Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re on the couch, feet up, relaxed, and with a beverage in the other hand. Today’s newsletter took me a while to figure out in my head, but I think it will be a highly-forwarded email. If you’re getting this as a forward, sign up here for free.

Before we get into today’s newsletter, what has been in the water lately? Gwyneth Paltrow is on trial for a skiing accident 10 years ago. US politicians can’t comprehend why TikTok needs to access the home wifi network. OpenStore, which previously only acquired brands, is now offering to run your brand, and you keep 90% of the profits (their fee is 10%). Allbirds’s stock is down over 95% since they came to the public market 16 months ago.

We had Keith Rabois on Limited Supply on a previous episode, and I’m curious to see him in a couple of weeks and learn more about why they’re shifting to operate these businesses. OS claims you can turn a store into passive income with their product, OpenStore Drive, which is a managed service. They’ll send you a projected monthly income, and they’re so confident that they will take on all the risk to drive growth.

We also wrapped up filming the last episode of Limited Supply’s third season. Season 4 starts soon, and we plan to level it up again. Until then, catch up on this past week’s episode, which Moiz, Suli (Moiz’s brother), and I taped when we were in LA together a few weeks ago. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. And, as always, shoutout to Tapcart for being such an amazing podcast sponsor. This coming week’s episode is with Ben Yahalom, President of True Classic and a huge Tapcart customer. $150M in revenue in 2 years. It’s a good episode!

Ok, enough gate-keeping. Let’s get into today’s newsletter…

Regardless of your brand's stage (just began, scaling, or you’re Estee Lauder), the one thing everyone needs more of is always content. It’s spun incredible software companies up, agencies, networks, and more. On top of that, you need the distribution behind it. Good content that gets seen by no one isn’t worth anything. The $50k photo shoot that ended up with 43 likes on Instagram stings.

Given how content distribution channels are changing (moving to an AI-curated content feed vs. a “following” feed), content either HITS or it gets almost no distribution. Of course, this won't affect channels like email, SMS, influencers, and anywhere you’re paying for placement. If anything, the ads engine should become more powerful and targeted for brands. Once someone comments on how much they loved a GRWM video (older people, this stands for “Get Ready With Me”, a popular TikTok trend where people show off their outfits, talk about life, etc while they get ready on camera), you’ll see the Kate Spade ad with the green purse mentioned in the GRWM video, as an ad to purchase.

Ok, I’m getting too excited about the future intersection of advertising and AI, but let’s get back to content… So with all these changes happening, and also just naturally being Indian (aka stingy about unnecessary spending, loves a good deal, etc), I’ve always followed and recommended what I call The Bootstrapped Content Playbook. I’m going to explain the pieces of it, and the context or thinking behind each piece.

If you think, “I have a $3M a year budget for content, I don’t need to read this,” you’re wrong. I know you’ll find at least one nugget in this newsletter. This playbook always works, especially when you’re looking to be efficient with where you spend your cash. Let’s get into it…

The Bootstrapped Content Playbook

Before we get into what the tactics are, let’s get clear on why this is beneficial to you, as a brand:

  • More content overall, means more signals of what works and what doesn’t, for your brand.
  • Content can also help drive awareness of what you’re selling, making ads work more efficiently.
  • Customers get excited to talk about your brand, or post photos, because you’re “cool” when you’re a brand that participates in the conversation. (”conversation” on social channels just means existing with something relevant to share)
  • You’re building brand equity over time, at a low cost.

Here are the pieces that make up the full strategy:

Hire a Press Secretary for your brand.

If you can, you should. In my mind, short-form content creators are like having a Press Secratary for your brand. This is someone who specializes in the media format relevant to their “boss” aka the brand. In this case, it’s someone who specializes in vertical, algorithm-driven, short-form content to be distributed across channels like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Stories, etc. Ideally, this person can film 1 to 2 videos per day and publish these, understanding from the last one, how to make the next post even stronger.

Generally, this person can also handle producing and posting on social media channels that you need to be on, and build your relationships with external-facing influencers and content creators.

