.jpg)
The Unstoppable Marketer®
Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhardt bring you quick marketing and entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and trends for DTC business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. These are lessons they've learned through the years of being right in the thick of scaling dozens of businesses. Whether you have an established business looking to grow, just starting your business journey, or trying to become a digital marketer, this marketing podcast will not let you down.
The Unstoppable Marketer®
EP. 107 The Billion-Dollar Playbook: Mastering the Art of Knowing Your Customers
Unlock the secrets to brand success in a saturated market with our latest episode of the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. What if exclusivity could be the game-changer your brand needs? We're diving into the world of athleisure, and discussing how Vuori has managed to shake things up with an impressive $800 million fundraising milestone. With the return of in-person community activities, we also explore why traditional social media tactics might not be enough to build lasting brand loyalty.
Join us as we dissect the dynamic strategies of athleisure brands like Vuori and Alo, who are capturing market share from giants like Lululemon. Discover how these brands leverage direct-to-consumer sales and strategic retail partnerships, and why brand equity is pivotal even for companies experiencing financial losses. We also spotlight the importance of crafting your brand's niche, using examples like True Classic T's, to understand the power of targeted messaging and exclusive offerings.
Ready to optimize your Black Friday strategies? Our episode is packed with actionable insights and tips to ensure your sales campaigns are seamless across all platforms. From preparing your Shopify store to syncing discounts with social media channels, we've got you covered with strategies to maximize your holiday sales. Whether it's through pricing exclusivity or community-building efforts, learn how to effectively target and capture your market to stand out in the crowded landscape of modern marketing.
Please connect with Trevor on social media. You can find him anywhere @thetrevorcrump
You have to be exclusive. I know we want to be inclusive, but as a marketer you have to think in exclusive ways. And I'm not saying to discriminate. What I'm saying is you just have to think about hey, do I want any guy wearing my stuff?
Speaker 2:You get into these saturated markets, and one of the best ways to make it feel like it's less saturated is to identify who that person is. Yo, what's going on on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast, with me, as always, my co-host, mark Goldhart. Mark Goldhart, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1:Doing good Well swell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, woke up to the first snow on the street today, like it was stuck to the street did yeah at least at my house, was that at your house too?
Speaker 1:yeah, it was very wintry this morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the morning walk, but then it was like blue skies by the time I got here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was blue skies.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it was very blue bird day I don't know if any of the ski resorts are open no, they I think, uh, um, I think this the one, the earliest one opens like the 26th or something like that right after thanksgiving that's right before thanksgiving.
Speaker 2:I think we're okay. So, if you're listening to this right now, it is black friday, is this week. If you're listening to this, this will drop and, yeah, you are going into Black Friday. You are two days away to three days away from Thanksgiving, because it's no, no, two days. Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday three days, yeah yes, you start on Thursday night three days away from meta bugs higher cpms.
Speaker 1:Google bugs higher conversion rates, though yeah, higher conversion rates buying behavior is up, we, we, godspeed.
Speaker 2:We wish you the best it was the best of times it was the worst of times you're gonna have high cpms, but you will have higher conversion rates. Your conversion rates will be high. Do you know what that line's from uh, sing the song that reminded me of the good times is that it it is so not it oh, but do you know what I was thinking?
Speaker 1:it was yeah, you're thinking of the Chubba Wonky song. Chumbawumba, chumbawumba. Yeah, johnny boy. Yeah, that's a great song.
Speaker 2:Johnny boy, I can't not love him.
Speaker 1:Kids will never know how great it was to just hear a song on the radio that slapped. It's the only way to find a new song or your older brother or sister like brought home a cd oh, I mean, if you go even further back.
Speaker 2:Do you remember the box? Did you ever watch the box? The tv show, the program yeah, it was called the box, like the channel, the channel. It was called the box, channel 58 for me, but it only it was just music videos live, for.
Speaker 1:I feel like it was like a secret channel that we discovered and it was on for maybe a year and then it disappeared.
Speaker 2:I can't confirm or deny that. But what the box was is, it was essentially like TRL without Carson Daly, so TRL was MTV, where they would play music videos, but then Carson Daly would get on and he would like talk about like oh, that's the Spice Girls or oh, that's NSYNC, you know, but it was just music videos straight. But what you could do is it was like.
Speaker 1:it was like what's your first memory of the music video on it? What music video was it? Devil Went Down to Georgia. Same, really, I'm not kidding. I was right about to say the Devil Went Down to Georgia was the first thing I saw on that.
Speaker 2:Or Power man 5000. Georgia was the first thing I saw on that. Or power man 5,000. No one will ever remember that, yeah, but the box was um, the box was if for those of you who don't understand, it was like a jukebox, you know how like you'd go to. If you could go to a bar at a jukebox and you put money in, you say a nine, and it would play that song you could call in.
Speaker 2:Oh is that how it worked? It was like star six, seven or something like that, and then they would just and it would bill your phone company. So, like our parents would lose it on us, cause it'd be like three or four bucks a song and we'd call in like 10 times and you just sit and wait.
