New and interesting tactics are becoming increasingly important to retain and engage potential customers, and that’s exactly how Peloton went from launch to a $3.9 billion valuation in less than 10 years and now boasts over half a million users. The Peloton Marketing Strategy puts community and content first, selling much more than just a bike. “Peloton sells happiness,” says co-founder and CEO John Foley.

And merriness sells at a luxury price point.

Peloton Marketing Strategy: Be Quick To Adapt

Focusing on the paradigm shift as the worlds of branding and performance marketing overlap, the Peloton Marketing Strategy understood how to ignite emotional responses among its user base. While FlyWheel and SoulCycle were busy luring customers to $34 classes at location-specific studios, Peloton saw the potential of the boutique fitness trend in New York and developed a new model. With the in-home bike, subscribers can achieve their fitness goals and become members of an engaged community without going anywhere. And their bikes are never soaked in other people’s sweat.

Hardware-plus-subscription business models have delivered some spectacular failures in recent years, Juicero being a prime example. So why has Peloton been successful? After a failed Kickstarter campaign caused them to rethink their actual offering, they quickly adapted to launch an entirely new category. The Peloton Marketing Strategy prioritized leveraging personalization, content, product development, and exceptional service to achieve an almost unheard-of 95% retention rate, which they call Connected Fitness Subscribers, while maintaining a monthly churn rate of 0.65%. To put that number in perspective: Netflix, a company we all know and love, has a retention rate of 93%, while Blue Apron, which showed early promise, now has a rate of just 13%.

Boost Retention With Community

At-home cycling has been around forever (since 1796, to be exact), but Peloton has turned an activity you normally do in solitude into a community experience. Joining the community feels like a ritual. Users are asked to enter their complete bio: height, weight, gender, age, etc., and are invited to create a unique screen name (Hugh Jackman accidentally revealed his on Instagram recently).

During classes, instructors use the data to give riders “shoutouts” for milestone rides and birthdays during live classes triggering an emotional, rewarding response. The bikes track the riders’ performance and remember their preferences.

Peloton encourages engagement as users are invited to race against each other and track their progress live. There’s nothing more motivating than realizing you’re lagging behind 200 of your closest friends and neighbors. The ability to send high-fives is another example of the Peloton Marketing Strategy aiming to meet users’ expectations and surprise and delight them. By gamifying the exercise experience, Peloton has tapped into what keeps its users returning for more.

If playing the Peloton game isn’t for you, you can opt-out. Turn off the leaderboard, and it’s just you and the instructor. The Peloton Marketing Strategy understands the ability to choose is as important as the feature itself. Celebrities are fans in part because they can get a quality workout without the selfie requests they would get at a regular gym.

The more personal the service is, the more involved users get entrenched in the community, and the more involved they feel, the more they use the service. As we know, Peloton stands behind the statement that “increased usage equals increased loyalty,” backing the customer stickiness of the Peloton Marketing Strategy.

Peloton listens to its user base. After completing a workout, members are asked for an immediate review of the workout, and targeted recommendations are made to encourage the user to try additional classes. For example, after a 30-minute ride, recommendations are made for classes outside of cycling, such as yoga and meditation. The product feedback and interaction loops allow Peloton to make changes quickly and adapt to user suggestions in real-time while keeping users engaged.

The loyalty created by the service is evident in the way the brand is discovered online. According to data from Similarweb, 55.71% of traffic is direct, while 38.36% comes from search. Even more impressive is that 91.01% of that search traffic is organic. The tribe of raving fans shares the brand with friends, and word-of-mouth referral is one of the most lucrative ways the Peloton Marketing Strategy drives new users.

Content: But Keep It Legal

While Peloton is not without its faults, a group of music publishers sued Peloton in 2019, alleging it used more than 1,000 songs from Lady Gaga, Drake, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake, and others without permission — content is at the heart of what has driven Peloton to such success. The most successful companies know to leverage content in many different formants.

With celebrity instructors (some of whom make more than 6 figures and have their own cult following) leading at least 12 new live classes daily, Peloton is a content machine. Some of their notable instructors are favorites like Cody Rigsby (683K followers) and Ally Love (641K followers). They also acquired Neurotic Media in 2018, a B2B music aggregation and streaming service, giving them a new edge in content generation.

“We’re trying to be creative with new forms of media that fall somewhere between earned media and more traditional marketing,” Foley said.

The Peloton Marketing Strategy includes a film studio, which pumps out about 950 original programs a month, is no joke. It may have started with 4 bikes in the back room of their office with rented lights, but it certainly isn’t anymore. The New York-based studio is staffed with top producers, some of whom have won Emmys for production excellence, and is a state-of-the-art film studio.

Content is so critical to Peloton that their website title and meta-description don’t mention the equipment. Instead, they highlight what Peloton considers the most valuable part of their business: the service.

Delivering Exceptional Product Experience

Product development at Peloton hasn’t stopped at a sexy spin bike design and celebrity-led classes.

They have been able to achieve tremendous growth in their subscription revenue by accepting that, for some riders, expensive gear just wasn’t an option. To serve this additional market, Peloton began selling digital memberships (no equipment purchase required) in 2018. The cost is just $39.00/month, and now, in 2024, there are about 2.33 million digital-only subscribers, with an annual retention rate of over 92%.

Peloton is constantly pushing for the latest and greatest, which keeps users signing up and staying. Looking for a workout away from the bike, like yoga, stretching, or even sleep meditation? There’s that, too, via the app. Prefer to run instead of riding a bike? Their newest product, Tread, is a treadmill that offers the same in-home workout experience as the bike.

And it’s not just equipment and app innovation that has kept them at the forefront. The Peloton Marketing Strategy continues to evolve. Traveling? Stay at one of the more than 300 hotels offering private Peloton rooms where you get your own private bike and access to their network of classes. Waiting for a sale? Don’t hold your breath. Peloton rarely has sales and leans heavily on its referral program as the main source of discounts.

Other media investments include Facebook ads, retargeting, search engine marketing, email marketing, TV, and print. The company spent over $100 million on paid media in the last year, advertising on over 250 different media properties across multiple media formats.

Ready to meet your audience where they are?

Peloton’s pricing strategy has also had marketers talking. Peloton partnered with Affirm to offer frictionless product financing, enabling customers to pay off equipment purchases for as little as $50 per month over time. By eliminating this upfront cost, Peloton was able to remove many consumers’ hesitation and bring the price below that of a boutique fitness club membership, significantly strengthening their core value proposition (especially because multiple people can use the bike for the same subscription price). This financing also “locks in” users for 3+ years, which adds to the case for their low churn and high retention rate.

Peloton SVP of Global Marketing Carolyn Tisch Blodgett says, “While it’s nice to see headlines that say ‘the Peloton of rowing’ or the Peloton of something else, we’re not really focused on what our competitors are doing. We’re focused on solving needs for our core consumer through innovation.”

