Brand Building Beyond ROAS Jail

Brand Building Beyond ROAS Jail Speaker 1: Hello everyone and welcome back to Better Advertising with BTR Media. Today I'm incredibly excited to have another exceptional BTR Media employee join me on the podcast. Isa, can you give us a little bit of a backstory on how you got started in the industry and how you came to find BTR Media? Speaker 2: Happy to and thank you for having me. I'm very excited to join the podcast. So I also came from Celsius like our teammate Sage. We work together pretty closely. The last bit of my time there, I worked on ecommerce like across all the retailers that she's mentioned. But I started there working on Paid media and the paid media team was like brand new to Celsius like they hadn't done linear television digital out of home. They were doing a little bit of digital marketing on the Google side of things. But other than that, it was pretty much non existent. I got to get my hands dirty in all the things and like I said, the digital out of home, CTV, streaming TV, working with like national television partners and doing these big media buys that someone right out of college is probably not qualified to be doing. And it was just great. I got to work cross-functionally with so many different teams, creative team, influencer team, experiential side of things. It was just such a great experience. Even getting to dabble a little bit into our international expansion when we went to Canada, when we went to France, all those things. So it was an amazing first job and I will never, ever like regret it so much. Like I'm so happy this coming to BTR is just like the next step in my career. And yeah, I'm just really excited. Speaker 1: That's amazing. I feel like a lot of people we interview on the podcast or even just in our space, they get started on the opposite end of the spectrum. They get started on the PPC side and the ROAS side and just the bottom of the funnel performance marketing. You had exposure on the opposite. You kind of got thrown into, like you said, the national media side, the impression, the brand building side. In my opinion, it's easier to learn that first and then realize what's possible from an attribution, you know, metric tracking standpoint. Then it is to start on the performance marketing side and teach someone the power of brand building. Because once you know you can get a five ROAS on PPC, it's harder than educate someone on why they would accept anything less. So I love that you are always able to bring that point of view to a lot of our brands because a lot of our brands are in this stage of brand building, right? All of our content lately is about creating their own demand. And if you think about Celsius, I mean, They were very culturally ingrained. I think from a collegiate perspective, everyone I knew was chugging Celsius and talking about Celsius. And I think a lot of that comes from the work that you were doing, which is amazing. Speaker 2: Yeah, we were just like very much like get the brand everywhere. We were in that like infancy growth, like growth spurt, I'll call it period where it's I just recently did the partnership with PepsiCo and it was like a big influx of dollars. It was like, get the brand out there, get it known, awareness, awareness. And like you said, it is really nice. I don't always realize that as like a strength of mine, but it's like, I can look at things beyond the ROAS, beyond the conversion rate. And I'm like, well, this is servicing something down the funnel because nobody's going to search X, Y, and Z brand if they don't know X, Y, and Z brand. It's not going to happen. They're not going to feel any sort of inclination to go and search for you because they don't know you. They don't think you like. You haven't made an imprint in their mind yet. Speaker 1: Which is incredibly important because we're seeing kind of this flattening, I would say, of performance media, right? You had the golden era of meta ads. You had all of your large D2C brands were able to scale because of their cost per acquisitions were incredibly affordable when your CPMs and CPCs were as low as they used to be. Amazon advertising and sponsored ads specifically was like a little money machine. You're at a casino that's like hitting the jackpot every single time you put in a dollar and you got out $10. I mean, when I started, CPCs were like 20 cents. So I think it kind of shifted the focus to like this major performance marketing. And now we're seeing the playing field level quite a bit, right? People started spending more and more money on meta ads, spending more and more money on Amazon Advertising and Walmart Connect and CPCs were rising, which kind of leveled the playing field. Today we're going to talk about agentic commerce and what we're seeing on that front. We're going to see the pendulum swing where brands are going to have to start investing in more brand building and brand marketing dollars because the real competitive advantage is getting in front of your customer before they need to make the search. Because if you wait until they make the search, you're already behind. You're now being compared to every other item on the digital shelf. That being said, brands sometimes struggle to make the investment. How do you have that conversation to a brand that is used to or maybe just in ROAS jail? They can't understand the fuller funnel. What are you going to them and really helping them kind of piece it together with? Speaker 2: Well, it's really, I'll say this, it's really difficult to somebody that's in ROAS jail. It's very hard to get them. They're locked in like. Unknown Speaker: They're happy there. Speaker 2: They feel safe there, right? But I think the approach that we've taken is just testing, just being like, let us take this piece of creative. Let's level set on what the expectations are going to be. We're not going to see this. We want to see this is what success looks like. Impressions and clicks and detail page view, right? And it's like we don't want the expectation of CVR. Like that's not what we're looking for here. And just like driving home the point because they understand KPIs. So you just have to drive home the point of what the different KPIs are for this tactic, for this effort, for this campaign, for this piece of creative. And then another thing is like really leaning into creative performance when it comes to things like FBV or OLV. And it's like, okay, you're not seeing the highest new to brand or sales or whatever it is, but your branded search volume