What do Haus and Caraway know about Branding that you don’t?

Happy Sunday and Happy Slurpee Day! If you're about to dive into this email, I hope you're relaxed, on a couch, Olipop in one hand, and maybe a weighted blanket on top? Or a puppy... can't go wrong with pups.

If you were forwarded this email, hey there! Feel free to join the 15,000+ of us by signing up here: nik.co/email

For everyone who tweeted on my birthday, THANK YOU! I put many of them on this new email collection page, and a big shoutout to Alex Lieberman for helping me with the copy hierarchy and word choice, given what he knows from Morning Brew.

This past week I spent the week in San Diego at the GeekOut conference by Nick Shackelford. It was absolutely bananas. It wasn't your typical marketing directors, or agency business development people. It was a two-person team running a $100M/year biz, a one-person remote agency founder who's managing 250 people overseas with 50 clients. Just under the radar, but VERY impressive people — the hustlers. I love hanging with hustlers.

Their next event is in Brooklyn, NY, and I will push a link out to y'all when it becomes available. I felt like I made up for the entire cost of the trip and the ticket with one conversation I had with a bank there. A few other founders had their companies scooped up by Thrasio at the event itself. Nick Shackelford, who puts the event on, has quite literally created "Serendipity" but as an event. 

Something cool coming soon — AppSumo's Sumo Day, which is similar to Amazon's Prime Day. It's a HUGE sale day from AppSumo, and it lasts 3 days (72 hours). I am going to be scooping up apps for cheap, and I suggest you do too. You can sign up here to join Sumo Day (it's FREE to join): Sumo Day 2021

Lastly, before we dive into the main content of the email, I just wanted to say THANK YOU for reading this newsletter, engaging with me on Twitter, replying back when you can, saying "hi" at events, and any other form of engagement. It keeps me motivated knowing there are people on the other side of my screen and makes it fulfilling to do! So, thank you! 

Alright, now I know you're here for the good stuff. This email is all about building “brand” in the early days when you don't have as many resources (people, capital, etc), but need to start building brand. Outside of easy things like product placement opportunities, there are ways to build a long-term brand. 

The very last thing - this is pretty much a response to what someone wrote in. If you have something on your mind, email me your question!

A response to, “Hey Nik, how do we build brand?”

While performance marketing becomes the crack that we love — instant gratification with purchases and attributable actions, the long game lies in the depth of the brand. 

To those who will argue there are companies that even do $50M or $100M in revenue without any real brand, yes they do. But that's about all they can sell. If your goal is just to sell 1 thing the entire lifecycle of the company, then you might be able to get away with not building brand. I spoke with a founder yesterday who does 6-figures in revenue per day, with 99.9% of that coming from 1 product. Why? Great product-market fit, the product is actually really good, but without brand, their other products don't sell more than 2% of any other product per day.

That's just from the revenue ceilings...

If you look at "brand," holistically, it gives you a competitive advantage (read: an advantage, especially, when being compared to competitors). Having a great brand, with a mission, a vision, elevated design, informative content, positive reviews, good word-of-mouth, ease of use, etc. is the brand equivalent of a firm handshake. Before really doing much, you establish a level of trust, confidence, intention, and respect.

Obviously, a LOT of things go into building a great brand, and the brand equity compounds over time. A few of these puzzle pieces to building a great brand include:

• Positive customer reviews
• High NPS (net promoter score) or word-of-mouth
• Good packaging (box, inserts, notes, tape)
• Good content (social, email, website)
• Good brand education: email flows that build up the need for the product, infographics to be shared, etc.
• PR/blogs/affiliates
• Influencers/newsletters
• Partnerships or collabs
• Emphasize the founding story, everywhere

Today's consumer is smart, in terms of smelling the BS of a brand that is being built with intention, and one that's just being built by a VC firm or being drop-shipped with Alibaba. The FTC is also getting smarter with what brands that JUST rely on borderline illegal tactics around pushing fake UGC content, so building brand has a high payoff as you grow.

I wanted to share 4 tactics that I find can help build brand early on when budgets can be tight or you're unsure where to start. 

If you have others that you have used in the past, please reply with them! I want to take this email and all the replies and compile it into a doc for you.