1.4 Million Users Who Expect the Best

Users are willing to pay a premium for exceptional service — and when the price point is high, so are their expectations. With members exceeding 1.4 million in 2019, the pressure is on the Peloton Marketing Strategy to continue to provide exceptional service. From the white-glove delivery to the consistent evolution of classes offered, this is a prime example of a data-driven approach allowing a company to leverage customer insights to provide best-in-class service.

Blodgett said, “Traditional fitness classes are 45 minutes, but our 30-minute classes outperformed, so we produced more. Many people like on-demand classes, so we’ve added features that make the on-demand classes feel like a live class.” Peloton uses customer data like demographics, location, etc., to target new users and drive acquisition, determining that their fastest-growing market is users under 35 with a household income of under $75,000.

As mentioned in their registration documents, “We use performance data to understand our Members’ workout habits to evolve and optimize our programming around class type, length, music, and other considerations.”

By going above and beyond to delight members, they have seen nothing but growth in year-over-year subscriber rates. When you make something exciting and worthwhile, people want to be part of it.

Peloton Marketing Strategy: Addictive Fitness

Achieving optimal user retention means creating a product that feels like a need more than a want. The Peloton Marketing strategy does just that. The $39/month Peloton subscription is mandatory when you buy the equipment and gives users access to the community and thousands of live and on-demand classes while generating consistent revenue and data for the company to use to improve its offerings. We’ve seen other subscription companies try to do what Peloton has done, but most with average success. The goal is to make the at-home fitness experience “as physically rewarding and addictive as attending a live, in-studio class,” according to the registration filing.

The keyword here is addictive. With retention rates through the roof, it seems it might be. On average, its subscribers complete 19.9 workouts per month, and subscriber engagement with Peloton workouts has grown 2.65x over the last four fiscal years (June 2017 – June 2021). And they do it all with very little churn. As they mention in the S-1, “Usage drives value and loyalty.” Peloton’s customer reviews average 4.8 out of five across more than 1,000 reviewers, according to Wirecutter.

Peloton Marketing Strategy: What’s Next?

“Arguably, the Peloton bike has been the most disruptive product in the fitness industry,” says William Lynch, the company’s president. “But that’s a really narrow view of what we’re doing.”

The impact Peloton has had on the fitness industry is huge, and there’s no doubt that it would be hard to return to the way things were before. With Peloton’s constant thirst for innovation, there seems to be no reason that Peloton won’t continue to thrive and push the boundaries of what consumers can expect from a hardware-plus-subscription business.

Countless competitors and imitators have popped up in recent years, including Mirror, an at-home device that touts itself as “the nearly invisible interactive home gym,” which was recently acquired by Lululemon, and SoulCycle or FlyWheel, which have now launched their own connected home bikes. Startups like Tonal have taken a different approach, focusing more on full-body workout functionality, incorporating magnetically powered weights for added resistance. Strava and Whoop, on the other hand, have established themselves as a way for athletes to track and measure their progress (and split times) with people in the real world.

Partner with us for cutting-edge growth marketing services that propel businesses forward.

What’s the takeaway here? The Peloton Marketing Strategy and the companies unwavering commitment to building community, creating a tribe of avid fans, generating quality content, and providing exceptional service, is a backed-by-science recipe to turn a failed Kickstarter into billionaire-dollar company.

Understanding Peloton’s Breakout Year

Unlike many retail businesses, the Peloton Marketing Strategy benefited from the pandemic, becoming a top choice for home workouts as people were forced to move indoors and rethink their exercise routine. The demand for Peloton equipment has become so high that the company is struggling to keep up, prompting Peloton to raise its sales outlook for the full year. The company said heightened demand for its bikes has continued to grow as those who were not considering buying one before the Covid-19 crisis began to warm towards the idea.

Peloton Marketing Strategy: Power Of Influencer Marketing

As themed workouts became popular within the Peloton community, the company partnered with celebrity influencers. On November 10, 2020, Peloton announced its multi-year partnership with Beyonce Knowles to produce some of these themed workouts for their members. The announcement saw immediate success, with Peloton’s stock soaring 8.6% on the day of the announcement.

Customers were equally excited, with one follower on Peloton’s Instagram commenting, “This is so powerful. My personal trainer […] is a Howard student and he taught me how to use Peloton. This campaign makes me feel seen and valued as a current Howard student and Peloton user. Thank you.” Another wrote, “You market to ME, you get me! Peloton purchased.”

The Peloton Marketing Strategy and Beyonce collaboration was a win on all fronts. According to Peloton, Beyonce was the most requested artist among its 3.6 million members worldwide. That’s not surprising, given that millions already have Beyonce’s music on their workout playlists, but it’s not just her music that makes this partnership perfect. Beyonce is a global superstar, businesswoman, and activist with a massive fanbase (172 million followers on Instagram at the time of this article update).

Beyonce is a master of social media who truly understands how to connect with her fans, ignite conversations about everything, and sell (take a look at her first Ivy Park collection with Adidas, which sold out in one weekend). According to social media analytics firm D’Marie Analytics, one post from Beyonce is worth over $1 million in advertising.

Furthermore, the logic behind this partnership goes one step further: Beyonce is a performer known for her fitness and stamina, who often talks about the importance of prioritizing her health to achieve her goals and be the best version of herself. She embodies hard work and excellence — everything Peloton and its followers strive to be.

By partnering with Beyonce, a Black female artist, and building relationships with HBCUs, Peloton is taking steps to make the health and wellness industry more inclusive. Consumers in 2024 are becoming more aware and have higher expectations for companies to be inclusive and mindful in their business practices. By building partnerships like this, Peloton is sure to attract new subscribers who may not have previously seen Peloton as something they could use before.

The partnership has been a huge success and in a single quarter, 1 million people completed workouts featuring music by Beyoncé.

Peloton Launches DFB Partnership

Peloton’s path to further advance their role in fitness innovation includes the companies recent partnership with DFB Academy (German Football Academy). Through this partnership, the Peloton community can “train with” and and compete in “DFP” branded workouts. Not only did Peloton give its users another tangible benefit of being a member of the community, this marketing move positioned Peloton in front of a brand new segment of consumers. With its business partnerships and sales trajectory, there’s no doubt the Peloton Marketing Strategy is one to watch despite the tough competition in the space and we can’t wait to see what they dream up next.

Don’t feel like reading? We summarized our Peloton growth marketing guide into a short video. Take a look:

The post Peloton Marketing Strategy: Uncovering Key Lessons For Rapid Growth appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

There will continue to be a slew of product upgrades and platforms that hit the market, so it’s important to stay focused and calculated on marketing strategies. Performance Marketing will leverage tactics to understand the how, when, why, and where for all of your marketing efforts.

