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March 2023 Social Trends

March 2023 Social Trends

POSTS + tiktoks

march trends

#TrendAlert – Back story: there is a trend on Tiktok and Instagram that features the original song “Dumb Ways to Die” from a mobile game. Creators have shifted this to say “Smart Ways To Live” by doing the opposite of what may cause you to die. In this case, drinking magnesium is good for ya! Give it a try by using this sound.

#TrendAlert – Use this sound to show off something that people are looking for! Example: If you are a Kombucha brand, you can say “When you are looking for a great-tasting, low and no sugar kombucha”.

march trends
    MARCH HOLIDAYS
 
  • March 1: Start of Women’s History Month
  • March 3:National Day of Unplugging
  • March 8: International Women’s Day
 
  • March 17: St. Patrick’s Day
  • March 20: International Day of Happiness / First day of Spring
  • March 29: National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day

   TRENDING REELS AUDIO

  • This is the perfect audio to showcase your product! Use it to highlight its features and what makes it perfect.
  • Use this audio and compile a montage video of your product. Show others why you’re obsessed with it! Ex.
  • This sound says ” Allow me to reintroduce myself my name is…”, use it to introduce your business/product!

   SOCIAL NEWS AND UPDATES

  • Meta is testing new Verified subscription to help creators establish their presence.
  • Instagram is no longer supporting Live shopping after March 16. (For Lives only)
  • Instagram is rolling out ‘Instagram Channels’ as a broadcast chat.

Ready to create a 7-figure Consumer Goods Brand without wasting money on strategies that don't work?

Then it's time you join the Consumer Goods Growth Course & start driving the results you've been wanting!

Book a call with us now & learn how you can start making consistant, 7-figure sales!

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Create More Behind The Scenes Content

content
content

Benefits of behind the scenes content

Video is the elephant in the room for any founder who hasn’t jumped in front of the camera yet!

We have spoken with so many brand leaders who are not comfortable getting in front of the camera and we completely understand. It can feel awkward and foreign but we assure you – it doesn’t come off that way to the consumer! It comes off as connection, especially if you’re interacting in an engaging way.

Here are some ideas for you to show up this week:

▪️ What are your most FAQ? Shoot a Q+A OR Green Screen Reel/TikTok

▪️ Give a behind the scenes look into your day-to-day with Stories and Reels/TikToks (This could simply look like a sped up video of you packing orders with a block of text across it.)

▪️ Share a recent win in Stories

▪️ Take a look into your past content and zero in on the highest performing posts. How can you repurpose those topics into video content that will positively serve your followers and customers?

For those of you who are more timid to get in front of the camera, here are some tips:

1️⃣ DISCOVER accounts and founders who show up often and get inspired! (We love how the founder of Poppi always shows up to share their mission and brand wins.)

2️⃣ PREPARE your shot list and write down prompts to make it easier while filming

3️⃣ PRACTICE makes progress! (No one wants to see perfection…)

And once you’ve created some founder forward video content – tag us is in the comments so we can go hype you up!!

Ready to create a 7-figure Consumer Goods Brand without wasting money on strategies that don't work?

Then it's time you join the Consumer Goods Growth Course & start driving the results you've been wanting!

Book a call with us now & learn how you can start making consistant, 7-figure sales!

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Spy On Your Competitors

Spy on your competitors
Spy on your competitors

Why You Need to Spy on Your Competitors to Achieve Business goals!

Here’s the tea ☕️ on how to spy on your competitors’ ads and improve your content + results…

One of the *best* ways to optimize your own ads is to spy on competitors to help you understand what they’re doing with their ad creatives + copy.

Step 1: Find competitors

If you don’t already have a list handy – you can easily find competitor brands by going to the biggest brand in your space’s Instagram and click on the little person outline with the + sign that’s to the right of the “Follow” and “Message” buttons. (This may vary depending on if your app is updated or not.) Clicking on that little icon will bring up “Suggested for you” accounts.

Create a Google Sheet and just start listing all of these brands, their Instagram + TikTok handles, their website URL, and any other relevant information.

It’s extremely important to know exactly who your competitors are, big and small, and keep tabs on what they’re up to!

Step 2: Competitor spying 

It all goes down in the Facebook Ads Library AND the TikTok Creative Center! You’ll actually get to see every campaign your competitors are currently running!

For TikTok ads – you’ll want to add in parameters to look at US-based, eCom businesses to get inspired!

For Facebook Ads – you’ll want to search for a specific competitor.

We are looking a lot of times, at the biggest brands in your space – and we’re learning from them, because they most likely have spent thousands to millions of dollars testing and finding what is resonating with their audience and getting the most conversions. So we’re going to use what they’ve been testing and creating to get started on the right track quicker!

Take note of:

What types of creatives they’re running? (Are they mostly video or images, or what ration of each? Are they using UGC, testimonials, native looking ads, or are they highly designed?)

What kind of copy they’re using? (What pain points are they addressing and solving for? Are they offering any discounts, if so what is the %? Are they using long or short copy, etc.)

Where are they sending people? (Are they sending to their product collection page, or are they sending to a particular product? Or are they sending to a separate landing page?)

What are their longest-running ads? (Meaning they’re likely high converting!)

And that’s it! Keep on spying 👀 and get those ads optimized!

Ready to create a 7-figure Consumer Goods Brand without wasting money on strategies that don't work?

Then it's time you join the Consumer Goods Growth Course & start driving the results you've been wanting!

Book a call with us now & learn how you can start making consistant, 7-figure sales!

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February 2023 Social Trends

February 2023 Social Trends

POSTS + tiktoks

february trend

The TikTok algorithm is pushing Carousel-like photo posts with Trending sounds to the #FYP.

Content Idea: Create a Carousel post featuring your brand’s different products, reasons why your audience should shop your products, or the benefits of using your products.

Pro Tip: End the carousel on a cliffhanger! That way someone will keep scrolling and land on your profile page.

#TrendAlert – Green Screen videos have been trending all over our TikTok Feed lately. TikTok has made it easy to join the trend by adding shortcuts for you to recreate videos with templates using CapCut. Save those extra minutes, create the content using the templates and hop on the trend! Here are one and two examples for you to try out!

february trend
    FEBRUARY HOLIDAYS
 
  • February 1: Black History Month
  • February 9: Chocolate Day / National Pizza Day
  • February 12: Super Bowl Sunday
 
 
  • February 14: Valentine’s Day
  • February 17: Random Acts of Kindess Day
  • February 20: Mardi Gras

   TRENDING REELS AUDIO

  • This audio has a great beat! It would be great to use for a transition video.
  • Use this audio to show something you did that you don’t regret. Caption the video “Reasons I regret _____: none”. Here’s an example.
  • This sound has a great beat and many variations have been trending across both TikTok + IG! You can use it as background music.

   SOCIAL NEWS AND UPDATES

  • Instagram’s navigation bar is changing (again).
  • Tiktok’s got a secret “go viral” button.
  • Buzzfeed to use ChatGPT Creator OpenAI to help create content.
  • Instagram is testing lead forms as an action button on business/creator profiles.

Ready to create a 7-figure Consumer Goods Brand without wasting money on strategies that don't work?

Then it's time you join the Consumer Goods Growth Course & start driving the results you've been wanting!

Book a call with us now & learn how you can start making consistant, 7-figure sales!

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Four Essential Email Automations

Email Automation
Email Automation

four essential email automations to increase e-commerce sales

Email automations (aka email automations, email flows, evergreen sequences) are emails that are automatically delivered to folks based on their activity on your site.

These emails you can “set and forget” (well, not technically FORGET because you should be checking in on them to make sure they’re converting well and up-to-date but you get the gist) so that your email flows are working hard for you in the background while you’re busy with other important biz building activities.

Here are four email automations to increase e-commerce sales! 👇🏼

👋🏼 Welcome Flow – This email flow welcomes new leads and offers them a first time discount to get them to purchase!

🛒 Abandoned Cart Flow – This flow is triggered when someone puts an item in their cart but doesn’t check out. They’re showing you they’re interested, and you want them to come back and purchase ASAP!

👀 Browse Abandonment Flow – This flow works the same as the Abandoned Cart, but instead it delivers when someone abandons a product page but doesn’t add the product to their cart.

🤝 Win-Back Flow – Depending on the shelf life of your product or how long it takes to consume, you want to send a reminder to your customers to come back and purchase again.

We’re all about working smarter, not harder, so let’s lean into email automations to optimize our email marketing and keep generating that revenue!

Ready to create a 7-figure Consumer Goods Brand without wasting money on strategies that don't work?

Then it's time you join the Consumer Goods Growth Course & start driving the results you've been wanting!

Book a call with us now & learn how you can start making consistant, 7-figure sales!

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January 2023 Social Trends

January 2023 Social Trends

POSTS + tiktoks

january trends

New year means… new graphic design trends! The team from 99designs have put together a listing of the top trending visual styles and formats which are set to become more significant trends in the next year. Check it out here!

#TrendAlert – Use this audio to show yourself talking to someone and they say something to you that makes you go crazy!

Example (product specific – kimchi): I say: Have you tried Mother-in-Law’s Kimchi?”, You say” Oh no thanks I don’t like kimchi” “You make me un poco loco”.

january trends
    JANUARY HOLIDAYS
 
  • January 1: International Creativity Month / New Year’s Day
  • January 9: Clean Off Your Desk Day
  • January 16: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
 
 
  • January 19: Get to Know Your Customers Day
  • January 23: National Pie Day
  • January 31: National Hot Chocolate Day

   TRENDING REELS AUDIO

  • Use this audio to showcase a solution your product solves or showcase how it works. Here is an example!
  • Use this peaceful song to show a tutorial, a product, or use it on a tweet/meme reel.
  • We love a good mash-up! Use this audio for a recipe reel or show off your product!

   SOCIAL NEWS AND UPDATES

  • Instagram is testing a new feature to support building an online community on the platform. TBD on effectiveness.
  • With Instagram’s newest feature, you can now add music to your feed posts.
  • TikTok is testing new horizontal, full-width display for in app videos.

Ready to create a 7-figure Consumer Goods Brand without wasting money on strategies that don't work?

Then it's time you join the Consumer Goods Growth Course & start driving the results you've been wanting!

Book a call with us now & learn how you can start making consistant, 7-figure sales!

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#39: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Digital Marketing (Part 3 of 3)

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#39: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Digital Marketing (Part 3 of 3)

Join Alison and Karin as they chat with Alli Ball, creator of Retail Ready, and Adam Pollock of Rodeo CPG in this mini series: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands!
 
In the last episode of our mini series – Alison and Karin will be talking about the digital marketing KPIs you need to track to make informed decisions, three essential digital marketing levers for CPG brands, and how to prioritize your marketing to-do list so you can avoid overwhelm.
 
Let’s get into our final episode! 🙌🏼
 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:45 – 1:35] Introduction
[5:35 – 10:32] The core three marketing levers for digital success
[10:32 – 12:23] Why you should focus on these three marketing levers for success
[12:24 – 14:23] How these three levers work together to master consistent sales
[14:24 – 17:58] How to build a community
[18:00 – 22:40] When to expand your marketing efforts
[22:41 – 26:17] The primary KPI you need to track for social media
[26:20 –  30:37] The primary KPI you need to track for paid advertising
[30:38 – 34:16] The primary KPI you need to track for email marketing
[34:17 – 35:17] More freebie education to snag!
[36:14 – 37:42] Closing

 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with them –

Adam Pollack –

  • Check out their website, here
  • Instagram, here
  • LinkedIn, here
  • or email Adam: adam@rodeocpg.com

Alli Ball –

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#39: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Digital Marketing (Part 3 of 3)

 

Calling all consumer goods, business owners and marketing professionals. Does planning content ahead of time stress you out? Do you want to run Instagram and Facebook ads but just aren’t sure where to start? If your answer is yes and yes, then our mini course was made for you. It’s 100% free and packed with essential tactics that you can implement as soon as today. To join in, visit our website at umaimarketing.com/minicourse. All right, let’s get on with the pod.
 
