How to Test Your Creative for Paid Media with Alexa Kilroy

Speaker A: If anyone ever tries to tell you like this is what's working on paid right now and you need to do this, I wouldn't listen to it because it works. Everything works so differently for every different brand. I have been thousands of times where I've tried something that somebody suggested on Twitter or I saw another ad that I liked, I tried to recreate it for my brand, tanked. It just doesn't work like that, right? So just know that your product, your demographic, the way that you approach your messaging and everything is so different than what other people are doing, even your direct competitors. And uh, like really stressing about what's working for somebody else probably isn't going to help you either. The best thing that you can do is dig into your own data, your historical data, your customer information, everything that you know about your product, usp and focus your energy there on pain.

Speaker B: As ah, Facebook and Instagram ads change, many people's strategies have also changed. An overarching theme in paid media right now is to focus on the creative assets and let the content do the targeting. I wanted to bring on a non agency perspective to media buying that might be refreshing for you. What works for one brand might not work for your brand. When it comes to sales or marketing, every company is different. But hearing from inside a brand might inspire you on your next decision. Welcome to how to market your D2C brand, a show where we interview founders and marketers in the DTC space to learn about how they have grown their brands and current best practices in marketing. This show is brought to you by Goodo Studios, a photo and video creation studio that works with consumer brands to create content that converts viewers into customers. And I'm your host, Matthew Gatozzi. Today's guest is Alexa Kilroy, Senior Manager of Creative strategy. At first day, I wanted to start off the interview defining Alexa's role as a creative strategist.

Speaker A: So what I'll say first is, um, the creative strategist role is actually a really vague title. It varies very significant whether you're at an agency, you're in house, um, even the size of the brand and the type of the company that you're working for varies a lot. Um, the way I describe my current role um, is very unique. So imagine that all the parts of your marketing structure are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. My um, role is to actually be the person that puts the puzzle together. So I piece together, uh, work from expert copywriters, work from expert photographers and videographers, um, work from expert landing page people And I help put all the pieces together in the best possible way that I know can capture our customer the best. Um, and so usually creative strategists are a combination of, uh, super creative, super analytical, um, and then they're also really great at managing project managing multiple different pieces. And they're super expert market researchers and just know all the things about the product, the customer Persona, um, everything about your market that you need to know. That's your kind of base knowledge that you're using to put that jigsaw puzzle together.

Speaker B: So if you were to go into a, uh, a, a new brand today, or maybe you could even talk about when you joined first day for the first time, what are the first things that you're looking at or want to understand so that you can build out creative strategy for brands.

Speaker A: So the first thing I really need to be is a product expert. I need to understand everything about the product, about the usp. Um, I need to be able to basically write out the nutrition facts, the back of my supplement label off my brain. I need to know everything I need to know there. Then I need to know any existing data that we already have, um, what current sales, like what platforms we're currently running on, uh, what paid channels we're on. Um, I need to know everything about the customer Persona. I even started just actually reaching out to customers, um, via email to schedule customer interviews. Um, really just understanding the voice of the customer, the intentions of the customer, um, and then where our product fits into their life. Um, and then lastly there's that big creative piece. Um, so you know, do we have an existing kind of brand guideline? Do we have assets in the first place? Um, what is the current marketing team org structure work and how are people interacting with each other, um, in order to get creative, live and in front of other people. So it's a lot of understanding everything about the brand, the company, the product, the customer, and then also making sure that the marketing team is flowing and working well together and supporting them in terms of putting things together and getting the creative that you need.

Speaker B: So I want to break down two parts of that, which is the data part and then the customer Persona part. So for the first part, for the data, what are some of those key metrics that you're looking at?

