Welcome to an exciting episode! Today, we have Levi Knox, the Director of Marketing at Laundry Sauce
In this episode, host Samir ElKamouny chats with Levi about the unique value proposition of Laundry Sauce, the role of subscription models in driving customer retention, effective marketing tactics and customer-centric messaging, turning mundane chores into enjoyable experiences, and insights into product development.
Understanding your customer’s pain points allows you to create messaging that truly resonates and converts.
Key Takeaway
- Laundry Sauce infuses luxury scents like Tom Ford and Le Labo into laundry pods, making laundry a sensory experience.
- Levi Knox's experience spans performance marketing at Tube Science and leadership at Darkroom, equipping him with diverse marketing skills.
- Defaulting to subscription and optimizing retention rates has significantly improved Laundry Sauce’s customer lifetime value and profitability.
- Understanding and addressing customer pain points through feedback has ensured high satisfaction and loyalty.
- Effective marketing requires balancing engaging creative ads with clear conveyance of the product’s unique selling points.
- Focusing on ads that directly convert customers rather than just generating awareness has driven profitability.
- Expanding the product line and offering upsells like dryer sheets and fabric softeners boost revenue.
- Random, surprise sales help avoid high competition and costs associated with major sale periods while driving significant sales volume.
- Unique fragrances create an emotional connection and play a crucial role in customer retention and brand loyalty.
- Levi emphasizes learning from both successful and unsuccessful campaigns to continually improve marketing strategies.
View Written Interview
Hey everybody. Do I have an exciting episode for you today? Because we are going to be talking with the director of marketing at laundry sauce. And if you have not heard of laundry sauce, maybe you're living under a rock or maybe Levi's got to make sure he gets an ad in front of you. But one or the other, you have either heard of them or you're going to be hearing of them because they are one of those brands that's just killing it. They're killing it. They're doing a super great job of their marketing. They're creative. Everything that they're doing is a testament to what you should be doing in the direct to consumer market these days. And so I'm super excited to be talking with Levi Knox. Levi, welcome to the podcast.
Hey, thanks, Samir. It's great to be here. Super excited to chat.
Likewise, I would love to have you just kind of kick things off and tell the audience about laundry sauce and what the brand is all about.
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to. You know, if you've seen our flashy fun, wild ads, or you just heard the name Laundry Sauce, you can guess that it's a fun brand. But it's not just the branding that's killing it. It's the fact that it's a very new product for a very neglected market, which is Laundry detergent. Laundry detergent smells boring, but it doesn't have to. You can actually put Tom Ford Le Labo Quality Scents into your laundry pods.
And not only will you smell good, like a cologne would like your clothes will smell good longer. Your sheets will smell great. Your, your bedding, your, your towels will smell great. It really is bringing a signature scent to your entire house and your whole persona. so laundry sauce is killer brand marketing, but also incredible product development, which to any marketer that's watching this, you know, that once you find that client
You can sell like hotcakes just because it's great, that's the perfect client to work for.
So true, it's so true. And so I'm curious, just, you came in as a fractional team member over there. And so I'm just curious, how did you get into that?
Yeah. So, kind of path to fractional growth marketing. I started performance marketing at a place called tube science. That's a really cutthroat paper performance video advertising agency. and that's where I really learned the fundamentals of taking a product, taking what customers are saying about it, breaking those down into, okay, these are the solutions that, that are actually backed up that, that, that people love about this product.
Finding the problem framings, and finding the personas and then shooting ads that are really tailored towards relating to, really a variety of different people, who come from different backgrounds, have different reasons for why they need the product, and converting them to buy. So, that, performance marketing background of tons and tons and tons of creative AB testing to find a handful of winners that you can scale really quickly.
And that actually taught me a very customer -obsessed method to messaging and creative development. But I didn't really have the ability to have an impact on product development and on the site and on a bunch of other channels like email or direct mail. And so I wanted more access.
I wanted more ability to take the learnings that we have in performance marketing and the systems from marketing and apply it to a bunch of other areas. So that led me to Darkroom. Darkroom is a New York based but it's also full remote all over the world digital marketing agency. And I jumped over there in beginning of 2023 to help build their director of growth role and create the growth strategy team.
And that was a blast. I mean, I hired several growth strategists, had a fantastic job time acting like a fractional CMO or a fractional head of growth for anywhere between three or five clients per growth strategist. And it's a role that's meant to flex based off of, okay, do you need just more consulting for your current head of growth, for your current CMO?