Karin Samelson: [0:45]
Welcome to the third and final episode of our three part mini series: Lessons Learned from Successful Seven Figure CPG Brands. We’re joined by Alli Ball, creator of Retail Ready and Adam Pollack of Rodeo CPG, to talk about everything operations, retail and digital marketing for your CPG brand. The last episode in our mini series is all about digital marketing and the three marketing lovers needed for big brand success. In this episode, we’re sharing our learnings from working with several seven figure CPG brands.
 
We’ll be talking about the KPIs you need to track to make informed decisions, the three most important digital marketing avenues for CPG brands, and how to prioritize your marketing to-do list so you can avoid overwhelm. Let’s get into today’s episode.
 
Allison Ball: [1:36]
Adam, I’m going to kick it to you first. Tell us, what’s Rodeo CPG? What do you do there? And then, my off script question for you is tell me your favorite vacation destination.
 
Adam Pollack: [1:47]
Okay. Yeah. So, Rodeo CPG helps food and beverage brands in a variety of different ways, mostly with research and development operations and sales management. So, how do I bring an idea to life? How do I set up the infrastructure to actually make that thing? And then, once I want to get on shelf, we help with the effort behind that. And we do that with services, but also increasingly with digital tools. So, we have software that helps you plan and execute your retail sales effort. I head up marketing for Rodeo, so it’s a lot of creating content like this and checklists and all sorts of other resources that will help the CPG community at large.
 
And the favorite vacation destination, I would say for me was Japan. So, spent two weeks there a couple years ago, ate a tremendous amount of sushi and ramen and everything in between, went all over and it was just totally awesome.
 
Allison Ball: [2:45]
I’m jealous.
 
Alison Smith: [2:48]
Me too.
 
Allison Ball: [2:48]
That sounds delightful.
 
Adam Pollack: [2:49]
Yeah. It was pretty epic.
 
Allison Ball: [2:50]
All right. Who do you want to pass the baton to for our intros?
 
Adam Pollack: [2:55]
Let’s see. Karin, why don’t you go for it?
 
Karin Samelson: [2:59]
Hi everybody, it’s Karin again. I am one of the co-founders of Umai Marketing. We are a small boutique marketing agency out of Austin, Texas, and we focus on growing CPG brands through organic social, paid social and email marketing. And my favorite vacation destination, that’s tough, but Hawaii is one of my favorite places to go when the humpback whales are migrating. It’s just a really magical time.
 
Allison Ball: [3:34]
Do you have a favorite island?
 
Karin Samelson: [3:36]
I’ve only been to two, but Maui is where I wish… I mean, I wouldn’t live there because it’s not my land to live on, but I would love to spend a month there every year. But yeah, it’s just a wonderful place.
 
Alison Smith: [3:53]
So, I’m the other co-founder of Umai Marketing. Beyond being a boutique agency, we also have a course, the growth course, and we help CPG brands, generally younger brands or marketers who want to learn our strategies, our core three strategies for brand growth. And I’m actually headed to Hawaii in about two weeks, Karin, so I might need to get some more tips from you. But favorite destination vacation is Guatemala. I went to Lake Atitlan last year around the same time, and it is just this gorgeous lake, volcanoes everywhere, crystal clear blue water, just amazing. Amazing place. I probably shouldn’t spread the word, but too late.
 
Allison Ball: [4:48]
I love that this podcast is just going to turn into a travel podcast, right?
 
Alison Smith: [4:51]
I know. Can’t we just talk about that?
 
Allison Ball: [4:54]
Yeah. Forget the marketing, we’re just going to talk about vacations from here on out. All right. Thanks for that intro. And for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Alli Ball. I’m the founder and CEO of Food Biz Wiz. I’m a former grocery buyer turned wholesale consultant, and we help emerging food, beverage and textbook grocery brands understand how to land on the retail shelf and how to have high sales once you’re there. All through our signature program, Retail Ready.
 
My favorite vacation destination, I didn’t even prep this, gosh, I should have, anywhere there is a tropical beach. I just want tropical. Okay. I think it’s time to get serious. So, I know we’re going to talk about the core three for digital marketing. And last week I ended with one of my favorite quotes. And so, I’m actually going to ask you to kick it off with the quote that you’ve prepped for this episode. You guys want to jump in?
 
Alison Smith: [5:53]
Yeah. Love the setup, Alli. So, we’re pulling a quote. First of all, love quotes, but we’re pulling from Steve Jobs. He said it best. He said, “Focus and simplicity. Once you get there, you can move mountains.” So, our whole method is built on this idea of focusing in, and we call this strategy the core three, like Alli said. And it includes the three digital marketing levers that we consider to be, basically, must haves for brand success. So, these are the pillars for digital marketing success.
 
And these three things, we truly believe that any successful CPG brand should be doing, and doing well, to see true growth. We’ve helped brands grow from inception to over $9 million in revenue, and we see these three pillars as the constants. So, Karin, you want to talk about them?
 
Karin Samelson: [6:58]
Yeah. Let’s talk about what these three levers are. You’ve heard us say it again and again, but we’re real into the number three. And these three are truly what we see giving us the most growth when we implement them really effectively. So, the first is organic social media, so social media marketing and content creation. And this is where you’re creating really engaging content with the goal of generating community and building a community of advocates for your brand. The second lever that we talk about and that we do for our clients is paid social. So, this is where you’re acquiring new customers as well as focusing further down your marketing funnel by retargeting people that have engaged with your brand but haven’t purchased yet. And never forget that people need at least five to eight touch points before they buy, and customers have a higher percent of converting if they are receiving content from different channels like organic and paid and email.
 
So, it really helps with increasing retention and loyalty from current customers. And we’re going to be talking about the marketing funnel. And the very first time I even heard the term, I did not go to marketing school, but I was at a Vital Farm, so my first CPG job, and they had somebody come in who was talking about his marketing funnel and he was going off the rails and it was not simple in his mind, but you can see it pretty simply. So, it’s this funnel where you’re trying to bring in customers through awareness and then convert them, and then make them loyal and then make them advocates of your brand. So, simply put, that is your marketing funnel.
 
And then, your third lever to have an efficient marketing funnel is email marketing. And we call this the OG of digital marketing because it’s been around for a really long time and it’s still one of your strongest powerhouses for marketing. And it gives you direct access to your customer list. You own that customer data and you can share your promotions, any brand news, all of that good stuff through your email marketing. And it’s just a really great place to indoctrinate new customers, new leads to your brand and increase that lifetime value.
 
Allison Ball: [9:18]
It’s interesting, as you talk about this, Karin, and you refer to them as levers. That’s literally the image that came up in my mind. Three different pulleys that I can push or pull or engage depending on where I am, potentially, in my year or my launch strategy or my team’s capacity or my production capacity or whatever it is. Are you telling me I just choose which lever to pull?
 
Karin Samelson: [9:48]
Yeah. I mean, ideally, you’d be pulling all of them. We want you to get to the point where you’re pulling them all.
 
Allison Ball: [9:56]
Gotcha.
 
Karin Samelson: [9:57]
But absolutely, if you’re in this growth phase, if you don’t have the means to do it, if you don’t have the funds to hire someone to do it, if you don’t have the skills to do it yourself, focus, of course, on the things that you think will make the most impact and pull the other ones as soon as you can.
 
Allison Ball: [10:14]
Okay. So, maybe it’s more even like a dashboard where I’m picturing a mixer or something where all three are sliding up and maybe one slides a little faster and then the other one catches up, but all three are moving forward.
 
Karin Samelson: [10:28]
Absolutely. Yeah. Love the symbolism here.
 
Allison Ball: [10:32]
Got it. Okay. But why these three tactics? When I think about marketing or when our brands think about marketing, there’s so many options, why not all the other options?
 
Alison Smith: [10:43]
Yeah. Great question. And the short answer to that is overwhelm. I think each of us hit on our episode about CPG, it’s difficult. It’s a difficult space because it’s so multifaceted, there’s so many things to juggle and to work on, and where do you put your focus? So, the main reason we preach three things is to help defeat overwhelm. So, depending on where you are in your growth, your team generally cannot handle multiple channels. You can’t handle an infinite… You want to be omnichannel, you can’t handle an infinite amount of channels and do it well. So, these are the three things that generally any small to medium team can focus in on, it is doable and they can, focusing in on these three things, produce this quality efficient funnel.
 
And we aren’t against additional levers, like we talked about, but it’s when your business is ready. So, doing these three things will create this profitable marketing machine alone, or as Alli says, a mixing board alone. So, just really thinking about where your business goals and understanding when you yourself, your team, your brand as a whole is ready and that’s when you can expand beyond these three pillars.
 
Adam Pollack: [12:11]
So, you’ve got your marketing machine, your mixing board, whatever this thing is, and you’ve got these three main pillars. You’ve got organic social, you’ve got paid social, and you’ve got email marketing. How do they all work together to create this well oiled machine?
 
Karin Samelson: [12:29]
Yeah. So, we’re going to go back to that darn marketing funnel and it just is a really wonderful way to be able to target potential customers and re-target old customers, which you should always be doing, all the way through that funnel by using these three levers. So, with organic social, you’re really bringing awareness of your product to new audiences and maintaining interest and advocacy of your brand with your advocacy of that audience that already knows and loves your brand. And then, we have paid social, increasing that awareness, that interest and desire for your products. And then, we have email marketing, promoting loyalty, getting those conversions and getting retention with those customers to keep coming back and purchasing. So, it’s a really good way to build this really small, lean marketing funnel that will follow your customer throughout that journey.
 
Allison Ball: [13:35]
And Karin, what I hear you say too is almost what Adam talked about on episode number one, what I talked about last week, is this idea of building trust with the people who, ultimately, are going to be your biggest fans. And what I’m reading into this is, with each of these levers, we’re building trust in all of these different channels with our potential audience.
 
Karin Samelson: [14:01]
That’s right. And when you think of community outside of your brand, your business, when you’re thinking of community in your town, when you’re making strong connections with people, you are building trust, you like them and you’re building trust with them. And that is so incredibly vital to your marketing plan as well.
 
Allison Ball: [14:23]
Yeah.
 
Adam Pollack: [14:24]
Question about community for a second. I know brands… Everyone’s talking about how you need to build community now, it’s harder to rely on Facebook ads and other third parties to help find your customers. You’ve got to have your own first-party data and build your own community. Are there a couple of quick tips or things you’re seeing some brands do very, very well to help do that? I know, like anything, it’s relationship building and it takes time, but what are some ways to get on the right path towards building your community?
 
Karin Samelson: [14:52]
That’s such a good question. And I would say, obviously, it depends on your time commitment and it depends on your budget. You’ll see those two things factor into a lot of the marketing. Today, I had a discovery call with a founder who launched to his brand. And I asked him, “Do you want to be the face of your brand? Do you want to have founder forward content?” And he was like, “I don’t know. I really love Magic Spoon and Magic Spoon doesn’t do it. I really love Kodiak cakes and they don’t really do it.” And I’m like, “Okay. Well, what do they have that you may not have right now?”
 