Speaker 2:Like you didn't have a queue, you would. You didn't have a queue, you would. You didn't know what you where you were at in the queue. So we would just watch it for like two hours and just wait for our song. We're like, oh, peaches, that was like one that we'd always do, the peaches song.
Speaker 1:President of the United States or or.
Speaker 2:Uh, we do like a lot of like third eye blind you like third eye blind?
Speaker 1:you know you get some third eye blind, some peaches yeah, I remember peaches. I remember obviously devil went down georgia.
Speaker 2:I don't know who sings that, I don't know he was looking for a job or, uh, I can't remember I don't think it's any.
Speaker 1:I think it was like a one-hit wonder.
Speaker 2:It was awesome the music video is epic. The box, yeah, the box. So, uh, okay, so let's uh. In other news, uh, big announcement this week was made by viory, so viory just raised another, I believe, 800 million at a valuation of 5.5 billion dollars. Billion with a B Fury, the active wear company you call athleisure active wear company athleisure which is very interesting, because I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think where I want to take this, but I want to break it down just because. So, if you restarted, I want to say it was. Did we say 2015? Is that we looked up, or was it 2016? It was 2015 2015.
Speaker 2:So from 2015 to 2017 they were doing they only did 1 million In DTC revenue. So by year 2 they were doing a million a year. By year 3, 2018 that's when they launched women's, because they started with men's shorts, I believe like it was just that was their one product was men's shorts. They went into the women's space and went from a million to 30 million. Now I'm sure they got some investment at that time too. I, you don't. You don't generally just go from a million to 30 million if your product is not dramatically different and if you think about it, their product. You know, lulu lulu lemon was the kind of poster child of yuri yeah, yeah not much different I don't want to.
Speaker 1:Everyone has these opinions about all these athleisure brands, but yeah, there's nothing that dramatically different what is your athleisure brand?
Speaker 2:athletic brand, do you have one that you particularly subscribe to?
Speaker 1:no, no, I do not. I have a pair of Lululemon shorts. I have a pair of Viore shorts. I have Nike shorts.
Speaker 2:Just everything. And whatever Christmas gift you're getting.
Speaker 1:Basically yeah, yeah, no, I'm not loyal at all to athletic brands.
Speaker 2:I have fallen into the Viore trap and we're pretty, we're very loyal.
Speaker 1:That's because you like pastels colors. They're more pastelly.
Speaker 2:And I really like their exercise shirts.
Speaker 1:Blue Lemon seems to be a little bit more. Their exercise shirts hold up Now.
Speaker 2:they're full of probably poisonous chemicals, but we can talk about that later. So okay, chemicals, but we can talk about that later, so okay. So what did viore do to go from, to go from a million to 30 million, to now?
Speaker 1:we did the math it's like 500 to 600.
Speaker 2:We did the math just and this, guys, so we have tools where we can see how much traffic a brand's getting and and you can put some averages like okay, we've been in that, we we've worked with enough clothing brands when their price point like it seems like their average price point is probably like 90 bucks, I would imagine if their aov is probably hovering around 130 to?
Speaker 2:160. Yeah. So average conversion rate is between what a percent and a half to two and a half percent like is what most brands probably, yeah, fall under. So I gave them a two percent conversion rate. I gave them $150 AOV, which means that from a direct consumer perspective, with how much monitored traffic our tools are sharing with us, they're bringing in around $500 to $550 million a year on D2C alone. And then with some basic Retail's hard Retail's, really hard and then with some like basic uh retail retail's hard retail's really hard, but with some basic like it's really hard to guess because we could be off by.
Speaker 1:We could literally be off by 80.
Speaker 2:Yes, we could like but who knows? What we're getting. They have about 50 stores. Their goal is to open 100, I think, by end of 2025. About 100 million is what we're guessing Based off of chat GPT. But that's not counting Amazon, that's not counting Amazon, it's not counting their partnerships with Nordstrom their partnerships with every Dick's Shields sporting goods store. So you, you know, maybe it's another 100 to 200 million.
Speaker 1:So I can't believe dicks is still called dicks yeah, yeah, I mean so.
Speaker 2:So they're probably, they're probably sorry, but they're probably annual revenue of, let's say, between 700, 700 million, million and a billion, I think is probably a fair yes, like I and their valuation was 5.5.
Speaker 1:5.5. Yep, so they're not quite getting a you know what is that?
Speaker 2:It's between a six and a seven multiple, depending on where they're at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, based off the valuations I've seen, that seems really high, so we're probably wrong.
Speaker 2:But but hold up, you're right, but we're not dealing with billion like we're not dealing with billion dollar companies Like. Their brand is like I think the value brand equity. Exactly. Cause that's true, cause I have heard that, uh, that, uh, so liquid death didn't they get like? I think the last valuation that they raised at was like 800 million. Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 2:no we had a discussion, probably like a year and a half ago, about this yeah, I can't remember you have to go to the vault, but I think they were like 800 million I think they're verging on a billion, so that sounds about right and my buddy, our buddy Brody yes he Invests in a lot of these companies and he worked with somebody like. His investor Brought that liquid death portfolio to him and they were still in the red but valued at 800 million Because of brand equity well, yeah, also, projections aren't.