Or are you a younger brand and you really need someone who's going to own the ideation and execution of almost all of your marketing? So, it was really fun, like alternating between both the roles. laundry sauce actually came to dark room, in August of 2023 and, got assigned to them. And instantly I was like, this is going to be a blast to work on. and it's, it was one of those like agency nightmares.
Where I just loved the brand so much and it was such a good fit that I ended up leaving Darkroom and going internal to Laundry Sauce. But it worked out all for the best. I mean, I still love Darkroom and Darkroom services are still a core part of our like agency vendor wheel that is the execution of Laundry Sauce. So yeah, that's how I ended up here.
That's awesome. So where, as you entered laundry sauce, I'm really curious, where did you find areas of opportunity maybe early on to kind of make a big impact?
Subscription hands down defaulting to subscription and heavily pushing it. That was the one thing that was seriously missing with laundry sauce and I come from Almost all of the e -commerce brands that I worked on and that were very successful were subscription based businesses I had two major food delivery services that were subscription based that I scaled I don't know if you remember freshly freshly is gone now, but back in the day, they were a huge hit and I was behind those ads. So I knew there was just a tremendous opportunity to make our subscription, one, like defaulting to it, to ads talk about subscription, you're opening like intro, offer landing pages or focus on subscription. And then optimizing our subscription retention rate and making the subscription like limit up one more on the brand side, like adding some surprise and delight and making the subscription something that you're very proud and excited to stay a part of. But thankfully the product does most of that work itself. Once people try it, they're obsessed.
That's awesome. So every marketer's dream, finding that perfect product that you can have creative freedom, lots of fun, but you also got to shake up the customer experience, I guess, in a way, but then you're also trying to reframe customer purchasing decisions, I guess, in a way.
Definitely. Yeah. I mean, we were really the first major fine fragrance laundry detergent. There's now some like knockoffs of us, which is like very flattering
Yeah
Like, happy to have some knockoffs of us. I think it's actually lifting the industry of luxury scented, designer scented laundry detergent overall. Like, so I'm, I'm excited for it. But.
The main hook that we use is your laundry detergent smells boring. And I think almost everybody can agree with that. Like laundry detergent is generic names. It sounded like AI generated titles for these scents before AI even existed. You know, like cool winter breeze and island ocean. Like just boring stuff or a generic scent that is like a signature scent that you can't tell what it is.
You have no clue what the key ingredients are, which in turn means there's no transparency to the ingredients, right? So, yeah, you can shop for laundry pods the same way you would shop for a fine fragrance. Find scents that you like, like ingredients that you like. Find a personality that fits you. But also we see that, similar to candles, people swap out the scent that they want to feature for their towels, their sheets, their clothes based off of mood, based off of season, based off of like my husband wears Indonesian patchouli, but I wear Egyptian rose. Like that ability to flex but still have a really high quality scent is awesome.
Yeah, no, it makes sense. I have, I don't even know how many different clones I have and I use them for different purposes and different, right? Like, yeah, my, it's all, I'm totally with you. I'm curious though, when you came in and even now, do you have like a clearly defined ideal customer profile or is it just so...I imagine it casts, there's a wide cascade of kind of who the ideal customer is, but as you, but the first, you said it, first thing you were thinking about was customer lifetime value and how do we get people to subscribe and be, and acquire more soulmate customers versus just try it once customers or whatever it is. So did they have that? Is that something that you've worked on since you've been there? I'm just personally curious.
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Totally, yeah. So it's the business is I think three years old. And so just because of the age of the business, it's relatively broad. We have not super delineated a bunch of different personas. But the method that we're rolling out personas, I was actually working on a doc for this just before the call actually is scent based.
And so really trying to build out a sense of place lifestyle hobbies, values associated to each individual scent. And, you know, there's, there's higher level values that laundry sauce will always stand for of just like laundry day should never be boring. A laundry day should actually be fun and you should look forward to doing laundry. Like we're trying to change the perception of laundry day. So that will always exist. But, but yeah, defining persona is based of of scent is what we're doing right now. And it's actually really fun. We're doing a huge annual customer survey that's going out in one week, and that's gonna help us refine that even more.