Performance Marketing for eCommerce

Performance marketing for eCommerce is using strategic digital advertising tactics to drive online sales. It is especially critical to use performance marketing strategies because the customer is already online. This means that the barrier to get them to click over to your site is greatly decreased.
 
You can then leverage the data to determine where and when your customers are hanging out online and how to effectively reach them. For example, if your eCommerce business sells basketballs and you know that your target customer is in their 20’s, lives in the US, is a frequent online shopper, and is part of a basketball league – you could set up Facebook ads to target them specifically. From this, you can determine other attributes shared by customers who purchase and then optimize your ads to get even closer to the people you know will convert to customers.

A DNVB (digitally native vertical brand) cannot go without this type of performance marketing because they sell online. Their customers are online, their brand is online, and their marketing should be as well. To be successful, you need to target your customers where they are already shopping.

So where are they?

Online marketplaces account for the largest percentage of online shopping market share at 35%, followed by supermarkets and DTC sites. 

© Statista 2023

 How Performance Marketing Differs From Other Types of Marketing

The ability to pay per action and only for results is what sets performance marketing apart from other, more traditional advertising channels. With no clear metrics for traditional ads like newspapers, magazines, or television, you can assume that you will reach everyone in your target audience, but you will never know for certain. 

Some companies have attempted to make up for this lack of measurement tools by including a unique coupon code in their ads. You may get close to knowing how many coupon codes were used, but you will never get the same finite data that you would from the calculated approach of performance marketing. Performance marketing tactics tell you exactly where your marketing dollars are going and what ROAS (return on ad spend) they are driving, so you don’t have to do the guesswork.

8 Steps to Create a Winning Ecommerce Performance Marketing Strategy

Step 1: Optimize Your Website for User Experience

Before allocating your budget to the performance marketing tactics we’re about to share, spend some time cleaning up your site.

Is your checkout easy to navigate? Is every call to action clear and accessible? Make it as easy as possible for your customers to find and purchase your products. Lead them to the products you think they’ll love and encourage a conversion with a clear buy button. After the customer adds the item to their cart, suggest additional products to go with their purchase. 

Also, consider what will happen post-purchase. Do you have an email drip campaign set up to follow up with email subscribers, cart-abandoners, or buyers? An email campaign will help nurture customers so your brand remains top of mind when they want to make another purchase. 

The user’s experience on your website should be as seamless as possible to ensure they will choose your brand again in the future.

Here are some UX design principles to consider:

• Responsive design ensures your website looks great on both mobile and desktop 
• High-quality images with a cohesive color scheme add dimension to your brand’s image 
• Categories should be intuitive and easy to navigate so the user can find exactly what they are looking for

Step 2: Set Real Goals and Stick to Them

Performance marketing for eCommerce is extremely methodical. The first step is to create a plan and to set clear goals. The most obvious goal is sales, but other types of goals include email sign-ups, LTV (life-time value), avg. session duration, clicks, or app downloads.

Marketers often start by creating Instagram posts or sponsoring email newsletters. While these channels can be helpful in driving brand awareness, they are not performance marketing tactics that will drive measurable growth quickly.

Utilize the SMART methodology when developing a performance marketing plan:

• Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
• Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
• Assignable – specify who will carry out the task.
• Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
• Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved

Step 3: Define Your Target Customer

Who is most likely to complete the action you set out in your goals above? This doesn’t have to be just one person, define different target personas for people who you believe will convert. Staying with our basketball example, personas may include parents who have kids that play basketball, basketball enthusiasts, and even coaches or schools who represent basketball programs.

The goal here is to set defined personas. It would be ideal to use your current customer base to create these personas but the more information you have from the start the better. If you don’t, conduct research and do the best you can. The best part about performance marketing is that you can continuously optimize.

Step 4: Define Your Value Propositions

Why should someone buy basketballs from you specifically? How are your basketballs going to improve their lives? It’s really important to get this message across to customers. Don’t just tell your customers that your product is the best; let them know how it is going to solve a problem and improve their lives in some way.
 
A basketball is great, but a basketball that inspires your teenage son to hang out with his dad on a Friday night is better. List some of these defined value props and save them. You can use them as inspiration for your advertisements later.
 

Step 5: Find Which Channels Your Target Customers Are In

Look back at the customer personas you created earlier. Do you have a persona that spends their time on Snapchat? Are you trying to reach a professional crowd who scrolls through LinkedIn? The most important part of performance marketing is meeting your audience where they already are! Think about this and research what kind of people are hanging out on each channel, then you can choose the ones that align with your ideal audience.
 
To determine what channels you want to start with, think about your product holistically. Assess your goals and pair personas with channels that make sense. Most people use Google and a lot of people are also on both Facebook and Instagram. These are some of the better channels to start with – not only are they the most popular, but they are able to drive conversions at the lowest CPC (cost per click) when compared to other channels.
 
Keep your goals and target audience in mind when choosing the right channels. Are you trying to drive sales but your eCommerce business is fairly new? Facebook and Instagram are designed to encourage discovery which means that these channels might be a good fit. Google, on the other hand, might be better for people searching for something specific. If your customers don’t know you exist yet and you sell a product that is widely available, this could be a tougher channel for you. However, if you sell a product that people search for, and your brand is new – you might find success with Google.
 
Each channel has its own positives and negatives, and you will need to determine which ones are right for your business. Some of the most popular performance marketing channels are Google Ads, Google Shopping, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Reddit, and Twitter.

Here is a list of ecommerce channels that may suit your business:

Step 6: Find The Right Channels For Your Budget

Not every customer is on every platform, and not every company has the required budget to excel on every channel. Determining the right channels for your business and allocating your budget effectively will be essential. 
Start with your average customer acquisition cost or CAC. Once you determine how much it costs before a customer pays you, you have a better understanding of your budget. Not all channels cost the same and you will want to start with the lowest hanging fruit (lowest costing channel with the highest rate of conversions).
 

Step 7: Write Ad Copy That Converts

You don’t need to be Shakespeare to write ad copy that converts to sales. Take a look at this ad copy created by Zendesk:

“Customers who use chat are more engaged, more satisfied, and more likely to buy stuff.”

They have a defined value prop and easy call to action. A customer’s mindset after reading ad copy like this may be: “Do I want my customers to be more engaged, more satisfied, and more likely to buy what I’m selling? Yes! Does this mean I should try Zendesk chat? Maybe!”
 
Zendesk is also leveraging neuro-marketing through the arrangement of its colors and fonts.

If you’re interested in learning more about this, check out our video.

The most important thing to keep in mind when writing ad copy is defining how your customers will benefit. Don’t go on bragging about every single product feature. Potential customers want to know why they should care. As an example, it’s great that your new clothing line has a jacket with 10 pockets, but why should consumers care? In your ad copy, translate how this feature will create value for your audience. Write concise copy that provides the ultimate solution for customers.
 