So, one thing that I really love smaller founders doing that maybe don’t have huge pocketbooks yet, is really building a connection with founder forward content and never forgetting that it absolutely doesn’t have to be perfect, you’re just trying to make a connection by being really authentic, and again, building that trust with them. So, that’s definitely my biggest piece of advice for a brand that wants to be able to build community like that. And then, consistency is another, just showing up and giving yourself an amount of time that you think that you can devote to organic social for community building and sticking to it. Pretending like you are your own boss, because you are, and making sure that you get it done the amount of times that you want to get it done a week. If you want to show up a couple times a week if you want to show up five times a week, if you want to show up once, just be consistent.
 
Alison Smith: [16:30]
And I’ll add to that, too. So, looking further down the funnel for things like retention and loyalty, I mean, that’s still your community. I think a lot of people focus on the awareness stage of the funnel, the acquisition stage of the funnel. But what about the people that have already bought from you? How do you increase that trust but in turn increase that lifetime value? So, looking at things like loyalty and retention. Apps like smile.io is an app for Shopify that rewards you when you purchase from the website, you get points, things like that. So, yeah. In addition to the acquisition phase, think about how you can optimize the very bottom of your funnel.
 
Allison Ball: [17:20]
I think what’s interesting is where my mind went when Adam asked that question was I was thinking about in-person community and I was like, “How are these brands connecting with their followers and their fans in-person?” And I love that you just flipped it on on its head for me and really focused on digital community and that online community that brands can create. It just proves to me that there’s so many assumptions in marketing, or it’s really interesting to watch where our brains go and recognize that there are so many ways to do this as we build businesses. So, what happens when a business is feeling pretty solid with these three levers? Should they expand past the three core lovers?
 
Alison Smith: [18:11]
We believe so. And that’s not to say that these things aren’t enough, these three things are enough when done really, really well. But there’s always other channels that are niche specific that could allow you to have cheaper costs, a more efficient marketing funnel. So, once you fill, you have these pillars in place, your brand is set up on this nice foundation, that’s when you can consider other marketing levers. For us, we generally recommend influencer campaigns, affiliate marketing campaigns, SMS marketing. I know it seems spammy, but it does work. Just reel it in a little bit, you don’t need a text every day.
 
And then, Google ads. Those are some of the things that we generally recommend for CPG brands once they’re ready to expand past their foundation. And of course, if you’re funded or have a healthy budget or a team behind you, which not everyone has the luxury of having, you can consider testing these things sooner rather than later to see what converts, what’s most cost efficient. But really consider… I know we talked about this earlier, just really consider your team, your brand’s goals, overwhelm, burnout is a real thing. So, really consider what you can handle and what you can do consistently and with quality as well.
 
Allison Ball: [19:42]
And Allison, I think an aha moment for me here is that so often I think brands see things like influencer marketing or affiliate marketing to be under the umbrella of organic social or something like that. So, they’re like, “I thought I had to do it under that first pillar.” And what I’m really hearing you say is, “No, organic social is literally your own feed, your own stories, your own platforms, your own content.” And then, you can layer those things in later if you have the capacity.
 
Alison Smith: [20:22]
That is exactly correct. Influencer and affiliate marketing are beasts in their own. Yes, they do, technically, fall under organic social for the most part, but they are time consuming. So, we are not preachers of running an influencer campaign that’s automated or bought automated. We are preachers of developing and trust that we just talked about, the same way that you act with your consumers and building that trust, that’s how you should approach your partners, your affiliates, your influencers. And it takes a lot of time to build that trust and a lot of effort. So, that’s why we consider it a next step lot of times.
 
Allison Ball: [21:06]
And I mean, I know… Again, we’ve shared a bunch of clients as well. And I see that you’ve had success helping brands scale with just the three pillars alone, right?
 
Alison Smith: [21:17]
Yes, definitely. I would say the majority of the brands that we work with, the majority of our students, it’s these three things. It does matter how well you’re doing them, what strategy you have in place. So, all those things come into play, obviously, as well.
 
Karin Samelson: [21:36]
Yeah. And so, we’ve talked about these three things over and over again, organic, paid and email. And we really want to touch a little bit more on your key performance indicators, your KPIs, because that’s the only way you’re going to make really good decisions. Because with social or digital, things were always changing. I mean, it is a… I was about to curse. But it is a wild place out there right now on social. And so, just being able to make sure that you know your numbers and you’re continuously testing is of utmost importance. So, yeah. We think every brand should really have a set amount of primary KPIs that they always track and can lead their decision making.
 
Adam Pollack: [22:24]
Yeah. I mean, what gets measured gets managed, right? That’s the old adage. And it’s totally true with social media, especially on the organic side where it’s really easy to get sucked into and have that become your full-time job. And obviously, as a founder, that can’t be. So, I guess the question to you would be, what’s the primary KPI you need to be tracking for your organic social?
 
Karin Samelson: [22:48]
Yeah. So, for organic social, and when we talk about that, we’re talking about just the content that you’re sharing on Instagram, on Pinterest, on TikTok or whatever, you’re not spending dollars on through ads, that’s organic social. So, our primary KPI is engagement rates because you’re trying to cultivate a community around social, around your brand on social. That’s the whole goal. And so, the way they interact with your content and with your brand is, obviously, the most important thing. So, when it comes to actually giving you numbers, we think smaller brands with under about 5,000 followers, you should be shooting for an engagement rate of two plus. And then, obviously, when you start getting more followers, it’s harder to balance that. So, look for 1% an app.
 
And if you’re not getting a really quality engagement rate, it’s really vital that you change your content strategy. So, really paying attention to what content really hit, what people really interacted with, try and make it a series, do more of it in different ways to try and generate that amount of engagement as well.
 
Adam Pollack: [24:05]
When you say a 2%… Let’s assume your account has 5,000 followers and you have a 2% engagement rate, that means that on any given post on average, around 100 people, give or take, are liking, commenting, sharing that post, is that what you mean by that?
 
Karin Samelson: [24:23] 
So, yeah. You’re trying to make me do math right now. So, if you have 5,000 followers and you’re looking for-
 
Adam Pollack: [24:30]
To be fair, I had to punch that into a calculator, so we’re on the same boat. Yeah.
 
Karin Samelson: [24:35]
Yeah. Generally, that’s what we’re looking for. Yeah. So, it depends on the brand of course, and it depends on the time. So, I don’t want anybody listening to this right now because if right now, if when we actually post this, which is a little bit of a difference, and obviously, when we’re filming it or recording it it’s a little bit harder with algorithms right now to get that engagement rate up. But just focusing on maintaining the engagement rate that you’re seeing on your best performing posts is super, super helpful.
 
Adam Pollack: [25:12]
Got it.
 
Allison Ball: [25:13]
That’s great, Adam. That was exactly the question that I was going to ask. And we do have a rule here on the podcast, and inside of Retail Ready, that we don’t do live math on Zoom.
 
Karin Samelson: [25:25]
I love that rule.
 
Allison Ball: [25:26]
No live math.
 
Adam Pollack: [25:27]
I didn’t mean to make us break a rule. That’s my fault.
 
Allison Ball: [25:34]
And so, even thinking about for those brands who are like, I don’t know, “I’m bad at math.” Or, “I don’t want to do that.” Thinking about, there are tools to measure engagement as well. Even, I imagine, going into our business insights and looking at some of the data that’s provided by these platforms, right?
 
Karin Samelson: [25:50]
Yeah. So, there’s third party platforms that you can use. We are always fans of just being able to utilize a lot of things without spending a lot of money. So, a simple way, put it in a spreadsheet, just put all of your likes, comments, saves, shares, and just have it calculate in your spreadsheet because it’s free and we like free.
 
Allison Ball: [26:16]
I love that. Okay. But let’s talk about paid. What is a primary KPI that needs to be tracked for your paid social?
 
Alison Smith: [26:26]
Yes. So, before we get into that, I do have to talk about the paid landscape and how much it has changed over the past year, even the past few months. But hey, if we don’t change, we don’t grow. So, if you’re into paid advertising, if you’ve been running paid ads, you are probably very aware of what I’m saying. If you’re new, I don’t want this to scare you, we have to think of things a little bit differently. So, for e-commerce campaigns, our primary KPIs are EROAS, which means estimated return on ad spend. And also, CPA, which is cost to acquire a customer or some people call CAC, C-A-C.
 
So, I’ll talk about EROAS. So, EROAS is basically a holistic view of your business. So, we’re basically looking at how much we’re spending versus how much we’re making in revenue here. Basically, your total revenue divided by your total spend, we look at this weekly as well as monthly. And then, we’re, obviously, checking on our ads daily. As a smaller team or a founder, if you’re running your own ads, I would probably look at this weekly and monthly. Monthly is where you’re going to be able to make decisions, but it’s also always nice to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Yeah. So, EROAS is one of our main KPIs.
 
Unfortunately, gone are the days that you are able to track and attribute direct return on your ad spin, thanks to new privacy laws, shout out to iOS 14. So, instead you have to think holistically, you have to look at your business in a holistic way and understand how much you’re spending overall and how it affects your return. So, generally, for brands, we are shooting for an EROAS. Just to give you a baseline here, we want an EROAS generally no smaller than 400%. So, for every dollar we’re spending, the company is making at least $1. $4 back, excuse me. For new brands, shoot for a goal of 100% EROAS. If you’re breaking even, you’re spending a dollar on an ad and bringing in a dollar, that is awesome because then you can use your email funnels, you can continue to indoctrinate through organic means and sell through organic means and continue to re-target and reengage that customer and increase that overall lifetime value. So, breaking even here is still a great goal, I will say that.
 
And then, secondly, we have to talk about CPA, cost to acquire a customer. For e-commerce, this is generally cost per purchase. So, we have put together a free calculator, it’s called our Breakeven Calculator, and we’ll share it in the show notes with you all. You’ll input your cogs and other information on your product to understand how much you can spend to acquire a new customer. A very important metric to know. And so, a great CPA is going to depend on your product and your product costs and just making sure that you are at least breaking even on a sale. This is, again, just a great initial goal to have, especially with our current paid landscape. And as you gain a customer for break even, again, continue to sell to them through email marketing funnels, retargeting them, remarketing to them.
 
Adam Pollack: [30:13]
Yeah. So, you mentioned iOS 14 and all the changes that came about with digital marketing as a result of that. Basically, it’s harder now to track where purchases are coming from because Apple’s put privacy at the forefront. So, that, obviously, has implications for your paid social, but I know it has some implications for email as well, because it’s harder to track who’s opening things and maybe clicking things. Yeah. So, on that note, I guess what are some primary KPIs you need to be tracking for email and how have those privacy changes impacted email as well?
 
Karin Samelson: [30:50]
Yeah. Apple really hit us last year. So, Alison already mentioned iOS 14. We’ve been talking a lot about problems, problems in ops and retail and digital marketing, but they’re good problems and problems that we can solve altogether. So, iOS 15 was the email privacy update that they did where you can no longer track open rates. So, pretty much TLDR, Apple will automatically show that an Apple person has opened it, even if they have not once they receive, they get delivered that email. So, you’ll all notice, if you have been running email or sending emails, is that your open rates have increased exponentially since that has happened. It doesn’t affect Android users, but a lot of people use Apple.
 
