Taking a clothing brand from B2B to DTC during the pandemic

L1NEUP DIGITAL was created due to the lack of digital marketing agencies with deep-rooted knowledge in the touring, music, and festival space. We officially launched the company 2 days prior to worldwide lockdown due to COVID-19 and our pipeline for tour marketing went out the door.

Rather than sitting around waiting for live shows to come back we knew we could apply our transferable digital marketing capabilities to different industries in the meanwhile.

Here’s a thread on how we just surpassed $600K in sales in 5 months for a clothing brand in the middle of a pandemic.

• Our client — a hand-smocked children’s clothing brand, approached us in April with a problem on their hands; their business relied on selling to boutique shops at wholesale prices. With boutiques shut down, there was a whole lot of spring inventory sitting around costing them storage and with no one to purchase it.
• Prior to April, our client’s business was 99% retail and 1% online (in regards to sales). They needed a turn-key solution to convert their B2B (business to boutique) to DTC (direct to consumer) model so they could sell their spring inventory and keep their business viable.
• We started off with a full audit of their digital ecosystem — Shopify, handles, paid social, paid search, pages, etc…, to better understand their digital landscape and where our quick wins would lie.
• Luckily they had installed pixels and tags on the site that had been collecting user data for a few years and which allowed us to derive insights quickly and informed our media buying strategy.
• Our primary goal was to sell the spring inventory and the best method to do that was to reach parents on the platform that they used the most: Facebook. We created a prospecting and retargeting catalog sales campaign product set that included all the spring inventory at discount rates.
• Our analytics provided us with valuable insights where we were able to quickly target the preferred demographics, in-market interests, and generate sales almost instantaneously. On a more tactical level, we also recommend making sure you close on your low hanging fruit, aka people closest to purchase such as those who’ve engaged with your brand or abandoned carts. Shopify has many great app integrations that help, one of them being Recart: an automated messaging software that sends out Facebook messaging reminders as well as discounts to close that final purchase hurdle.
• With big advertisers and brands pulling their marketing dollars from the platform, auction rates were at an all-time low which stretched our dollars much further and resulted in lower Cost per Purchases and higher ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). Of course, we also have to credit market conditions as online shopping became the new norm with everyone in lockdown. Marketing is matching value to your consumer at the right place and time…
• For two months we were seeing a ROAS of just over 9.0 and our ACoS (Ad Cost of Sale) was hovering just around 11%. We were thrilled with the results and wondered how we could continue our success and eventually scale.
• We started testing other ad platforms such as Snapchat and Pinterest to gain more omnipresent brand awareness, but they weren’t generating the same Top of Funnel acquisition costs as Facebook Ads were.
• Other channels that worked tremendously in our favor were two Shopify App Integrations: Etsy & ROI Hunter’s Google Ads Integration. Since our Facebook campaigns were under the conversion or catalog sales objective, that good traffic was able to engage with our products and/or site and allowed us to build a profitable retargeting audience as well as hit them within other digital touchpoints. ROI Hunter allowed for easy retargeting when these users searched for products and Etsy gave our brand more social proof & authority where in-market parents could discover us and our products’ positive reviews.
• Once we tasted initial success we were able to double down on our Facebook ads strategy and increased budgets incrementally on Etsy and ROI Hunter Google Ads. We scaled the client into two other clothing brands and well into the six figures as well as kickoff new product lines — officially licensed collegiate masks and gaiters.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS THREAD: The three platforms that performed extremely well were Facebook Ads, Etsy Shopify Integration, and ROI Hunter Google Ads Shopify Integration.

Because our paid marketing has acquired so many NEW customers we’re at a point where we’re prioritizing building our organic and content marketing strategies to increase customer (Lifetime Value). By strengthening the brand we should see trickle down effects in our paid efforts as shoppers come back to our stores, become advocates, and eventually afford the brand the ability to convert consumers by itself.

To conclude, our backgrounds in the entertainment digital marketing space, a nimble, fast-acting, and cost-efficient environment has made our transfer to e-commerce effortlessly. We’ve also learned a lot of new strategies and tactics that we’re currently utilizing in untraditional ways for our entertainment clients.

If you’re in hit us up on , we’d love to hear what marketing strategies and tactics that have worked best for you!

Originally published at https://www.l1neupdigital.com on September 4, 2020.