Marketing Happy Hour - 360 Brand Marketing Tactics That Work | Amruta Vyas of De Soi

Starting point is 00:00:00 you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode. Hi, Amruta. Welcome to Marketing

Starting point is 00:00:49 Happy Hour. How are you today? Hello, I'm good. I'm excited to be here. Yes, we're excited to have you. We discovered DeSoir probably, I would say about a year ago or so. We worked with the new bar. They sent us over some and ever since then, we've been obsessed. So big, huge fans. I'm super stoked to hear just about what you all are working on and insights into your career specifically. But before we get started, we have to ask, what are you sipping on right now? What do you have? Okay. So before we started recording, I've been on a mission to try to do some ASMR, but Cassie, you have the microphone, so you might need to do it. But I am drinking, hold on. It's not working. Anyways, I gave it a

Starting point is 00:01:36 shot. I am drinking De Soie's Golden Hour. It's my favorite. And also if you ever want to mix things up, spike a little bit, put some mezcal or tequila in it. It's my favorite. And also if you ever want to mix things up, spike a little bit, put some mezcal or tequila in it. It's really great. Oh, I love that. Oh my gosh. I'm going to have to try that. Um, no, I know. I don't like to advertise it as a mixer, but it does mix well thing when you want to. That's totally fine. We're sober curious over here. It's, it's totally fine to do both. Uh, we love that. Um, so I also have to swap every time I go to target. I feel like I grab a can and it's like my treat for grocery shopping. Um, so I grabbed, uh, the spritz Italiano, which is absolutely delicious. And if anyone knows me, uh, they know I'm obsessed with April spritz and it's definitely reminiscent of that. So I'm a huge

Starting point is 00:02:23 fan, but, uh, Erica, what do you have? Yes. I also love the spritz. I's definitely reminiscent of that. So I'm a huge fan, but Erica, what do you have? Yes. I also love the spritz. I think that might be my favorite of the de soif flavors, but I have the Tres Rosé, which I think would qualify as like my second favorite or tied with my first. This is the one, I think the new bar sent over in the first time we ever tried the brand. So it's near and dear to my heart. And I love that we get to chat with you today because we are such huge fans of the brand, like Cassie said. Could we just hear a little bit about your career journey, how it's evolved and what kind of sparked your transition from growth marketing to brand marketing?

Starting point is 00:03:03 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can take it back a little bit because I think this might, the college experience might resonate with people. But when I, well, so I went to, I grew up in Canada and went to Queen's University out, it's a couple hours outside of Toronto and I studied science. There was no pre-med there, but it's basically what I was studying was pre-med. And I was really lost. I thought I was going to be a dentist, but my parents are in the healthcare industry. And I thought like, okay, that's what I want to do. And I don't know if you guys feel the same way. And I'm sure things are different now with the rise of TikTok and just the information age as a whole. But like, I really

Starting point is 00:03:37 did not know what career options there were outside of, you know, going to grad school or doing a post-grad program. Like I really had no idea until maybe even my fourth year when I saw my friends at like business school or engineering applying for roles in consulting and investment banking. It sounds so silly to say now, but like I really did not know that those careers existed. And maybe I would have maybe like picked a different major or gone down different paths if I knew that existed. Because truly, I thought if you went to business school in your undergrad, like you might be an accountant, or you're going to go work for a large CPG company and like nothing in between. So I really, I mean, for four years or three and a half years, I thought I was going to go to dental school, had a little bit of an identity crisis, which I'm sure everyone has gone through going into

Starting point is 00:04:23 their final year. And then in that last year, I kind of had like an awakening of, hey, this is going to be here. Let me try something different for the next year, treat it almost like a gap year, per se, and like figure out what it is I want to do. And then if that doesn't work out, or if I don't get a job, or I don't know what to do next, like, I can always apply to school afterwards and then figure it out from there. So that's, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if things were different for you guys, but like, I'd love to hear if that was the same experience. Cause I was, I was very lost. Yeah, totally. And that's something that we hear a lot from our listeners too, is that like, you know, they, it's, they struggle to see what the best next step is, you know? And so it can be,