So, and it's an interesting one to me and I obsess over it because so often, you know, we at Fetch Refinery have so many clients that come our way and they don't know who their ideal customer profile is at all. And we need that in order to really cater the messaging and the creative and everything else, right? So we'll do that deep dive in order to figure that out because without it, for a lot of brands, not for necessarily for you guys, right? But for so many brands, it's so important because they aren't super mass marketed, right? They're like in their minds, they're like, my customer base is all snowboarders. No, it's not. Or it's everyone who buys laundry detergent. Okay, no, it's not everybody that buys laundry detergent and you guys know that, right? But there certainly probably becomes these quasi maybe demographics or locations or income levels or something like that. As you extract that.
Yeah, Psychographic.
And so I'm curious, does that end up playing a little bit of a role on the creative side or do you, like you're mentioning, almost just lean more towards the product itself and actually, yeah, like, hey, we're just gonna let the product stand on its own and then the customers who want it will gravitate towards it and the customers who don't will just kind of ignore it.
Yeah, again, because of the relatively early phase we're in, we have a humongous market that totally believes that laundry smells boring. And so opening with that hook and then showing the product is working extremely well for us right now. And I recognize that this is a very like privileged spot to be in. We, what I recommend for any agency that's signing, especially if it's a newer brand, it doesn't have these defined is, is identity and identity based and then problem solution based opening hooks. So stuff like you can A -B test the exact same video of a concept or just do a static with a hook like why men are switching to laundry sauce and then you can test with why women are switching to laundry sauce. You have an A -B test right there of, okay, are men or women immediately attracted to this product? Get an idea there.
And then problem solution based. I did this with laundry sauce Even though I kind of knew what the answer would be already. I still did it is list out a ton of different potential problem solution trainings and that's like Laundry. I hate doing laundry. It's such a boring chore. Okay, we make laundry fun Laundry charge it smells boring. Okay ours is fine fragrance there could be the want to spoil myself cool.
This is something that's been a little bit extra on and it makes me feel special there could be the I'm worried about the Toxicity and I don't trust my laundry detergent. Okay, let's let's do our our like skin safe angle. I Don't feel like it's sustainable like the laundry detergent they come in big plastic jugs. I don't think it's sustainable enough Here's a like laundry sauce comes in recyclable packaging
and they totally dissolve in the wash and they don't clog your septic tanks. Like those different framings, we tested a bunch of them with like in the opening hooks and then following up with, you know, record your SPs throughout the rest of the video. And like that Can tell you really quickly what framing works for people. I think that's, that's a very performance marketer defined type of persona, but I do really believe that.
If you understand your customers pain points, you can learn so much. You can relate to them so well. You can learn so much about how they're feeling and then you can recreate that. I relate to your feeling. Here's how my product helps you feel how you want to feel. If that makes sense.
100 % and and I think you get dynamite data from that because it not only can influence future creative to your point of like hey which hooks are resonating with people the most and how are you getting people in and all that but then you're also right you you also have you're going to see what's resonating with people the most to also determine, okay, is this, is this just like a small thing that should be in my FAQs to do some light objection handling? Or is this super important to a large portion of my addressable market or my current customer base so that I need to develop a whole landing page around it or make sure it's a focus point of the homepage or, or that, you know, in my retargeting strategy, they're at least getting served one video on this topic, whatever it is, right. Or all of the above, right but absolutely, it's only going to increase the effectiveness of everything that you're doing, your conversion rates, et cetera, but simultaneously impacting what you're doing next.
And it makes, yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I appreciate that you brought that up too, because I think everyone should be, everybody listening, doesn't matter what role you're in, you should be testing your hooks. You should be testing your problem and solutions and figuring out what does resonate the most. And I think another thing that I appreciate what you've done and what the brand has done is being cheeky, but not...Outlandishly cheeky, I guess, for lack of a better word, right? Where you've played into it on a fun degree to your earlier point. Hey, you know, for people who's laundry is boring or they hate it. Hey, we want to make it fun. And you have, I mean, one of the ads that kind of got me, I don't know if you actually ran it or not. Luckily, I was in, I got an inside scoop on it, but it was one that was quasi sexual, I guess, potentially. I don't know if that one ever got ran or not.
Mm -hmm.
it's like you know they
Was it the French saffron? Was it the Valentine's one for French saffron? That's what comes to mind.
It was just, they were like moaning in the laundry room, essentially. Okay.
yeah, yeah. Yeah, those didn't perform very well. But yeah, there's some like, you know, just like getting creative, you're gonna hit and miss with a bunch of different stuff. We've sort of dialed it down to how we visually present the product is very professional, almost like we want to be perceived as the real deal.
