Steven KrinbergHead of Growth Marketing
Bio

Currently leading all growth marketing for a portfolio of e-commerce DTC brands including helixsleep.com, birchliving.com, and allform.com. Focused on significantly scaling top and bottom line growth through a wide range of online and offline marketing strategies. Built a fully in-house team with focused specialties in Facebook, Instagram, Paid Search, YouTube, Podcast, Radio, Influencer, Affiliate Marketing, Amazon, TV, Mail, Strategic Partnerships, Display, Email, Newsletters, CRM, Trade, SMS, PR, SEO and more.


Recent Answers


If you're looking to build a marketing program to sell to consumers, I can provide guidance on the best places to start. If you're trying to sell to existing stroller companies as a B2B solution, that will mostly require networking and identifying ways to get your foot in the door. I can show you some simple ways to get in front of these people


I agree that the answer here is always going to be "it depends". I will say the biggest mistake many companies make is assuming they should just start on FB and Google as it's often times is actually not the best place to start and an easy way to burn cash fast. The most important question to ask is where are your customers coming from today, where are your potential future customers (maybe same place your existing ones are?), and then start there. Don't try to reinvent the wheel for your company. I'd recommend leaning into how you've already build a successful base and maxing out there as I'm sure those customers didn't just appear from thin air :)

If your cautious of burning cash in marketing channels you're not comfortable with, I'd always recommend starting with affiliate marketing. It's a zero risk way to grow your company profitably without putting dollars at risk. This is one of the areas I focus a lot in if you'd like to chat further on it https://clarity.fm/stevenkrinberg1/expertise/affiliate-marketing-to-grow-fast-and-profitably


Facebook is often going to be the best place to start given it's scale and capabilities. I'd recommend taking the free Facebook Blueprint training course to get started https://www.facebook.com/business/learn


I'd recommend pricing on a CPM rather than a flat fee. That way you're not leaving money on the table if it goes over and if it's under, you just charge on actual delivery. For example right now you're charging a $20 CPM (cost per thousand) based on reach. But if you deliver 6k, then your rate effectively drops to $16.66. If you say you'recharging a $20 CPM and you estimate getting clients 5k-10k impressions, you're guaranteed to be paid for all the reach you delivered.

That's the fair way to do it for both parties. Honestly though a lot of brands don't consider reach and only look at how many followers you have. You could probably get away with charging some brands a CPM based on your followers which at $10 rate would be $400 a post or $20 would be $800 for you :). I think you could get away with that, but you'd probably need to increase your content to ad ratio to ensure strong performance for your partners


If you have the supply of cleaners and are just looking for demand in the service on the consumer side but don't want to spend/risk losing money, I'd recommend a commission/affiliate based marketing strategy. This is a full proof way to grow with guaranteed profit without putting dollars at risk. I would have to get more of an understanding of your app, your market, scale, etc but affiliate marketing is one of my areas of expertise and I'd be happy to chat further on how you can do this. https://clarity.fm/stevenkrinberg1/expertise/affiliate-marketing-to-grow-fast-and-profitably


I agree with Ankit. I'm not sure how people are getting to their cost per user recommendations, but no reasonable marketer is going to pay you for that. Everything needs to be charged per thousand views as that's the industry standard (CPM or "Cost per Mille" which means "Cost per Thousand"). Video CPMs range anywhere from $5-$40 and I'd say the typically sweet spot that brands/agencies are used to paying would be $10-$25. At 10k views a day, you can reasonably make $100-$250 a day if you fill all your available inventory.


Even if this platform exists doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity. It's all about how you market it and get it in front of the right companies. I work at a 30 person startup and I can say 1. We (and many of our peers) aren't aware of these platforms today and 2. We could definitely use it throughout the year. The business model I'd recommend would be charging the vendors and making it free for companies to use. The hardest part will be convincing companies to use it over another option or just paying for something they can do themselves so you have to showcase value + no risk. You then build a base of customers and then vendors would be happy to pay to have access to these customers as it would be relatively cheap/easy ways for them to acquire new customers. If you come to a vendor and say "I have 100 companies on my platform and I charge you 15% of the revenue you drive from them", I'm not sure why they wouldn't do that as it would be pure incremental revenue/profit for them. And maybe to further stand out they could offer your companies discounts which then in turn adds more value to the brands. Seems like it would be a win-win-win for everyone


I'd recommend a couple of things here:
1. Make sure you go into a vertical that isn't completely saturated. Make sure your product offering and value stands out and isn't in a sea of similar options. Trademarking and patenting can also be great tools to keep people from encroaching in your space, but it isn't full proof and there's tons of ways for people to get around it. More important here is to establish yourself as the original and first market leader
2. Focus on scaling sustainably and profitably. This is one of the most important things buyers/investors will look for. Gone are the days where unicorns that lose as much money as they make are being snatched up or seen as valuable. You want to prove you can build your business and that it can last 100 years on its own
3. Build a defensible position: Establish marketing and business building tactics that make it very difficult form competitors to come into your space. For example if you , you can negotiate category exclusivity in some areas so your partners can't work with any of your competitors. This is immensely valuable.


There's no such thing as brand marketing vs. direct marketing. The purpose of marketing at the end of the day is to drive sales, plain and simple. Of course there are subsets of how to get there which is commonly broken down as "brand awareness", "consideration", and "direct response" but IMO everything should be looked at in terms of growing your customer base and how to measure that. NO ONE who purchases you products is NOT going to be aware of your brand right? That sale had to come from some level of awareness but more importantly is thinking about the mechanisms and tactics to do them all at once. What's the point of making someone "aware" of your brand if they have no intention to buy? Or what's the point of making someone "aware" WITH an intention to buy but you can't actually measure the performance/impact? At the end of the day everything you do should be geared around measuring it's impact to growing your brand. Otherwise you'll be sitting around spending money and guessing/wishing it's working.


Leverage Google search data! There are tools such that allow you to see how many people are interested in certain products/categories and how competitive those areas are within SEO. Although it may seem like a narrow view; how people search, the volume at which they search, and what they're searching for can be a great way to identify niche opportunities that are under-served today.

As someone who leads growth marketing at a large e-commerce, I'm constantly looking for new product opportunities that can create value and solve gaps for consumers today. Feel free to schedule a call and I can walk you through how I've found success doing so.


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