Starting point is 00:05:07 it can be interesting to look back on our journeys for sure. And like, see where we were versus like where we've ended up for sure. I don't know. I know. Well, I mean, exactly that. So as soon as I graduated university, I like really did take the first job that I thought I could find. And then it ended up being an advertising, performance marketing specifically. So I think all things ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, at a small agency based in Toronto at the time. And I actually started off in a sales role. I had no experience in marketing really whatsoever. I came from studying organic chemistry and was like, let's reboot, go the other direction.

Starting point is 00:05:46 And I started working at this agency. And this was also 2017, 2018, the heyday of performance marketing as a whole. I think this is the year of Casper doing their IPO, like a lot of major, major DTC brands that were coming out. And honestly, it seemed like everyone was launching a brand in this space. And when I say the heyday of performance marketing, it was extremely cheap relative to today to acquire customers on Facebook ads or Instagram ads. And so a lot of companies were popping up because it was a pretty efficient way to start a company, especially if you were bootstrapped. So when I first started working at this agency, I did sales. My whole role was really just bringing on new clients to work with the agency. And that's really where I learned, I mean, one, what performance marketing was.

Starting point is 00:06:32 But two, just really all the nuances of what advertising looked like, whether that was from ad creatives to conversion reoptimization, like figuring out copy, specific copy that would help convert customers to buy the specific supplement brand or whatever on day one when they're seeing these ads, learned what a cost per acquisition was. Really true fundamentals of D2C and e-commerce was there. And I honestly, it started off as like a sales role. But again, I think you'll see this common thread throughout my career. career, but I've always joined early stage or small scale companies where you're able to wear a lot of different hats and learn pretty quickly just based on what your strengths are and where you want to kind of apply yourself. So after I was at that agency called Jumbleberry, I ended up

Starting point is 00:07:15 moving over to one of our clients, Combo Ventures, which brought me out to LA. So Combo Ventures, that's a brand incubator. They own some pretty large, well, what were DTC brands, which are now retail DTC kind of everywhere. But a lot of them were in the beauty space at the time. And so I joined Combo Ventures just coming on, on the influencer marketing side. Again, a little bit different from the performance marketing side, but I was like, I can, I'm sure I can figure this out. And I started off in influencer marketing, but again, being a small company and being a marketer, you kind of can fill in roles wherever the business needs you to. So I started off doing influencer for only about four months, after which I ended up moving over

Starting point is 00:07:54 to one of their in-house brands at the time to run all their marketing. And again, I say all their marketing, but it was a three-person team and all of us were pretty juniors. So, I mean, again, I think that was like a major privilege to learn on someone else's dime, to be able to really one day be reading P&L sheets, which I had never done before. And the next day, you know, looking at packaging. And then the day after doing our e-com strategy or launching landing pages, launching ads, like really all things marketing, but also 360 running a business. And I think our CEO at the time, he had multiple brands within this umbrella company. So he really gave whoever was working on the brands, a lot of free and like liberty to, to learn and figure it out and go on the fly. And that was really helpful. And then after doing that,

Starting point is 00:08:42 and actually an interesting note about that company, it was an influencer-backed brand, which is like, of course, that kind of melded the two worlds of my e-com strategy, but then also influencer. But then that brand, I hate to say it, failed after a couple of years. And I was there for both the rise and the fall of it. The influencers that we launched it with just didn't want to be on the internet anymore. And having such, having a brand that was so, so directly tied to a personal brand was an incredible learning experience because as soon as they decided they didn't want to do it anymore, the brand couldn't really function without them. So that was, I mean, I just like to drop that