Yep.
super professional, super pristine, super high quality. And our scents are luxury. So how do we visually present that luxury? But at the same time, you don't have to be super pristine and professional with how you message. You can actually be fun and engaging and wild with how you message. So yeah, there's a confidence. There's a bravado that people put on when they smell Laundry Sauce, when they smell like Laundry Sauce. And so we're trying to get that across like we know how good our product is. We can play with it. It gives us the freedom.
Yep. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I...
And it's like you said, right? You just, you got to test it. You have no idea until you test it and you run it. And like, I thought that ad was A, brilliant, but also B, I'd be nervous to run it at the same time, right? Because it's like, all right, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna catch some eyeballs, but they might not be the right eyeballs. Who knows, right? And so that's a fine line. Sometimes I feel like you have to kind of balance, right? When you're, when you're extremely growth minded.
Yeah
Yep, definitely. And so in, in 2024, we flipped a profitability, which, which required us becoming, like clinical with what we choose to run in ads. And instead of playing the game of, all right, we'll have top of funnel awareness. We don't care who they are, where they come from. Let's just get eyeballs and then we'll convert them in our welcome flows. We'll convert them with retargeting ads, but we'll convert them with direct mail followups that was not efficient enough, and balancing the, let's be fun with the brand and let's do like brand performance creative, to that actually converts. It still has to demonstrate the product. It still has to hit the core USBs. It still has to show the product early in the, in the ad. that stuff has launched us into profitability. And instead of the sort of like dual approach of just top of funnel awareness and brand awareness, brand equity, and then we'll convert it for where we are right now with our unit economics, with our growth goals, with our profitability goals and the many other places that we want to invest our money. That dual play just wasn't efficient enough for us. So that's what 2024 has looked like more brand performance marketing.
Yeah, it makes sense. And that's not easy. I mean, and especially, right, you're a lower price point item in the grand scheme of things, but you have, right, but you're, you know, just as far as like, okay, like, you know, I'm not buying a $1 ,600 electric skateboard or something like that, right? And so it's a, so your cost of acquisition, right, is probably, you know, break even if you're lucky, right, from the initial sale to then trying to get profitable, you know,
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
month, two month, three, whatever it is, right? Kind of like the dollar shave club model, if you will, quote unquote, right? And so how much of that, you know, I, yeah, I guess like as you came on board and you said subscription was number one, you know, and now you're, and now you got into profitability, how much of like customer lifetime value and like customer acquisition costs, I guess, I'm not asking it the best way, but how much, you know, did that kind of play a role and like trying to, like which areas were you trying to impact or?
Yeah
Ha!
Probably all of them, but...
You see me leading forward. This is 2024. So 2023 was about subscription, like actually kicking off initiatives to default more to subscription. 2024 was really about reducing our CAC payback window. We have an extremely high customer lifetime value, but the problem is the average term between purchases is three months for a box of pods. So if you have...
Yeah.
I mean, if you have less than a 2 .0 ROAS, then you're still waiting anywhere between six to 12 months to actually make your money back on that month cohort. So we had to reduce the cash payback window. The main thing has been being more efficient with our spend. Also defaulting subscription has helped a lot because that's reduced the average term between orders. It's also increased our just retention rate overall. And we're still working through different sizes of our product, different intro offers, relaunching our sample pack, other ways to get some different intro offers that are sort of split between like, hey, I want to impulse purchase. I want to buy that full 69 pod box but just make it really easy for me to return versus the people who I only pawn to pay a little bit of money so I can sample it and Then I'll invest in the bigger pods. So we want to give people those two directions and not what let one cannibalize the other and Yeah, we're doing a great job of selling three months worth of pods. What if we do one month worth of pods? what if we do just a sample pack and then we do a 14 day window to get your intro offer on a subscription. So a lot to test, a lot to work on, a lot of fun stuff to do to run yourself.
And all the upsells. I mean, now you've got dryer sheets and fabric softener and wool dryer balls and all this other stuff now too, right? So then you're like, hey, if I get my soulmate customer who has enough disposable income that they don't care, right? Just upsell them everything, all of the things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep. Upsells are absolutely crushing it for us. If there's like the number one thing I could recommend to anybody, any entrepreneur that's starting a business, start building a product family around your core SKUs. And, and then your hero SKU create three to four variations throughout the year. You know, we do scent launches about three to four times a year and the scent launches are massive. We had a new scent that launched in February still our top performing ad is just a static that says introducing Italian bergamot. And it has, it's like a full point ROAS above the account average. It's yeah, absolutely. People crave novelty.