Speaker A: Because my role is so full funnel, uh, I'm looking at lots of different things. So my experience might be unique. But um, I am like in Shopify and I'm looking at things like, you know, it's down to like our AOV or how Long our actual customer stays with us and their lifetime value. Um, um, so I'm looking at it from like the existing customer standpoint, um, or the prior customer standpoint, looking at all those purchase metrics. Um, um, we of course at first day have both one time purchase and subscription options. So I'm looking at the breakdown between who's purchasing one time and what volume they're purchasing versus subscription. Um, um, I'm looking at things like what paid channels we're on and the performance of those channels. Um, um, I'm looking at how people are engaging with our content as well as how you know, they're converting. Um, so Roas is always king uh, in dtc, but you've got to be looking at things like customer acquisition costs as well. Um, I'm looking at our blended performance. So I'm looking at ah, how all of our channels play into those customer acquisition costs, um, or where the actual point of conversion is for a customer. So do they purchase from ads? Do they purchase from an email that we captured from them from an ad and then they're purchasing later? Um, um, it's really so many different things. And so throughout my week, um, I'm doing all sorts of data analysis that ranges from like broad scope user journey stuff all the way down to I'm actually looking at specific ads like on the ad level, um, I'm looking at how they're performing, I'm looking at when people stop watching them or how people are engaging with them. Um, and I'm also making suggestions there on how we can optimize ads even better on the ad level so it goes broad to niche for sure.

Speaker B: How are you trying to, you know, get behind like the decision making of a customer and how are you finding that through the questions you're asking.

Speaker A: When I hop on a customer interview first, I actually interview two different types of customers. I interview people who may have purchased a subscription and canceled it and I want to understand why or how we could win them back. Um, and then I also interview people who are like lifelong customers, either single purchases or subscriptions. And I want to understand why they're such advocates of the brand. Um, the questions vary obviously based on the type of customer, but the first thing that I find as really successful is I'm actually very direct with the customer up front and I let them know like, hey, here's why I'm doing this interview. Of course, you know, there's some sort of incentive for you, be it a gift card or whatever, you know. But um, I want to Let you know up front exactly what I'm trying to understand so you can help me understand how you think. And, um, being that transparent and that direct is actually really helpful with people. Um, because if they like your brand enough, they want to help you too. They want to help you grow. And it's a win, win. Um, and so I usually ask them questions like, you know, how did you first come across our brand? Um, what about our brand or our packaging or our formula? You know, makes you really excited to stay, uh, a first aid customer. I'll ask those questions, but it's, it's usually not the first answer that they give you. It's just about digging deeper so, you know, they'll say, I like the taste of your gummies. And you're like, that's awesome. What do you like about it? Do you like the texture? Do you actually like the flavor? You gotta really dig in. Um, um. And basically my sentiment is like, you gotta keep asking discovery questions until they've really run out of ideas. Um, um. Because you just wanna get to the absolute root and they might not have that root right away. Um, um. So I think just being really in depth and kind of almost doing that little five year old. But why, but why? Until you really get to it, you need to know. Um, but I think for me it's really about how they first encountered us. Um, I asked questions about the actual product consumption experience, how they feel about the packaging, um, what messaging about our brand that they encountered that made them feel like they could trust us or made them feel like our product does taste good or make them feel like our product is quality. I'll dig into some of that stuff. Um, and then sometimes it's more just bigger philosophical things like why do you care about vitamins in the first place? You know, help me understand why someone might buy vitamins.

Speaker B: Part of Alexa's job at First Day is running paid advertisements. Lots of brands have been debating whether to use Facebook and Instagram ads or not. So I wanted to see what platforms she is focused on for first date and why.

Speaker A: Historically, we've been a big Facebook brand. Um, our demographic is usually parents, often moms purchasing vitamins for their kids. That was our hero product. That's how they get into our brand. Um, there's just a lot of like moms and grandmas and aunts and uncles on Facebook hanging out. So it's an easy spot for us. However, Facebook is incredibly volatile, as everyone knows, and it feels like every week they're rolling something new out that's Just bonking up the whole system. And so, um, this quarter we've made it a big, we've made a big push, um, to launch on YouTube, which I'm really excited about. Um, if your brand currently isn't on YouTube, you gotta be. The TLDR is that you can invest in like one or two really high quality creatives. Um, um, they might be a little expensive but YouTube creative lives for so much longer. There are brands that are scaling a creative that they may be paid, I don't know, a thousand dollars for to 300k a day paid spend. Um, um, so super high return on investment if you are setting things up the right way. And the longevity is just really impressive. Like you can run that same YouTube ad for months and months and months. Um, so that's a huge, huge, ah, blue ocean in my opinion that I think a lot of DTC brands aren't capitalizing on. And then of course TikTok, everybody's obsessed with TikTok right now. Um, TikTok is fun because it's new, but it's also challenging because it's new and their uh, app platform just isn't as established or developed as something like Facebook that we're all very familiar working with. Um, and so there's just a lot of finagling, um, that you have to do in working with the TikTok support team or working with maybe an agency that is a partner of TikTok. But um, because it's so difficult, there are less people advertising on it. And so again, huge opportunity. Last thing uh, we're doing, we're exploring native kind of display work. Um, and this really depends on your brand. But for example we are a health and wellness brand. So um, when people are looking up nutrition, ah, information or how to keep their kids healthy, there's a series of websites like parenting.com right, that they're going to be on and we want to be there when they get there.

