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In January, Pinterest created a new sales team that was tasked with figuring out how they can get younger startups, particularly direct-to-consumer brands, to spend more money on the platform.
As direct-to-consumer brands grow up and spend more money on traditional marketing channels, figuring out how effective each of these marketing channels are becomes a much more challenging process. When brands start spending on channels like direct mail or television, they can no longer just count on the number of clicks to determine what's working. And that's where multi-touch attribution comes in.
Younger brands that built social responsibility into their businesses from the beginning are establishing new brand-purpose playbooks that demonstrate how a cause or mission can penetrate a company – in spite of its inherent capitalist nature – beyond a marketing campaign, demonstrating instead a dedication to social responsibility.
Brands transitioning their marketing strategies to account for broad awareness-raising channels – which yield little to no insight into attribution or customer data – have to navigate an awkward growing-up phase that requires a reallocation of resources, navigating partnerships, new methods for tracking results and back-end preparation to meet a new level of customer response.
When five-year-old startup Eight Sleep released a new product in February, a $1,995 smart mattress that offers dynamic temperature adjustment, the company used the launch to kick off a "pretty intense testing phase" of new marketing channels, according to senior vice president of growth Ori Klein.
Billion-dollar growth requires a relentless marketing strategy, and CMO Sheila Shekar Pollak said that Athleta’s seen the most success in investing in both traditional marketing methods, particularly catalogs, as well as paid social media marketing, where the company has considerably increased its spending this year.
A growing number of health and beauty brands are turning to cloud-based systems that can handle customer, financial and inventory data across all processes, from production to payment.
In its early days, being direct-to-consumer meant lower prices. Because there was no middleman, so the theory went, companies were offering better quality goods at more competitive prices. But as the industry matures, there has been a shift away from branding DTC products as the most affordable alternative to traditional retail shopping for personal products. The strategy to offer “no markups” was integral for the success of Warby Parker and Everlane, among others when they launched a decade ago. However, that’s no longer the case, as evident from a new crop of luxury DTC brands that are looking to duplicate the model’s biggest success stories, in diamonds, luxury fashion and more.
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