Speaker 1:Valuations are funny, right, because they're not just a multiple. Sometimes it's it's also like a run rate and you know there's different equations that go into it. Yeah, but nonetheless, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah so what is a company like that who, like I said, you've got, you've got lululemon, who had the big takeoff, like in what? Probably around? Like 2014, 2015, like it's probably when they were really big, like remember, when you and I got the discount from the kid, they took off? And that was probably 2016 when we got like our 30% off and we bought like seven pairs of pants, each From 2010 to 2016 was like kind of Lululemons. I'd probably say even more to like 2020.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm just talking about, like, their exponential growth. Yeah, because they were an 80s brand.
Speaker 2:Like I think they started in the 80s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have no idea about their backstory.
Speaker 2:I read the founder's book and I'm pretty sure he said they were kind of like a Nike Very long. Nike started in what the 70s, and then, all of a sudden, they were huge when Michael Jordan took them on Right, which was in the oh 98. Okay, so not the 80s 98.
Speaker 1:The 90s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, late 90s. So I think that Lululemon's heyday.
Speaker 1:It's a millennial brand.
Speaker 2:I would guess Lululemon's heyday was probably 2014 to 2021, if I had to bet. And then you had Aloe that came in and Viore that took up a lot of market share. So I think one of the reasons why Viore was able to capitalize is Lulu became so big and popular and sometimes, when you become so big, people stop wanting it right, because everyone's wearing it.
Speaker 1:Well, Allo's kind of new to the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Allo's probably new.
Speaker 1:The same way viore is I'd say viore is a little more of like, a second mover along with like, because you had the men's brands like cuts and roan. Viore started off heavy on the men's side and then went heavy into the women's space. Yeah, right, because you said they were doing 1 million and they opened appointments and went to yeah, 30 million a year. Yeah, I would guess they'd probably sell more women's, but I don't know and they have a very intense collaboration strategy, affiliate strategy how many partnerships do they do a year?
Speaker 2:yeah, so they do around 12 000 by 2024. You know, as of right now they have 12 000 partnerships and collaborations and I think what they did different than, like a lululemon I think lululemon were really big into retail, but they just went super deep like that. So viore's viore, uh, hit the same time that nIL stuff hit and they went and found every college athlete who had following.
Speaker 1:They started paying them.
Speaker 2:And just yeah, exactly, just started shoveling Emerging market, Shoveling those that 700 million that they had raised, or 600 million that they had raised back in 2021. Just because, when did NIL start?
Speaker 1:Two years ago right 2022. 2022? Yeah, so they had all that money. I want to say maybe 21, but 2022, I think yeah.
Speaker 2:Notably, the person that they landed was Livvy Dunn, who had like 3 million followers on Instagram and 7 plus million, who at the time, if I remember right when I read that she had the most followers of any collegiate athlete remember right when I read that she was the high, had the most followers of any collegiate athlete yeah, she set the record for the most nil revenue.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sure an athlete, I'm sure I'm not mistaken yeah, she was for those of you, she was the lsu gymnast, yeah, and I don't know what she does now.
Speaker 1:I don't know if she's like on team usa or I just remember the the news story when she, when lsu, was at the university of utah for a gymnast gymnastic meet. Okay, I don't know, who is it? What do you call that a gymnastic meet? I think so. Yeah, um, there was a news story about like a thousand high school boys like waited for her to leave the stadium. Oh, serious, like yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she got a couple hundred, like it was a bunch of people like waiting to get her autograph she got massive celebrity status yeah, she's dating she's dating the guy who just won rookie of the year, uh, or who'd won rookie of the year for football the nfl?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think I don't even know who that is.
Speaker 2:I can't remember what his name is. Yeah, I just saw a video of him like winning it and he like she was more excited than he was. Oh yeah, he was just kind of like and she was like ecstatic about it.
Speaker 1:I have to look it up, but anyways, yeah, I think so. I think how do you, how do you go there? What's like, what do you think?
Speaker 2:the question is, how do you stand out in a? I mean, think about like athleisure. Lululemon started the athleisure like movement where women were like, hey, I can just wear my leggings as clothes, not just when I do yoga and work out, I, I'm just gonna wear them to soccer practice, I'm gonna wear them on the plane, I'm gonna wear them everywhere. Right, so they start this movement. Lulu paves it. This happens all the time where somebody paves of movement and then you have other brands that capitalize, but it's a super saturated market and so we talk to people all the time. In our business where we're working with, you know, we have, we have a marketing agency and we're working with if I had a guess, I would probably say one, two, three, we probably have five or six clients who are in very, very heavily saturated markets, and we have a jewelry business that is a very heavily saturated market. So how do you stand out? Right, you could, you can't.
Speaker 1:The first, yeah yeah, number one is you can go, because this is what Lululemon did. So, lululemon, you're competing against Nike and adidas. Lululemon went exclusive. So in the early days it was hard to find certain colors. They would only do certain colors for certain releases and then they would never have that color again. So there was this mad dash by a lot of people to try to get a certain color so they would have this exclusivity to their product, right?