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. It's, it's, gosh, I don't think they survived, but it's like ugly water with all the limited edition ones they came out with, right? Like they had the candy cane and whatever, right? And like, those crushed it and they got me to buy because I was like, candy cane water? Okay, I want to try this. And then, yeah, it makes perfect sense because then.
Mm -hmm.
Yep. Yep. Well...
Yeah, you're gaining new people, but at the same time, yeah, the novelty of even new customers.
Exactly. You're refreshing your returning customer for your returning customers and you're unlocking new personas at the same time. Like it's, it's a no brainer.
I'm curious on... Yeah.
Trying to think of how to word this. So I guess like on the creative side of things,How much of that is crucial to the success? Because you're talking about a little bit of strategy, right? We're talking about hooks and launching new sense and other aspects. We're also kind of talking about creative from the angle of, okay, hey, we're gonna try some out of the box stuff. We're gonna try some proven stuff, right? We're going to, you know, yeah, et cetera, et cetera. Like what role is creative and maybe kind of content production play for the business? Maybe especially going into 2024 where you are trying to make sure that you're reducing CACs or increasing ROAS and profitability.
Yeah. Creative is still one of, if not our most essential investment on a monthly basis. It's because we're strictly an e -commerce brand. You know, we're not a, I work with a really great eco -friendly potting soil company called Rosie Soil as well. It's my friend's startup. I kind of do it on the side. He is in a bunch of plant stores. The potting soil is in tons of plant stores that are all ambassadors for the soil and where people can see it, feel it, talk to someone, hold the bag, all in person. And we don't have that luxury yet. We're not in retail yet. And so you have to have the creative as a way to have those conversations with people and start a relationship in the same way that like we're trying to create an eye -catching experience on the scroll in the same way that packaging would create an eye -connection experience as you're walking down the aisle.
Interesting comparison. I mean, yeah, but you're...
But yeah, I mean, it makes sense at the same time, right? You're disrupting a stagnant industry, right? And so you have to be innovative in that sense. And you have to, right? You've got to capture somebody's attention. And then you're not only trying to capture their attention and get them to convert, but you're trying to keep them as a loyal customer forever and ever, right? However long I continue doing laundry. And so yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, I'm alongside that though, right? With the customer loyalty aspect Right?
Are there, what levers have you pulled there maybe to help that? Like is, you know, is there advertising strategies that you still play out to get people to come back? You said like, hey, once they're a customer, they're a customer. I know you said kind of improving even the customer experience and maybe even gift giving or different aspects.
Yeah. So we're still in that golden phase where, because we're such a unique product with not many direct competitors, there's very little people trying laundry sauce and then switching to a different laundry detergent that's on the same tier as us. and so because of that, we don't have to do, we're not running, we've tested some wind back campaigns, like meta, but we don't really have to do that.
we have some automated through post pilot wind back flows that is spending maybe a couple hundred bucks a quarter. Like it's very little. and our customer retention is extremely high because there aren't those alternatives to switch to. they, the alternative to switch to is just a different scent from laundry sauce. and so that totally recognize that it's likely a short amount of time before another brand comes along and really tries to take a chunk out of our existing customer base and try to get them to switch. But again, the bigger we get, the more we double down on investing in the quality of the product and the quality of the service. And so we've attained that we're the best in our niche and we're just going to continue to invest in maintaining that we are the best in our niche. And it's an awesome position to be in. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, no, I think it's super helpful, but it's tough too, because you're balancing, right? You're talking about the two, you know, the, I see brands so often do one, you know, go one direction or the other. It's all about the customer and the customer is number one and that's that, right? And I don't care about the product, Amazon probably being the prime example. And then there's the opposite.