Starting point is 00:09:19 little nugget because it wasn't like it was a super successful company. It definitely had highs and lows. And at the end of the day, we ended up closing the doors on that one just because it didn't work. But from there, I moved over to one of our other hidden house brands called Glamnetic. There I did specific growth marketing things. And Glamnetic is a great success story because speaking of the heyday of D2C and e-commerce, Glamnetic scaled from zero to $50 million in revenue within the first year of launching. So like that's insane. And it was completely bootstrapped. It was completely self-funded, no outside investors. And going to that level of revenue was like truly like a dime, I mean, a diamond in the rough, I would say. So, I mean, I think as I joined that team and,

Starting point is 00:10:04 you know, coming from like a three-person team to now what was a 25% team, obviously I was able to hone in a little bit further on like one specific area of the business being the growth side of things. I'll wrap this all up and bring it to the disloy side. So, of course, after doing growth and, again, being a small, small-scale company, I was able to do a lot of different things and wear a lot of different hats. I found that like, hey, growth is super analytical. And like anyone that tells you otherwise is lying because it is very, very analytical. And I felt like there was this creative piece of my brain that I just wasn't using anymore. And I feel like even just given the experience I had up until that point, I felt like I was very 360 with the way I was approaching marketing. And especially with the way that even if you think about how expensive it is now to advertise on Facebook or how expensive it is to advertise anywhere, you have to treat marketing as a full

Starting point is 00:10:55 360 moment. You have to be launching influence. You have to be doing retail. You have to be doing out of home if you want. You have to be doing everything all at once. And I just felt like I wasn't being able to use that piece of my brain, which is what brought me over to Desoie to now do all brand marketing. And the funny thing with Desoie is now I really don't touch growth at all. We have a digital team that does the e-commerce side. I'm really on the other end of things now. But I feel, again, being a small company, I'm able to do a lot of different things. And that was really my mind shift where I'm like, I'm equally like right brain, left brain.

Starting point is 00:11:28 And I wanted to find a role that was kind of combining the two. And I think this is like a great medium of them all. But that's my spiel. I hope that was, you know, concise enough. Absolutely. Oh, such great experience. And I think something that is really interesting is the fact that you had a hand and were so versed in the analytical side of things, in the growth side one end, and then you have very analytical people on the other end. And I think a good marketer is able to combine those two worlds.

Starting point is 00:12:11 So I will say moving on the brand side of things, my initial reaction to everything is always like, what's the direct response kind of tactic that we're using here? Like if we're launching copy on our packaging, like my initial thought is like, how is this going to convert people? Because my background and trying to convert people off of like 15 second ads has really played a role into everything from even like our packaging. And that's something that I think has been helpful because up until this day with Desoi, like there's pieces of our packaging that we've, we're continuously trying to tweak. But one element that I mean, right now we're working through is like, Hey, we have a huge functional piece to our beverage. There's adaptogens in them. And if you actually look

Starting point is 00:12:51 at like the trend results of lion's mane, reishi mushroom, ashwagandha, you'll see that it's on like a crazy exponential growth curve in the last five years. And that's something we really don't talk about on our packaging. And then if you actually think about the consumer mindset of like, hey, they're cutting out alcohol, they're looking for a replacement. I don't think selling them on flavor alone is going to work. I think you still need to figure out the why of like why people are consuming alcohol and then why are they trying to cut it out? Hey, maybe we can tie in our functional piece a little bit further and put that on our packaging to help convert those customers a little bit easier. I think, I hope that makes sense. But I mean, like,

Starting point is 00:13:29 I think just like having all of this like direct response marketing background and then bringing that over to something that's traditionally not, and maybe traditionally is more creative has really helped. And I hope that like, this is how we treat all of our packaging decisions, all of our retail decisions, all of that copy we use across our website, but also when we use to pitch retailers, like is kind of transcendent from that initial like advertising background and almost analytical CPA conversion rate sort of mindset. Yeah. Well, that kind of goes into my next question too, with all these different elements, whether it's on the packaging or messaging on your website or social media,