An exercise that can help is to write all of the potential problems a customer might have if they shopped at a competitor and what effects this would cause. Try to write out as many as you can.
 
For example, if someone was shopping at a competing basketball eCommerce site, our list would look like this:

Tips for writing ad copy that converts:

• Make sure your ad copy matches your images and campaign objective
• Use social proof and play on the emotions of your audience
• Anticipate any objections to your ad copy and address them
• Keep the language simple — complicated jargon isn’t effective

Step 8: Optimize and Improve

Your campaigns are launched, congrats! Now is when you take a good look at the data. Are the results meeting the goals and expectations you set at the beginning? Probably not. It is very unlikely that every part of your strategy will be successful. This is when performance marketing kicks into full gear. Through performance marketing tactics you can optimize and start to improve your results.
 
Determine which channels are performing the best, the worst, and understand why. Are you doing things on certain channels that you could leverage in others? Take a look at your budget. Are you spending your budget appropriately? In some cases, you have done everything to improve and optimize a specific ad or campaign but it still fails to do well. In this case, leverage what works and continue to push channels that are effective. Shut down what doesn’t work, but make sure to learn from those failures so you can bring these learnings forward for any other strategy you may create in the future.

Optimize Your Ad Scheduling 

Another optimization strategy that often gets overlooked, is managing the days and times in which your ads are being served, or your ad schedule. In both Facebook and Google Ads, you can review what time and day your ads are converting the most. If you’re running your ads 24/7, you may be wasting your budget on clicks that have lower intent. Take a look at the times and days that work best, and then optimize to ensure your ads will show when you need them to.

Ready to kick off performance marketing for your eCommerce business?

You’ve made it to the end of this guide and now you’re ready to implement performance marketing tactics for your eCommerce business! I’m sure you realize the importance of performance marketing and how vital it is for your business. Old traditional marketing tactics simply won’t get you the results you want in 2024.
 
However, we understand that getting traction and implementing a performance marketing strategy is not easy. If you need help optimizing your ecommerce website with performance marketing, our growth experts can help. Feel free to drop us a line. 

The post Ecommerce Performance Marketing: A Complete Guide for 2024 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Julia Yan

Head of Growth, TikTok

LinkedIn

Julia Yan is the Head of Growth at TikTok, the fast-growing, short-form mobile video app owned by Beijing-based startup ByteDance. Prior to joining TikTok, she worked for Amazon and was part of the product marketing efforts for the Amazon Echo speaker. Before Amazon, Yan was a consultant for Deloitte and PwC, respectively. She’s based in Los Angeles and hiring, according to her LinkedIn.

Alison Lewis

Chief Growth Officer at Kimberly-Clark

LinkedIn

25 years of experience in marketing at the top companies in the world makes Alison Lewis one of the most prominent and influential women on our list. After a recent exit from Johnson & Johnson, she has now found herself dropping the CMO acronym and trying out the title Chief Growth Officer instead. A move that solidifies the importance of growth within companies. She is recognized as a visionary leader and has earned many accolades throught her career.

Cynthia Kleinbaum

VP of Mobile and Product Marketing at Walmart eCommerce

LinkedIn

Years of experience in the ecommerce fashion space has led Cynthia Kleinbaum to her role at Walmart as VP of Mobile and Product Marketing. With a Harvard MBA and 14 years in the industry, she is known to be analytical and collaborative as well as have an entrepreneurial nature.

Stephanie Chang

Head of Growth & Retention Marketing, Glossier

LinkedIn

Twitter

After 2 years at Etsy, Stephanie has now been leading growth and retention at Glossier for just over 2 years. According to her LinkedIn, Stephanie and her team are responsible for building financial forecasts based on different budget scenarios and partnering with finance on the P&L, optimizing Glossier’s media mix based on insights from experiments (geo, channel, stage of marketing funnel), partnering with the data team to build an attribution model that is aligned with our business model, partnering with our product/eng teams on landing page optimization/conversion rate optimization, partnering with our creative/brand teams to build new content streams, and scaling the levers that drive meaningful business impact (customer LTV, repeat rates, product mix, etc).

Barbra Gago

Growth Marketing Executive

LinkedIn

Twitter

Having just left her role as Chief Marketing Officer at Miro, Barbra Gago continues her mission as an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs through her work at Reforge and Accelprise. She is a revenue-focused marketing executive with over 12 years of experience building customer-centric brands and scalable marketing engines that drive rapid growth in mid-market and enterprise. Just some of her expertise includes digital marketing, demand generation, content marketing for SaaS, product marketing, go-to market strategy, and positioning.

Rachel Weiss

VP Strategy & Growth, L’Oreal

LinkedIn

Twitter

After 12 years at L’Oreal, Rachel Weiss has been a huge part of marketing and growth for many L’Oreal brands. She is also an award-winning digital professional who champions women in the industry. Weiss is the founder of one of L’Oréal USA’s key initiatives – Women in Digital. This program supports women in the digital space by identifying and celebrating female entrepreneurs advocating digital and IT careers for women along with mentorship programs and testing opportunities. In addition, she is responsible for creating digital marketing and innovation strategy focusing on mobile, social, content and disruptive technologies across L’Oréal USA.

Jen McGavin

Sr. Director of Marketing and Growth, Rockets of Awesome

LinkedIn

A career in B2C marketing eventually led Jen McGavin to the growth marketing industry where she has found a place at Rockets of Awesome. As one of the companies disrupting the market for children’s clothing, Jen has been with them through the last year of growth where they saw an almost 50% increase in traffic and revenue over 2019. Jen is an expert on growth in the ecommerce arena specializing in omnichannel growth and developing immaculate user journeys.

Elena Filimonova

Senior Vice President, Global Marketing at CGS

LinkedIn

With over 15 years of experience in the strategic marketing and brand management space, Elena Filimonova is a seasoned marketing executive. Her work has impacted the visibility, profitability, and performance of diverse technology services and products including SaaS, Cloud and Search technologies. She has spent the last 5 years at CGS where she leads the Global Marketing Team and has a reputation for developing highly successful campaigns within budget, on schedule and surpassing corporate goals.

Susan Hui

Director, Innovation & Growth (AI & Emerging Technologies), 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC.

LinkedIn

Twitter

After spending 5 years as an investment banking analyst, Susan has now really hit her stride in the growth marketing industry. As director of innovation and growth at 1-800-flowers.com, she has lead the companies voice search initiatives and more. Her work won three Mobile Marketing Association Smarties Awards in 2018. 2 gold for Mobile Payments/Commerce for Global and Mobile Payments/Commerce for North America Regionals, as well as 1 silver for Messaging for North America Regionals.