Speaker B: I was surprised by Alexa's answer about YouTube ads. I haven't met a lot of brands focusing on YouTube so I wanted to hear more about what is working for them on this platform. And maybe you could look into YouTube

Speaker A: ads for your own brand in transparency. Uh, when my work to date actually hadn't had a lot of YouTube experience, we'd done some minor tests and we definitely did things the wrong way. First thing I can tell you is if you try and run Facebook style creative or basically any other platform style creative on YouTube, you will immediately lose money and you might not even be able to serve your ads. So don't even bother. Um, but we actually partnered with um, an agency this year. Um, shout out to this agency called Inceptly. I found them because, and I highly recommend this if you're interested in YouTube, um, the founder created a free tool. It's called Vidtao Vid Tao and it allows you to go in and see um, you can look up your competitors, you can see ads they're running, you can see how long they've been running for how much money they're spending on them every day. You can't see their performance like, but you can see what they're scaling. And if something's doing well enough, right, you're not going to be spending 300 grand a day. So um, it's really great insight if you're interested in exploring YouTube. Um, YouTube is of course part of Google. So you run your YouTube campaigns through Google advertising. So if you're proficient in Google Ads, um, you will be great@ Ah, YouTube advertising because it's a very similar, you know, technical media buying setup. In terms of the creative, um, there are two kind of approaches. There's like very glossy feels like a commercial creative and then there's creative that feels like the brand made it using UGC elements and different things in house and either can succeed. Um, I think what's unique about YouTube is you the way that you're charged is actually different than Facebook. Uh, so you basically don't get charged if someone skips your ad. So you have five seconds to not only convince people to watch your ad, but make sure that you're convincing the right people to cause then you have to pay for them. Right? So if you're just generating curiosity watches, you're wasting money. But if you're doing the right thing in your first five seconds and getting the right people hanging on, you have a really high success rate because you have like, I don't know, your YouTube ads can be super long. I think they can be like 10 minutes even. And so you have so much time to capture people and the people that are on YouTube are already there because they want to be watching longer form video content. So it's just uh, like the perfect space to give everybody everything they need to know in this beautiful video presentation.

Speaker B: Basically brands are trying to calibrate attribution in paid media while customer acquisition costs are creeping up. I wanted to know what is working for Alexa and first day recently when it comes to paid media.