Starting point is 00:14:11 et cetera, how are you balancing this need for acquisition slash retention? So thinking about this quote unquote marketing funnel that you all have, um, what does that look like? Cause I feel like that's always a challenge for especially new brands, just figuring out as we're gaining raving fans and consumers, how are we creating things that serve them, but also this new consumer who has never heard of us and getting them into the door for the first time? Yeah, I think for the first piece of the question with acquisition, I firmly believe that it is no longer, I mean, and I'm sure this is really obvious, but you can't convert someone off of one touch point. Someone needs to see your brand seven, eight, nine times from credible sources or credible points of reference in order to convert. And so I think treating acquisition as like a single funnel or single channel strategy is just like not going to work. And so the way I think we think about it is really doing like marketing blitzes, I like to call it, where people, maybe a small group of

Starting point is 00:15:18 people, but those group of people seemingly see us everywhere. So whether or not it's choosing a group of influencers that are all friends with each other that likely share a huge audience together, I would much rather go after this niche group of influencers rather than doing spray and pray that it works out and then treat the same thing. So like, okay, out of those influencers audiences, where are those people shopping? Maybe it's like a super LA-focused audience. A lot of them go to Erewhon or they go to Sprouts or they go to Whole Foods. Like, okay, then let's also target our retail marketing efforts to those three.

Starting point is 00:15:55 Where are we doing our events? And like, who are we inviting to those events? It doesn't necessarily have to be those influencers, but it could also be the people that follow these influencers, right? Like, having super hyper-targeted strategies to a group of people, making them feel like this brand is huge because they're seeing it everywhere when we're in reality, we're just like firing on all cylinders for this group of people. So that's kind of how I look at acquisition.

Starting point is 00:16:16 And then when I think about retention, I mean, like, how are you keeping people interested in the brand? And I think for that, if we think about just email marketing strategy as a whole, as a CPG brand, like I'm going to be honest, like it's not something that like, I don't subscribe to the Coca-Cola emails or like brands I see on shelves at Whole Foods. Like that's just not really a thing. So like, how are we kind of keeping our current audience engaged after we do acquire them down this email funnel or like our website funnel, et cetera. And I think my answer to that is truly just like novelty, change it up and the types of like content you're putting out for these people.

Starting point is 00:16:55 You know, there's always like these, I always see like the e-commerce pros post on LinkedIn, like text-based emails convert X like percentage. And I don't necessarily think it's like, because you sent a text-based email, that's why it did so much better. I think that brand probably switched things up after doing like a bunch of designed out emails. They probably sent out a text based email and looked very different and created some like break in the consumer so that they, you know, saw something novel, they clicked on it, et cetera. Same thing goes with like promotions. If you're doing promotions all the time, you lose that novelty. Same thing goes with like behind the scenes or team content. If we're doing that consistently,

Starting point is 00:17:27 it loses its spark. And so when I think about retention and like our email marketing strategy specifically, like I'm just all in on trying to create as much novelty and diversification in the content we're putting out so that it does feel exciting. It does feel new and it does like bring people on or at least like convince people to open up this email from this brand they just saw at Whole Foods. Oh yeah, that's so brilliant. And I think you're sharing so many good nuggets. I want to like encourage listeners, if you don't have your notebook already, like please pause and like even rewind and like jot some notes down because you have so much knowledge in this space. And I think it's something that a lot of brands, uh, listening or those who

Starting point is 00:18:12 represent brands that are listening could really learn from. Um, so just delighted to have you on. Um, but I wanted to talk a little bit about that influencer marketing piece. I know you mentioned about like having some unique approaches to that and you've managed it for both large and like smaller scale brands. How do you think that the influencer marketing landscape as a whole has changed from your early days to now? And I think we probably have the same like early days to now mindset. So I want to hear what you have to say. Yeah, I mean, I think like think about influencer marketing when it was new versus what it is

Starting point is 00:18:52 now where it's extremely saturated. I think like originally, I mean, I was following honestly, like girls wearing cute bikinis or like looking really fit or the revolve girls. And I feel like nowadays, I think just because of how saturated it is, we're looking for something a little bit deeper. And I feel like this is so obvious, but I mean, the biggest type of influencer, I think that has been resonating with a lot of people. And I can see kind of increasing in the amount of them we see is this whole like founder influencer or working girl guy influencer, someone that's like living a relatively normal, but also aspirational lifestyle that you can then see yourself doing.

