Tactical & Practical

Follow Mike De Lia On Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-de-lia-047576178/ Tactical & Practical is brought to you buy Intelligems & Waste Not. We talk about Intelligems a ton on this episode, because it was SO INSTRUMENTAL in how Mike tested & built this website. Go to Intelligems.io to start increasing website performance NOW! Waste not makes sure every cent of every dollar spent on Meta isn't WASTED! See how they helped me decrease CAC here: https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel

Usually, I write headlines with only ONE customer persona in mind. But that strategy kinda breaks down when I need to write headlines on your homepage, collection pages, or PDPs where a diverse mix of people are visiting those pages all the time. And I've only found one way to do that, but it's now worked across 16 brands I've tested it at. Here's the difference: If I'm writing to a gift-giver during Q4, I want the messaging to speak specifically to them. I want them thinking that they're not just buying a *thing*, they're buying a symbol of their love, their appreciation, and something that satisfies their desire to NUTURE the person they're buying a gift for. It'll sound something like, "Show your [husband, wife, son, daughter, boyfriend] they're [worth it, earned it, appreciated enough] with a gift that's as [positive adjective] as they are." "Show your man he's worth it with a gift that's as showstopping as he is." "Let her know you see & appreciate everything she does by giving her a gift that's as uniquely beautiful as she is." See what I mean? But, most pages on your website ARE NOT persona-specific. Your homepage, collection pages, and PDPs get a diverse group of traffic. Some gift givers, some people buying from themselves, some ppl who are super problem-product aware, some who are less educated, some are confident, some are insecure, etc... So, you need a headline format that can work well for all of them. There's only one headline format that I've ever seen work well in those cases, and I break it down in this episode of tactical & practical, brought to you by Intelligems.io & Waste Not (https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel)

Did you know you can start running gifting messaging on your site & in your ad account BEFORE you launch a sale, like Father's Day or BFCM? Early in the month of May, I tested Father's Day Gifting Messaging across websites of 4 different brands that all sell products that make good father's day gifts. Even before the sale or the offer is launched, this messaging outperformed evergreen site content, increasing CVR & RPS. Then, and maybe most importantly, once the sale does launch, we already know which messaging is best to roll out across the site and ad account, and can squeeze every single drop we can out of the promo period. One client, YoY father's day comps are nuts: They spent 30% LESS money on ads, and did 34% MORE revenue. You 1000% need a plan to test gifting messaging in OCTOBER this year, weeks before you launch any kind of holiday sale, so that when you launch the sale, you're launching it already having your messaging dialed in. Tactical & Practical is brought to you by Intelligems.io - they're the software solution that allows me to test all this messaging on site and shows me where we're increasing Conversion Rate, Revenue Per Session, and a lot more! Tactical & Practical is also sponsored by Waste Not! A software that fortifies your Meta ad spend to cut waste, reduce audience overlap, and decrease cost to reach new audiences! Check out what they've done for me here: https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel

When should you iterate? And when should you test net new creative concepts? The simple answer for me, is when you hit a point of diminishing returns with iterations, shake the etch a sketch, and start over with net new concepts The first round of headline testing increased CVR by 27% The next round, we iterated on the winners, and increased CVR by 11% The next round, we iterated again and only increased CVR by 2% It’s time to start the cycle over This episode is sponsored by intelligems.io - the best way I know how to run tests like I show in this episode.

The most valuable copywriting inspiration I've ever gotten is from songwriters. They're the best at writing in a way that makes people feel something. They're excellent at making the aspirational feel within reach. They're better than any marketer at making people feel at home, and comfortable in their lyrics. Great advertising should aspire to do those things too. So, in this episode, I share 3 songs that taught me how to speak to our customers with more familiarity, how to hype up our customers without being too cheesy or on the nose, and how to bring an aspirational lifestyle to appear within reach to our customers if they use your product. This episode is brought to you by Intelligems.io so you can test copy, content, prices, and offers all across your shopify site to make more money! Sign up for my copywriting skool here: https://www.skool.com/bottomsup/about

CMO of Ridge & the Most Valuable Guest of Tactical & Practical, Couuor Mac joins the pod to talk media buying, on-site messaging testing, and hammock-maxxing.