Speaker A: I have so many answers to this question and they all vary based on the Platform. Uh, the first thing that I would say to anyone who's struggling with paid media right now is one, stop obsessing about individual channel roas or individual channel performance. And the reason that I feel this way is because the way that consumers engage with advertising has changed dramatically, not only in the past couple years, but even the past six months. Um, and it's because every platform that we're using has advertising on it, and it all functions in a really different way. So customers are constantly inundated with ads, uh, in different formats in different places. They perceive all of them differently. And we're at the point now where your customer is probably going to have to see one of your ads in like, two or three different places before they convert. So whereas it used to be like, I saw a Facebook ad, I purchased something right away, I saw an Instagram adapt something right away. It's just not happening that way anymore. Um, and so I think the biggest tip that I can give you is, like, think about your blended marketing return. Stop thinking about individual channel returns. Um, because it'll just get you. It'll get your head in a hole about, like, Facebook isn't working. This isn't working. I need to be constantly pivoting, trying new channels, trying new things, and then you end up spreading yourself really thin across a bunch of different channels, and it just doesn't work out that well. So what's working for us on paid media? We are having success on Facebook. What I will say is, um, um, it really. There's. If anyone ever tries to tell you, like, this is what's working on paid right now and you need to do this, I wouldn't listen to it because it works. Everything works so differently for every different brand. I have been thousands of times where I've tried something that somebody suggested on Twitter, or I saw another ad that I liked, I tried to recreate it for my brand, tanked. It just doesn't work like that. Right? So just know that your product, your demographic, the way that you approach your messaging and everything is so different than what other people are doing, even your direct competitors. And, uh, like, really stressing about what's working for somebody else probably isn't going to help you either. The best thing that you can do is dig into your own data, your historical data, your customer information, everything that you know about your product, usp, and focus your energy there on paid, um, in terms of, like, visual creatives for our brand. Right now we have this mom demographic. Um, we see a lot of narrative content going, well, be it, you know, narrative video testimonials or, um, advertorials, narrative style messaging for the product. Um, I also am a huge advocate of what I call like product education advertising. Um, it seems really simple, but, uh, people who are going to purchase things from ads and are okay with it want to just learn about the product to purchase the thing from the ad. Um, and so you actually generate higher quality leads from your ads and higher quality clicks when you're really transparent about what you're selling, why you're selling it, and why it's better than anything else. So that product, Educational Creative is doing well for us. And then lastly, I call what I call weird creative. Um, so things like things that you would never expect to work, uh, sometimes they're just super boring, super senseless, like random visuals, but your body copy has enough information about your product that performs well. Or for example, we have an asset that a mom wrote on a piece of paper, like a note about nutrition and her kids, and took a picture of it and sent it to us as ugc. And that weird handwritten thing has popped off for us. So definitely, um, if you're feeling fatigued or you're feeling like you're trying what everyone else is trying and it's not working, do something weird. Um, get out of your comfort zone, Go like, walk around and look at things outside, take some deep breaths, come back down and try and create something kind of off the books for you. And I guarantee you'll see some sort of result or get some sort of learnings that you didn't have before.

Speaker B: What are some things that you guys have tried to do that didn't work? And what is, what are you thinking about? Or how are you thinking about solving the things that aren't working for you? Like, what are some solutions that you guys are coming up with internally to say, hey, you know what, this is not working, but we're going to test this out.

Speaker A: On platform retargeting is trash for us right now. So like on platform Facebook retargeting, not great. Um, I would say part of it is because of permissions, iOS 14, whatever. Um, but we're also just finding that the bottom of the funnel discounts and offers that used to work before just aren't working the same way that they do. Um, our solution to that has actually just been to really beef up our Google Ads strategy, um, and get in front of people on keyword searches and on branded searches, um, and just send people to the product page and get them where they need to be to Learn about the product as opposed to trying to do some, like, gimmicky, really catchy remarketing efforts, um, that kind of, like, left this in your cart thing does not work for us, and that's fine. Um, but we've also just seen generally, like, in the platform, our retargeting audience is a fraction of what it used to be. And so it just makes our costs really high and it's just really an effective marketing for us. Um, so I think that that's something that, like, strategically, we have kind of worked around. Um, um, in terms of creative, we tried, like, thousands of different creative things that don't work. Um, um, and I think that that's part of the experimentation process. And you just have to be willing to, like, sometimes throw a little cash and what feels like a dumpster fire to get some learnings, and that's okay. Um, um, but I know, like, for example, everybody has been really amped about, like, repurposing TikTok, TikTok style creative on Facebook, for example, and using this, like, native text and making it feel like a TikTok on Facebook. It doesn't work for us. We tried. We tried it a billion different ways. Doesn't work. And that's okay. Um, but we found that, you know, using UGC narrative content, but designing it a little differently or trying it a different way works really well for us. And so just kind of experimenting. Um, I think another huge piece of advice that I could give your listeners is, um, you know, often we test something and it doesn't work. You know, the first two times, three times that we try it, we just move on. Um, the reality is there are way more experiments to be run with that concept, with that test, with that thing, and sometimes it's as simple. I was tweeting about this the other day. But sometimes it's as simple as you change the color of something or you change the video clip to a slightly different video clip in the hook, and all of a sudden you see drastic performance changes. Um, when I think about things that aren't working well for us, I just see them as opportunities to optimize and iterate and not so much failures, but more so, you know, okay, this probably work and will work in some way. How can I make it work better? Um, and I just have a little, you know, creative testing experiment campaign where I play with things and I switch them up a little bit. And it's amazing. Sometimes you launch, you know, five variants of something that are incredibly similar, and one of them is just a Crazy winner. And the other four flop. And you never know really why. You just can. Gotta make your best hypotheses.