Ride or Dies

The best way to start the word-of-mouth chain is to get a starting group of people to be your brand's Ride or Die fans in the early days. Immi did this in a great way by cultivating a community of ramen lovers who wanted high-protein ramen. Maximus Tribe did this by creating a space where men can communicate openly, and without judgment, with Dr. Sepah directly, or among each other. Jolie Skin is doing this by creating educational materials (a local water contaminants report) for anyone, for free.

This group will be your initial word-of-mouth spark, but they will also be your "Marines" in the comments. Someone has a question in your Instagram post or Facebook ad comment? Someone from this group will be the first to answer it and come to your defense if it's something negative. It's a fascinating and fulfilling engagement to see happen.

Many of the most successful brands or companies started in a niche audience (like what I'm describing with Ride or Dies), and then expanded from there, but always had that support to rely on. Facebook and Tinder? Colleges. LifeAid? CrossFit. Barcode? Professional athletes.
 

Packaging

I don't think I've seen a brand execute this better than Haus and Caraway. Both brands created extremely delightful packaging that felt it was a part of the brand experience, not just a means to get the product. Everything from the outside of the box, to the way the molds fit the products, to the branded tape adds a lot of positive brand equity to the brand in someone's mind. Lucky for performance marketers, good packaging also adds a lot of perceived value to what you're selling.

Create for Dark Social

Dark Social is somewhat of an older term, but it's the sharing that you can't necessarily track. Things like copy/paste a webpage to a friend, or taking a screenshot and texting it to a friend. Luckily, now, social platforms and analytics tools have gotten better about tracking, but the underlying intention should still remain true: create things that people will share.

This email is a perfect example of this. I know this email gets forwarded like crazy. Why? Because I wrap something from start to finish in one email and include information that is helpful or brings value to you. 

If you really want to get good at this, take 25 ideas and throw them on a Pinterest board and understand what gets re-pinned. Then apply that to other channels, and play with the dynamics around how users "share" content within those platforms.

Performance PR / Whitelisting Content

Something that's becoming "hot" lately is fueling the third-party endorsements about your brand with first-party data and media spend. You can do it in two main ways:

Take a piece of positive press, a blog post, a detailed review, a press piece where you might be mentioned as a solution to a problem, etc., and run it with some paid media to your cold audience. Get them warmed up with something more "upper funnel" to build an audience of now engaged people. They should be getting something of value out of it, otherwise, people won't end up sharing the content on their own. Paid edia should always be looked at as amplification, not THE strategy — so if you're not planning to get shares from your ads/content, you're thinking about this wrong.

The second way to do this is to work with influencers like Hashtag Paid where you can find creators who can try, like, and create content for what you're selling. Then with one click begin running ads through THEIR social handles, so it really comes off as a third-party endorsement.

Make sure you consult with your legal team or read through all the rules around this, don't blame me in 2 months for saying I told you to violate FTC rules.

When you think of a dog, what do you think of? I think of a yellow lab. You might think of a spotted white puppy or a pit bull. That's the brand of "dog" in your head. Go make that happen for your category, product, and brand.

On to some fun stuff... 
 

Software/App of the Week:

SMS Templates - The best SMS automation library for commerce

Postscript just recently launched this and didn't do the best job of explaining it, which is why many didn't hear about it, but let me attempt a different way of explaining it.

All the complex automations that you want to get done, from post-purchase sequences to cross-selling collections, to following up for purchase on a consumable product can be done from this library of automations. The templates also integrate easily with review platforms, ESPs, etc. — all available at now for free.

Click here to try some free automations!

Brand of the Week:

Arber - A new DTC brand for gardeners

Arber is a company that was recently launched but has had a great amount of early success both online and in retail. The branding is beautiful, the products are high-quality, and it's surprising that more brands haven't played in the outdoor space.

I don't have a lawn in New York City, but if I was still in San Diego, I would absolutely buy Arber. I love the branding, product assortment, accessibility to retail, and everything else about this brand. What do you think? 

Try it: GrowArber.com

That's all for today. I'm writing this email from 36,385 feet in the air going about 558 MPH. They aren't serving breakfast, but the wifi speed makes up for it. 

I hope you get those 9 hours of sleep tonight and this upcoming week. Just try it once, if you haven't gotten 9 hours recently. Just try it. You'll see what I mean.

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