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Bonjour Millionaire, 

1 time back in the day when I was agency-side we were pitching a celebrity beauty brand and it was a veryyyyy competitive process. During the pitch call at the final I told the celebrity that I am a huge, huge fan. She smiled and was nice about it.

But then after I said that (we were on Zoom), I started showing her the products I've purchased from her over the years. I had them all lined up on my desk to show her. She really smiled. I then told her to go look in Shopify and search my name, to see how much I love the brand and to see my years and years of order history.

I then was invited to her offices and when I went and pitched in person she had an autographed book waiting for me (a really nice way to treat a fan!!!)

We got the job and worked together until I left the agency. Do you want to know why????

I think it has to do with the fact that she knew, and I knew, that I understood the product and the brand because I was her customer...

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ON THIS EPISODE OF GO-TO-MILLIONS 

Is your team marketing something they don’t understand?

Imagine 2 businesses: Business A and Business B.

On the surface they have all the same resources and the same caliber of marketing teams and agencies supporting.

Really top-notch across both businesses. 

But imagine in Business A, less than half of the team has tried every SKU. And, imagine in Business A, that their UGC agencies are shipped enough product for those filming to try, but not those briefing or those copywriting.

Their non-creative agencies, let's say Google media buyers, have never tried it at all. 

And, imagine that with Business B, there's a rule that every single person who touches marketing is deeply and always acquainted with every product.

That every agency, even those in non-creative functions, has ample stock as it is the expectation that they live, breathe, USE, and are inspired by the product at hand. 

My money is on Business B. Why?

1. BTW I have a data-set from my own lived experience at an agency over the last 4 years and that data-set points to Business B because..
2. I know that when my teams and I tried every product in the range for the brands we worked for, we A) cared a lot more and felt more attached (you want your agencies to feel attached) B) had so much more to say in our marketing because we could really grip it. 
3. Everyone is a product marketer if they are growth marketers who use the product. 

Most teams have someone or many someones on the team optimizing the funnel for products they've never personally experienced. That's a very expensive mistake. 

The Business Impact of flying absolutely blind

Would you rather have 80 marketers watching your brand and protecting it and pointing out gaps or 30? If you shipped my team back in the day product, you'd get 50 extra bodies that have been strictly instructed forced by their very, very Type A boss 😉 to report issues they find in the customer journey. 

1. If the shopping journey isn't perfect, your funnel is therefore leaky → if your funnel is leaky you’re losing money $$$$ 
2. But it's hard to spot leaks in your funnel that you’ve never felt as a customer, we'll never know the experience of every customer in every part of the country but we'll know more if more bodies are experiencing the brand and reporting back in more places. So, the more "customers" you can recruit to experience and funnel hack your brand at all times the better
3. Quantitative data at each stage of your funnel tells you what’s broken, but there's nothing like feeling it for yourself. We have to shop what we market.

Scary to only see part of the picture

At the end of the year my friend (who is also a marketer/ my former colleague) DM'd me on instagram. I thought would be a nice happy new year message. Nope, more fun than that.

It was an ad from a supplement brand we used to be in competition with (they were direct competitors of a former client of ours). The crop was FUCKED. The 20% off was cutoff - and so it showed 0% off. Tears.

We clearly still harbor a bit of competitive, residual hate for the brand from those years of competition so I apologize for my response but not really: 

The point isn't about our evil chuckle, it's that most people on your team are only focused on 1 part of the funnel. A buyer (and your competition) sees everything.

• The first IG ad 
• The second IG ad
• The third IG ad 
• The OOH poster 
• The branded search headline 
• The email capture that fired before they could digest the homepage hero
• The homepage hero
• The asset in the meganav 
• The 3rd page of reviews on your PDP
• The slidecart upsells 
• The post-purchase survey
• The branded tracking page 
• The corrugate selection and free sachets 
• The million emails and texts to follow 
• The sporadic paid social ads to follow 90 or 180 days later

Everyone is responsible for every part of the journey because if we've all shopped then we've all seen it with our own eyes. NO EXCUSES. That 0% off ad could have been part of a retention campaign that your man-on-the-street agency could have been served. They'd see that ad, flag it to your media buyers, and you'd be saved because you'd have extra eyes to help you avoid mistakes from living out in the world for too long. 

In defense of "secret shopping" 

You have to be in the funnel to understand the funnel.

You see where the experience actually breaks.

You could fill a hole in your funnel that's hemorrhaging millions of dollars, OR you could get a genius line of copy from someone's husband that helps you crack a a new audience segment because they used the product and used it in a new way. 

More minds, more eyes, more opportunity, fewer screenshots from your competitor's former-agency's basking in the glory of your cropping fuck ups. 

How to be Business B

Market from a place of abundance. Shop every drop, all of you. 

Give away product for free, with the known tax that every free item comes with the responsibility to watch, report, and insist on change wherever any lack-of-absolute-perfection is found.

I started using HexClad pans in 2022 when they gifted to our team as we came onboard as their agency. My affinity for the brand was born the second I unboxed. I then went on to work with them for years, but that's not the story.

My entire family has paid full-price for HexClad ever since I waxed poetic about how great the product is. I probably have personally convinced 15 of my family members to buy. They all love it. 

On top of that, because I love the product and the brand, I once wrote that I really wanted their new Salt Mill.  Someone read that, found our agency's office address in New York (I don't live in New York), and sent me a Salt Mill. Not someone who works at HexClad - someone who wanted to apply for a Retention Marketer role on my team and used the gift to break through the noise. 

I can't actually know how many people have bought HexClad because of me but it's a lot. And, I'm talking about purchasers that weren't even generated from my marketing or the work we did. I'm talking about purchasers generated from my deep love of the product!

The product I got to try.

I used to be a hostess at a restaurant and I got written up by a secret shopper because my white converse (part of the uniform) had a mark on them and it really, really pissed me off. 

Yours,

Ari 

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