Speaker B: What impresses me by first day in Alexa is the amount of testing they do each week. I wanted Alexa to break down her process to test ads and creatives.

Speaker A: I'm going to give you our Facebook creative process just because it'll be easier to give. Probably the most popular platform that people are using. Um, so, okay, thinking high level. When we're thinking about our creative testing process, uh, the thing that we start with is a big angle matrix. Um, and what that is is essentially we have master angles. So let's say competitor focus, you know, product education, um, different, like sub angles of problems and solutions that we have, things like that. Um, those all go in one column. Then we have like the sub angles that fall underneath those. And then we basically just matrix that out on an Excel document. You know, have we tried this yet? Where did we try it? How do we try it? How, um, high confidence are we that it might succeed? Succeed versus, you know, is it a high level of effort thing that we want to test? So that's like big picture, you know, totally innovative testing in terms of like angles, messaging, that kind of thing. Um, so we have that, um, and we use that to guide our innovative testing. Um, and so our innovative testing, you know, the ideas really come from what. A lot of what I do as a creative strategist is that market research part. So I'm reading like parenting blogs, I'm reading Reddit, I'm reading Amazon reviews on other things that parents are buying. I'm trying to find the words of the customer to explain what they're searching for, what they need, turning those words into compelling messaging and then making sure it gets into creative. So once we have kind of an angle and a messaging style that we want to try, we usually pick a couple new, like radically new concepts per week. Um, we turn them into a kind of cohesive concept that either myself or a copywriter will write some scripts for. Um, our video editor will work off the scripts, you know, put the text overlays, make the video work. Um, we always test all of our new creative with one high performing, high converting landing page. And if we're testing new visuals, new messaging, we'll use, you know, an LP that we know is working copy that we know is working. Or if we're testing new copy, we'll use a video that we know is working in an lp. So we're always trying to reduce the number of variables so that you're really testing that new thing that you're testing almost in isolation or, you know, using other things that you know will perform around it to kind of buffer it. So when we're doing innovative testing, we're trying to test like two new, two to three new concepts per week. Um, and then we essentially have a creative testing campaign, um, in which, you know, we have a few different ad sets breaking things up on angles or creative styles. Um, and we just constantly refresh as things either show that they're viable for scaling, so they're just crushing it, and we scale them up with more budget, or they don't really get much spend or kind of die off and we just replace them with something new to test. Um, in addition to our innovative testing, we also have iterative testing. So that's where you're taking something that either performed really well and trying to make variants of it that will perform as well, or you're taking something that did perform, performed very close to benchmark and you're changing up like the video hooks, you're changing up the copy, you're trying to give it a different funnel and see what variables you can tweak to get it to perform even better. Um, and then, you know, once we've got things that are performing well in those two campaigns, that's when we just scale the heck out of them. We give them lots of budget, we let them rock and roll. And usually, you know, if they're really strong creatives on Facebook, they'll live. I mean, we have a creative that has actually been crushing since August, um, and it's currently March of 2022. So if you do it really well and you're really data driven and you're really in the weeds with it, you can get longevity out of those creatives. But sometimes they just live for like a month or two. And that's great too.

Speaker B: Like you said, it's not like there's a one size fits all solution for paid media. And every brand is going to be different because every, you know, customer is going to be different or ideal customers can be different for different brands. And like, the economics of brands is very different. So obviously you can't give like tactical advice to people, to listeners here. But if you were a brand starting out today, how should they plan for paid media and the rising customer acquisition costs? Like, if you were to, you know, be at a startup ground level, what, how would you even think about getting into paid media?