Speaker 2:yep, so, and they did a lot of retail back in the day they did a ton of retail and a lot of community stuff a lot of community stuff.
Speaker 1:So what they would do if, if, uh, if, you're unfamiliar is they would sponsor dance teachers and gym teachers, and so if you were a teacher, you could go in and get a significant discount discount to wear your stuff in front of your class when you say a teacher, you mean like, not like a educator no, I'm saying like a gym instructor.
Speaker 2:An instructor, yeah, like my wife, yeah, dance teacher, my wife got her fitness instructor license yes and was able to get it. I think your wife got it because she teaches dance.
Speaker 1:So they wanted they had this kind of guerrilla tactic of exclusivity, but then they would invite people in that had influence in the communities to wear that exclusive stuff and then people you know wouldn't want yeah, you'd get like 20 off and they weren't affiliates, they didn't get paid.
Speaker 2:It was literally just like hey, you want 20 off. We never do discounts. You want 20? Yeah, you want a discount, because they never did discounts and so that they that's what pumped them up yeah, now you'd get a really good discount now, if you already did that, but much bigger, like they, they would offer, like they offer like 40 off.
Speaker 2:So they doubled it I don't know yeah I do know, yeah, like they doubled it and and then they took it a step further and said we don't just want all those like community people who might not have following or whatever. They're just gonna be more word of mouth people. Let's go find bigger people to talk about us too. Right, where? I don't I, I don't recall lululemon doing that. Lululemon didn't.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm sure they did it's hard to say because they're 2012 to 2016.
Speaker 2:18 but I was pretty dear.
Speaker 1:He started growing post that yeah, yeah, but nonetheless it's like step one is exclusivity helps you stand out. So I think a lot of people are scared to go exclusive because you're narrowing your audience. But tesla also went exclusive. So if you look at these companies that have grown over time, right now owning a tesla is not really a huge status symbol like it used to be. I mean, they're not cheap cars, but they're really not that expensive anymore.
Speaker 2:In comparison, two, three years ago, they were very much a status symbol yeah, or I'd say three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even two years ago probably, even though prices started coming down. But they started out only selling roadsters to rich people and there's like some economy of scale here and that was their long-term plan. They sold these really fast, expensive cars and now they've moved into more of a everyday car, yeah. So a model 3 and a y are great car options for just like your regular, yeah, middle class american, like they're not that crazy. I mean, they're literally the same price as buying like a toyota.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the average car price now is like 48 000 which is a y and you can get a y or a three for that or less yes.
Speaker 1:So exclusivity you start exclusive because your profit's always going to be better and then you you move into more of like a broader approach.
Speaker 2:So that's one way to stick out, is if you want to become more exclusive and you're not trying to be for everyone and ways you can do do the exclusivity is well, one with price, if you don't want to be cheap yeah, you, you said one which was drops that, sell out that is very exclusive product drops and price and price is another one, and viorey for sure stepped up on the price like they elevated their price. It was very similar to lululemon, but it was cheaper. It was more expensive than nike and the adidas and it was much more expensive than a nike and adidas your everyday wear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, lululemon, back then it was more expensive than nike and the adidas and it was much more expensive than a nike and adidas your everyday wear yeah, lulu lemon. Back then it was like 110, 20 bucks for joggers yep like we're talking in 2016 15 14 prices that's a lot yeah, for sure I I wonder what their prices are.
Speaker 2:Now I want to check yeah, so, yeah, I like it. I think exclusivity is is something that can help you stand out in a very crowded market, right, um, I think the other thing, uh and we've kind of alluded to this already is people you know sometimes you can just outspend people in ads, um, like if you've got, if you've raised capital, you can do that. But I'm guessing the majority of people who are listening to this podcast that's not very helpful for them because they probably don't have mil, hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars to outspend their competition. So if the key, one of the keys to selling so Mark and I talk about this- all the time.
Speaker 1:130 bucks. They're joggers now.
Speaker 2:So they've, gone up like 20 bucks or so, yeah, which isn't that much considering in the last six seven years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the other, the other thing is, uh, like mark and I talk about this all the time if you want to grow your business, you've either got to get more traffic, you got to find ways to increase your conversion rate, you got to find ways to increase the average order value, you have to find ways to get your returning customers to come back more frequently. And so, if your E is going from a million dollars to $30 million, and then from $30 million in 2018 to now, what we just talked about, which seems like it may be somewhere around the billion you know, north of a billion um annual revenue, you have to get yes, you can, can spend money, but if you're listening to this podcast, you don't have all that money. You have to have other people talk about you. Right, you need borrowed distribution, is what I like to call it, and it's not just hey, it's not the old school model of hey, hey, here's $8,000. Influencer has 5 million followers, or $10,000. Will you post about us?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and do you want slow growth or fast growth too? Yeah, that's the question.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:Because you don't have to grow the way Viore did.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:And just so everyone knows I just looked it up Lululemon's worth close to $40 billion.