Julie Channing

VP of Marketing, Allbirds

LinkedIn

Allbirds, the rapidly expaning leader in sustainable carbon-neutral footwear, has now grown internationally and just filed for a Series D round. Their success can in part be contributed to their marketing team led by Julie Channing, who lead the development of the brands’s unforgettable aesthetic and strong brand story. In Channings’s interview with Forbes, her tidbit of advice for marketers – “..really appreciate the importance of listening instead of just talking to their consumer and taking complete advantage of the data at their fingertips to find these actionable nuggets that can help them create more meaningful and relevant connections, and then being nimble enough to react quickly to change.”

Leela Srinivasan

Chief Marketing Officer, Survey Monkey

LinkedIn

With many years in the industry, Leela Srinivasan is a marketing leader whose journey has included significant stints in sales and management consulting. She specializes in B2B marketing, customer marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, marketplace businesses, and more and leverages all of these skills as the CMO of the popular SaaS company, Survey Monkey.

Berta de Pablos Barbier

Chief Growth Officer, Mars

LinkedIn

Twitter

Berta’s story is a coming home tale. She spent 6 years at Mars doing everything from marketing to food science, to leading innovation before leaving for 5 years to flex her muscles in the fashion world. She has now been back at Mars for 5 years where she is the Chief Growth Officer. Berta regularly spends time doing interviews and speaks on diversity and women in the workplace and she truly believes in paying it forward. In a recent article, she wrote for NBC, she said, “Be attentive, vulnerable, and lift the people up around you. It is rewarding and remember, every effort counts.”

Kate Iles

Growth, Farmer’s Dog

LinkedIn

A seasoned entrepreneur with years of experience at brands like M.Gemi and Elysium Health, Kate Neufeld has not only been a leader in business but has also taught growth marketing at the graduate and executive levels. She strives to promote disciplined prioritization and excellent execution and unlock cross-team ideas. A few of her specialties include research and data analysis, customer acquisition and retention, and conversion funnel optimization.

Mary Sagripanti

GM, Global Head of Marketing, Growth and Customer Engagement at Amazon

LinkedIn

Mary Sagripanti is the GM and Global Head of Marketing, Growth and Customer Engagement. Before joining Amazon in 2016, Sagripanto spent 8 years at Kraft where her and her team won multiple awards for their marketing efforts including Ad Age Top Marketer of the Year. With experience in Fortune 100, start-up, and agency experience, Sagripanto is a well-versed brand marketing who have proven business and leadership skills.

Susan Su

Head of Portfolio & Growth/Marketing in Residence, Sound Ventures

LinkedIn

A startup marketing veteran, Susan Su is now the leading Growth Marketing for Sound Venture, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s venture capital firm. Susan has spent the last 6 years of her career helping other startups build and lead growth marketing teams during her work at Reforge and 500 startups.

Amy Ng

Director of Growth Marketing, Billie Inc.

LinkedIn

The recent acquisition of Billie by P&G in January 2020 for an undisclosed amount is proof that Amy Ng and her team have had a successful year. After spending many years at DTC brands like Casper, Tarte Cosmetics and Modcloth, Amy is no doubt a talented marketer. She is an expert at customer acquisition, search marketing, and more.

Melissa Tan

Startup Advisor

LinkedIn

After a few years in finance at Goldman Sachs and consulting at McKinsey, Melissa climbed the product and growth ranks at Dropbox helping the company find success in acquisition, onboarding, and expansion. Currently Melissa has taken her skills to be a startup advisor for top venture-backed businesses including Grammarly, Typeform and Canva working with them on improving their growth strategies and scaling their growth teams.

Casey Daley

Director of Growth, M.Gemi

LinkedIn

Casey Daley is the Director of Growth for upstart footwear company M.Gemi. She joined the company in fall 2019 after spending many years as a marketer for several other footwear brands including Foot Locker and Coach. Casey is an expert in affiliate marketing and customer acquisition.

Dana Raichman

Vice President Growth Marketing, theSkimm

LinkedIn

Dana Raichman was first a Director of Ecommerce before becoming the Vice President of Growth Marketing at popular newsletter, theSkimm, just 3 months ago. An expert in acquisition and retention, she has not only driven growth through typical channels, but consistently looks outside the norm to find unique growth opportunities.

Edlynne Laryea

Director, Head of Industry, Consumer Packaged Goods at Facebook

LinkedIn

After 5 years as a Global Director at Johnson & Johnson, Edlynne Laryea has now found a place at Facebook as Director, Head of Industry, Consumer Packaged Goods at Facebook. A specialist in social media marketing, brand management, consumer packaged goods marketing, among many others, Edlynne is consistently pushing the boundaries of what growth marketing can be.

Caroline Couvillon

Director, Global SMB Marketing at Facebook

LinkedIn

A true media expert, Caroline Couvillon grew her skills at Time and CNN before landing at Facebook 5 years ago. There she has moved up the ranks on teams like Accounts and Agency Marketing and Global Marketing Solutions before becoming the Director of Global SMB Marketing.

Liz Walsh

VP – Growth Marketing at Forbes

LinkedIn

Twitter

Over her 5 years at Forbes, Liz Walsh has focused on company wide brand marketing and oversees a large team of designers, brand managers, campaign specialists, art directors and audience development specialists. She has also been focused on the launch of the Forbes 8 app which is an app created to provide inspiration for entrepreneurs. The app launched January 25, 2020.

Jill Essig

Sr. Director of Growth Marketing, The Walt Disney Company

LinkedIn

After spending 10 years on the agency side, Jill Essig is now an expert in digital products for Fortune 500 companies. After 2 years at Bed Bath & Beyond and 2 years at 21st Century Fox. Essig is now at Disney driving audience growth to Disney’s evergrowing portfolio of digital products. Jill’s marketing prowess has allowed her to translate customer data and insights into effective marketing programs.

Didn’t see someone you felt should be on the list? Let us know at hello@nogood.io.

The post 20 Women Pushing Growth Marketing Forward appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

SaaS

Monday.com

monday.com

Founders: Eran Zinman, Roy Man

Funding: $234.1M

Organic traffic:⬆45%

The exception to the productivity tool rule, Monday.com has found a way to break away from the crowd. There is even potential for an IPO in 2020 if they continue to play their cards right. With a $1.7M/month marketing budget, the team at Monday.com focuses on doing a few channels really well. And those channels are just what you would expect: Adwords, Facebook, Instagram, Capterra, Outbrain, and Bing. Using hyper-targeted lookalike audiences on Facebook has contributed largely to their success as well as focusing on intent-based searches on Adwords.