So, open rates were a really good primary KPI for us. It was like, “My subject line was on fire on that one.” Because our open rates were so high. So, what we had to do is just pivot our primary KPIs click through rates. So, that depends on your list size as well. But as a general rule of thumb, we’d like to see your click through rate above 1%, above 2% if you can. And that means your emails are encouraging your leads to really click through and shop or learn more about the content that you’re sharing in your emails. And so, a tip for you, if you’re not getting that click through rate at 1% or above, consider some optimization, some tactics to try and get people to click through.
 
You could personalize the subject line and the email that you’re sending with your subscribers names so they feel more connected to you and your content, you’re speaking directly to them. Or you can test your send days and your times. Somebody told us the other day that their best send days were on the weekends and that was never a thing. So, you have to test it to know what’s going to work. Another way you can increase click through rate is editing your CTA buttons. They can be bigger and brighter with more enticing language being, get your discount, really personalize it to the person reading it. So, there’s a lot of ways that you can try and optimize to get that primary KPI up.
 
Allison Ball: [33:22]
I love this. And Adam, what were you going to say? I know you had one-
 
Adam Pollack: [33:27]
I just had one note. You mentioned personalization, and I do think that’s important. And most people go either in the subject line or, “So and so,…” And then, they start the email. I was reading someone’s email the other day and I thought it was genius. Buried halfway in, they made a point and they’re like, “That’s pretty cool, Adam, isn’t it?” It was buried in there. I’d already read and I was getting value and then they just threw in a little mail merge right there for me. And I thought that was so smart because I just… Normally, once you get past that opener, there’s no more personalization. So, just another interesting little anecdote I saw around someone using personalization really, really well.
 
Karin Samelson: [34:07]
I love that. You’re like, “They are really talking to me.”
 
Adam Pollack: [34:09]
Yeah. Like, “I matter.” So, I thought that was pretty cool.
 
Allison Ball: [34:16]
That’s smart. I feel like we could keep talking for hours and hours. And I just so appreciate the simplicity of your framework, the idea of these three levers that folks can pull. And then, understanding what the key KPI is for each of these levers. I mean, we’ve talked about this this entire series, but knowing your numbers is so important for growth as well as attracting investment. So, I’m curious, as we wrap up here, where can people start learning your strategies that have helped so many of our mutual clients, so many amazing brands in our CPG space? Where do people go next?
 
Karin Samelson: [34:55]
Yeah. So, you can take our free five day mini course. It’s going to walk you through some of our core three strategies, and it’s going to give you some actionable tasks that you can apply right now to grow your brand no matter what stage you are at. And you can find that at umaimarketing.com/minicourse.
 
Allison Ball: [35:14]
Awesome. So, that’s what we’re going to officially assign our listeners as their task from today’s episode. Okay. We will put that in the show notes. So, before we wrap up, I want to say a couple things. First off, I didn’t get to say this so clearly at the beginning of any of these episodes, but Umai Marketing and Rodeo CPG are two of my favorite resources in the CPG space and I’m just so grateful that the three of us have come together and made this mini-series for our listeners and have realized that it really does take all of these moving parts, operations, retail strategy, and digital marketing strategy to create a healthy, thriving brand. So much respect for you guys and appreciation that you devoted so much time for us with this mini-series. Thank you guys for being here.
 
Adam Pollack: [36:10]
It was awesome. Thank you for having me.
 
Allison Ball: [36:11]
Of course. So, one last time, tell us where can people find you and make sure to drop your Instagram handle and I’ll give our listeners a little call to action at the end. Umai Marketing, give us the recap again.
 
Alison Smith: [36:31]
All right. Well, beyond our free five day mini course, you can also follow us on our Instagram, it’s @umaimarketing. And we try to share a lot of helpful tips and tricks for CPG brands. Beyond that, we love to chat with anyone and everyone, so you can send us an email at hello@umaimarketing.com.
 
Allison Ball: [36:55]
Awesome. How about you, Adam? Where can people keep in touch with you and Rodeo?
 
Adam Pollack: [36:59]
Yeah. We’re on Instagram, and TikTok these days, @rodeocpg. You can get more info about our whole business at rodeocpg.com. And yeah, if you want to send me a personal email, adam@rodeocpg.com.
 
Allison Ball: [37:13]
Awesome. And I can be found on Instagram @itsalliball, or on my website at foodbizwiz.com. So, in addition to your action of taking the free five day mini course from Umai Marketing, I’m going to task our listeners with screenshotting this episode and posting it too your stories, tag all three of us. Tag Rodeo, Umai Marketing and me, and we will give you a follow right back and make sure that we get to keep in touch with your brand.
 
Alison Smith: [37:43]
Thanks for joining us in our three part mini series: Lessons Learned from Successful Seven Figure CPG Brands, where we’ve covered everything ops, retail and digital marketing to help you build your own million dollar brand. We had so much fun recording this mini series with Alli Ball of Retail Ready and Adam Pollack of Rodeo CPG. And we hope that you’ve had just as much fun listening along. Let’s get to seven figures and beyond.
 
 
Umai Social Circle is a CPG agency driven podcast based out of Austin, Texas. We’re excited to share more behind the scene insights, chats with industry leaders, and whatever else we learn along the way. Follow us on Instagram @umaimarketing or check out our website, umaimarketing.com. Catch you back here soon.
 
 
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December Social Trends

December 2022 Social Trends

POSTS + tiktoks

december trends

The Holidays are here! Posting a gift guide is a great way to inspire your followers. Add your products to the guide and optimize it by adding shop tags! Include products from brands that share the same mission and feel free to tag their page as well!

#TrendAlert – Use this audio to create a reel wrapping up your 2022!

Example: Include some of your favorite campaigns, posts, and Stories you posted in 2022. You can also include BTS (behind the scenes) from photoshoots and production you had and pictures or videos of your team!

december trends
    DECEMBER HOLIDAYS
 
  • December 4: National Cookie Day
  • December 5: International Volunteer Day
  • December 10: Human Rights Day
  • December 18: First night of Hanukkah
 
 
  • December 21: December Solstice
  • December 24: Christmas Eve
  • December 25: Christmas Day
  • December 26: Kwanzaa Starts
  • December 31: New Years Eve

   TRENDING REELS AUDIO

  • Who doesn’t love a mashup?! This song is perfect, upbeat background music.
  • This audio is from The Office and is Michael Scott saying “I love it!!”. Use it to showcase your product!
  • Use this audio to show something you’ve been looking forward to! Example: a new launch. PS: It adds a little holiday ~spice~.

   SOCIAL NEWS AND UPDATES

  • Social Media Today has announced 32 predictions for social media marketing in 2023!
  • TikTok is slowly rolling in in-app shops in the US as part of their expanded eCommerce push.
  • Instagram is testing a new messaging feature: Notes. Creators and businesses can use Notes as a way to communicate news, updates, or pertinent information.

Ready to create a 7-figure Consumer Goods Brand without wasting money on strategies that don't work?

Then it's time you join the Consumer Goods Growth Course & start driving the results you've been wanting!

Book a call with us now & learn how you can start making consistant, 7-figure sales!

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#38: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Retail (Part 2 of 3)

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#38: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Retail (Part 2 of 3)

Learn the strategies of million dollar brands! Join Alison and Karin as they chat with Alli Ball, creator of Retail Ready, and Adam Pollock of Rodeo CPG in this mini series: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands!
 
In the second episode of our mini series – Alli Ball shares everything you need to know about getting on AND off the shelf, and setting your CPG brand up for retail success.
 
Alright, let’s get onto more shelves! Oops….We meant onto the pod! 🎙
 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:46 – 2:47] Introduction
[3:28 – 6:01] How to successfully reach out to grocery buyers
[6:02 – 11:46] Establishing trust and building retail relationships
[12:02 – 15:00] For new brands without existing sales data: how do you pitch sales?
[15:01 – 17:46] What to do when a buyer is ghosting you
[18:58 – 22:28] Getting more sales
[22:29 – 24:59] Effective strategies for a brand to move product off the shelf
[25:01 – 27:39] How to handle being “stuck” in retail and increase velocity
[27:49 – 28:48] Inspirational quote from Alli
[29:02 – 30:10] Activity for all listeners!
[30:12 – 31:57] Outro

 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with them –

Adam Pollack –

  • Check out their website, here
  • Instagram, here
  • LinkedIn, here
  • or email Adam: adam@rodeocpg.com

Alli Ball –

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 

#38: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Retail (Part 2 of 3)

 
 
Calling all consumer goods business owners and marketing professionals. Does planning content ahead of time stress you out? Do you want to run Instagram and Facebook ads but just aren’t sure where to start? If your answer is yes and yes, then our mini course was made for you. It’s 100% free, and packed with essential tactics that you can implement as soon as today. To join in, visit our website at umaimarketing.com/minicourse. All right, let’s get on with the pod.

Alison Smith: [0:46]
Welcome to the second episode of our three part miniseries. Lessons Learned from Successful Seven Figure CPG Brands. We’re joined by Alli Ball, creator of Retail Ready, and Adam Pollack of Rodeo CPG to talk about everything operations, retail and digital marketing for your CPG brand. Today’s episode is all about retail led by Alli Ball. She’s going to share her golden rule for trying to get on retail shelves, what you need to remember when approaching buyers, and the common mistakes you should avoid when trying to increase velocity. Let’s get into today’s episode.


Alli Ball: [1:26]
I am Alli. I’m the founder and CEO of Food Biz Wiz. We help emerging CPG brands understand how to get on the retail shelves and how to have high sales once you’re there. We do that all through our signature program, Retail Ready.

So today we’re going to talk about retail. And this is kind of a funny episode for me because I’m welcoming in Karin, Alison and Adam to ask me questions about retail originally on the Food Biz Wiz podcast. So I’m kind of excited and maybe a little bit nervous to see how this plays out.

So, from a high level, I want to talk to you guys about getting on the shelf, verse getting off the shelf and into shopper’s Baskets. In last week’s episode, Adam, you talked about how operations and sales are really, really connected here. And I’m so glad that we kicked things off with that because I think without really dialing in our operations, without really understanding what we’re making and how we’re producing it and how we’re working with our co-packers and partners, we’re just winging it when it comes to sales.

So again, this is a cry for you guys to go back and listen to episode number one of our series if you haven’t done that. So let’s start by getting on the shelf. Are you guys ready to talk about that with me?

Adam Pollack: [2:48]
Yes.

Alli Ball: [2:49]
Okay. So often I see brands say that getting on the shelf is their end goal. So we hear things, if I can only get into Whole Foods or if I can only get into Erewhon, I’m going to be good. And then momentum will build and sales will come. And when I was thinking about prepping for this episode, I really thought about our savvy seven figure Retail Ready brands who know that getting on the shelf is the first step. And it’s not even an easy step at that, especially now. But once you do, you have this whole other set of business challenges that start to come up.

Adam Pollack: [3:28]
Alli, my question to you is then, you’ve probably heard thousands, maybe millions or trillions even, of brand pitches at this point from your time as a grocery buyer. What do you wish that brands knew about how buyers wanted to be contacted and sold to? What do brands screw up all the time when they were reaching out to buyers?

Alli Ball: [3:49]
Yeah, this is a really great question, and I wonder how many brands I had pitched to me. So I’ll say when I was a grocery buyer, I would get about three dozen samples, three dozen brands dropping off their samples every single week at my office or with the cashiers or things like that. And that’s week in and week out. So, I mean just hundreds and hundreds of brands every quarter trying to get their products on our shelves.

