The product and messaging you put out into the world determines the type of customer you’ll attract.
This content was first published in the No Best Practices newsletter on 6.27.2021.
Saw an interesting tweet from Three Ships’ Lillie Sun a few weeks ago:
I’m sure that many of you reading this have run into the same issue: you’re trying to make your brand differentiated and fun, but the audience only seems to respond to UP TO 90 PERCENT OFF!!!!1!
The Law of Attraction may generally be a load of malarkey, but not when it comes to marketing. The product and messaging you put out into the world determines the type of customer you’ll attract.
Let’s break down the situation in Lillie’s tweet. It seems that most of Three Ships’ SMS subscriber base is looking for promotions and is disinterested in creative frills. Why would that be?
To figure it out, let’s do a mini customer congruence audit. First, we’ll look at a few recent Three Ships Instagram posts, which most closely match the tone of voice originally used in the SMS:
Next, let’s look at the copy on Three Ships’ product detail pages. This copy zooms in on the functional aspects of each product’s ingredients and features social proof. The tone is much more straightforward than the IG copy. This makes sense given the role of the PDP in the path to purchase.
Finally, let’s look at the copy on the brands’ on-site SMS opt-in captures. This is the biggest departure from the rest of the brands’ digital touchpoints: it is purely focused on savings.
People will reach the Three Ships website by various means. Some will see the brand for the first time in Target and then Google it. Others may follow Lillie on Twitter and check the brand site to see what she’s up to. And yet others may discover the brand through a chance encounter on Instagram or a skincare blog.
All of these people will have a different baseline level of brand context aka “what is this brand about and what does it mean to me”? They also have different baseline levels of promotional affinity. Maybe they never buy ANYTHING at full price as a rule. Maybe they’re happy to pay full price for a brand whose values align with their own.
What sub-segment of web browsers is going to be most likely to sign up for SMS messages from a brand they’re unfamiliar with in exchange for a 10% off promo code? Probably the same segment who prefers stripped down, promo-forward copy.
There is nothing wrong with taking steps to attract this audience, as long as you have a plan for them that aligns with your overall strategy.
But, unfortunately, most marketers underestimate their own power to attract specific audiences. Or they must give in to business pressure to attract whatever audience they can in order to hit a number. The result is that the behavior of your actual audience starts to diverge from the behavior of your target customer.
Here are a few more common examples of this phenomenon:
The Hot Item: An apparel brand lands on a runaway hit, also known as a “hot item”. This rapidly scales the brand’s revenues, customer base, and current addressable market. But the customers who purchased the “hot item” aren’t interested in anything else the label sells. When the next collection launches, with inventory planned up to comp the hot item bump, it flops.
Paid Social Determinism: A brand launches Facebook prospecting ads for the first time. They test creatives across all four product categories that they sell. Ads in Category A perform much, much better than others. In fact, it’s difficult to get impression delivery for Categories B, C and D. On advice from the brand’s media agency they scale spend in the account. After a year, their customer file is full of Category A customers. New product launches in Categories B, C and D flop.
Test and Learn: A brand sets out on an aggressive “test and learn” agenda to optimize their email performance. They test subject lines, copy, content and offers across the entire email file and land on “best practices” for the channel. Because all of the testing is full file, the winners skew towards the preferences of the most reactive subscribers in the file–customers with 4+ orders and sale customers. After six months of running these best practices, the brand sees a big dropoff in new customers signing up to email. Those who do sign up opt out within a few weeks.
Raising Prices: A brand has a stable but slowly shrinking base of loyal customers. Attracting new customers to their existing offering gets harder each year. A new Chief Merchandising Officer decides to raise prices gradually each year to win more revenue from the existing base. After this decision goes into effect, order frequency and customer retention decline, and so do revenues. The cost to acquire a new customer increases even further.
What This Means
When merchants, marketers, eCom teams or planners make decisions, those decisions never happen in a vacuum. Decisions about site creative impact the composition of the customer file. Decisions about pricing strategy impact the effectiveness of marketing. And decisions about marketing channel strategy impact the success of the assortment.
Many teams still operate in silos. And members of one discipline are not encouraged to learn about any others. This is short sighted.
Our decisions today have a real impact on our ability to be successful in the future. But it’s hard to pass up something that looks like a big win today because it may hurt the business tomorrow. The eCommerce landscape is competitive and, unfortunately, a lot of guidance and thought leadership is built around fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Whether you’re an owner/operator, just starting in your career, or leading a large team, the most impactful thing you can do today is to start thinking about the ripple effects your decisions may have on other areas of the business. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it will help you redirect undue blame for others’ decisions.
When you understand the dynamics of your assortment and your customer file, you can start using them to your advantage. Because in eCommerce, that is really your only true competitive advantage.
Everyone has access to the same branding agencies, media buyers and marketing technology. What makes your brand special is your product and how your customers relate to that. Your decisions can either amplify that advantage or chip away at it. And that’s why you need Modern Lifecycle Marketing.