The Difference Between Winning Brands and Losing Brands

3 things are certain in life…

• Death

• Taxes

• The price of attention going up

Yeah - weird way to start a newsletter, but it still caught your attention

… and that's what we'll talk about in today's newsletter.

Attention.

What every D2C founder is eagerly throwing their precious money after…

What all the Big Tech platforms are desperately trying to steal from consumers and sell to advertisers

… and most importantly, what makes great businesses great in 2023.

"Wait, how does attention make great businesses great - you might ask? "

Well, the answer is simple. Great businesses are great, because they are great at two things.

1) Capturing attention

2) Converting attention into $$$

In this newsletter, we'll not talk that much about no. 1) as we feel like this is already a well-covered topic in the D2C space - but we'll instead talk about no. 2) because funny enough, surprisingly few people are talking about this topic (if you want to read our takes on no. 1 then don't worry, we'll still write about it at some point)

For those of you who like fancy acronyms (Who in D2C doesn't, tbh??!) - converting attention into $$$ is also referred to as CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization.

But, regardless of what you call it - its job is still to do the same thing.

So, without further ado - let's dive into today's newsletter.

Why CRO is a non-negotiable for D2C brands in 2023

In case you haven't noticed, we're currently in a post-IOS, post-pandemic, midst-inflation, and pre-recession environment where money is glued tighter to consumers' pockets than ever before.

Translated into eComm language, that means your traffic is converting at a lower rate than ever before - and your profits are shrinking by the hour. If that wasn't enough, the traffic that you are sending to your website also isn't as good as it was in the pre-IOS heydays.

In other words - the quality of traffic has gone down since IOS, AND the traffic is converting at a lower rate than before. What a cocktail!

One of the best ways to make sure you stay afloat in the current environment is by focusing on what you can control in your business.

… and that is:

1) Your product(s)

2) The experience you give to customers when they come to your (web)store

3) Whether your product and marketing messaging are resonating with your customers and their problems, pain points, and desires.

Number 2) and 3) is essentially what CRO is all about. Converting visitors into customers by giving them a frictionless shopping experience combined with a damn good reason for why they absolutely need your product in their life

New channels, new agencies, and fancy media buying tricks won’t save you

One of the reasons why we think CRO has been neglected for too long is because founders and marketers either got told (by their agencies/employees) or told themselves the lie that "they just need to use another paid media strategy/tactic."

… That couldn't be further from the truth.

Because chances are - if your paid marketing is not working, then it's probably because you have some problem in your back-end.

Either:

1. Your product is not resonating with your visitors or…

2. You can't make a compelling argument for why people should buy your product - resulting in a low conversion rate

3. Or… both

We have been both on the agency side and on the brand side - and we've overseen dozens and dozens of accounts - so we can confidently say that most of the time, brands have a CRO problem and not a paid marketing problem.

That being said, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't look for the best paid media strategy and tactic. But our point is that: If your website / LP is converting at, let's say, 1.5-2% or less - then focusing on fixing your conversion rate will yield greater results than trying to fix your paid marketing campaigns.

Chew On This!

As promised, the Wednesday newsletter is supposed to be short, sweet, and easily digestible with content that you can chew on during your lunch break - whereas the Sunday newsletters are heavy and packed with more details.

So here are a few questions you can chew on during your lunch break.

1. Do you invest as heavily (both time and money) in your CRO/Back-end setup as you do in your front-end/traffic acquisition setup? If not, why?

2. What would have the biggest impact for your business… Going from index 80 to index 85 on your paid acquisition - or going from index 40 to 60 on your backend CRO and UX ?

3. Which resources and skills would your current team or future team need to have in order to increase your conversion rate? Copywriting? Design? Web Development? Strategy? Project management?

As always, we got some answers for ya