An Adwords feature they leverage that can often be overlooked is the day of the week intent. A product used most frequently at work, it would make sense that Monday to Friday audiences are more likely to convert. A discovery they made, which should make us all rethink our personal bias when crafting brand personas, is that the majority of the Monday.com customer base comes from non-tech industries, construction, churches, and wedding planners to name a few. With their most recent Series D funding ($150M) in July 2019, 2020 is already setting itself up to be yet another year of massive growth for Monday.com.

Fullstory

https://www.fullstory.com/

Founders: Bruce Johnson and Scott Voigt

Funding: $59.2M

Organic Traffic: ⬆23%

Launched in 2012, Fullstory received its largest round of funding yet in 2019. A Series C round worth $32M has allowed the customer experience company to make serious plans for the future. Analyzing their own customer journey and leveraging a/b testing across outbound enterprise customer leads were both key to their current success. In 2020, we expect to see even more growth from Fullstory as they turn their current platform into “an engine for digital intelligence.”

Grammarly

https://www.grammarly.com/

Founders: Alex Shevchenko, Max Lytvyn

Funding: $200M

Organic traffic: ⬆35%

With 7 million daily active users, it’s no surprise that Grammarly would make this list. But how you ask? An SEO driven content strategy paired with PPC and podcast advertising. They have over 2000 posts on their blog and each one is strategically written for specific high-intent keywords. We also saw an increase in PPC ads in September through November of 2019.

Experts at the freemium model, Grammarly first get users to adopt their technology through a free browser extension before subtly asking them to upgrade to a paid version. Continuous product upgrades have also driven growth for Grammarly this year, the most critical being tone detection. A feature that provides insight on how the writer’s work will be interpreted, the future is nothing but bright for Grammarly. They collected an additional $90M in funding this past October, giving them the budget to explore new channels and product updates in the new year.

Klaviyo

https://www.klaviyo.com/

Founders: Andrew Bialecki

Funding: $158.5M

Organic traffic: ⬆79%

This year popular email service provider Klaviyo went all-in on their owned marketing crusade. Owned channels – email, mobile, and website are what they consider the most critical way to drive growth as other paid channels continue to get more and more expensive. “In 2019, with the three biggest months of the year to come, [customer owned revenue numbers are] already over $3 billion and it’s on pace to double. That owned revenue number is our north star and what we focus on to help you grow,” Klaviyo’s CEO, Andrew Bialecki said at their recent conference.

A $150M fundraising round in 2019 is sure to help them skyrocket in 2020. Bialecki hinted at product developments that will “make owned marketing easier and a more scalable way to grow than selling through Amazon or running ads on Google or Facebook.” They are also hiring like crazy with special attention given to engineering, design, and customer-focused roles.

Consumer Goods

Rothy’s

rothys.com

Founders: Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin

Funding: $42M

Organic Traffic:⬆479% (2018 v 2019)

Founded in 2012, Rothy’s is a DTC footwear brand making shoes out of 100% recycled plastic water bottles and post-consumer recycled materials. Its growth has been rapid over 2019 with the introduction of a brick-and-mortar store as well as several new styles.

Growth for them was a function of 3 main areas according to their VP of Growth, Matt Gehring. The first is personalized journeys. By paying attention to context and channel they were able to pinpoint what messaging works at each stage of the funnel. The next was non-branded search. Focusing their search campaigns on those searching for keywords like sustainability and machine-washable they found a cost-effective way to find new customers. Lastly, an emphasis on retention gave them insight on users who interacted with specific silhouettes and allowed them to retarget with specific messaging.

Rothy’s has exploded in 2019 and it will be interesting to see where they take the brand in 2020.

Away

awaytravel.com

Founders: Stephanie Korey and Jen Rubio

Funding: $181M

Organic Traffic: ⬆ 61%

Away is a startup founded in 2015 that specializes in luggage and other travel products. The company was created to build a lifestyle brand around the concept of modern travel and luggage. Their growth strategy is built completely on the outside impression of the brand and leveraging influencers, social media, and content to drive growth. Some recent news about the brand may set them back in 2020, but only time will tell.

Brooklinen

brooklinen.com

Founders: Rich and Vicki Fulop

Funding: $10M

Organic traffic: ⬆56%

Word of mouth and a digital-first approach has driven the bedding and associated luxuries company Brooklinen to a 56% increase in organic traffic over 2019. In October 2019 they also launched Spaces, an online marketplace for bedroom products that allows users to show by beautiful rooms curated by aesthetic. After receiving a $10M Series A in 2017, Brooklinen has shown they were a good investment. In 2020, there are talks of a brick and mortar in Brooklyn as well as expanding their current retail assortment.

Hubble Contacts

hubblecontacts.com

Founders: Jesse Horwitz, Ben Cogan

Funding $73.7M

Organic traffic:⬆32%

Contact lens DTC startup has gone all-in on social media to drive rapid growth throughout 2019. In a market full of massive competitors, Hubble Contacts leverages their ability to filter and qualify paid social particularly on Facebook. An attempt to both educate customers and drive sales with an emphasis on quality leads over quantity. With $73.3M in funding, they certainly have the means to not only continue but to ramp up their paid social efforts in 2020.

Grove Collaborative

grove.co

Founders: Stuart Landesberg, Jordan Savage, Chris Clark

Funding: $212.3M

Organic traffic: ⬆55%

A well-funded natural home and personal care site that launched in 2012 continued on it’s path to massive growth in 2019. An emphasis on paid channels and giving away a free Mrs. Meyers cleaning set has been a huge success for them. Retention isn’t much of an issue as the items you purchase are then put in your account monthly with autoship. Customers are free to remove items from their cart, but if not, they will be shipped on time like clockwork every month. In 2020 they will use their most recent round Series D funding ($150M) to expand into clean beauty, develop sustainable packaging, improve their supply chain, and grow their home concierge business.

Prose

prose.com

Founders: Arnaud Plas, Catherine Taurin, Nicolas Mussat, Paul Michaux

Funding: $25M

Organic traffic:⬆125%

New to the DTC crowd is recently launched Prose. A customizable haircare startup that matches users’ answers to unique product formulations, Prose has seen exceptional growth over the last twelve months. A strategy heavily reliant on paid social and content, the company sold only 3 products until October of this year. Their fourth-quarter growth was largely driven by new product launches. First, a custom dry shampoo and then an engravable hairbrush perfectly timed for holiday gifting. In their first year of existence, Prose has proven the potential of the customizable beauty concept and 2020 is set to be their best year yet.

Health/Fitness

Daily Harvest

https://www.daily-harvest.com/

Founder: Rachel Drori

Funding: $43M

Organic traffic: ⬆ 37%

A company founded on the idea of solving an actual problem faced by its founder, it’s no wonder why it’s taken off. Daily Harvest has been a game-changer for the meal prep industry as they found a way to create, freeze, and ship individually portioned smoothies for thousands of time-starved humans.

