SO JARGONY 

Over the weekend, this report from Primary VC landed in my inbox and it seemed like a perfectly timed promo for the upcoming class I'm launching with Bob Doto called "Beyond the Feed - Business and Creativity in a Post-Social World". It's a bit chalked full of jargon, but the takeaways confirm the predictions I made in my seminar about social media over a year ago. It feels like an end of an era. That hallucination that all you have to do is throw up a website, pump money into ads, post on social and you can rapidly build a brand is officially dead, confirmed by some of the biggest brands in the game. And regardless if you choose to join us for what will surely be a creative way to grow, what Primary reported here feels important to share with everyone. So here are a few key takeaways, but if you're e-comm focused, I recommend you take time to read the full report.

The past 11 months have seen continued expansion for some, but also very painful contraction for others. Merchants are facing a confluence of complex challenges: People are spending less time online, some shopping habits are reverting to offline channels, supply chains are crippled, and privacy changes are upending lead targeting. 

Merchants have also now recognized that traditional media channels have tapped out and there is a real need to start using existing consumers as a channel for awareness or figuring out a way to successfully utilize affiliates. The core investment philosophy for ecommerce has always revolved around customer acquisition compared to a customer’s lifetime value, however there’s been a significant shift throughout this year and great articles have written about why CAC doesn’t matter.  Brands will always be price takers when it comes to digital media and cost of acquisition, however it's up to their control to grow the LTV of a customer. In 2021, we are starting to see the early innings of brands focusing on innovative ways to strategically grow customer value and turn the best customers into marketers for their brand.

For everyone selling online, competition and complexity are at all-time highs. Ecommerce enablement startups are building solutions at a rapid pace to help support merchants, however creating breakout successes requires building something so fundamental, so mission-critical, that customers stop being able to function without them.

By far the most common response we saw from merchants was still optimizing existing marketing channels (predominantly email) either through enriching CRM data or improved automation. As leads or customer data flow in from a variety of different sources including email, SMS, loyalty, affiliates, physical retail, and others, it’s been more important than ever for brands to have a central repository and more effectively understand who their customers are in order to efficiently market to them.

“The most powerful driver of a brand’s growth has always been word-of-mouth coming from its community of customers. As traditional paid digital channels have become unsustainably expensive for many brands, we’re seeing marketers invent creative ways to drive this word of mouth online by mobilizing their best consumers as creators. We’ll see more and more brands considering ways to activate their customer community as they would think about investing in a performance media channel.”  - Scott Norton (Cofounder of Sir Kensington, Investor at N+1)

"Customer acquisition costs have nearly doubled over the last 6 years. The trend towards user privacy coming from the main digital ad platforms will only increase costs and decrease accuracy of targeting. Brands need to think about new ways to diversify acquisition spend and use their existing customer base to get product in the hands of new customers" - Matt Osman (Treat)

“2021 was the year that we realized just how hard differentiating in ecommerce really is, as a panoply of challenges from supply chain to marketing converged and combined with ever-increasing competition. We saw the beginning of the big switch to first-party (proprietary) data, as iOS 14 killed second party data (and tried-and-true Facebook marketing techniques with it), leaving many companies scrambling to find and understand their own customers. It was also a year that we began to ask ourselves what exactly "Headless Commerce" is, with most of the answers still barely scratching the surface of what headless really can do for merchants, as it relates to personalization and brand-forward commerce.” - Henry Davis (Chord)

BEYOND THE FEED CLASS DETAILS & REGISTRATION

Whether you're E-comm focused, you sell to the trade or wholesal, or you're a service-based business, this class is an exciting opportunity to think differently about marketing. Rather than being an ideological seminar, "Beyond the Feed: Business and Creativity in a Post-Social Media World" will focus on both the practical and self-exploratory aspects of what it takes to market your business, maintain your reach, and stay connected with others. You can read the full announcement here. 

WHEN: Thursdays in February (3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th) from 12pm-2pmEST.

WHERE: Via Zoom. Please note we will be recording these sessions and they will only be available for the month of the program. 

FEE: $500 

REGISTRATION:  You can read more and register here. Once your registration is received, you'll receive an invoice via Quickbooks. Once paid, your registration will be approved.

I hope you'll join us for what is sure to be a fun and creative way to transition to a more meaningful sense of commerce in 2022. 
 

You are receiving this email because we thought you would be interested in Ask Holly How.
You can or unsubscribe or update your subscription preferences.

Add Holly to your Ask Holly How