Speaker 2:Yeah knows, I just looked it up lululemon's worth close to 40 billion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which makes sense, right? They're not even close to, I think they're publicly traded.
Speaker 2:Now right, I have no idea, but probably but they're, they're.
Speaker 1:They're worth close to 40 billion. They were founded in 98. That's still fast growth. That's incredible growth. That's a giant company. Their earnings calls are still going up too, like they're not slowing down yeah they're going up, but it took them a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that gorilla approach that they took, where I mean maybe it's just because that's what it was back in the day like social media wasn't kind of what it is now. Yeah, I mean, the instagram boom started happening in 2014 is when it came on to the scene as like the main social channel. But they worked with communities and did community building like real community outreach, and because of that, I'm sure they have a ton of brand loyalists that have stuck around for a really long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure where no one does that anymore. Everyone just goes straight to Instagram Like they don't do any real life, reach out, they don't build communities in the same way You're starting to see it more and more right.
Speaker 2:Like, did we talk about this when you asked? Was it last week where you said what's a trend that you're going to see for 2025? Like, what should we expect? Remember, when you asked me this question, did we talk about in real life stuff?
Speaker 1:I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Okay, maybe I just created a tick talk about it, but I think that that's a huge, that's type of stuff is coming back.
Speaker 1:What is cause? The running clubs? Or the mommy like uh?
Speaker 2:I see A lot of like mommy walk clubs. So it's the moms who have babies who are In their house all day. You're seeing a lot of brands who are starting to say hey, we're a motherhood brand. If you're in Chicago Every Monday, we get our strollers and we Walk.
Speaker 1:Yes, Because, from a High vantage point, I think sometimes we forget how weird COVID was and how much it messed with people's psyches. Yeah, I don't think we're still done looking at what the overall long-term effects are of that. Yeah, not only on adults, but I mean there's kids and teenagers Like I think that's why.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we think about it more on what's happened with the kids and teenagers and less about how it's impacted us, for sure, just because of education, right. Cause you and me talk about this all the time. Like we have, we're based in Utah and half of our clients are in Utah and the other half are scattered throughout the United States. And we, like, we got a client during COVID in Utah and we didn't meet them until last year and they they're like you know, you're like 10 minutes I'm 10 minutes away.
Speaker 2:I'm like 30 minutes from them and and we were just like what are we doing like?
Speaker 2:you get. We got so like caught up in, oh, zoom Slack, which we're big believers in, oh, huge yeah, like we were able to get so much done. But all of a sudden and what was funny is I didn't even see him Like when I first met him, it wasn't at like our request, like hey, we should go to lunch. I was at like an event and he was like at this dinner event and him and I were like what, how is this the first time we've ever met in person, you know, and since then we've now met and we try to do that more often with clients, but, yeah, even like adults, we've even gotten caught up in that so much, whereas, like somebody lives 10 minutes away but so much easier to be on a Zoom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like people matter and like human relationships matter, and as and as a brand, one of the ways to build brand loyalty is to foster or to help accelerate those types of relationships yeah, yeah, I mean it's, it's like uh like what lululemon did.
Speaker 1:They didn't create those relationships between students and teachers. They were just saying, hey, let's sponsor these people in a way so that, hey, they're in a dance class, like they're going to be more likely, or they're in a cycling class. They love what their teacher's wearing, cause they're all looking at them, they're instructor. Well, let's, let's throw that on.
Speaker 2:Well, they would go do a lot of those in real life stuff.
Speaker 1:And they would do little sponsored events.
Speaker 2:They'd go and start yoga classes and host yoga stuff. And I think what a lot of people forget is not not to get religious, but like but you're going to get religious, but I'm going to slightly, I am, I'm a religious guy, okay, but like, if you, if like in Christian text, it's all about the one, right? Like that's what they focus on. I was like, hey, like, don't just think of a hundred people there, look at individual people, like that's what it's all about. You know, and I think oftentimes in business, like we, we cast the wide net because we want everyone and and the one is too much work, right? So in real life, what I mean by that is if you have a customer based of 50,000 people across the United States and a hundred of them are in Salt Lake city or San Diego or Carlsbad or whatever, a hundred of your 50,000 is the one. It doesn't seem like a lot enough to to make a difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that, and going to the one is a good reason why you should build a persona, because you can't talk to a hundred thousand people, but you can't talk to one person that will relate to a hundred thousand people. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:So so I think doing these things and that's what, that's what lululemon did really big is they. They had, like it is, to do the in real life stuff. It is a lot of work, you have to have a lot of people you, it requires a lot of your time it is a lot of work, but what was their?
Speaker 1:my sister-in-law worked there back in the early days, so I remember like this huge comeuppance of lululemon, right yeah, and she worked at one of their retail stores. But what was the ethos Like? Who was the persona Of Lululemon?
Speaker 2:Um, I would probably say Um.
Speaker 1:A mom, cause the owner talks about it. Yeah, remember he said he didn't want certain people wearing their stuff. Yes, a mom, because the owner talks about it. Yeah, remember he said he didn't want certain people wearing their stuff.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I mean it was a fit mom, Essentially.