They have since launched a large range of products to supplement, but a great product alone won’t necessarily drive rapid growth. The team at Daily Harvest relied heavily on Pinterest. A perfect channel for food and visual products, they receive approx. 4.1M monthly unique viewers on Pinterest. Understanding their unique customers and knowing when, where, and most importantly how to communicate with them has been instrumental in driving growth for Daily Harvest.

Peloton

https://www.onepeloton.com/

Founders: John Foley

Funding: $994.7M

Organic traffic: ⬆ 24%

With the IPO in 2019, we’ve covered Peloton’s growth strategy extensively and have essentially narrowed it down to 3 key factors. Community, content, and product experience. By building an extensive and deeply involved community, Peloton allowed its customers to do the talking for them. From there, they upped the ante for at-home fitness content. Celebrity instructors and a state-of-the-art studio to film in mean they can produce content at a quality never reached before. While they were building community and developing huge amounts of great content, they also perfected their product. And we don’t just mean the bike. The interface is also key to their growth as they developed acquisition loops right into the experience.

2020 will be an interesting year for Peloton as they discover what a post-IPO world looks like for them. The PR surrounding their 2019 holiday ad certainly added some fuel to the Peloton fire, but only time will tell how they manage the publicity and attention.

Fintech

Robinhood

robinhood.com

Founders: Baiju Bhatt, Vladimir Tenev

Funding: $912M

Organic traffic: ⬆70%

With a mission to “democratize the stock market,” Robinhood was the darling of the fintech world in 2019. Grounded in their mission to make investing available to anyone interested, they used a few strategic tactics to achieve unparalleled growth over the past year. Similar to Peloton, Robinhood put in significant effort in 2019 to develop a community. Because of this approach, their referral program is arguably one of the best. When a referral is given, both sides of the transaction receive a free stock. A unique but high-value offer has helped them to see success.

After receiving an additional $50M in funding in late 2019, the company has big plans for 2020. Specifically, expanding into dividend reinvestment plans and recurring investments, which help customers put money into stocks and ETFs on a regular basis (daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly).

Stripe

stripe.com

Founders: Patrick Collison, John Collison

Funding: $1B

Organic traffic: ⬆37%

A company with such significant investment dollars, something would be seriously amiss if Stripe didn’t make this list. Whether they know it or not, 84% of Americans have made a purchase using Stripe. Identifying a gap in the market for a payment processor not quite self-hosted and not quite 3rd party, Stripe introduced their own technology.

By focusing on a developer-first marketing strategy they engrained themselves into the community who would be making decisions about what programs to use in the future.

From there, they grew by leveraging word of mouth and by providing a delightful product experience.

Lemonade

lemonade.com

Founders: Shai Wininger, Daniel Schreiber

Funding: $480M

Organic traffic: ⬆67% increase

Lemonade Insurance is the insurance of the future. It encourages users to “forget everything you know about insurance,” and is also taking advantage of growth marketing tactics usually used by DTC products. For example, they really leverage chatbots. Through this channel, they provide authenticity and introduce customers who may be new to insurance to a friendly face who will walk them through it without being pushy or too sale-sy. They have also taken advantage of machine learning and extensively use Facebook as a paid channel to drive new users.

Lifestyle

Resy

resy.com

Founders: Gary Vaynerchuk, Ben Leventhal, Michael Montero

Funding: $45M

Organic traffic: ⬆ 267%

Before being acquired by American Express in May 2019, Resy had already been growing rapidly proving that the restaurant industry is finally ready to take advantage of tech advancements. Resy, a restaurant reservation app, has become even more than what consumers see on their phones. They leveraged product development to drive growth in 2020 by launching programs to streamline the hospitality industry overall including a back of house program for inventory management.

As growth marketers, we often lean on specific channels or strategies but what is unique about what Resy has done, is to consider adjacent products within the industry and make them better as well. Product-led growth can be just as effective as other paid channels. With the additional resources American Express can offer, 2020 is sure to be another massive year for Resy.

Talkspace

talkspace.com

Founders: Roni Frank, Oren Frank

Funding: $106.7M

Organic traffic: ⬆90%

Talkspace is the #1 rated online therapy platform. Launched in 2012, the company really hit its stride in 2019. By making use of several channels, they drove a 90% increase in organic traffic. In the last year, they have used subway ads, paid social, content, and PPC to drive growth.

Their most recent round of funding will go to growing their commercial business where they target employers.

Hinge

hinge.co

Founder: Justin McLeod

Funding: $20.6M, acquired by Match Group in 2019

Organic traffic: ⬆40%

After being acquired by Tinder parent company Match Group in early 2019, Hinge was flush with resources this year. Branded as, “the dating app designed to be deleted,” Hinge went all-in on branded influencer content. Working with popular accounts like @betches and @fuckjerry, they use wit and humor to talk about the app and inspire new users to try it out. They are also very elusive with CTA’s across all ads and partnership posts. Not a tactic we usually recommend, but it’s important to remember to try new approaches and it seems that when Hinge did just that, they found great success.

MorningBrew

morningbrew.com

Founders: Austin Rief and Alex Lieberman

Funding: $0

Organic traffic: ⬆123%

The only company to make the list with $0 in funding is Morning Brew. Managing to drive a 123% increase in organic traffic in 2019, the growth of this email newsletter is astounding. How did they do it? A very well-executed referral program. By implementing a milestone-based reward system, members are incentivized to continuously submit referrals. They are also protective of their data and have implemented many safeguards to protect against unwanted actors. An important thing to consider when growing rapidly and giving away rewards.

After hitting 1million subscribers in 2019, 2020 is set to be another huge year for the company. Plans to expand into additional verticals such as retail and tech and even beyond written content, it will be interesting to see where Morning Brew takes us in the year ahead.

Meow Wolf

meowwolf.com

Founders: Vince Kadlubek, Caity Kennedy, Sean Di Ianni, Corvas Brinkerhoff, Benji Geary, Matt King, Emily Montoya

Funding: $185.2M

Organic traffic: ⬆25%

Meow Wolf is an arts and entertainment company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico that has recently been making waves in the immersive and multimedia exhibition space. Founded in 2008 as an arts collective, their success can largely be attributed to the growing experience economy and the new focus on Instagram-able moments.

The amount of funding they’ve received, while typical for a tech or DTC startup, is unique for the experiential art market. The money will be used to develop new experiences in both Las Vegas and Denver where they hope to continue to drive the massive revenue numbers they’ve gotten used to at their New Mexico location. A business dependant on construction success expanding into new markets, and Instagram likes is risky and it will be interesting to watch how they navigate in 2020.

That’s a Wrap!

The companies on this list are experts in growth strategy and tactics and have proven they know how to use advanced strategies in ever-changing markets. If they all continue to think outside the box and with a narrow focus on their customers, we see no reason why they shouldn’t kill it in growth come 2020. And if you’re looking for an agency growth partner to help fuel your growth contact us for a consultation!