The beauty of having an internal content creator is you’re able to produce a higher volume of content, have the analytics and content monitored by the same person, and get new content in a matter of hours, not weeks. Someone on the inside also has their ears close to customer service issues, upcoming logistics or ops issues, etc. and can keep the online communities up to date. This is how I got to the thought that a short-form content creator is like having an internal press secretary at your brand.

If you have someone internally who has a desire to be this content creator, then you should do what I did — I had our video team dive into this TikTok masterclass that JT put together. If nothing else, get the 50 page PDF on his site, it’s underrated.

Build your own creator network.

Regardless of IF you have an internal creator on your payroll, everyone should have a network of content creators they can email or text for work, when needed. Disclaimer here: you will have to build genuine relationships with creators for this to work.

Write an email to creators you think would be a good fit, and include:

  • who you are
  • what you sell
  • why they might like it
  • what’s in it for them
  • ask if they’d like to learn more

For the ones who respond, set up a phone call and let them know you’re looking to build a relationship so that when you have content needs that arise, you can rely on them. In the meantime, try to do things that solely benefit them: make introductions to friends who might need them right away or have an opportunity for them, send them your product, just ask how they’re doing, etc. From this initial engagement, you want to establish:

  • What is the cost of creating content with them?
  • What does the content look like and where can you use it, as the brand?
  • What is the timeline they prefer to work on, and what is an accelerated timeline like, if needed?
  • Address and info to ship items

Now build a network of this. I tend to do this with UGC creators, photographers, videographers, animators, video editors, influencers, etc. The benefit is if any of our clients needed a photographer at moment’s notice in San Diego, I have someone. Or if we need to do a quick product render design, I have someone for that, too.

Creators are not just influencers without a following, they’re almost any artist that contributes toward the creative process for your business.

Find a good designer to use.

You could consider designers to be creators, but I’m going to segment this out. I’m not talking about a fashion designer here, but more-so a web designer or a graphic designer. Having a good graphic designer can make or break how your brand is perceived, and it’s a role you do not want to slack on. A good designer is the difference between RX Bar’s business failing and selling for $600 million. But, really talented design isn’t cheap. I am fortunate to have an industry leading design team at Sharma Brands and HOOX, but where can someone go if you’re on a budget? The answer is overseas.

Overseas design talent is phenomenal and you can hire A+ level design talent in countries like Serbia, Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina, Dubai, India and more. Sure, you might spend more time explaining things, giving context, or working on tweaking the design, but the work is still amazing, and more affordable.

This designer or design agency can be leveraged across email, website, presentation decks, iconography, illustrations and graphics. It’s an investment worth making. You’d be surprised at some of the largest brands on Shopify, who’s design you admire, was not designed in the US.

Seed product to the right people at the right time.

Who better to get content from than the content machines themselves — influencers! Like building the creator network, you should build a network of influencers you seed products to when you launch something. When Snif launches a new fragrance or product, every celebrity and influencer is gifted their product with a beautiful and elaborate unboxing. It duos as amazing content for the brand, but also a free awareness campaign, where their “CPM” cost is just the cost of product COGS, shipping, and the time to build those relationships.

This works similarly with industry reporters or magazine/online editors. Type “Snif candle” into Google and click the News tab, it works just as well. With editors, you also don’t need to send the elaborate or extra packaging that you’d normally send to celebrities or influencers.

Build a library of product renders.

Having a product render library, combined with a designer at your fingertips, makes for a gnarly combination. Product renders are one-time costs, once they’re made, you’re gold. They allow you to not just rely on photography, and really just be able to create any possible asset you need. You need a picture of your water bottle designed as a firework for a July 4th promotion? You can do that with renders!

When I worked at Hint, we almost always used renders. We did 1 real photoshoot over two years, most of the content we created was video. Anything static or for banners was just made using renders. If you go to the Hint site, emails, Twitter, or Instagram today, you’ll still see that renders are mainly used.

It’s cheaper, faster, easier, and always looks crisp. There’s no such thing as “The lighting sucks” because you can just manufacture that too.

Host events.