The product is amazing I care way less about the customer, you know, Apple, I guess, right? Like I need the product to stand for itself or whatever, right? And so it's so interesting because you're talking about balancing both, which is not easy, but you're also talking about, hey, the product needs to stand out so much that that actually takes care of the customer experience at the same time, which I don't know, it's kind of a unique opportunity, but it's, you know, but it's a fun place to be at the same time, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, I, after working in marketing for what, over eight years now, I refuse to work with any brand that it's an actually solving a customer's problem. I just don't believe in companies that aren't in some way solving a problem and providing a solution. I can't, even if they have incredible, fun, engaging marketing and super beautiful branding. and so to me, the product is developed to satisfy the customer. That's all that matters. Like they're integrally tied together. And what was I going to say? Yeah. What you're saying are two different things we really think of as the same thing. Product development and customer satisfaction and their preferences are inextricably tied. Does that mean we trust the customer with one cent we should develop or how we should price our product. We can't always trust their feedback and their preferences entirely, but we can meet them in a place where it makes our product the best it could possibly be relative to the market, but also be absolutely intoxicatingly addicting to the customer.
Yeah, that's fun. And how do you craft the marketing campaigns that you feel like move customers beyond just awareness and nurture them actually into the brand advocates?
Yeah, that's a good point. Again, very privileged that the product does it for the most part itself.I really do think that the development, first of all, when it comes to scent and fragrance, you said you own tons of clones, there's a visceral emotional feeling that you get when you smell a certain scent. And so not every product can do that. Like, you know, these may be my favorite glasses in the world, but they don't make me feel excited. But fragrance can always make you feel excited. They can make you feel sexy. They can make you feel something.
And so I think that alone, just the fact that like tying fragrance to what the product is, is huge. This is, I don't know if this is true or not. I can't actually confirm it, but here in New York, we talk a lot about Shopify Sweetheart, which is Jolie Skin. Do you know Jolie? So supposedly Jolie, when you unbox the shower head, they have a little bit of fragrance that's inside the box that is sort of like let out.
And so there's a fully sensory experience to unboxing a very utilitarian object, which again, it's time to an emotional hook. It's an emotional hook that the product is giving you when you unbox. And I think that that does wonders for, for, for not just enjoying the moment, but also people want to ascribe to an identity and fragrance is very tied to identity. So I don't know if that means like anybody out there, whatever you sell, put fragrance in the box. I don't know if that's necessarily the answer. But if you do, make sure it smells really good.
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think there's that one with lemons, right? Or like, they're, you know, they're like, hey, if you, if you make your, you know, your office smell a little lemony or something like that, it increases productivity by some small percentage or something like that, right? Because yeah, it's like, it makes sense, right? It's an uplifting scent, but you know, but I, I, you know, there, there's this in the back of my mind, I struggle where I'm not buying a cologne. Okay, we got fireworks going here.
I, I'm not going to try a cologne without smelling it, right? It's a little bit more of an expensive purchase. Am I willing to drop $100 on something I haven't smelled? Not really. So I try it in the store and kind of figure it out. I know you've handled this in some ways on the marketing side as well as kind of on the website and whatnot. And you have sample packs, all these different things. But it's a tricky one for a lot of brands, right? We have a client sells tomato sauce and olive oils and vinegars.
And that's fine a very difficult vertical because, okay, I can just go to the grocery store and I can grab that stuff. And, you know, I'm one of them, like their sauce is amazing. But until you taste it, until you try it, very difficult to translate that across a screen, right? Of why you should try this. And so, you know, do you feel like you've had a little bit of an uphill battle with that aspect? Or is it something where it's like, you know what, hey, we're, we're, we're so unique in a way because most laundry deterrents are either kind of, if they're the paraben free and all that stuff, right, eco conscious and everything, they're either unscented or like, you just wanna feel like your clothes smell clean. It's not like the cologne aspect and everything else that you're bringing. Yeah, I'm so curious kind of where that's been.
Yeah. So for years I've worked with primarily Prada Laundry Shop's food brand and trying to translate the smell and the taste of food to try and validate on screen that it tastes delicious. It's extremely difficult. So like advice out there for anybody that's doing food, beverage or fragrance?
Hyper -focus on reactions and also really leverage your customer feedback, like your customer comments, because people are much more likely with things that are sensory and you can't translate over video, they're much more likely to scroll to that comment section and read what are people's interpretation of the sense, because that's probably their closest one X-to -one to what their own reaction will be to the sense.
And then there are other things that we can do that are a little bit more on the brand side, which is, it talks about like creating a sense of place, trying to define a persona, like not just what's a scent that you can relate to, it seems like one to one to your life and your lifestyle, your hobbies and whatnot, but also who you aspire to be. You know, like do you want to wear a Siberian pine in the fall because you're so excited for skiing?