So with that, my number one rule, my golden rule is don’t drop by. And I wish that brands knew that at the end of the day, your relationship with your retail partner is based off mutual trust and mutual understanding. I mean, Adam, it’s really similar to what you were talking about in last week’s episode with your co-packers and your 3PL’s and things like that.

So, so often brands see buyers or category managers as gatekeepers to their success. And I hear that brands can get ahold of buyers, and so they just start swinging by retail stores, especially independent retailers and small chains, and they try to meet with the buyer in person. They feel like there’s no other way to get ahold of a buyer than to just swing by.

And here’s what I wish everyone knew. Buyers hate that. I mean, if you think about it, think about being in the middle of your work day, maybe being in the middle of a production shift, or Alison, your heads down in the campaign manager and really in it, and someone just knocks on your door and is like, “Oh, hey, can I just have a little bit of your time? Let me try to sell you something.”

And I used to hide in the walk-in when brands would swing by Bi-Rite and I would literally do everything that I could do to avoid them. So, I always like to remind that. First off, don’t swing by, don’t blind ship your samples without making contact with those buyers or with those category managers before you… Don’t blind ship those samples before you’ve made that initial contact, because they don’t like to be interrupted and they don’t like to be blindsided.

Adam Pollack: [6:02]
Yeah. I have one follow up question there. So, how should a brand go about establishing trust and building a relationship? What are some good things they can do to… And I know that takes time and I think everyone wants a silver bullet. They want that to happen yesterday. But assuming this takes a while, several months to a year, whatever, what are some actionable first things someone can do to get going in that direction?

Alli Ball: [6:24]
Yeah, so we’ll talk about sales pitches in a second, but I think the first thing is really understanding that at the end of the day, you and that retail account or that wholesale account, you both want the same thing. You both want high sales. You want high sales for your product and that store wants high sales in your category. And so once you realize that you both have the same goal, you can approach that relationship with empathy and mutual understanding rather than thinking that that buyer is, like I said, the gatekeeper to your success.

So Adam, we often advise that it is as simple as picking up the phone and making a connection over the phone rather than swinging by or cold emailing or putting your products on RangeMe and hoping that buyer swings by your listed page.

So we always say pick up the phone and be a real person. Easier said than done though. I mean, we find in Retail Ready that people are very hesitant to pick up the phone. And then there’s of course all the complications of who do you know you are calling? How do you get their phone number? What if they’re Regional Manager or working in some corporate office and you can’t get ahold of them on the phone? We have all of these different ways of getting ahold of buyers, but I think, Adam, to your question, it’s really about understanding that they are real people and think about how you as a real person want to be treated as well.

Adam Pollack: [7:56]
Makes sense. Yep.

Alison Smith: [7:59]
Yeah, I love that you’re basically saying, don’t be creepy.

Alli Ball: [8:03]
Yes. Exactly.

Alison Smith: [8;05]
Don’t be a creep. But I mean, cold calling is terrifying. I mean, that is a really scary thing to do to call someone and potentially get rejected or get rejected multiple times. So you’re saying the sales pitch is what people need to focus on to improve that sales pitch. Is that right?

Alli Ball: [8:26]
Yeah, well, if that’s your goal. And we talked a little bit about this in Adam’s episode last week, but we need to realize that getting more retail accounts isn’t going to magically solve all your problems here. There’s no one size fits all where we want to say, get in more doors and your business will grow, right? One of the things we teach inside of Retail Ready is the idea that at the end of the day, your velocity is more important than the amount of doors that you’re in.

We want to make sure that you are selling in the accounts that you’re in and if you’re not selling in the accounts that you’re in, don’t start going and pursuing new accounts. Don’t start fixing a problem, a different problem. So Alison, back to your question about the sales pitch though. You’re right. It is really scary to pick up the phone and try to sell your product to someone. That is scary. But here’s the thing, it is so easy to ignore a sales email and it’s so easy to ignore a product that’s submitted during an online form through a category review. We find that the people who pick up the phone, the brands who pick up the phone, are the ones who have more success creating that human connection with their potential retail partners.

And so this is something we practice a lot in Retail Ready. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do. It’s usually terrifying for our students, but I put on my old buyer role and I pretend I’m the buyer again, and they themselves are trying to pitch their product to me. And I give them every no in the book. And we really role play to try to make it boost their confidence before we set them out to go and do this.

But I think, Alison, one of the most important things is recognizing why buyers bring in products in the first place. And once you know that, you can craft a pitch that’s much more effective. So it’s important to recognize that buyers bring in products to enhance sales or margin, something around financial goals in your particular category. So, if your product doesn’t come in and increase sales or increase margin, it’s officially not worth it for that buyer to spend all the time and the energy and the labor and all of their team’s energy to bring in your product line. Especially right now as we’re seeing so many staff shortages and operational challenges at the store level as well.

So we want to make sure that we are crafting pitches that are based off that understanding that buyers want, buyers need your product to sell and they need to trust that your product’s going to do that. So, if you are crafting a pitch that is based around the idea that your product is delicious or values driven or sustainable or female founded or any of these things, that misses the mark with that wholesale buyer. I mean, sure, it’s great for your marketing messages and like Alison and Karin, we potentially can talk about this on the next episode. That’s great for marketing, but that category buyer doesn’t actually care about the taste and the values and the story behind your product.

Alison Smith: [11:47]
So, question…

Alli Ball: [11:48]
Yeah.
 
Alison Smith: [11:48]
Love it, first of all.

Alli Ball: [11:49]
I know. I’m sighing because it’s… People get really sad when I say this, right? They’re like-

Alison Smith: [11:54]
And it really is the opposite, it should, be when you’re talking to consumers versus buyers. But my question is, if you are a brand new brand and you don’t have that existing data to pitch these sales numbers, how are you doing that? How are you gaining the forecasting information? Where should people be looking? Help us out here.

Alli Ball: [12:17]
Oh, that’s such a great question, and Adam, I’m sure that you guys do this as well, but there are ways that you can get data for your category that you can present to those retail buyers that isn’t historic data for your own brand. So, if you’re just getting going, it’s normal that you wouldn’t have sales history. We always say this, every single brand starts at zero. Chobani started with zero wholesale accounts at some point. And so it’s important to realize that at some point you won’t have that data, so you need to figure out where else you can get it. And if you don’t have it for your own brand, you can use it from your category as a whole. You can pull from things like SPINS or Nielsen data. I mean, oftentimes you have to purchase it, but there are also free places to get data like this.

So you can present it for your category, you can present it for ingredients that you’re using that’s trending. You can present it, let’s say you are a female owned business, you can talk about how female owned cereal companies are on the rise year over year or something like that. We can always craft a story with the data. We just need to be willing to put on our detective hats and be a little bit witty on how we use the data.

Adam Pollack: [13:37]
Yeah, I think that’s so important, is there’s a couple things in there. One, it’s not… No one cares about what you do. They care about what you can do for them or why. So all the things you mention, all the things that most brands mention around being low sugar or keto or delicious, that’s what, that’s not a why. That doesn’t help the buyers. That’s super, super important.
And then, yeah, remember, you tell your own data story. So, I looked at a deck from a new brand who has very limited retail exposure but has phenomenal customer reviews.

Alli Ball: [14:10]
Yes.

Adam Pollack: [14:10]
It had some other really, really interesting unique data points that it’s not, “Here’s our sell through at competitor retailers. It’s, “This is really cool stuff that’s interesting. You probably don’t have this.” And so there’s always a way to tell the story the way you want to tell it. And especially for brands that are launching direct to consumer, I find, and I’m sure in my team you can tell me I’m either right or wrong here, when it comes to social proof, the very raw text messages, tweets, screenshots of emails, all that stuff that looks very unadultered is always the stuff that plays really, really well.

So when I see a deck that’s got pretty testimonials in it and I don’t really trust it anymore, but when I see a deck that’s got like a hundred screen grabs of texts from people saying, “This changed my life.” That’s the sort of thing that in lieu of having sell through data, you could show to a buyer and they’d be pretty excited about it, I think.

So I guess switching gears a little bit, my question was going to be around, so you’ve been hammering a buyer for many, many months and they won’t respond to you or you had a great interaction, the more frustrating situation, you had a great interaction with one and it seemed like a sure thing and then they’ve vanished off the face of the earth. What do you do in that instance? What’s the right way to handle that?

Alli Ball: [15:21]
Yeah. Adam, I hear this so often. So often brands say to me like, “Okay, Alli, I’m trying, I’m trying and I’m still not getting any traction.” And I’ll say, “I am one of the most organized people that you will ever meet and it would still take me months and months and months to bring in new product lines.” There’s so many things that buyers need to do behind the scenes that vendors don’t realize. So often, and I’m sure you see this too, Adam, that brands will reach out once, they’ll reach out twice maybe, and then they just let that relationship fizzle out because they don’t want to be annoying to that buyer.

So my advice here is to be the squeaky wheel and understand that it does take months, sometimes even a year, over a year to get your product on the retail shelf. And if you are that squeaky wheel, if you are popping into that buyer’s inbox, if you are shooting them a DM, if you are connecting with them at a show, you will have much more success when it comes time to review your category again. And you are top of mind for them.

So Adam, I advise, depending on the relationship, and there is some nuance here, but email every two weeks, every three weeks, give them a new press hit, give them a new category information, give them a time sensitive seasonal introductory offer. Give them any reason to pay attention to your brand again. So really being the squeaky wheel is important here. And realizing that until that buyer gives you a hard no, please stop contacting me, you have my full permission to keep showing up in their inbox. So, that’s number one.
Yes, go ahead.

Karin Samelson: [17:13]
That’s super, super great advice too to deliver something of value. Don’t just be like, “Hey, reminder just coming to the top of your inbox to check in on where we are.” It’s like, no, deliver something of value to them to make them want to bring you on shelf.

Alli Ball: [17:33]
Totally. It goes back to that trust factor, Karin, right? That idea that give them another reason to trust that you’re going to sell through on their shelves. So, let’s talk about selling off shelves. All right, so every product, I promise that this was going to be two parts on the podcast here. So you get on the shelf, okay, wonderful. But then every product has to perform its job on the shelf and it is, I’m going to talk directly to our listeners here. It is your responsibility to make that happen. So, I like to think about shelf space as real estate and you are renting this space from the retailer. You’ve got to be a really great tenant in order for them to keep you around. So you have to be the person who’s responsible for increasing velocity, hitting your sales goals and succeeding in those wholesale accounts. And so it comes with a shock sometimes to the brands that we work with, that it’s not the store’s responsibility to sell your product, it’s not the category manager’s responsibility to sell your product. It’s not anyone’s responsibility except for you as the brand. So, maybe we should talk about some of the things that brands need to do to make that happen.

Karin Samelson: [18:46]
Yeah, let’s do it. So if you’re trying to get off the shelf, you’re doing everything you think is right, but it’s just not happening, where should a brand start with trying to get those sales?

Alli Ball: [19:00]
Yeah, so it is, it’s actually so similar to what Adam was saying, I know I keep referring to this, but in our episode last week, this idea that it starts with a plan. And I know that that seems like I’m oversimplifying it, but so often we see brands that are just winging it here. And I see, I look over, and if you guys are listening, you’re probably not watching this recording, but literally everyone’s nodding their heads like Adam, I’m sure you see it with your Rodeo clients. Karin and Alison, I’m sure you see brands who are just winging it.