Speaker A: The first thing I would say is, um, if you're ready to spend Money on paid. You first need to choose your channel, and you need to choose your channel really wisely. Um, so it really depends on your product. Um, if you're like a life Coach, go on YouTube. People are looking for resources there. That's a great place for you to launch. If you are, um, a handmade jewelry maker, go on either Instagram or Pinterest and post like real style videos of you hand making your jewelry that people will absorb as just cool content and then they'll want to purchase your jewelry later. Actually follow this incredible girl who makes, uh, dominoes with resin. Um, and she just started basically by making reels of her making her dominoes and then started boosting the posts and now she's crushing it has this massive handmade craft business. So I think the first thing is making sure that when you're ready to spend, you start by spinning on your platform of choice. And the worst thing that you can do is is think like, okay, I know exactly who my customer Persona is. I'm going to go really niche. I'm only going to spend on like people who have indicated the interest dominoes. That is the worst thing you can do. Go broad. No matter what platform it is, go broad. Let the data show you where your people are. You are usually very biased because you created your product, you built your business around what you think is exciting or who you think your customer is. Sometimes it's completely different than what you anticipated. And so you got to let the data guide you. There's. So go broad on whatever channel you choose. Um, in addition to whatever your primary channel is, back yourself up. Uh, on Google, own your own branded keywords. People will search for you after looking for an ad. Make sure that when they search for you, you're the first result that comes up. If you don't have an SEO expert, the best way to do that is run on paid. There probably isn't another brand bidding on your name if you're that new or depending on what your brand name is. But if it's a very generic term, maybe there are people bidding on it. But make sure you own your brand name space on Google. And once you maybe have a little bit more cash to spend, start owning top of funnel keyword searches for things that are related to your product, your brand, um, on Google as well. I think the biggest advice I could give is always back yourself up with the Google. Because we're finding that so many people watch your ad, maybe visit your lp, visit your page, but they end up doing their own research anyway because Consumers are really smart, they're really wary, they're not as comfortable just buying random things on the Internet anymore. Um, and then the last thing is, um, whether you do it yourself, you find an awesome summer intern. Invest in at least having one organic social platform. Active people want to see the social proof that you have 14,000 followers on TikTok or on Instagram, because to them that means, okay, at least, you know, 10,000 people have purchased from this brand and want to follow them and that makes them feel safe about purchasing from your company when, um, it's kind of like a random website. So kind of think through the customer's brain of like, you know, if you were to go click on a random Instagram ad, what would make you feel comfortable purchasing from them? Um, walk through that journey yourself and make sure you have those basics, um, to support you once you're ready to launch on paid. Know that. Um, so the sentiment that CAC is rising I, um, think is a blanket statement. I, uh, think that CAC is rising if you're, if you don't have strong media buying strategy because our customer acquisition costs are solid right now for us on Facebook. Um, so, and I think one of those big things is going broad. That's a huge help because if you're doing that really niche targeting, your costs are really high. Um, but I would say, um, that if you're worried about rising customer acquisition costs, uh, make sure that you have the platform backup and then you're also investing in things, um, like solid email marketing or SMS strategy, um, in order to support you in case people aren't converting at that first point of uh, touch, be it your paid platform, um, and also be very mindful that if you're a new brand and you start working with an agency and they're promising you like big, big, big, big things off the get go, um, be wary of who you're working with as partners, um, and know that uh, as much as we all try and learn everything we can about the media buying game, about the paid creative game, everything's constantly changing. People who promise you a guarantee that they have X results consistently or can get X results consistently probably aren't being entirely truthful. Um, and I would say if you're moving on the uh, media buying front, um, make sure you have someone in your pocket who really understands media buying strategy. Um, because just trying to do it yourself and figure it out yourself and play with the platform is a really hard way to go. Even though there are a ton of resources online, even if it's just finding someone on Upwork or fiverr to help you out or reaching out via Twitter. Um, getting someone who understands media buying strategy well and understands how to set up and optimize campaigns is immensely helpful and making sure that you're battling those costs.

Speaker B: So what are brands that you're looking at for inspiration lately? It could be from a strategy standpoint, it could be for a content standpoint. But just like who are some brands that you know, you feel like have been executing really well at a high level?