The post 20 Brands Doing Growth Marketing Right appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Let’s take e.l.f cosmetics for example. E.l.f. Cosmetics sales had plateaued in 2019, and in 2020 they launched a growth strategy to reach the new age of consumers – Gen Z. With more and more beauty brands coming out each year, they had to completely rethink how they were going to turn their small, budget-friendly brand into an international staple for young consumers. As explained in their Shorty Awards Entry, “From Q4 2019 through Q4 2020, e.l.f. established itself as one of the most innovative brands on TikTok, accruing over 10 billion views across a series of disruptive campaigns.”

But do views on TikTok translate to sales? We’ll break down how e.l.f. did it later in this post, but the cosmetics company increased sales YOY by 13% in 2020. Then in May 2021, they increased net sales by 24% to $92.7 million in just that quarter. It’s safe to say their strategy worked.

In this post we’re going to take a look at:

1. What virality is
2. How to cause virality
3. The virality coefficient
4. A deep dive into e.l.f. Cosmetics virality strategy and how to duplicate it

1. What is virality

Virality is simply a very efficient and very successful growth loop. By creating viral content and putting a structure in place both internally and in external marketing to encourage virality, it is possible to create a constant loop where:

1. A person discovers your product or service
2. They then talk about your product or service with friends (or on social)
3. Their friends pick up your product or service
4. They then enjoy it and share it with friends

And the cycle goes on and on. It is a snowball effect that gets bigger and bigger, but your product, user experience, and internal structure has to be set to allow for this loop to circle.

2. How to Go Viral

As we have said, going viral does not happen by simply “getting lucky”. Virality comes from the right conditions at the right time. The factors needed for something to go viral are as follows….

It needs to be…

Relevant: This typically refers to cultural relevance. For something to go viral it has to fill a gap and provide value. This may be being relevant to a trend at that moment, or filling a widely known problem.

Infectious: The very nature of virality is being easily shareable. Like the common cold, it must be something easily passed from person to person, and in this case typically over the internet. This means it should be easy to explain and easy to obtain.

Timely: There is such a thing as right product, wrong time. Marketers can ensure timeliness by having an understanding of the marketing landscape of their industry and the culture of their consumers. It is very easy for brands to fly above the clouds rather than sitting with their consumers, continuously listening and building that friendship.

These elements should be considered in every step of the campaign: from the product, to the marketing strategy, to the user experience. The goal is to create a growth acquisition loop that feeds into itself, creating that viral snowball effect that drives brand loyalty, revenue generation, and customer growth.

Math geeks, are you ready? Virality is not objective – there is a way to calculate the success of a viral marketing campaign.

Calculating the Virality Coefficient

We wouldn’t be growth marketers if we didn’t have data to back up our efforts! The virality coefficient is how we calculate the exponential growth of new customers from the current customer pool. Essentially, how many new customers are we getting from the current customers who are raving about our products.

Time for math class.

The variables we are working with are:

1. Number of current customers
2. Number of referrals those customers are giving on average
3. The conversion rate of those referrals

So the question is: Of the customers we have, how many people are they referring us to and how many of those people are converting to customers (completing the cycle)?

Therefore the formula(s) for virality coefficient is…

(Number of current customers) X (number of referrals) X (conversion rate) = Number of new customers

THEN

(Number of new customers)/(Number of current customers) = Virality Coefficient

Brief example:

Say our pool of current customers is 10. Each customer is making 2 referrals on average, and the rate of conversion is about 40%.

(100 current customers) X (5 referrals) X (40% conversion rate) = 200 new customers

(200 new customers)/(100 current customers) = 2 Virality Coefficient

Meaning for every new customer you acquire, you can expect 2 new customers to join/buy.

One brand who did this very well was e.l.f. Cosmetics.

How e.l.f. Cosmetics Capitalized Virality

The pandemic caused a significant hit to beauty brands, with makeup sales declining 22%. E.l.f. Cosmetics sales had plateaued in 2019, so they decided to launch a campaign to bring their brand back into the spotlight and pull themselves out of the sales slump – all aimed at the new consumers.

Gen Z was their gateway to reaching the top of the beauty market, and they used TikTok as their mode to reach them. From Q4 2019 to Q4 2020 they accrued over 10 million views on the platform, and they have now grown that audience to over 616K followers.

How did they do this?

When they were evaluating TikTok as a platform they established several things…

1. TikTok was not only a key platform for reaching their target audience, but it was a nonnegotiable platform
2. Brands were just starting to come on to TikTok and really utilize it in their strategy, so they had the opportunity to be a big fish in a (relatively) small pond
3. e.l.f. already had a presence on the platform from User Generated Content, which gave them a model for success AND proof that TikTok was a valuable platform to be on for their brand

The goal of their campaigns on TikTok were not only to establish brand awareness and grow their presence, but to become a leader and trend setter on the platform.

So the question stands… Can a brand successfully start a trend? E.l.f. Cosmetics said: “watch me.”

First item of business: Do what no brand has ever done before. Recognizing the importance of music on TikTok, they created their own song for a TikTok challenge. This song was relevant, fit into the platform extremely well, and as a result now has over 1.4 MILLION videos using it.

This along with their own organic content created a snowball effect of users creating videos on their behalf, so e.l.f. took it one step further. They created a TikTok reality show Eyes.Lips. Famous. where they had users create videos on why they wanted to win, and the brand had three beauty influencers judge the videos. Three winners were then selected to join the judges in a “Beauty Camp” which the brand aired daily on their TikTok for a month. With this campaign they not only managed to create a movement under the #Eyes.Lips.Famous., generating over 42 Million views under the hashtag, but they created a challenge that then fueled content for their own channel for a month.

However, the strategy doesn’t stop there. Part of building virality into your business is lowering the barrier to entry for your customers to purchase your product. E.l.f created a Chat with a Beauty Advisor feature on their website that makes it extremely easy for their consumers to get the help they need while they shop digitally. They even have an entire section of their website called E.L.F. Discovery where they have tutorials, guides, and resources that their consumers can take advantage of.

The results of all of this effort? As of Oct. 2022, e.l.f. Cosmetics dominates as the number 1 beauty brand for average and upper income female consumers according to the Piper Sandler Semi-Annual Gen Z Survey.

In an interview with Retail Touchpoints back in 2021 (at the beginning of their initiative), VP of Brand Gayitri Budhraja stated “Our success continues to be built off data, insight and genuine relationships with our passionate consumers — listening, responding to their needs and inviting them to be part of our brand narrative.”

Virality is certainly not built on luck, and it comes from a deep understanding of your consumer and having the desire to create something worth sharing.

The post Viral Marketing Guide: Preparation, Timing, & Management appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.