So I would invite our listeners, if you feel like you’re just throwing ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks, it is time to pare down and make sure that you have a plan in place. So, we start to think about it when considering what your plan’s going to be, we take into account a few things such as your own skill set and your strengths around marketing, whether you can DIY it yourself internally, or if you need to hire it out. We think about your own capacity as a founder. Are you a sole founder or do you have a team? We think about how much cash you have on hand. Again, Adam touched on that last week. If you’re bootstrapping your brand or if you have investment to back yourself up on shelf.

So first we think about what are your capabilities and what are your capacities as a founder and as a brand? And then we use something that we call the reorder checklist inside of Retail Ready. And we make sure that your plan is documented and replicable for each new account that you bring on. Of course we tweak it for each new account, but we want to make sure that you understand how you are communicating to every person along the supply chain, your co-packers, your 3PLs, your distributors, your brokers and your retail partners, your marketing team, if they’re external or internal, frankly, making sure that you can communicate that plan to every person along the chain so that everyone knows their piece in executing it and that you do it to every single new account. So often the mistake I see here is that you land a new account and then you have no plan for selling through. And so it simply comes back to creating a plan, documenting it, and trialing it with each new account.

Adam Pollack: [21:24]
Yeah, I love that. We talk a lot about creating a business case. So especially in the early days, if you’re in your first few retailers, all that’s learning and you’re trying to figure out like, “Okay, it’s going to take me this long to open the account, it’s going to cost this much amount of money and demos and promotions and stuff to get things to move. I’m going to have to be in once every week to make it happen.” And then after you do 20 of those, you’ve hopefully got to document and you’ve got a very viable plan around, it takes me X amount of dollars and X amount of time to break even on a retailer. So if I think that’s going to happen for this one, great, let’s do it. And if not, nope, not the right retailer for me.

So, I think that’s so important because this stuff can be very copy pasteable, once you’ve done it a handful of times. But most brands kind of think about, “Oh, each retailer is unique.” And to a degree, but not 100% of the time, each time, maybe 10% of the time. So, that plan piece is so important. And where I was going to go next is just, okay, so you’ve got your plan, you’ve got your strategy in place, you’ve got marching orders, and it’s clear what you need to do, you’re on the shelf. What are some tactics that brands can use to execute on that strategy and to actually move product off the shelf?

Alli Ball: [22:37]
Yeah. So it totally depends on the channel and the account. And I hate to say that it depends, but that’s almost always my answer with brands inside of Retail Ready. It depends. There is no one size fits all strategy here. So it depends on the channel and the account. So if online, let’s say you are pursuing online wholesale accounts like the Thrive Markets of the world, you might start doing some paid ad campaigns, which we might talk about next week. You might build out your digital swipe files that you send to each new accounts that have your assets and how digital recipes and digital marketing collateral. You might lean heavily on connecting with your online audience to drive trial in that online retailer. You would likely roll out an introductory offer or some sort of promotional period right when you land that retailer. In normal terms, you would do a sale or a discount at the beginning. And if it’s a brick and mortar store, you might lean into geo-targeted ads driving traffic to that particular physical store.

You might invest in Instacart ads. You would create a plan for staff education, making sure that you turn all of those stockers and people who touch your product into mini sales people for your brand. If it’s a smaller store, you might create shelf talkers and make sure that they get hung up. You might do in-store promotion, you might run demos. There are many, many different ways that you can drive trial and drive repeat purchases. And I think so often we over complicate it here. We’re like, “I have no idea how I could possibly sell off the shelf.” But if you sit down and just bullet point out what are some of the ways that you can connect with the store and connect with your consumers. I think our listeners would be surprised at how much of it they already know that they can do.

Karin Samelson: [24:40]
Yeah, I think that’s so important to remember that connection is so vital in every stage. Like Adam, you were talking about it with your operations partners. Al, you’re talking about it with your retail partners. We obviously talk about it with your customers. So, I love to hear that advice from you. So where do you see most brands getting stuck when they do try and increase velocity?

Alli Ball: [25:09]
So we alluded to it last week, but the very first one is going too far, too fast, too wide. And so often we see brands, I’ll just give an example here. We have a brand on the East Coast inside of Retail Ready. And sure enough, Erewhon, our favorite retailer, reached out to them and said, “Hey, we’d love to carry your ice cream.” And they’re on the East Coast and they don’t have distribution on the West Coast. They don’t have a broker, they don’t have a 3PL on the west coast, they have nothing there. They are primarily focused on New England. And they said yes to Erewhon. They were like, “Oh yeah, hell yes, that this is a dream account for us. That’s the gold standard.” And they got on shelf or they got that first PO or whatever it was, and they realized that they had no understanding and no way of fulfilling those orders. You can’t just, I mean, you can just ship ice cream cross country with dry ice, but it’s going to be really freaking expensive and you’re going to lose money on every single delivery, every shipment that you make.

So often I see brands who get really excited about opening new accounts without realizing the impact that it’s going to have on their operations and on their sales teams. So I think that’s the biggest thing. We see people try to go too wide, too fast. I’d much rather see a brand really, really penetrate their own region and really drive sales in their own backyard before expanding.
So, that’s the first one. And then I’ll give one more is, we talked about this a little bit, but this idea of just winging it with each new account, whether you’re winging it in your sales pitches or you’re winging it once you’re on the shelf. And when I say that, it’s really thinking about, thinking that you have to recreate the wheel with each new account and not prioritizing creating systems and measuring the results that you’re getting from your systems. Just winging it is not the way to run a business. I actually have a quote around that. I know Adam shared a quote in our last episode, so I brought one to today. Can I share it as well?

Alison Smith: [27:40]
Let’s hear it.

Alli Ball: [27;41]
Okay, cool. It’s my favorite. I’ve said it on the podcast before. So it is by James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, and he says, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” And when I heard that, it just shot me in the heart. I was like, “Oh, he was talking to us here at Food Biz Wiz.” We are lovers of systems and yet we… Lovers of goals too. But yet we still have so much room for growth around the systems that get us to our goals, thinking that most of the founders that we work with, I’m sure all of you guys on this podcast with me can agree. Most of the founders that we work with have really similar goals. It’s to create sustainable, profitable businesses. But if we all have the same goal, that goal isn’t enough. We have to invest in the systems that are going to get us closer to those goals.

Alison Smith: [28:41]
Love it. Love a good system. And Alli, thank you so much for bringing the knowledge on this episode. I love how you’re tying things back to what Adam talked about last week because y’all were talking ops, retail, digital marketing, it all needs to work together to make everything work. So Alli, what’s an action task that you can leave listeners to do this week before they join us on the third and final episode on marketing?

Alli Ball: [29:12]
I’ve got two. So just like we split up this episode, getting on the shelf and then getting off the shelf, I’ll give two actions here. The first one for getting on the shelf is a freebie that we’ve got. It’s called our 100 Buyer Knows Cheat Sheet. And it is 100 different reasons that I used to say no to product lines when I would get sales pitches when I was a buyer. Plus some training on how to shift that no into a yes. So I’ll link that in our show notes. You can just find it at aliball.com/100. So I would say download that and work through it. It’s a really easy work through.
And then the second one is, I want our listeners to start thinking about creating their own reorder checklist. And that really is the outline of the plan, what you’re going to do with every single new wholesale account that you land to make sure that you are putting that system in place to get the reorder each time. How’s that sound?

Alison Smith: [30:10]
Oh, sounds great.

Alli Ball: [30:12]
So before I let you guys go, can you tell our listeners where they can find you? We will put all of this in the show notes as well. Adam, how about you go first?

Adam Pollack: [30:20]
Sure. Yeah, you can find us at rodeocpg.com and then we have some free tools at rodeocpg.io as well if you want to check those out. And then we’re on social media @rodecpg and my email is adam@rodeocpg.com.

Alli Ball: [30:37]
Awesome. All right, Karin and Alison, where can we find you guys?

Karin Samelson: [30:44]
You can find us@umaimarketing.com. Umai is U-M-A-I, and we have a free mini course that walks you through some digital marketing strategies to help grow your brand. And that’s umai marketing.com/minicourse and we’re also all over social. So @umaimarketing, come chat with us, hang with us, and you can email us at hello@umaimarketing.com and we hope to see ya. Somewhere over there.

Alli Ball: [31:18]
We didn’t do this last time, but I’m going to throw it out there to our listeners that if they are listening right now, I want you guys to snap a screenshot of this podcast episode and post it on your socials and tag all three of our businesses. We would love to give you a follow right back, and we would love to share it as well. So you guys, you know, can find me foodbizwiz.com or on socials @itsalliball.

All right, you guys. That’s it for episode two. Next week we’re going to come back and we’re going to give Karin and Alison the stage and we are going to talk about digital marketing, which I know is a big topic for all of you. All right, thanks for joining me you guys. Bye.

Karin Samelson: [31:58]
Thanks for joining us in our three part miniseries, Lessons Learned from Successful Seven Figure CPG brands where we’re covering everything, ops, retail, and digital marketing to help you build your own million dollar brand.

Join us next week as Alli Ball of Retail Ready and Adam Pollack of Rodeo CPG chat with us about digital marketing. As we explain our three pronged marketing strategy that will help you connect with your consumers and drive sales. We’ll meet you back here for next week’s episode.


Umai Social Circle is a CPG agency driven podcast based out of Austin, Texas. We’re excited to share more behind the scene insights, chats with industry leaders, and whatever else we learn along the way. Follow us on Instagram @Umaimarketing or check out our website, umaimarketing.com. Catch you back here soon.

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#37: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Operations (Part 1 of 3)

UMAI social circle cpg podcast

#37: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Operations (Part 1 of 3)

Join Alison and Karin as they chat with Alli Ball, creator of Retail Ready, and Adam Pollock of Rodeo CPG in this mini series: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands!

They’re sharing some of the strategies that successful consumer goods brands implement across operations, retail, and digital marketing.

In this first episode of our mini series – Adam Pollock shares everything you need to know from demand production, procurement, and cash flow.

Let’s get into today’s episode… 📣

 

Let Us Break It Down For You…

[0:45 – 1:23] Introduction
[1:25 – 5:08] Defining “operations”
[5:15 – 6:50] Demand, production, procurement, and cash flow
[6:52 – 11:23] What should founders do next? Outlining your operations plan
[11:24 – 12:27] Bottoms up planning
[12:28 – 18:14]  Executing your operations
[19:01 – 21:14] The connection between operations and sales
[21:31 – 24:36] What brands are doing it right?
[24:54 – 26:44] How Rodeo CPG can help you
[26:49 – 27:53] Closing remarks
 

Mentions from this episode: 

Learn more and Start growing with them –

Adam Pollack –

  • Check out their website, here
  • Instagram, here
  • LinkedIn, here
  • or email Adam: adam@rodeocpg.com

Alli Ball –

Stay in touch:

Join UMAI’s Facebook Group: CORE 3

#37: Lessons Learned from 7-Figure CPG Brands: Operations (Part 1 of 3) 

Calling all consumer goods, business owners and marketing professionals. Does planning content ahead of time stress you out? Do you want to run Instagram and Facebook ads but just aren’t sure where to start? If your answer is yes and yes, then our minicourse was made for you. It’s 100% free and packed with essential tactics that you can implement as soon as today. To join in, visit our website at umaimarketing.com/minicourse. All right, let’s get on with the pod.