has gone up 30% in the last month. Things like that, like putting numbers to people that are in ROAS jail, it's like, okay, got it. Sometimes. I mean, it's not a complete switch flip, but it helps. Speaker 1: And I think that's the perfect middle ground is, you know, inherently when you take people that are from the national media side of the space, they don't always realize The level of attribution we have with tools like AMC and branded search and our general KPIs that we look at. So it's like we're able to offer them that middle ground. And then on the flip side, like you said, all the people that are used to ROAS can start seeing the bigger picture. And when they see their branded search increase, it's like, oh, yeah, that campaign doesn't show me that insight. But when I can tie it to my branded search, oh, it is driving results. Is there a minimum budget? And I know I hate this question if I'm on a podcast. I'm always like, no, there's no one size fits all solution. But do you think that there's a minimum budget you like to test with when you start pushing, especially into the TV space? Speaker 2: Well, I know the standard for like OLV is like 5,000. And then I think when it comes to like, if we're talking like national media and like my old position, I mean, lean on the network partners. Like they know what they're talking about. Yes, they are trying to get the sale out of you. But if they know the audience size is this much and you want to hit 5% of that or whatever it is, like At the end of the day, yes, everybody is trying to make the sale, but they also know they're not going to get another sale if you don't see the results that you want to do. I think it, yes, like you said, one size doesn't fit all. It depends on the medium that you're working with. I mean, if you're doing SBV, we can do something that like a $20 a day test and we can see what kind of clicks that gets. And then, you know, after two weeks of running that, let's retarget the people that have seen SBV that are searching toothpaste, like whatever it is. Speaker 1: All of that to say, it's a test and learn, and it doesn't have to be as scary as I think sometimes it can be made out to be. And that's really, I would say, the brands that we're seeing innovate and push the needle are the ones that are just open to testing. And I think in ecommerce, you can fail fast. You know, historically, to make some of those buys, it was a little bit more expensive because you didn't have the targeting capabilities. We now have the opportunity to target a little bit more of a niche audience, especially, again, when we're looking at, you know, OLB and things like that. I'm the CEO of BTR Media, which helps make or minimize that investment. But again, the smaller your investment, the potential smaller lift you're going to have. So you really have to kind of balance both. And to your point, I think one of the things I love that you said is set the expectations. That has to be done incredibly well. And that's something I'm really curious to hear your opinion on because you're one of the magical people that have both brand side experience and agency experience. How do you set expectations? How do you improve the relationship between brands and agencies? Where are some of the areas where you've seen maybe brands maximize their agency partnerships and relationships? And on the agency side, what can other agencies do better to make sure they're getting the most out of their brands? Speaker 2: Well, I think in general, if you just really treat your agency partner like an extension of your brand, it goes so much farther. If you understand that your agency wants, at least at PTR, we want your brand to do as well as it possibly can. One, because we have, what is it called? Unknown Speaker: Oh man. Speaker 2: Like work ethic, like we have integrity. Oh my God. Speaker 1: Integrity. Yes. Yes. Speaker 2: One is because we have integrity in our work and we want to be successful when it comes to things like performance marketing. And two, the better you do, the better the relationship is, the easier our jobs become and you're just less stressed and it's great and everybody feels good. And then what was the second part of your question? Speaker 1: I mean, to add to that, not to mention when you enjoy the brand that you're working with and the team you're working with, you're so much more passionate about it. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 1: And I think that's a big thing is like bring your agency into the problems you're having. Bring your agency into your long term goals and your strategies. I know sometimes brands want to just give a KPI and walk away. And I think that's where you run into issues because agencies, you know, real Strategic advantage, in my opinion, is their industry expertise and their category knowledge. So if you tell the agency or KPI, your agency can also come back to you and say, hey, that's kind of misaligned with your long-term growth goals. You're telling me you want to be the number one in the category and make up this amount of market share, yet you're focused on a ROAS number that doesn't align with that. So I think being as transparent and candid as possible with your agency can really help you get To the point of achieving those goals. Now, some agencies, I think, are a little bit more yes-men, where they're just going to go do tasks for you, but at BTR Media, our real competitive advantage is that strategic relationship, that ownership, authority, integrity, like you said. So I think that's one of the things we've seen maximize partnerships for sure, is being a little bit more transparent around what your overall goals are as an individual and as a brand, so that way we can best maximize our working relationship. