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Nik Sharma Profile picture
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2 Jul, 16 tweets, 7 min read
Over the last 90 days, @SharmaBrands launched one of the most successful storefronts in traditional alcohol.

• Conversion rate: 17.74%
• AOV: 4x the price of a single bottle
• 4.84 ★ avg customer rating

Here are 3 easy hacks anyone can implement for free:
For starters, you cannot ✨truly✨ be direct-to-consumer (DTC) in alcohol, due to the silly laws around alcohol sales in the US.

If you work with US alcohol brands or sell online, you'll want to get a notepad for this story.

While we couldn't sell "DTC" we found a workaround.
When we began, this co had many positives:

• One of the fastest-growing spirits in their category

• Great founding story & operating team

• Retail distribution of a brand that's been around for 10+ years (at year 3)

We had lots of data.

Now we needed it put them to work.
Our initial thought was:

IF we can set up a "conversion event" online,

THEN we will have something to measure against, in order to make our retail, POS, & on-premise marketing stronger.

Learn more about what a "conversion event" is from @jspujji here:
To go LIVE quick, we developed a microsite with the full "funnel" in mind:

• Education (product)
• The story (brand)
• Merchandised products (offer)
• Quotes/Logos (social proof)
• Added reviews (social proof)
• Email capture (retargeting/retention)
• Recipes (content)
To sell spirits, we needed an authorized alcohol seller.

We found a marketplace in the alcohol space running on @Shopify, which allowed us to:

• Setup another Shopify store that pushes orders to the marketplace via API

• Own/retarget the customer

• Setup tracking/pixels
Having all the right tracking pixels, software, and customer data enables us to:

• Run marketing with fast feedback loops

• Understand customer frustrations, pain points, and opportunities

• Build out proper email/SMS comms with strict KPIs.

No more spraying and praying.
Once the microsite was developed & LIVE, we had 3 goals:

1️⃣ Sell in bundles to optimize shipping costs.

2️⃣ Make it easy for customers to checkout fast.

3️⃣ Have a high AOV on the first purchase (our margin is in the sale to the distributor).
Selling in bundles.

When a customer is introduced, if you have multiple variants (flavors, scents, etc) you want to encourage a variety, to sample.

We created a variety pack (all 3 flavors) + flavor-specific bundles (3x single flavor bottles).

Benefit? Free shipping + 10% off.
Selling in bundles of 3 was the goal.

The data shows that most people are buying 1.3 bundles (of 3 bottles) per purchase.

We just made it easy for them to do it, which drove up AOV.

The AOV of this store is just about 4x the cost of a single bottle.

Simple UX always wins.
Increasing site conversion rate was a big goal.

The website flow was critical. Everything was organized in a way that hits 3 main questions repeatedly:

• what's in it for me as a customer?
• why should I believe it?
• how do I get it?
To increase the conversion rate in the cart, we made checkout easy. We enabled:

• @PayPal
• @Shop Pay
• @Apple Pay
• @Google Pay
• @amazon Pay
• @shop Pay Installments (@Affirm)

More ways to checkout means:

📉 decreased cart abandonment
📈 increased conversion rate
To keep AOV high, we tested a lot of things. Here's what worked:

• adding gift card options (with an emphasis on the 3 case bundle amounts)

• incentivized bundles (free shipping + volume discount)

• build-your-own-bundle maker like this: poopourri.com/byob
When you do all these (and more) the end result is:
This weekend, I'm going deep on more simple, but effective, nuggets.

All things that I wish I knew when starting in the world of CPG.

• it's completely free
• you can apply what you read for $0
• I don't send any bs

Join 15,000+ smart people 👇

nik.co/subscribe
Lastly, if you like tactical advice like this, feel free to give me a follow:

➡️@mrsharma⬅️
➡️@mrsharma⬅️
➡️@mrsharma⬅️

If you have any questions from this thread, ask me: twitter.com/messages/compo…

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More from @mrsharma

Nik Sharma Profile picture
3 Jul
Over the last 2 years building @SharmaBrands, there's 1 main asset I've realized is more precious than anything else:

My time ⏱

I've put together a personal operating system (OS) to allow me to manage my time better.

Here are 7 apps I use on a daily basis 🧵👇
Email: @Superhuman

Superhuman's main benefit is helping you find what's important, & getting through it faster, using: game design.

Using keyboard shortcuts, you can easily sort/organize your email into categories + get through your to-do list quickly.
On the right side, you get a detailed view of WHO you're talking to.

If you get a lot of emails, this is an easy way to keep track of past emails sent (which you can quickly look at).

In addition, you'll see their social handles for added context.

For $1/day, it's a steal.
Read 13 tweets
Nik Sharma Profile picture
20 Jun
I've generated over $120,000,000.00 in online revenue.

The 2 biggest mistakes I see are:

• Constantly chasing new customers
• Not being smarter with existing ones.

Here's a breakdown of 6 free tactics I used to add $100k+ in revenue. 🧵
Add subtitles to your video ads.

According to @verizonmedia, 92% of mobile users watch videos with sound off. 🔇

Adding 20 minutes to your video editing time will achieve higher:

• click-through rate
• website conversion rate
• return on ad spend (ROAS)
When adding subtitles to videos, you don't need to get too fancy with them.

• make the subtitles easy to read
• don't rely on music for the context
• show, don't tell

They're just an aid to help whoever's watching, understand the video better.
Read 12 tweets
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
18 Jun
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
Read 10 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

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