And that trip that you have coming up to Mount Kilimajaro in January, right? So it's, yeah, how can we establish like a sense of place and a feeling that's not just, this smells good, but also it smells good and transports you somewhere. Like this is who you are if you wear this. This is who you can be if you wear this.
Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's, yeah, it's, it's fun. It's just so fun. Cause in that regard, like, yeah, it's, it's, you're, you're playing with the senses, right? And you're, and you're arguably improving people's quality of life in that regard, which is like where you want to be, right? When you're, when you're going to brand and, and everything else, right? That's super fun.
Yep. Something that I think about often and that I try and remind people often, probably not enough, is whatever you're selling, the customer's expectation is that their life will change in one way or another. Like it will change. And develop products around the expectation that your product will change their life. And then message the product in such a way that like, here is how your life will change if you have this. That's the foundation of any success that I've had in advertising.
Yeah, super, super good points. And then to your point, retarget them and just try to get them across the finish line. You did mention before we hit record, sort of your cadence of success with sales, you called it democratization of seasonal sales. I'd love for you to touch upon that.
Totally. Yeah. So, anybody that is a digital marketer in the last several years knows that, Memorial day, black Friday, any seasonal sale, it's becoming extremely expensive to advertise during those periods and people. So the most common solution is, I'll just advertise sooner. And so now you're getting black Friday sale on end of September. it's insane.
And the whole reason is people are chasing a cheaper cost per click and trying to trying to beat out other competition to the dollar that they intend to spend during that season. The best success that we've seen with Laundry Sauce that I've seen with other brands is becoming more random with your sales. So same sale that you would do on Black Friday, it's 30 % off site wide.
Do it for 48 hours on an almost completely random day. Like have a story, have a reason behind it. Like the foundational one that everybody should do is the anniversary of your business. This is the anniversary of laundry sauce celebrating five years. Here's for the next 48 hours, here's 20 % off. And then only send an email out about it and only update the site. Let all your evergreen ads run normally so that there's some surprise and delight. But when people arrive on the site, they're like, wow.
20 % off, it's only for one day. Okay, I'm gonna grab it today. You don't have to create creative and then have to let it learn and the audience mature to convert for 48 hours, a 48 hour long sale. Yeah, that strategy has been massively profitable for us. And the cost per clicks for anything that's running during that sale period are dirt cheap because we're not competing with anybody else.
That's a good question. We actually, not too much. I think the election will sort of coincide with our hot season. Q4 is really great for us. We'll coincide with just seasonality starting to grow our business as well. So that's a good point. Thank you for mentioning that. Now I'm going to think about it.
Yeah, Levi's gonna be up all night thinking about the CPMs come November, October and November. I'm losing sleep over it already, so don't worry.
Hahaha
Listen, we have a new scent that's dropping in September. And like I said, anytime we drop a new scent, it absolutely crushes. So when we drop that new scent in September, we'll probably be outbidding the election ads because it is going to be so hot. So I'm excited.
Perfect.
If it's called Egyptian Magician, I'm in. I think that you should come up with.
There you go.
I'll take a note. Yeah, let's do a collab.
Perfect, that's my nickname, so that sounds perfect. I'll be the face, we'll come up with a cute cartoon character. If there's one piece of advice you could offer maybe aspiring growth marketers out there or other entrepreneurs or brands, what would that be?
Thank you.
Love it.
If you're like me and maybe at one point feel a little bit guilty about like all I'm doing with my life is marketing. Just know that literally anything you work hard at and get good at, you can earn a sense of pride and happiness and enjoyment in your work. I think we're lied to as Americans that...the American dream is about finding your dream that's true to your soul and then making that a reality. I strongly believe that it's about picking something and then making that your dream. And I don't, I'm now at 31 years of age saying something that I never think a 14 year old leave I would say, which is if I inherited a garbage disposal business, I genuinely think I could learn to love that business.
And probably the core of that is, caring about your customers, caring about other people and having that relationship. Like as long as that facet is a part of whatever you do, you'll absolutely love whatever you do.
Yeah, no, I mean it makes perfect sense. We have a great episode on this podcast with Alan Draper who was a lawyer and started a pest control business and killed it. He's literally a serial entrepreneur and angel investor now. Right? And it's like literally everything you just said in a nutshell. So you're absolutely correct, right?
Nice.
That's incredible.
That's amazing.
