenue, so if you make $100k, you'll likely pay out $10k.
Unlike Facebook/Google ads, affiliate rev all comes in at a fixed cost.

The only time you'd have it differently, at least in eCommerce, is with media partners where you pay them a fixed cost per conversion, and they either make a margin or take a hit to acquire those customers.
Having even 15% of your monthly revenue coming from affiliate marketing, where your "CPA" is 10% of your revenue, can really help to off-set more aggressive paid media channels, like Facebook or Google.

I.e., if your Facebook CPA is $60, your macro CPA could be closer to $35.
Read 4 tweets
Nik Sharma Profile picture
21 Jan 20
The keys to a successful DTC launch:

1. A product that launches with pre-launch product-market fit — this leads to low initial customer acquisition costs.

Easy to test too.

Here’s how: create a fake brand, run ads to a landing page, and understand your customer.
2. A marketing budget big enough to support a proper creative budget for paid-media assets.

When you launch with paid media, it has to be mobile-first and video creative.

Anything else and you’re going to pay more for your customers.
3. A movement-building press play among not only trade press, but also mass media outlets, and the right ones too.

I know a new brand doing 6-figures with no paid ads. Their secret sauce is memorable PR and story-telling.
Read 10 tweets
Nik Sharma Profile picture
3 Apr 19
Dear Brands, this is how you work with Amazon:

Companies under-estimate the importance of owning their data.

Giving up owned data for quick sales on Amazon kills the long-term potential of a venture-backed, brand-driven commerce company.
Using Amazon isn't a binary decision.

Selling on Amazon brings three main advantages:

1. Instant sales

2. Easy distribution

3. Low investment costs

If your product is good, you can win with the gamification of rankings, feedback, and reviews.
Selling on Amazon has 3 disadvantages:

1. You don’t know who your customer is

2. You can’t build brand equity

3. Your trading proprietary data for easy distribution

Brands give up their data to Amazon, and Amazon lets brands access their commerce and logistics infrastructure.
Read 5 tweets

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