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Weekly Update January 24th 2
The mistake I made with creating my product
Weekly Update Newsletter
January 24th, 2022
Hey ,
Happy Monday!
I always enjoy connecting with you at the beginning of the week, to share the latest resources, opportunities, and partners to help you be successful.
As we start off this week, I want to share a reflection on my experience creating a product that was complicated for consumers to understand. More below.
Jordan
PS. If you were forwarded this newsletter, please
.
I CREATED 5 KEY DIFFERENTIATORS WITH TEASQUARES AND IT ALMOST KILLED THE COMPANY
When we launched TeaSquares, our idea was to create as much differentiation as possible to protect the product from competitors.
We promoted TeaSquares as: “Tea Infused Energy Snacks”
Highlighting edible “Tea” as an energy source.
Bite-sized squares instead of bars.
Creating flavors like Citrus Green Tea Matcha, Vanilla Chai, and Acai Blueberry.
Packing in a multi-serve pouch instead of a bar.
Promoting our social mission of providing jobs to underserved young adults from Englewood.
IT WAS WAYYYYY TOO MUCH.
First off, no one has ever gone into a store looking for a “tea infused energy snack”, not even me. When a customer saw the product on the shelf, they had no idea what it was (especially since it was merchandized by the “Raw Foods”).
THE PROBLEM: Being too different confuses the customer, and most people wouldn’t spend more than 3 seconds trying to figure out what it was before moving on. I realized that people don’t buy for uniqueness, and changing someone’s behavior is INCREDIBLY difficult and expensive.
THE SOLUTION: Associate your product with a current customer behavior, and have 1 or 2 valuable points of differentiation. If you’re going up against protein bars, make sure that you have solid Macros around high protein, low carb, and low sugar. Then add your differentiation on top of that.Of course, there are exceptions, and those exceptions typically have at least one of these attributes from my experience:💵 Substantial funding - as new products require education and education takes a lot of money.🙋🏽♂️ Strong niche demand - companies tap into a dedicated consumer within a niche market. What's unclear is how substantial that market is. $10 million? $50 million?🎤 Entertaining - Founders and companies who are AMAZING at creating content and building a community because of their personality can achieve education for a low out-of-pocket cost.Let me know what you think by replying to this e-mail.
45-60 DAY CREDIT CARD WITH PARKER
If you're looking for a new business credit card, definitely check out
. It's a credit card built for e-commerce businesses with 45-60 day payment terms based on spend date (compared to the normal 30 based on billing cycle). You can unlock 100% of monthly e-commerce sales as your credit limit too.
ROOTED FOOD SALES CONTEST WINNER
Congratulations to
Tracy at Red Jacket Orchards
for winning our Rooted Food Sales consultation giveaway. She'll receive a free consultation session and education about Foodservice.
AMAZON CONSULTING
Amazon is one of the most important channels for brands, but it also requires a ton of work to make it successful. If you're looking for someone to guide you along the way, reach out to our friend, David at Amplify Goods. He specializes in taking brands who are doing ok, to great.
LOWER CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COSTS
Our friend Dallas Crum at Inspiir Media created a resource to help you lower your Customer Acquisition Costs…he's spoken with over 30 CPG founders in the last 60 days and one big theme that keeps coming up when talking is high Customer Acquisition Cost (thanks a lot iOS14). Here are the 3 biggest things to decrease CAC dramatically (post iOS14).
Theme - This is our internal nomenclature for “angle” or “big idea”. Once you nail the Theme that resonates with an audience, the algorithm can really go to work and find more people looking for what you’re offering. Ex. “Breakfast Replacement” was a theme we came across after a brainstorming session. Now this isn’t the entire purpose of the product but it is a definite value prop. We wrote headlines like “Your New Favorite Breakfast” and we watched CTR% and ultimately ROAS sky rocket.
Offer - How can we package or bundle something incredible to get someone in the door. This doesn’t have to be a discount. It actually shouldn’t be if possible. Maybe a special bundle, or a gift with purchase. Ex. from the same brand above. “Trial Pack” this new offer lowered the barrier to purchase and mitigated the consumers risk. This new offer alone cut down CAC by over 40%. It was crazy.
Creative - This is not as simple but basically creative is more important than ever before. UGC (user generated content) has absolutely been at the top of our list. When we analyze creative we have some quantitative metrics that we use but we also look at ads qualitatively and ask simple questions. Is it communicating the problem we are solving and how it make the consumers life better? Do we need to provide and anchor point so the prospect know’s how to compare our product to the market? Do I have enough social proof? Authority? A strong/clear offer/next step?
Dallas distilled the top performing ad creative to templates - 9 of them.There is 1 clear winner that continues to beat out all of the others, especially Top-of-Funnel. He calls it the “Storyline” template. Request an introduction to Dallas to get the template.
DISCOUNTS
- Mindful Goods
is an awesome Amazon expert that can quickly get you started or optimize your pages for strong ROI.
use code FOODBEVY.
- Amazon Brand Success Academy
is your go-to source for succeeding on Amazon. Learn everything you need to adapt in the changing environment.
- Maverick Lab
allows you to create individually personalized videos (with a customer's name) welcoming them to your community. Foodbevy members save 40%. Reply to this e-mail for an introduction
- Chop
is a
that allows you to drive in-store trial, collect customer shopping data, and build customer profiles to further drive your business. Foodbevy members save 20% off. E-mail me for the discount.
- Stripe
is now providing $20,000 in fee-free processing for new and EXISTING customers.
The Accountrepreneur
is your go-to outsourced CPA and CFO firm for the food and beverage industry. Receive
- Airtable
can store information in a spreadsheet that's visually appealing and easy-to-use, but it's also powerful enough to act as a database that businesses can use for customer-relationship management (CRM), task management, project planning, and tracking inventory.
With your help we're building an amazing community of Food and Bev entrepreneurs helping each other!
Jordan
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