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One participant in a recent discussion on the challenges of direct marketing of skincare products to consumers described the difficult part as “nothing for an ad.”
The pun was not lost on us. She was referring how many threads had been covered.
Many people who were looking to “market” themselves found social media to be a very attractive option.
- The business starts with the claim that if it can convince a new customer to buy a product with a high margin, they will be worth $50.
- A social media site or a search engine will offer to sell a click worth $50 for just $40.
- You can increase your business by buying as many clicks.
This is an excellent deal for social media sites. They are doing very little work and keeping almost all of the profits.
The pressures of competition can make a really good deal difficult for an organization to accept. Instead of $40, it now costs $50, $60, or $80 to get a single click. DTC companies spend a lot of money, mostly on online and social media ads, influencer payments, etc., and lose money with every customer.
They’re willing to try anything once they commit. Sales reps or consultants will tell them when to post and what to do with photos, color photos and testimonials. They may also suggest paid influencers. The algorithm will tell you if you’ve scaled your purchase too quickly.
This has happened many times before and almost always ends badly. Ads are not very interesting.
This is because the basic strategy will not thrive in a highly competitive environment. Someone will always outbid you to get your attention. Someone will always be prepared to lose a little more money than you.
The future is different.
You need to get new customers from your current customers.
It is not ironic, but it is edifying when you realize that THIS is exactly how all the media companies to whom you pay ad dollars grew. The media companies grew through word-of-mouth, not by the types of ads that they sell.
Facebook, or the influencer, didn’t grow through ads and subscription sales. They grew because their users thought it was in their self-interest to bring new users.
You will struggle as long as you base your project on the myth that “getting out the word” and marketing yourself to strangers is the best way to promote it. Someone always wins the spend-money-on-DTC-promo game, but it probably won’t be you. It’s a simple lottery, where one spender reaches a critical mass of buzz and is able to become famous. The rest of us have to do the hard work of creating something that is worthy of being talked about. It’s hard and it has dead-ends, but the work is what matters.
It’s the formula that is problematic. Category + money + media consultant= home run.
People do not talk about your service or product because of a gimmick, hype or because they like you. They may even mention it because an in-depth analysis shows that the features and performance are excellent. People talk about your product or service because it is good for them, their relationship with others they care about, or their state of mind.
I wrote about it twenty years ago, in Purple Cow. But people still search for shortcuts, which are rarely shortcuts. The conversation that sparked this post took place in the purple space.