Starting point is 00:19:34 Because I think a lot of the times and back in the day, the aspirational influencer was really like going on. It was like the travel vloggers and the Alexis Ren and J. Alvarez era. It was so different. And we were finding people that were just extremely different from us. And then that just became so unrealistic. And of course, the internet does what the internet does. And people get, there's obviously a sense of jealousy, but also we're paying all these brands to then promote people

Starting point is 00:20:01 that are living this dream lifestyle. What about us? So I think it's like nowadays it's more about, at least from what I can understand and what I'm consuming, it's a lot of people that have an aspirational lifestyle that also feels attainable at the same time. I think that's probably the rise of Alex Earl, at least at the beginning, where she was a college girl partying, literally talking to you like as if she was your friend. And it almost felt like you could be there with her. It wasn't this like crazy lifestyle.

Starting point is 00:20:29 And again, like nowadays, she's probably not attainable or that lifestyle is not going to happen. But again, she built this whole relationship up with the audience by being somewhat relatable, but also aspirational at the same time. And then speaking of like this whole founder influencer network, I think something that's worked really well for us when we think about events or I mean, events in general, I think the hardest piece, and I'm sure other brands in the space will find this too, but it's like people want to throw all these influencer events because it seemingly has such a high ROI. Like if you can get 20 influencers to show up to this cool event without having to pay them an exorbitant amount, like wouldn't that make sense? But I mean,

Starting point is 00:21:16 I think the question is like, how do you get them there when there's hundreds of events every week? And if you are a newer brand in the space and you're not an influencer as a founder, like how are you going to get these people there? And I think that's something we've struggled with for a while, unless we're paying someone to like host an event, which is also a great idea. Kind of piggybacking off the topic of influencers too. I want to hear a little bit about this idea of internal influencers, right? These people that are within the brand, whether it's a founder, a CEO, team members, whatever, out there sharing about the behind the scenes of developing this brand. And what do you feel just overall is the importance of humanizing a brand in that way and allowing people not only to connect with the brand itself and what they love about the brand, maybe the memories around

Starting point is 00:22:04 it, but also the people behind it literally building and developing it in real time? Yeah. I mean, I think it's in human nature to want to root for people. I think it's also, you're obviously a little bit more emotionally tied to a brand if you know the people and how hard they're working and the things that are happening behind the scenes. There's only so much we can say about our flavor profile and the adaptogens that are in every product. But when we talk about the story of Morgan, one of our co-founders, actually going up to Cambria and foraging botanicals and bringing us along through that process, which by the way, I'll be the first to admit we haven't done a great job of doing, but it is something that we're working on. Like that is so much more interesting than just the final product. It also shows the value in our

Starting point is 00:22:49 product. And I think something we consider all the time being a relatively, I mean, we're not, it's not a cheap product to sell. It's not a cheap product to make either. So the only thing we're able to do is provide more value in the product and convincing people why it's worth this, maybe four or five dollars for a can and I think a lot of that has to do with the pulling back of the curtain and showing one the founder story but be the production techniques the behind the scenes like what else can we show and how can we showcase it in a way that like brings people along on this journey and adds value to their lives um then like then like, besides by being like, you know, pulling

Starting point is 00:23:25 back the curtain there, that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And like, who better to share the brand story than those who are working day in and day out at the brand and really understand the brand. And then, um, I think too, like having those people at events or like out in the community and like engaging with consumers can really help as well to just like, you know, develop that brand love overall, because, um, you know, there's so much awareness that we can do with influencer, but, um, if we really want to cultivate that brand love, that brand affinity, like brand fans for life, you know, you kind of have to relate to people on a personal level. So