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the big things you touched on there is like the misalignment in goals. And like we've talked about brands that we've had that have that where it's like, we want to see this much ROAS, but we only want to see this much spend, but we have to be top of search, but I don't want to have a high CPC, but I want new to brand. And it's just like, you need to understand, not to sound redundant, you need to understand the funnel, you need to understand the way like all of the metrics We both flow into one another and one of the oldest sayings in the book is you have to spend money to make money. And the reason it's the oldest saying is because it's true. You're not going to make an impact if you're spending $100 a day, $200 a day, whatever it is. You're going to make an impact by using your brand to connect with people offline and then bring that We're here to scale online and understanding how your business in total, whether it's your influencer team, your social team, your experiential team, your national media team, are all feeding into your ecommerce business, are all feeding into your PPC, your D2C, all of that. It's one funnel. There's a reason why the concept became what it is. Speaker 1: That is such a great point is oftentimes we see our teams running in silos, right? They'd come to us again, my Amazon advertising goal is a four ROAS and that's it. In reality, everything that I know as a consumer, but also as an agency owner, again, the path to purchase is not linear. There's many times where a friend will send me a link of a TikTok influencer, and then I go to that brand's D2C page to make sure it's legit, and then I see it's legit, and then I go to Amazon because the shipping time is much quicker. You can never perfectly attribute that to that one TikTok influencer. Because I went three different steps along that point. And a lot of people forget that. And the same thing with Amazon ads, even with AMC, we see things like ad type overlap and path to purchase. The highest converting segments of Amazon advertising consumers are the ones that have multiple touch points. I mean, again, we live in a world that's constantly oversaturated with media and ads. Of course, you're going to need to expose your brand to the customer more than once a week. Speaker 2: Yes, and the space is so saturated that you can't just rely on your organic content or having a strong follower count or a strong subscriber count to reach. Speaker 1: That's table stakes now. Speaker 2: Exactly. To reach your full consumer count, to reach your full shopper possibility count. People are relying on their friends to send them things. We're back to like the whole word of mouth of it all. Like that is how people, my friend liked this brand. I'm going to go look at this brand site. I'm going to go look at their social. Now I got targeted with a competitor brand, but I think I like this one more because their branding is different because they did an in-store experience or any of those things. It's more, It's less linear now than it's ever been, but it's almost become even more cyclical and more like leaning into the funnel than ever before because you really do have to hit every level, multiple touch points. Speaker 1: It's difficult. There's a million different ways to be successful, which is one of the things that I think I really harp on with our team is there's not one playbook. And something I've always been concerned with is building an SOP-heavy team that is afraid to make decisions for themselves. And the reason being is, like you said, there's brands that come to us that have millions of followers on TikTok. There's brands that come to us that have an email list that's huge, or maybe they've expanded into retail. Each of those discrepancies truly do change your Amazon advertising objectives, how you utilize DSP, where we're shifting our media. Do we go heavier on Instacart, heavier on Walmart? These are conversations that my team Brand needs to curate per brand. I think it's just incredibly important because to Isa's point, it's more complex than ever before. There's a million different touch points that need to be had and should be had. And you have to adjust for every single situation, which is probably kind of a good ending point here. I have one last question for you. We gave a recommendation on how brands can do better. We gave a recommendation on brands can work with their agencies better. Do you have any feedback for how agencies can do a better job of working with the brand? Speaker 2: I would say, like, don't be afraid to bring new opportunities to the client in general, even if it's something that you think is like small potatoes. If you bring something new to them, they're going to feel like you're putting outside effort, not just performance driven effort. They're going to feel like you care about the brand. And even if it's something just going after a different kind of target on SP, like something that is very much ingrained in PPC and performance targeting, and then something as far as like trying Fire TV. As long as you have a backing, a reason, and you're not just like throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. It's going to allow you to have more, it's going to allow you to have more organic conversations, more real conversations with your brand, build that trust more. So bring more things, more opportunities to the table with your brands. Don't be scared of them. They want to feel like you care and that shows that you care. Speaker 1: Absolutely. I would add to that, not be afraid to ask questions. Sometimes it's scary to ask the question, am I doing okay? Or what can we do better? Because then you open yourself up to a point of vulnerability and feedback. But at the end of the day, everything that Isa has really talked about is, again, how custom and complex a strategy can be. And the more you know as an agency, the more aligned your recommendations will be. And I think it's super easy to kind of get caught into this like reactive mode of just doing what you've always done. But when you're really relentlessly building that relationship and diving deeper and asking the right questions, those are the partnerships I think that we've seen scale out the most. Speaker 2: Right. And there really is never a dumb question. Speaker 1: No. Speaker 2: There really isn't. Speaker 1: That. Well, Isa, thank you so much for joining. You've provided so much feedback. I have no doubt we're probably going to have a few requests to hop on and do a deeper dive episode where we'll maybe deep dive on some of the case studies of the brands you've worked on. Speaker 2: That would be so fun. Speaker 1: It would be fun and we can make it a little bit more hands on keyboard. Like we gave you the high level, now here's how you accomplish it. But you have been amazing. I think it's first official BTR. Is it your first official podcast? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Oh, you're ready for stage. If you think Isa should be on stage, send us a LinkedIn message because she's exceptional. If you got value out of this episode, please like, share, comment, give us a shout out if you listened. And again, thank you all so much. And Isa, thank you. Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.