Events are underrated for content creation. There are three ways to approach events:

  1. Make it experiential. If you have something experiential, whether it’s a tent, a tasting or sampling, a photo booth, a fitting room, etc., people will create their own content. You just have to setup the environment to be ripe for content creation — good lighting, good props, good story, etc. You set that up, everyone else will naturally create content.
  2. Invite people you want to be there and have them sample or try products. Your goal in doing this might be to get certain people with the right shot of consuming or trying your product.
  3. Be the sponsor for something else where your product fits. Anywhere you want to advertise, you need a publisher. The publisher creates the content or experience and brings the audience. So in this case, figure out what event you can co-create with someone and make sure you are the sole sponsor of the event. If you’re Eight Sleep, maybe you put together an event with Matthew Walker (famous author who writes about sleep), and have your product available for people to try with photographers on standby.

Events can seem costly, but $10k for the amount of content and awareness you’ll drive can be absolutely worth it.

Use online design tools.

There are tons of tools online to create content, use them. Dabble into companies like Canva and Flair, or watch some YouTube videos on Figma, and spend 3 hours to learn how Figma can be leveraged. Learning Figma is one of the best returns on time I had in 2022.

Reinvest back into your content infrastructure.

As you grow, the goal isn’t to continue just working with a bootstrapped budget with your content, but rather to keep the same principals and efficiency. When you reinvest your profits back into growth of the business, mainly advertising and inventory, don’t forget to keep leveling up your content production infrastructure, too.

Ok, hopefully that was helpful, now onto some fun stuff…

Vendor of the Week:

Tatari — The go-to TV-ad partner for brands focused on performance marketing and stretching every dollar they can.

The other beautiful thing about creating a ton of content, is you really start to understand what underlying themes and hooks work well in your ads. I’ve always used these signals to make sure we also nail our TV ad creative. This is where Tatari comes in…

Tatari works with some of the best direct-response advertisers in our industry (Fabletics, True Classic Tees, Glossier, Roman, Magic Spoon, etc), where they make it easy for marketers to bring TV advertising in-house and optimize campaigns with an online interface, similar to how you would manage Meta ads.

The platform works well, they allow you to buy media and measure with their attribution directly in the app, and you can test across regular TV, OTT and connected TV, allowing you to buy ads on a live TV network or Hulu.

They have a great video on this article under Fabletics, where they go through the full BFCM TV strategy. And on this article, there’s a helpful PDF under the “Don’t know where to start?” section which outlines rough costs and what works on each platform (i.e. Disney+, Hulu, etc).

If you’re interested in seeing if TV is a good channel for you, you can schedule a demo on this link with someone at Tatari. And if nothing else, grab that video and PDF I mentioned above!

LP of the Week:

This is a landing page I was SO excited all week to share, especially because of how beautiful this turned out. Shoutout to Maggie Sellers for introducing Flaus’s team to HOOX.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE LANDING PAGE!

This landing page turned out SO well, if you go to the Flaus homepage and try to get to the PDP, you’ll end up on the HOOX page! It beautifully captures something that’s an annoying experience (flossing with a string) and turns people who’d otherwise not floss into flossers.

The copywriting, the use of assets, and the style of animations and illustrations that Flaus produced all came together to build such a perfect-looking page. I highly recommend buying one for yourself too!

If you’re ready to launch a high-converting landing page, then click here to book a call with HOOX!

That's all for this week

This newsletter took me forever to write… about 4 hours. Tons of ideas later, I finally landed on the bootstrapped content playbook. I want to try something new… if you send me an idea to write about (it can just be a sentence with the idea, a question for me to answer with the newsletter, or it can be a long prompt) and I end up seeing that and writing about it, I’ll Venmo you lunch money for the whole week ($150, which gets you 5 days of lunch at $25/day). Just DM me the idea on Twitter, or reply here with the idea.

I hope this newsletter was helpful, and you enjoyed reading through it. I’ll be in Nashville if you will be, too. I have a tight schedule and I’ll be speaking at OAAA while I’m there, but holler at me on Twitter if you’ll be there too.

Get those 9 hours of sleep tonight, break a sweat this week, and cross something off your to-do list you’ve been waiting to complete. I’ll see you right here, same time, same place, next Sunday!