Starting point is 00:24:06 I love that. That's a part of your strategy. But I do want to talk to a little bit about you touched on it for a moment, but events. So how do you think events have played a large role in that awareness in that like brand love cultivation, everything everything for D'Soie? You know, any examples of like successful events that you have participated in recently or in the past that you'd like to share? Yeah, absolutely. So I think with events and if you think about traditional alcohol marketing in general, you'll notice that they're selling a lifestyle. Like if you ever look at like Casamigos, et cetera, especially with like their teal blue, they are so relevant because of their events and like on-premise strategy and like selling this lifestyle. And I think that's a key

Starting point is 00:24:59 piece about the events, like beyond just getting, you know, influencers to come and excitement. Like I think when we start posting that content on our social media, when we start recapping that on our emails, when people start seeing that on LinkedIn or their other friends' stories, we're selling this lifestyle that's associated with D'Assois. And that's a key piece in like keeping people loyal and engaged with the brand. Because I think like everyone wants to feel like the product that they have, especially when it comes to like luxury marketing says something about them. So if we start in an example of a successful event recently was doing a pickleball event in

Starting point is 00:25:34 the Hamptons. And like, that sounds really hottie totty or like a little pretentious, but it was a really successful and fun event for us because one, I think the Hamptons backdrop, say what you want about it, but it does sell an elevated, luxurious lifestyle. And that says a lot about the brand and whether or not, you know, you have a million dollars or $2 in the bank account, if you have a can of DeSwa in your hand, like hopefully that says something about you, right? Maybe it says that you care about your health. Maybe it says that you have the means to purchase it. We want it to exude some sense of luxury and sophistication and elevation. So I think that's one thing I think

Starting point is 00:26:12 about when we're trying to figure out what kinds of events we want to throw. But at the same time, that event was not exclusive, right? A lot of people were invited. It was not influencers. It was people in our community that were able to come out. And that's another core tenant of our brand. I think word of mouth is such an important piece of the business and the piece of acquisition that people don't or brands don't think about enough. But I think doing these IRL moments and activations where you maybe have like 30, 40 people there and it doesn't feel like a huge lift, you'd be surprised by how much that word of mouth and just like that snowball effect comes out of it. And I think that's another piece I think about with events.

Starting point is 00:26:51 It's like, what are the markets we want to hit? But what community members can we get going to these things? How is that going to help propel the brand and bring it out into more spaces? But yeah. Love that. And we're, we're huge fans of events over here and there's so much power as Erica was mentioning, and you were mentioning of just getting out there in your community and meeting people face-to-face, allowing them to touch, feel, and taste the product. It's, there's so much power there outside of the digital landscape. So it's always so great. Um, I want to shift gears just slightly to talk a little bit more about your career. So you have, as you've mentioned, a very diverse background. You've

Starting point is 00:27:34 had a lot of different touch points in the marketing space. So I'm just curious how this Jane of all trades per se mindset helps you navigate complexities of working in a startup environment. I know we have a lot of listeners who work in that kind of environment as well and just navigating wearing a lot of hats or just having a smaller team. And so any just tips around that specifically? Yeah, I think my biggest tip for anyone wanting to join a startup is I think you really do have to have an entrepreneurial mindset. And I think our CEO scout does a really great job of making everyone feel like they are owners of the business to some capacity. And like you have to know that you're going to have to roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty and do a lot of different things and be excited by that. So I think for me, I always knew, not all of me, I didn't always know, but like in the last five years, I've known that like, hey, I don't want to specialize in one specific area because what gets me excited is doing something different every single day. And I think that mindset going into a startup is key because

Starting point is 00:28:40 if you want to go in having a very traditional structured role with like, you know, a vertical organization, like I don't know if it's the right environment for you. And I would implore you to like probably figure out what is because I don't know if it's a startup. But if it is, if you find yourself getting bored by doing things the same way every single day, if you want to be able to take risks. And also I like to say this and it's probably not the best, but like you're learning on someone else's dime. And I think if you're starting off early in your career, joining startups is so exciting if you're in it to learn. And so if you don't know what you want to do next and you want to have the experience of doing a lot of different things, a startup's the best place to do that because you're going to be put into situations where the business needs you to be. And then you have to be okay with it. You have to get scrappy and like be excited by that stuff.