Speaker 1:Not even like. I wouldn't even say mom, it was just fit women.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, I think it was very much not the 20-year-old, I think it was more like the 30 year old aspirational 30 year old, which generally is going to be a mother yeah, yeah, but they never had mom stuff yeah, you're not pregnant women, or you know?
Speaker 1:it was yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah. So it was we want fit women, yeah, period, like they were exclusive, like they did not want certain body types, yeah, and they got in trouble for this, I think in 2000 oh, yeah, yeah, I mean everyone 20 like once the body chip.
Speaker 2:Uh, the founder's name is chip something, but yeah, he gets like a ton of heat like they put they. They toss him in the same category. We used to toss him in the same category as the Abercrombie guy.
Speaker 1:The Abercrombie guy.
Speaker 2:But now he's like sex trafficker. So he's what? Oh yeah, abercrombie guy, I think so.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean he's like in some really, really deep stuff, so I don't think he's now in that.
Speaker 1:Well, I never wore Abercrombie, so I did a little bit.
Speaker 2:My mom loved it. My mom loved it.
Speaker 1:Buy it for me I remember going in the store and just wanting to pass out because of all the perfume.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will say this so still to this day fierce by Abercrombie is one of the best smelling colognes ever. My dad still wears it. I was wearing that in like oh five and my dad still wears that. It's like it was like fierce or Aquadesia. Remember Aquadesia 05?
Speaker 1:and my dad still wears that. It's like it was like fierce or aqua dejo. Remember aqua dejo.
Speaker 2:So anytime, I do remember aqua dejo did you buy that 10 years ago and you're still just 20 years ago and you're still just using it?
Speaker 1:there's no way.
Speaker 2:People still use aqua, dejo I smell it every now and then, really, yeah, like it's like a blast from the past, because I guarantee if, if grayson was wearing it right now, you'd be be like Every junior high boy was testing out Aquadesio. Oh, yeah, Well, you were sexy man because it was like a low price here, Like Aquadesio was like 15.
Speaker 1:There were some rumors about it too.
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1:Yeah there were some rumors that it would help your game Pheromones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 1:It never worked for me. So, of course, like a bunch of loser junior high boys are the ones wearing it. Yeah, anyways, but anyways, yeah they were very exclusive in their persona.
Speaker 1:So, if you want to start from the beginning, the outreach and the community building they did was not like, yes, it was nice and it was great, but they were very strict about who they wanted wearing their stuff. That's why they went to instructors Like they didn't want just anyone wearing their stuff. They wanted people that others looked up to in a fitness way. Yeah, period, yep, so very exclusive. And you have to be exclusive. I know we want to be inclusive all the time, but as a marketer, you have to think in exclusive ways. And I'm not saying to discriminate, sure. What I'm saying is you just have to think about hey, if I'm in clothing, let's say I'm a men's clothing brand, yeah, do I want any guy wearing my stuff? And the question is true. Classic tees is a good example of like the antithesis of this theory, because they went for everybody but you can go big right if you like.
Speaker 1:Yes yeah, and they went for everybody. Yeah, but in a way I there, I, they went broad, but I would actually argue that it wasn't exclusive in the way of oh, we're an exclusive brand, but it's like they were only for men. Well, it was men period, their their messaging was broad.
Speaker 2:And their messaging was broad but specific. But it was meant for dad bod. Yes, right, right. So it wasn't Like. So, even though like their messaging was, anyone can wear us.
Speaker 1:It was the anti-Lululemon messaging. It was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like hey, these either look too tight on you if you're wearing a Lululemon and you can see your Thickness, yep or you're wearing something so big from TJ Maxx that doesn't have a fit, and so it just looks like you're wearing a bag.
Speaker 1:Like we're gonna come in so they, they, they targeted the dad bod a hundred percent yes, and that's what I want to say is like it's Inclusive but also exclusive, because there's a lot of guys that look at true classic tees and they're like no.
Speaker 2:I've never bought one ever and I don't like.
Speaker 1:I don't like because they don't identify with that brand, like if you're a super fit dude, chances are you've never bought one yeah, chances are.
Speaker 2:If you're a super fit dude and you're looking at true classics versus cuts, what are you buying? You're probably buying cuts?
Speaker 1:yeah, for sure. That's my argument at least.
Speaker 2:But if you're just a guy who's like, or a viewer, or you know, like yeah and guess what?
Speaker 1:I'm not saying it's good or bad either way. Sure, we're just analyzing, yeah, and hypothesizing, yep. But if you're just an average dude, you know you're busy, you're not into fitness, which is fine, but like you know you're okay shape, but like you got a dad bod, good for you. Yeah, salute true to classic teeth comes to your rescue and it makes you look like oh and a shirt that, a t-shirt that actually looks good on yeah, makes me look like I'm a little more trim yeah yeah, I, I like what, I like where the conversation's going is because very specific we're talking about very saturated t-shirts, very saturated.