Karin Samelson: [0:45]
Welcome to the first episode of our three part miniseries, Lessons Learned from Successful Seven Figure CPG Brands. We’re joined by Alli Ball, creator of Retail Ready, and Adam Pollock of Rodeo CPG to talk about everything, operations, retail and digital marketing for your CPG brand. Today’s episode kicks off the series with a focus on what you need to consider around operations in your business to be a successful seven figure CPG brand led by Adam Pollock. We’re going to be talking about demand production, procurement, and cash flow. Let’s get into today’s episode.

Alli Ball: [1:25]
Okay, you guys, are you ready to do this? Are you ready to talk ops?


Adam Pollock: [1:28]
Let’s do it.

Alli Ball: [1:29]
Okay. Adam, I think we need to kick things off though with a high level. What the heck do you mean by operations? What is that?

Adam Pollock: [1:38]
Sure. Well, and I guess before I start really quickly, I mentioned what I do at Rodeo, not what Rodeo does. So Rodeo helps brands with three main things, R&D, operations and sales management. So we have service offerings that do that. And then increasingly we’re building technology to help with that as well. So just so it doesn’t seem like I’m some random person spouting off about ops. So this is what we do as a company for a living. So to kind of break ops down simply, it’s basically everything related to making your product. So when you think about packaging and ingredients and manufacturing and all of that kind of non-sexy behind the scenes stuff that goes into going from an idea or a bunch of disparate pieces to a finished pretty product that’s on the shelf, that Alli, you help brands move, that’s kind of operations. And then you hear about supply chain every day today and the disruptions in it. And that’s very inextricably linked with operations as well. So just think about basically all the components and things that go into making your finished product that’s typically what we mean when we say ops.

Alli Ball: [2:45]
Yeah, and that makes sense Adam. And I’ll tell you, I know that we’ve shared a lot of clients and we often find that brands come into Retail Ready and they don’t quite have their ops dialed in. So I love that it’s a focus of yours, a passion of yours, both at Rodeo and personally you have all that experience with ops. So let’s start from the beginning and talk about what the best brands do, where they start from that ops perspective.

Adam Pollock: [3:13]
And just to address your point, most founders don’t get into this to be operations experts. They want to create a brand, they want to sell, they want to do that side of the business. So it’s not uncommon to come in with very little fundamentals here and it’s not uncommon to not want to do this. It’s a very, very important part of your business, but it’s definitely not the most fun part. So that’s a totally common refrain. That’s fair. So one thing I love, there’s an old Mike Tyson quote that I think I find myself saying a lot, but everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face. And that happens to hold very, very true for CPG, particularly right now when things are kind of a mess. That said, it all starts with a good plan. You need a plan, it’s going to change and that’s okay, but you can’t go in with no plan.

So to make a plan, so before you even get there, you need a firm grasp or at least a pretty educated guess if this is your first time doing this or your business is brand new, around four main things. So first thing is demand. So what are my distributors or my customers going to order for the next month, six months, a year or so? The second thing would be around production. So how much am I going to manufacture and when? The third thing would be procurement. So what materials do I need to order when and in what quantity? And then the last important piece of working towards a plan would be your cash flow. So understanding what’s my cash balance on a particular date. So how much cash do I have for the next month, three months, six months? So, and I think in general the key here is always be very, very conservative when you’re thinking about revenues and very, very aggressive when you’re thinking about costs and time. So in other words, assume that things will cost twice as much and take twice as long as you think they will take. That’s always just a very important thing to build into your models, especially if you’re doing this for the first time, it’s never going to go according to the plan and it’s always going to take longer and it’s going to cost more.

Alli Ball: [5:10]
I think that’s super solid advice. Okay so the four things that you were saying in planning, I just want to recap them here.

Adam Pollock: [5:14]
Yeah.

Alli Ball: [5:15]
Demand, what are people going to want for the next month, six months, year, right? Demand. Production, how much am I going to manufacture and when. Procurement. So all those supplies and moving things that go into making your product. And then tell me the last one again.

Adam Pollock: [5:38]
Cash flow.

Alli Ball: [5:39]
Cash flow.

Adam Pollock: [5:39]
So, and this is a huge one, and this is particularly in the world of selling wholesale, selling through a distributor into a retailer, your cash cycles could be six to nine months. And so this is where I see most brands fail is around, especially once again, if this is your first time, you think you’re going to get paid in 30 days, which would be the case if the clock started now. But from when you outlay the cash for the raw materials to the time that you’re actually getting paid back, it can take up to nine months. And so this is where it’s really, really important to be thinking about that. And if you don’t have any knowledge of this, working with someone who’s done this before to help you understand this is how much cash you need to have on hand. So those are the four main things you need to have a grip on before you even start planning. So just trying to make sense of those four main, we’ll call them pillars and then from there, you can start moving towards creating plans around each of those.

Karin Samelson: [6:36]
That is such a good note to always remember that it’s going to cost twice as much and it’s going to take twice as long. And if I could tell every single founder we’ve ever worked with that or we ever will work with, that’s just such really great advice. So you just talked about what you should do to start, what do you do or what should the founder do after they have a really good handle on their demand, production, procurement, and cash flow?

Adam Pollock: [7:03]
Yeah, so this is now where you move from getting a handle on these key pieces of information to actually planning. And each one of those four things should have its own respective plan. So for instance, if you were say, trying to do a sales plan for retail, you’d want to generate what’s called a bottoms up or a consumption based sales plan. So that’s like a velocity driven plan, how many units I’m going to sell by product or skew, by month, by key account. And that’s typically developed by a sales team if you’re a solo founder, you’re the sales team. So that’s developed by you. But the idea is instead of saying we’re going to sell… That the market size is a billion dollars and we’re going to get 1% of that and work your way kind of top down, you work your way bottoms up by account. And then in that plan you’d also have assumptions around, we’re going to reach out to these 50 accounts, we’re going to close 20% of them. And then you’d put timelines against all that. So we actually have a tool at Rodeo that’s free that you can use, you can create an account at rodeocpg.io and create your own consumption based plan, which is super helpful for a lot of brands. So, that’s=

Alli Ball: [8:16]
Well I’m going to interrupt you, Adam. Is it okay if we put that in our show notes and we’ll just put that link right there for our listeners?

Adam Pollock: [8:22]
Yeah.

Alli Ball: [8:22]
Okay. Awesome.

Adam Pollock: [8:22]
Yeah. That would be great. That’d be great. There’s a free tool there for that. And then there’s some other free tools in there as well that are great. So when you’re thinking about demand, that’s a piece of it. Obviously the sales side and then there’s also, you’d have your own separate demand plan as well, which is kind of more of, I guess internal facing or production facing. But the idea is based off of a demand forecast that you put in place and any other pertinent information from sales and marketing and your research and development teams, it’s basically what will actually be ordered versus what you plan to sell in this bottoms up sales plan. So those two kind of consumption based sales plan, demand plan sort of work together there. And then you could create from a production perspective, a production plan. So that kind of lays out what finished goods you’re producing, when, and then taking into consideration your own limitations if you’re self manufacturing or your co-packers.

And then the last one would be, so we talked about procurement and getting things together in that realm, once you have that, you’d create a material requirements plan. So that’s basically takes into consideration the raw materials you need to order and when to meet your production timelines. So basically we talked about demand, production and procurement. From a planning perspective, you’d be looking at creating a bottoms up sales plan, a demand plan, and a production plan to support what’s happening in those specific pillars. And the key thing to remember with all these plans is people will ask frequently, when do I update these plans? And instead of doing a monthly cadence or whatever, the best thing to do is always to have it be more event based. So for instance, you are launching a new product in three months, that’s obviously going to have a big impact on sales and your production capacity.

So you want to update your plans around that. You’re going to open new accounts over time. So anytime you open a big new account, that’s going to have a big impact on your operations, your production, your cashflow, everything. You discontinue products from time to time. So all of these things are big events, you think about when you get insurance as an individual and these qualifying life events happen and you can update your insurance out of open enrollment. Very similar here with your business. You’ll have these big qualifying business events I guess that happen and you’ll want to update these plans accordingly because they’re going to impact, opening a new account is not just a sales problem, it’s an operations problem, it’s a cash flow problem, it’s a whole set of other problems, which are usually good problems, but problems nonetheless. So just key to think about, these plans aren’t static. They update when big things happen and you want to make sure that that’s when you’re sitting down with your team or yourself and making sure that the plan you made three months ago still holds water.

Alison Smith: [11:12]
Love it. And I love a good plan and absolutely love that you guys are providing more tools and roadmaps on how to actually create these things because it’s definitely not easy. And I would love to hear from you based on clients that you work with, how many people are coming to you with these in place? Or is this often a misstep?

Adam Pollock: [11:35]
Yeah, I would say from the plan we see, well we see all of these plans a lot. Most of the time someone’s coming to us to create it. So most of the time a client doesn’t have it. I would say in general we see a lot of founders are able to come up with a sales forecast, but once again, it’s not necessarily grounded in this sort of bottoms up way. It’s much more lofty or I would say idealistic. So if you’ve never done this sort of bottoms up planning before, it’s just like it’s, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so I would say for the most part we see varying degrees of completeness in these plans from the clients we work with, but the expectation is that we kind of help them get there. So never a big deal for us if a client doesn’t have a proper bottoms up plan. That’s when we can probably help the most.

Alison Smith: [12:26]
Awesome. That’s great to hear. Okay, so you have the plans in place, what is the next step?

Adam Pollock: [12:33]
Yeah, so you’ve got plans in place, so then you want to be thinking about executing and we’ve been around over a hundred brands launches and growth at this point, particularly brands who are launching into retail, selling wholesale through distributors. So I think the key thing I want to note is that sales and operations are so linked and it’s hard to realize that a lot of the times, but that’s a really, really important thing that most brands get wrong, is that their sales and operations teams aren’t talking in the way that they should be. So one of the things that you always want to do before you say yes to retail account. So it’s always super exciting, big meeting with a retailer, they want to bring you in, it’s going to change your business. It’s always very, very important to be thoughtful about that before you say yes. So one of, or a few of the things to be thinking about before you say yes to say a new retailer and how that will impact your operations is can you even afford the inventory?

So a lot of times brands just, new stores more dollars, but in the short term it’s always more cost. So if a brand says or a retailer says “We’re going to put you in a hundred new stores.” Do you even have the inventory to support that? And if you need to create new inventory, do you have the cash to pay for that inventory? The answer may be no. So timing in that sense might not make sense if you’ve just got to go and fundraise or do accounts receivable factoring just to pay for the inventory, it might not make sense. Can you even make the launch date work? So let’s say a retailer says yeah, “We want you in 30 days.” But you have to work through a co-packer to make that product. You don’t have, once again, you don’t have the inventory so you got to be thinking about how long will it take to make the product, how long will it take to ship from the co-packer to warehouse, how long will it take to ship from the warehouse to the retailer?

And then with all of that, is the product going to reach the distributor or the retailer with an adequate amount of shelf life? So some retailer, distributors require 70% shelf life or some require nine months of shelf life. So after all that’s said and done, if you can’t ship product that’s actually going to meet those requirements, you’ll be in basically double trouble because you’ll ship the product to them, they’ll ship it all back and charge you back for it and that’s brutal. So those are all things to be thinking about before you say yes. And then saying no can very much be your friend here. And Alli I know will probably speak to this, but it’s so hard. It feels like when you get deep into a retail account and there’s a fit and they want you, it’s so hard to say no and you feel like you can’t say no cause that’s your only chance.