Starting point is 00:29:29 And I think for me, that was such an exciting thing because like over time you learn so many different things that like now I find when I'm in conversations with people, I have something to add from all realms of, you know, marketing, but also like the backend of the business, the production, the sales cycle, what that looks like. And for me, that's exciting. And like, that's something I like to do. So I think, again, like being very clear with what kind of person you are, because if that's not what you want to do, like I probably wouldn't recommend it.

Starting point is 00:29:57 But I think if being this like Jane of all trades, having a lot of different experiences is important to you, I think a startup is like a fantastic environment to be in. Yeah. Same with like agency experience. I always recommend to people, I'm like, if you're thinking about doing it, do it even if it's for a little bit, just because you get so much rich experience. And I think also too, you kind of discover maybe different areas that you have not been exposed to in marketing before that maybe turn out to be the area you want to focus in the future. So kind of again, like the agency experience, it's a really good place to dabble and test and learn. And you may discover too, that maybe working in a startup space like that is where you really fit. So

Starting point is 00:30:41 it's always worth a go, you know, if you're thinking about it. For sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, so I want to ask too, you mentioned some of the areas of focus for DeSwa moving forward, just things that you specifically in marketing, you're thinking about, uh, you guys are optimizing, testing, learning, um, messaging being one of them on the packaging themselves. Anything else that you see as just growth opportunities that you're thinking about moving forward in the space of marketing? And also thinking about some of the trends that we're seeing in the industry, things you want to kind of try, dabble, focus on in the future. What are you thinking about right now? Yeah, absolutely. I think when you think about the consumer that buys CPG,

Starting point is 00:31:27 I think people forget about retail marketing and it's something that should be so forefront because I think you could love a beverage, but it's really rare that you're going to go through the trouble of ordering it online when you don't see it in stores. So I think from a opportunities perspective, our biggest goal for the next two years is more retail placement. But on that same note, how do we now stand out in retail? And retail marketing is something that I'm really new to. So if anyone has tips, like I please reach out to me because I would love to know more. But I think that's something like if everything from like, hey, how do we make, I guess, like even end caps to stand out?

Starting point is 00:32:06 Like that's something that like it's consumer behavior and almost like marketing 101 from back in the day. But also just, you know, keeping up with the current trends of what's happening in retail. Like how do we make ourselves stand out? And I guess another example of that too is like we love our packaging. And like something that we love for a long time and we're like, oh, it's so exciting. Recently started seeing it on shelves and finding that, hey, with the emergence of more non-alcoholic brands, we're now in this set of other brands and like our packaging doesn't stand out. And like, how do we now fix that? And how do we message, how do we actually convert people in stores? And like, that's something I'm constantly trying to figure out and, and, you know, I guess really just, yeah, figure out essentially. But I think like also from

Starting point is 00:32:50 like, what are the other options that we can do to drive more retail or like in-store foot traffic? I don't even know what I don't know yet. I think we've been testing and trying things like digital coupons. So we'll send like a 25% off rebate to anyone that goes to buy our products and target. But like, what are other things we can do? Because that's only targeting our email list. And that's a small subsect of customers that could potentially be buying to swap. So what are we doing in stores to really like help that conversion? And to be honest for that, I don't know yet. We're gonna have to figure that conversion. And to be honest for that, I don't know yet. We're going to have to figure that out. Oh my gosh. I love it. I love hearing a little behind the scenes of like what you're actually thinking about moving forward in the brand. And it's one thing like retail marketing,

Starting point is 00:33:35 a note for us to just have somebody on the show to talk about it because you're so nice. Like it's not like common knowledge. And I remember I worked at a haircare brand and there were just like so many requirements and different requirements at different retailers when we would go out and pitch our products. And so it's definitely an area that I think isn't talked about a lot. And I don't even think we've had anybody talking about it on our show. So we will absolutely do that. And honestly, there's like not that many people that I know besides like old school marketers