Speaker 2:Everyone sells a t-shirt, right every clothing brand, athletic wear. We talk jewelry. You can talk, uh like um liquid supplements, water, right, very saturated things, and I think where the full circle's coming around is is you. You can be very, um, you can be in a very saturated market, but if you find your person, you find your group of people and who are they true classics, dad bob, dad bod, and then you only talk to them. Yep, exactly, abercrombie and vich was only pretty high schoolers, right?
Speaker 1:pretty people, you know which makes sense if he's a sex yeah, who's the other one?
Speaker 2:there's a, there's a. There's a women's brand called brandy melville and if I recall, they only have like up to size two really yeah, so they like they are I'm looking at them right now very and and yeah, they, I mean they've they've had some documentaries about them and they've had some very like. They're very much in the media so they're the small girl brand exactly. So they took like what abacrame did, but like to the extreme three mil three million followers yeah, I mean they're huge they are huge.
Speaker 2:So I think you get into these. You get into these saturated markets and one of the best ways to unsaturate it or to make it feel like it's less saturated is to identify who that person is Viori let's go back to Viori, their person. Their person is like straight athletes yes, that was not Lululemon Like, even though they had, like, the community of yoga instructors, it wasn't athletes was fitness.
Speaker 1:It was fitness which very different. It's hard. It's hard for maybe the average person to distinguish what the difference is yeah but there is a difference, yeah, yeah, it's like like I'm in a fitness stage of life, not an athlete stage of life and I'm in a very much athlete stage of life right now. Like I don't compete in any sports. I grew up competing in sports, but right now I am not. Yeah, pursuing athletic so.
Speaker 2:So your mentality may be more so. To buy a view, uh uh, lululemon potentially, whereas mine Is very much for you, because I am like that's what I'm doing doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I'm not a runner four days a week, you know, and I like their, I like their material for performance. It's very soft for me, you know. So, yeah, I think messaging and identifying your niche is probably the most important thing you can do as a saturated brand owner. And then there's these other things that we talked about, right, mark, like, I think, to kind of like full circle the conversation and kind of like dwindle this down a little bit here, because we've gone off on a few tangents. Mark said you can do some exclusivity. That helps out a lot.
Speaker 1:But exclusivity. There's exclusivity in your brand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in your brand, also in your product right?
Speaker 1:Well, this is how I would define exclusivity. You have exclusivity. We go back to defining your brand. You have to choose your enemy and draw a line in the sand. When you're exclusive, you can be exclusive with price points and products. You can also be exclusive with price points and products. You can also be exclusive with your messaging, absolutely, but we'll just define that as targeting.
Speaker 2:So yes, so exclusivity products but your messaging is the new way to target right. Yes, your messaging which, your messaging which helps you create your content, your content is what really helps targeting nowadays.
Speaker 1:And I'm looking at all of True Classic T's ads and again they have a few that are more model-y now, more like model men, but still very much just like dad. That is a good way to describe them is they were and are a dad brand. Yeah, and dads often feel like, once you get to your 30s, I feel it, I think you felt it you get to this point with your style where you're like man, this stuff, like my body's changed, I don't really fit into stuff like nothing really fits me, like all the standard sizing doesn't fit me right, and they just yeah, here's a tea that makes you look good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they found like their market. That they found was really awesome. I think it's really cool so I think, that's where you end, right like it's. It's who define your audience yeah it's not every woman, it's not every man, it's not even just fit men right?
Speaker 1:you got to go a little bit deeper than that, especially if you're saturated and don't fall for the trap of thinking well, we also get these kinds of people yeah, yeah, you will get those people secondarily. Yep, it's gonna happen right and talk to them another time. But if you're trying to grow, their riches are in the niches, is what they say yeah, yeah, we work with.
Speaker 2:We work with jewelry brands. We talk to jewelry. Such a saturated market but you can create. We have work with somebody who creates jewelry for pregnant women around breastfeeding seems odd. She does great because she's narrowed it down to it's not somebody who's, it's not it's not a very specific message?
Speaker 2:it's not an empty nester whose kids are not even empty nester. It's not, yeah, you're not gonna have an empty nester who is ever buying that jewelry. No, you're not gonna get even somebody in their 40s who's not an empty nester but but who's done having kids, who are going to buy that jewelry. You're getting 25 to 35 year old women who are either starting or ending that journey. Who is going to buy that? So, yeah, I like it. Define your audience, then you can target your messaging and then you can create content around that which will then target and find those people.
Speaker 1:Now quick, uh, quick, uh. Public service service announcement. That's what I was looking for. Psa yeah, I don't know what this is. If you're on shopify, make sure that all your black friday discounts are synced with with your sales channel for instagram and facebook, so meta yes, and also google and youtube, and then just go into your merchant center on the google side. Make sure those discounts are showing up in shopping networks on your search terms that's something that a lot of brands miss yeah, what else?
Speaker 2:well, let's give a couple anything else that we saw some misses because we did yes, yes, also make sure, also make sure.
Speaker 1:This is what we always recommend. Get your, it doesn't matter, just get your Black Friday sale banner up. Yes, it doesn't matter if your email has gone out or not. Just get it up first thing in the morning or midnight the night before.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like don't, and make sure your code's live and and let your code be live for an extra hour or two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, like there's those people who are checking out at and time zone 59 and time, yeah, exactly nobody wants to pay attention to, like if it means midnight pacific or eastern we.