Speaker A: Whenever I answer this question, I answer it based off of brands that I feel make products that people don't really need, but people really want them. Right. So that's what I think about. It's like they have the ultimate. Maybe they don't have a problem solution, perfect situation which makes advertising easy. Um, the first thing I would say is if you are a D2CPG brand, you have to check out this website. It's called um, CPGD xyz. It's like an online directory of consumer packaged goods brands. It is a great place to find all these DTC brands. Get a lot of inspo looking at everything from their landing pages and websites to their content. Highly recommend it. Um, right now I have my eye on Mud Water. They're absolutely crushing it on TikTok. Um, I just know, I can tell by how much I'm getting hit with their ads, how they're scaling, um, and how they're doing and they just have really solid, really innovative content and they have a weird product. I mean it really is like a weird mushroom powder. But people who I know, who I would not identify as healthy people are buying that stuff. Um, and that means that their advertising is very compelling. Um, and I just think it's interesting because their product doesn't look particularly appetizing. I'm sure it is. But they've just done really innovative things with their creative. So I love MudWTR. Um, I love, uh, there is a brand called Better Brand. They make these keto something bagels. Again, not something people really need. Pretty expensive. But they're doing a great job with their advertising and they're doing weird innovative stuff like actually posting up in New York subways, which small D2C brands don't normally do stuff like that. But it's working because there isn't competition for them. Um, and then when it comes to YouTube, um, I'm obsessed with Grammarly's work. Um, I love Duolingo's work. Um, some of those bigger brands, um, are crushing it as well.

Speaker B: To finish out the podcast, we are going to do a few quick fire questions. The first one is, what is one tech company in the e commerce space that you've been a fan of lately?

Speaker A: Uh, so my answer is brand new company. It's called Clara. They may be rebranding, so I'll have to circle back, but it is a widget app for Shopify that allows you to put, uh, customer testimonials on your PDP or landing pages. And it has crushed for us in terms of CBR.

Speaker B: Okay, and what is one D2C brand that you think is awesome as a product? You gave us some great examples of people you love. But for you, like one brand that you're really enjoying in your lifestyle?

Speaker A: Um, it is a brand called Behave. They make, like, sugar free gummy bears, gummy worms. They're incredible. They're delicious. Their content, their packaging is beautiful. I am obsessed.

Speaker B: I finish off the podcast with a segment called Open Mic. This is a chance for my guests to share anything that they want. A lot of times I feel like people get stuck behind the industry they are in, but we are all human and have other interests outside of that. So this is a space for my guests to say whatever they want to say.

Speaker A: I have two things. One, um, if you're listening to this podcast and you're not active on Twitter, you are so, so missing out. Please let me give you fomo. Um, I have learned more from Twitter than I learned from my unfortunately very expensive college degree. From a lot of online courses that I've taken. Um, people are exceptionally willing to share their best practices to connect with you. It is one place where it is totally acceptable to slide into someone's DMS and ask for help, no matter how big and important you feel like they are. I've made some of the best connections, Matt included, recently, uh, by using Twitter. And I, uh, just highly recommend you spend some time on it. It will not be a waste of your time. It's an incredible resource. Follow cool people, reach out to cool people. Um, the second thing is very related to that. Um, in addition to listening to podcasts, reading stuff online, um, I encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone. If there is someone you admire, you really like their work. If it's creative, if they're a CEO, if they're a great leader, if they're a founder, just show up in their inbox and be very vulnerable and say, like, hey, I really admire your work. I'm really trying to figure this stuff out. I'm having a hard time with my brand. I'm having a hard time with my media buying strategy. I would love to just buy you a virtual coffee and chat. It can be very low key. I just really would love to get to know you and I really respect your work. You will be incredibly, incredibly amazed by how kind people are. Even if you feel like they're a competitor or in somewhere in the same vertical, everyone is out here trying to do their best. Media buying is hard. Running a company is hard. Working at a 10 person startup is hard. Uh, there's no like support group for that. Right? We just got to be there for each other and support each other. And so showing up into other people's inboxes gives them an opportunity to connect with someone that they probably. You don't even realize they want to connect with you, but often they do. Um, and it also is just a great opportunity to get some insight, some mentorship, whatever you're looking for. Um, never once have I had a bad response. Someone say, no, um, sometimes people are busy and they say, I'll get with you in a month. But it is just one of the best things that you can do for yourself and it's a great way to also push yourself beyond your comfort limits, um, and meet cool people.

Speaker B: This conversation with Alexa got me more more interested in YouTube ads for brands as well as taught me how to build out a creative testing process. You can follow Alexa on Twitter at alexakilroy. We will also be putting more information about first day linked in the show notes. Thank you Alexa, uh, for being on the show. If you like this show, drop a rating on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast listening app. Uh, and if you really love this show, please share this episode with a friend and thank you in advance.