But in my experience, almost always, if a retailer wants you today, they’ll want you in six months and in six months, your business might be on more solid footing, you might have a better inventory picture, there might be a whole bunch of other reasons where it makes sense. But if you say yes today and you don’t deliver, there is no second chance, almost like uniformly, that’s what I’ve seen.

Alli Ball: [15:29]
None.

Adam Pollock: [15:30]
So it’s always really important to, if you have to say no and say and explain why. And most retailers are really accepting of the fact, especially those that want to work with small brands, that there’s complexity right now. It’s incredibly challenging and they would much rather have you show up and be in a relationship with you when your business is able to actually sustain that and handle that. So I think that’s kind of a key thing. That saying no piece is just so important and I talk about that a lot.

And then I think another key thing here is before you say yes, and this kind of goes back to the previous points, but if you’re working with a co-packer, you have to make sure they can even handle the growth or they can handle another purchase order, it’s not always the case. So a lot of brands will go and say “Yes.” And then go back to their co-packer and the co-packer says “I can’t do anything for you.” And then the brand’s in a really, really tough spot. So if you’re working with a co-packer, something we’ve seen work very, very well is submitting what are called rolling purchase orders. So basically if you know over the next year you’re roughly going to open up hopefully X, Y, and Z retail accounts, basically creating purchase orders for those dates with kind of escalating amounts of what you’re going to need so that the co-packer can start mapping their schedule to that.

It’s not binding, it’s not like you’re forced to do that amount and if things change, co-packers will understand that, but at least it puts you both on the same page and gives you some visibility. Like in six months we do plan to launch in Whole Foods in these two regions, in another three months we plan to grow direct to consumer by X. And so that way everyone can start seeing very tangibly what we think is going to happen and in planning accordingly so that it’s not this crazy mad dash when you get into a new retail account.

And that’s not to say that things won’t happen and things won’t pop up, but it gets you much, much closer to a shared vision, which is really, really important here. Because obviously the product can’t get pulled out of thin air. So I think key is if you’re working, if you’re doing your own production, asking yourself questions around can you actually deliver this if you’re working with a co-packer, making sure they can and to the degree you can, making sure that your co-packer knows what to expect for the next 12 months or so. And as things come up trying to be as in front of it as you can. So if you know something’s coming in three months, letting them know now, that’s always really, really important. So I think it all boils down to just very strong communication and then being very self-aware around what your business can do right now and can’t do. And being honest with your partners around when you can’t do something, why you can’t, and explaining what you might be able to do instead.

Alli Ball: [18:15]
Yes, you’re giving a little sneak peek for next week’s episode on the retail side of things too, Adam and I have to say, you are speaking my love language here, understanding that producers should say no more often than they say yes. And just if you guys are listening, just slow your role both on your wholesale accounts and what you’re doing with your co-packer to make sure that you and the co-packer or you and if you’re producing, you and your own production facility have the capacity to support the sales that you’re moving towards. I love that, Adam. That connection between operations and sales is so strong and I feel like producers often forget that they’re so linked. I love that you brought that up.

Adam Pollock: [19:01]
Yeah and it’s easy, especially if you’re working with a co-packer who’s removed from your day-to-day workflow, it’s easy to go out and do your sales and forget about them. But you have to treat it like imagine you owned the production facility and you had a COO working with you, you would tell them if you went out and won a big new retail account, you’d tell them as soon as possible, they’d belong for the ride. So I think that the nature of working with this complex web of third parties makes it such that just stuff gets lost in translation. It’s not intentional. It’s just you don’t have someone sitting next to you in an office, so you don’t think to pull them in as much and they’re a stakeholder in your business but they’re not an equity holder in your business. So it’s just a different relationship. But I think that that’s why it’s so important we treat particularly these big partners like your co-packers and 3PLs, like they’re for now an employee in your business and you’re pulling them in as early and as often as possible to any sort of big changes like this.

Alli Ball: [19:59]
Yes. And you as the brand founder, you need them more than they need you.

Adam Pollock: [20:04]
Yeah.

Alli Ball: [20:05]
Co-packer doesn’t necessarily need you, but you really need your co-packer.

Adam Pollock: [20:10]
Way more brands than co-packers out there. So that will always be the case. So always treat them the way you’d want to be treated, treat them like a full-time employee. That’s a big miss I see a lot too is just brands thinking co-packers is this necessary evil, this necessary partner and just like they’re just making stuff for me, they can do a lot more for you. And if you have a good relationship with them that’s built on trust, communicating frequently. Even one of the simple things to do is, so yes, these PLs are important, an important thing. Most people I see never ask their co-packer for a weekly meeting and most co-packers would be happy to do that. Most of them aren’t email people, so they’d prefer to just have a quick agenda, meet for 30 minutes every week, that keeps you top of mind with them, make sure nothing falls to the cracks. And what you might find is they know packaging people, they know retailers, they know other raw material suppliers, they can do a lot more for you than just make your products. So definitely pull them along for the ride, not just as it pertains to making your stuff, but as like any partner, any good relationship you have that’s built on a honest, open, transparent dialogue.

Alli Ball: [21:14]
Yes. Again, sneak peek to our next episode. So Adam, I want to start to wrap up here. And you alluded to this at the beginning, but you mentioned things shifting in our current environment and things feeling potentially even more challenging than ever. And so I want to know, based on your experience, what are some of the best brands, the most solid brands right now doing in our current environment to set themselves up for success?

Adam Pollock: [21:41]
Yeah. Well, an unfortunate little spoil alert, things aren’t getting better. There was a brief moment of time early this year where things were looking good and then unfortunately due to war and a variety of other things, it doesn’t seem like for the next couple of years we’re looking at a stable supply chain. So just know that and know that in the current environment there are a few things you can be doing that the best brands we’re seeing are doing. And that’s if you’ve got the cash flow, so this goes back to planning. If you have enough cash on hand and you can buy more raw materials than you need and hold them, that’s always a win. That’s something you definitely should be doing. If you can’t, then we talked about this volume contract scenario, so you’re committing to a certain amount but you’re not necessarily laying the cash out for that.

You’re just kind of planning in a way. And that if you can commit to volume contracts, that’ll stabilize pricing and ensure availability. So that’s a big one. Just saying at the beginning of the year, we plan to do this amount of volume with you. That’s always a really important thing. You can do it. And I would say lastly, the best brands have done a significant COGS, cost of goods audit. So they’ve gone through every single line item that goes into making their product and figured out if it’s gotten exorbitantly expensive or unavailable, what can we swap it out with or if we refuse to swap it out because it’s critical to our product, then we’ve got to raise prices. And they’ve with a microscope, they haven’t done this once, they’re doing this monthly or quarterly at a much more significant cadence than you ever needed to do because things are dynamic and the availability of things seems to be difficult to pin down. So I think it’s either buy more than you can and hold or try and get in place volume contracts when you can. You’ll be surprised even for small amounts if you can commit to something for a year, you’ll get breaks there. And then just going through your cost to goods that go into your product just with a fine tooth comb and substituting things out or raising prices as needed to offset the increasing costs.

Alli Ball: [23:47]
Yeah, I hear this theme of planning around your operations, planning ahead-

Adam Pollock: [23:52]
Planning.

Alli Ball: [23:54]
Planning, have a plan and executing your plan.

Adam Pollock: [23:56]
One last thing I’ll say too is just being flexible. Knowing that whatever your first choice for anything is right now probably isn’t available. So knowing that’s the case for every single brand right now, even the biggest brands, there’s no one who’s getting exactly what they want. So just go into it knowing like the cans you wanted probably aren’t going to be the cans you get. So based on there’s going to be cans out there that are fine, how do you make those work? How do you make those an opportunity? Because there is a lot of creativity that I’m seeing around the constraints and so it doesn’t need to be all bad, you just need to go into it knowing things aren’t going to go the way you want them to. And that’s okay, but there’s going to be another option. And so how can you make that option work? I think that’s, that’s key.

Alli Ball: [24:36]
Yeah, flexibility. Okay. Adam, as we wrap up here, so I know you said best brands have gone through their cogs with a microscope and I know that you’ve got a couple other action tasks here. This is how we’re going to wrap up each episode of this three part series. So Adam, tell us what brands can do right now around their operations and then we’re going to turn it back to Karin and Allison. They’re going to tell us how we can keep in touch with them as well, how we can keep in touch with you and Rodeo Adam. And then we will wrap up and say goodbye before we roll out episode number two next week. So what are those action steps that folks can take after listening to today’s show?

Adam Pollock: [25:17]
Yeah, so I mentioned it before, we have a bottoms up, a consumption based sales plan tool at rodeocpg.io. So I would check that out and create one. That’s a really simple thing that I mentioned. Some other cash flow forecasts and some other things. But I think if you can get a good handle on what you think you’re going to sell into retail over the course of the year, that will guide almost everything else here. That’ll help you understand the materials that you need to buy and when you need to buy them and how much cash you need. So I think that consumption based or bottoms up sales plan is a great place to start. And then the last thing which you mentioned was just, it’s really simple to look at your COGS and look at it. Ideally if you’ve been around for a year, look at it year over year or look at it six months over six months.

But just get a really good handle on where things are at and where they’re going. And don’t be afraid to reformulate or to find a new supplier, to do whatever .feels very daunting, but it’s pretty necessary right now. So those are the two things. Just check out our free planning tool and then really look at your COGS and make sure that they’re holding up. Because what we’re finding is most brands COGS from a year ago don’t hold up anymore. They just, either the product, what they were using isn’t available or what they were using is so expensive that they would’ve had to triple the price of their product, which wasn’t feasible either. So they’ve made some solutions and swaps.

Alli Ball: [26:35]
All right, fantastic. So we’ll write those two action items in our show notes. We’ll link up that consumption based sales plan tool right in our show notes. And Adam, I imagine people can find out more just atrodeocpg.io. Is that the best place to find you guys?

Adam Pollock: [26:52]
Yeah, our general site is rodeocpg.com. Eventually. Rodeo cpg.io and.com will be folded together, but I would say go to rodeocpg.com. You can get to io from there really easily and then you can learn more about everything else that we do. And then we’re at RodeoCPG on all social media. And I’m adam@rodeocpg.com if you want to send me an email.

Alli Ball: [27:13]
Awesome. Thanks Adam. Okay, UMAI ladies, how can we keep in touch with you?

Alison Smith: [27:19]
Yeah, well we are going to also be giving away some freebies on episode three of this series. So I’m really happy, Adam, that you’re hitting COGS very hard because our freebie, you do need to know your COGS down pat. So for now, we’ll leave you with our Instagram. Please feel free to follow us. We share a lot of helpful tips and tricks. It’s at umaimarketing and then we like to chat with anyone and everyone so feel free to shoot us an email at hello@umaimarketing.com.

Alison Smith: [27:55]
Thanks for joining us in our three part miniseries, Lessons Learned from Successful seven Figure CPG brands where we’re covering everything ops, retail and digital marketing to help you build your own million dollar brand. Join us next week as we chat with Alli Ball of Retail Ready about how to get on and stay on retail shelves. We’ll meet you back here for next week’s episode.


UMAI Social Circle is a CPG agency driven podcast based out of Austin, Texas. We’re excited to share more behind the scene insights, chats with industry leaders and whatever else we learn along the way. Follow us on Instagram at umaimarketing or check out our website, umaimarketing.com. Catch you back here soon.