Speaker 2:We had a client who did a pre Black Friday sale who left theirs open, I think, for like 12 extra hours and they did like 5x what their normal revenue was would be in a normal day and it like we weren't advertising it anymore. We weren't advertising the sale at all and and it wasn't an auto code was the and the banner was gone to banner was gone.
Speaker 2:It was just people just had remembered or saw the email they did go against our better judgment and we, we are auto code people. They did not do auto code yeah, auto code is just easier auto code's easier. A lot of people don't put banners up and a lot of people like to have people put in the regular discount because they're like what if somebody just wants to buy full price? And it's like nobody you're gonna get more people who are gonna see the advertisement and want to convert or see your evergreen ad and then see the banner exactly and then that's a that's a pleasant surprise.
Speaker 2:I would even say put it in the announcement bar. Right, because a lot of you are going to be doing advertising that send people to either a landing page, a collection page or a product page. Sometimes you send it to the homepage too. Right, it makes sense to send it to the homepage, but a lot of you aren't going to be sending things to homepages, so yeah, collection pages or make sure it's in the announcement bar which is on every page, cause that announcement bar stays up there, I also will put it like.
Speaker 2:I will put it all throughout the homepage, like in three different sections, you know. So if you have other, like slider images or whatever it's black Friday I'll sometimes put it in the collection, like you know you could put it in the collection header. You can use a script that's like hey, 30% off, site wide black Friday. So put, put it all over, cake it all over, it will help your sales. Um, don't do auto discounts or just mark everything down, don't make people put in promo codes.
Speaker 2:It's just one less step and, if I recall right like, there's been times where I uh, um, there have been times where I you can't use your apple pay if you have to put in a promo code, like it messes things up, um. So that's huge and I virtually only use apple pay if they have the option yeah.
Speaker 1:Apple pay yeah, has an issue with it sometimes. Um, if it's not auto applied I also saw.
Speaker 2:Just just another thing is I also saw people's shipping. Uh, stuff was off because sometimes, like if you have promos where if somebody spends over x amount of dollars, like over a hundred dollars, you get free shipping, but you you don't have like override shipping rules for your primary discount, uh, like I went to check out on one brand and I had spent enough money to get my free shipping and it wouldn't give me my free shipping. So I actually bailed, like I was going to spend a couple hundred dollars and buy some gifts for people, and because it wasn't giving me free shipping and it was paying, it was charging me $10.'m like I'm not doing this when I qualified for the free shipping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, just yeah, little bugs, just go through your checkout make sure everything looks good, yeah, and then just double check make sure your discount, your black friday, is being advertised, because and the reason why I say that with google and why that's a huge missed opportunity Is there's a lot of people that will just search your brand, thinking I wonder if they have a Black Friday discount, and if they don't see it In the shopping network, or if they don't see it first search, they might not come.
Speaker 2:Can I leave a little Easter egg, since we're just doing this now?
Speaker 1:Sure, if it's the last one.
Speaker 2:It's the last one. It's nothing to do with Black Friday. It's an it's. It's a promotion for us. Mark and I just launched a new company. Yeah, oh yeah, you may. This is the Easter egg. Okay, we just launched a new company. It's called BFF creative. Where it's we? It's like in-house Subscription creative agency best way to put it like we are your in-house creative team, so you don't have the designs on demand designs on demand.
Speaker 2:Yep so video ads, emails, product images anything you need. We just launched it. We're in beta friends 25, 25% off for two months. Check it out. Bff, creativecom, the first two, first two months. If you do it, only people who get this who listened to the whole episode. I know people like you know that's true.
Speaker 2:So that's why I did it at the end. I like it Right. So the those listeners who did it and DM me if you did it, dm me if you heard it and let me know listeners who did it and dm me if you did it, dm me if you heard it and let me know. That'd be exciting. But it's awesome, like really cool portal that you can. You you can submit all your requests, have direct communication with the designers, you can revise it unlimited revisions, unlimited requests.
Speaker 2:It's really cool and wildly inexpensive yes, it is compared to having an in-house designer or even compared to working with somebody on fiverr. And if you do, having an in-house designer or even compared to working with somebody on fiverr and if you do have an in-house designer, chances are they're bottlenecked a hundred percent. So even if you have a good they're, always they're always overworked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, designers love using it and and most companies aren't in a position where they need to hire a second one. Yes, but you can get a second one for the price of a quarter, a quarter or a fifth of the price of one for sure.
Speaker 2:So all right Between you and I. All right, thank you everybody, we will see you.
Speaker 1:Thanksgiving. Yeah, happy Thanksgiving, happy Friday.
Speaker 2:We will see you on cyber Tuesday.
Speaker 1:Cyber week yeah.
Speaker 2:Cyber trucks Cyber week. Yeah, cybertrucks, see ya. Thank you so much for listening to the unstoppable marketer podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast, whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. To get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.