Brands need to act differently at different stages of growth. What works for a $50 million/year brand might drown a $10 million/year brand. Understand where you're at, and act accordingly.

AI is great at some things It's bad at others And sometimes, it straight up makes mistakes or lies to me... I think it's all important that we take a step back, understand its strengths, weaknesses, how it can help us today, and how we should be building it into our brands for the future. This episode is all about The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly side of Artificial Intelligence:

BEFORE you launch that new advertising channel, try these 5 things to try to spark new growth in a product or brand that's hit a plateau: 1. Test new prices & offers on your hero SKU. Price-Market-Fit is not something you can set and forget, just look at gas prices the last couple weeks. The price consumers are willing to pay for your product changes with inflation, election cycles, and category maturity. If you haven't tested your prices or offers in the last year, they're officially out of date, test them again. 2. Shoot new creative in different formats and with different creators than you've worked with in the past. If you're ad account is full of UGC, maybe try producing some high quality, polished assets. If you've relied super hard on videos, try some statics. Not every person in your target market will resonate with the same content format. When I see UGC as a marketer, I assume it's fake and dismiss it. When my wife sees UGC of someone who has the same pain points as her, she trusts it. Don't leave any part of your target audience out in the cold, make creative that can resonate with every corner of your audience. 3. Take this mentality into your copywriting, too. If you typically lean into negative, fear of loss, risk aversion messaging, then you're only going to acquire customers who resonate with that. Try to frame it positively, or be more optimistic in your messaging. Instead of showing them what they might lose without your product, show them what they'll gain by adding it to their lives. 4. Look for anomalies in your customer reviews to give you new ideas for ad angles. If 80% of your 5-star reviews are about how awesome your product looks, that means you're really good at marketing how good your product looks. Acquisition is self fulfilling prophecy... But if 10% of your 5-star reviews are about how good your products makes someone feel, then you're probably MISSING that benefit in your top spending ads. Go make more ads & landing pages about how they'll FEEL, and you'll acquire more of those customers that your last round of ads wasn't talking to. 5. Make new products that appeal to a wider range or a different segment of your market. Jack Daniel's does this perfectly. I never buy their base bottle, Old No 7 that costs $25. But there's 8 bottles of specialty, limited edition Jack Daniel's bottles that I paid over $500 each for on my shelf right now. They never would've gotten that money from me if they didn't push into a new market. Mercedes does this great, too. They make the G wagon for people who are rich. They make the C class for people who want to look rich. Rolex sells the dayjust and the daytona, to completely different tax brackets. Puma sells some traditional golf shoes, and ones with camo print all over them. I'd never by the traditional ones (or anything from puma usually) but I'm on my second pair of the camo ones... and so on. Obviously new product dev takes a lot of time, but you can definitely do those first 4 things BEFORE adding the complexity and unknowns of a new advertising channel. Then, when you do launch that new channel, you'll have more learnings for how to make it work for you. Happy scaling

On this episode: - I started an influencer program with $8k that grew into a multi 7-figure channel - A new form of ad iteration made me sell out of my hero SKU way too fast - Ad fatigue is self inflicted? - Headline tests continue to move the needle - Marketers need to understand WHY performance is bad, then they can work on how to improve it

I've been at a brand where an average SMS campaign would do $8k in revenue. Then we sent one that did $40k in 30 minutes. I've ran an email account that made $6k on a normal daily email campaign. Then we sent one that did $75k in 24 hours. And no, those campaigns weren't sent on black friday, they weren't even sent in Q4. In this episode, I show you how you can take a moment that your customers care about, or can relate to, bring them into your world to experience it with you, and have a day that makes your entire month. I also award a tweet of the week award, share the results of a split test that DID NOT GO MY WAY, and attempt to answer the question, "How do you get away from discounting all the time?" (the first few seconds of audio are a little sketchy then by 10 seconds it's good)

President of GrooveLife.com joins the show to talk about building lean & efficient marketing teams.

Dive into how I started a new brand, and how I think about creative strategy & split testing when nobody has ever heard of you.