Starting point is 00:34:04 that are working at really large brands. But those brands also have the budget to spend $500,000 on an end cap. So it's really all we're doing right now is trying to increase our presence everywhere else so that when people do see us in store, they recognize the brand. And of course, that's the main strategy here. But what can we do? I'm sure there's a way to hack the system, figure out what it is that's driving people in store. And I honestly, I don't know. Yes, the new wave of retail marketing is on its way, I'm sure. Yeah, for sure. Well, we want to wrap. I mean, this has been such a good conversation. I know earlier,

Starting point is 00:34:40 I was like, everybody get out your notebook, but I hope everyone listening got a lot of really great points out of this conversation because I know we did too. But I want to hear what do you know now that you wish you knew a little earlier on in your career? This is one of our favorite questions to ask, favorite questions that our listeners always love to hear. So any pieces of advice for your younger self? Yeah, I think this is, I'm going to make this a two-part question because I think the first thing, which I'm still working on, is to slow down when you

Starting point is 00:35:12 speak. And this is me speaking slower. And I know this is like such a table stakes thing, but I wish I knew this. So I would have started working on this five, six, seven years ago. But you sound so much more collected. You sound so much more sure of yourself and you sound almost more intelligent and like build this personal brand for yourself when you start to speak slower. So I wish I knew this because it's still, it's still something I struggle with. And I watch a lot of TikTok and they move on light speed. So like, I don't know if I'm getting any better or worse, but I mean, I would recommend for everyone to be working on this piece for themselves if your mind moves a miles a minute like mine. But my other piece, which is like obviously a little bit more of like a or like they really want a job that checks all the boxes.

Starting point is 00:36:07 And you'd be surprised as to what every single experience leads you down to or the next thing that you learn based off of that specific experience. I mean, when I took a sales job, I was like, I've never, never once thought I was going to be in sales. Like that was not it. But it just so happened to be at an agency that did marketing that then led me down this path to do performance, which then led me down this path to meet Scout at the SWAT. It's XYZ. And I think none of the experience that you're doing, whether it's truly nothing, I think you'd be surprised as to how much that catapults your career, at least impacts the next steps that you take. 100%. Thank you for both of those. And I loved your first tip was so like different from what we've talked about. It's so true. Oh my gosh. Love that so much. I know. I feel like we,

Starting point is 00:36:51 we literally, yeah, for a living on this podcast and it's, it's hard to remember to just slow down a little bit. So this has been wonderful. As Erica said, thank you so much. And of course, before we let you go, we have to know where we can follow along with you personally online, but also of course, where can we find the brand, learn more about it, et cetera. You can follow us on drink it to SWA D S O I it's not to soy. So that's our Instagram. And then my personal Instagram is EmrutaVS with two S's, I think. Oh, maybe it's EmrutaVS underscore. I don't know. I'm not a big, big updater of my Instagram, but I do occasionally post a lot of work fun things. So you can follow me there.

Starting point is 00:37:35 We'll have it linked below. So regardless, you'll find it there. Thank you so much again for passing along this information to us. This has been so helpful, so enlightening, learning more about the brand and definitely go out and get some Dyswall if you have not tried it yet. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want more of Marketing Happy Hour, but don't know where to start, we invite you to download our free Marketing Happy Hour starter kit at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash starter

Starting point is 00:38:21 dash kit. This interactive magazine style PDF walks through who we are, includes helpful resources like a marketing term glossary and the printable daily planner sheet that we actually use ourselves and contains clickable links to our episode recommendations by subject area. Not to mention all the fun extras like a quiz, the link to our Marketing Happy Hour Insiders Facebook group, a word search, a playlist, a goal setting guide, content inspo by month, and more. It's our hope that you'll dive into this resource and walk away more confident in your career journey with a group of industry pals that you can lean on for advice and support.

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Marketing Happy Hour - 360 Brand Marketing Tactics That Work | Amruta Vyas of De Soi

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