Maybe I'm curious now, like what's been the most rewarding moment in your career so far?
So back when I worked at Tube Science, one of the clients was a weight loss health app. I always called it like, I don't know if I'm NDA'd to not be able to share it, so I just won't say it, but it's a very large, relatively well -known weight loss app that the goal is to change your relationship with food. I always thought of it as like nutrition 101. The majority of Americans, they do not understand the basics of...of nutrition and the tie between your behaviors and food. So it's, I'll probably rephrase that too. It's like nutrition, psychology, one -on -one. And I, back when I worked at Tube Science, I was shooting a lot of ads and in addition to being the creative strategist or coming up with concepts and whatnot.
And I started the customer testimonial route of instead of hiring actors to repeat what customers have said about this app, let's just actually reach out to customers that truly love this app and it has actually changed their life. And, man, I just developed some really strong bonds with people who had, incredible stories and there, the app was the right place, the right time, exactly what they needed to make a really positive change in their life. And so like remote directing those shoots, I cherish those the most. And the fact that, you know, you work on something that's so meaningful to you and then you're like, no, is it gonna perform? Like, is this actually gonna kill it as an ad or not? And then when it performed, it was like the combination of my two worlds of like my head and my heart are very happy with what's been produced.
Hmm. Yeah, that's really fun. Because yeah, it's like authentic authenticity at its finest with, you know, changing lives and everything else. I mean, those are yeah, that's like the epitome of what you want in a piece of creative or marketing or anything.
Exactly.
Yep. And something that I think a lot of people don't know is the PSA campaign with Scott Eastwood that launched, what was it? It was September of last year, I think. But that's for most people who haven't tried Laundry Sauce, but they've heard of the brand.
They most likely know that app, the PSA campaign with Scott Eastwood. And that whole concept was directly from a customer review.
And we just said, okay, how can we take this awesome fun review and turn it into something bigger? And yeah, if there's one more tip I could give, it's obsessively read through your customer reviews. They are concept gold mines for creative campaigns.
It's so true. It's so true. And I think you can play into it. There's so many. Yeah, there's so much gold there. I mean, and it's, man. And if you listen to your customer, that data.
I mean, gosh, you know, if you're big enough, you should be on Reddit. What are people talking about your brand on Reddit? Like what are, you know, and the haters, like you should be thankful for the haters. Cause what are the haters saying? Right? Like there's so many versions of that. You can play into the haters and make them more haters. And then you can, you can also play into them and turn them around and make them love you. Right? I mean, we've had clients too, that have so much brand loyalty that, that they didn't even need to moderate the comments, the customer.
did it for them. You can't compete with that, right? And so yeah, I mean, it's, you know, and 50 %
Yeah, that's the dream.
people hated them for that and 50 % loved them but those customers man were they loyal and they spend to your point they launch a new product everyone flocks it doesn't even matter what it you know what it is they just they they want it and so you don't have to make everybody happy and it's just you got to make sure that you're handling of the objections you're talking about the right things. And you know, certainly you don't want to silo people out. You have to be a little careful with that. I think that was my earlier point with the cheekiness. It's a slippery slope, you know. Wendy's is probably the extreme example of cheekiness these days. But yeah, love it. I'm curious, what are you currently maybe reading or listening to or watching that's inspiring you or keeping you maybe even informed in the marketing world?
Yeah
Right, yep.
so I, I'm, I'm sorry, Samir. I'm not really good at listening to like marketing podcasts or marketing newsletters. there's, there's definitely some nuggets that I get from like, like going to marketing events and whatnot. but I really, I pay attention to other brands. that's mostly what I do. Like there are products like the Jolie.
forgive you.
Jolie skin that I almost want to buy it just to see what their post purchase flow looks like. And yeah, that's I prefer to go through other brands. I think a brand to call out, there's two brands that will call out right now that I'm absolutely in love with. And that's Bandit Running. So Brooklyn based running apparel company. They're just fantastic with almost everything that they do.
I'm huge, huge fans of bandit running. And the other one, I'm guessing you just pronounce it Fern. It's F F E R N. It's a fine fragrance company, Ecom only. I believe they're UK based and they launch one scent in a limited quantity per season. And there's just a big wait list and you have no clue how many people are on the wait list. You have no clue.
How much fine fragrance bottles are actually available that season. But their business model is incredible, simple, clean, fun, and they're killing it in my mind.
I love it. I'm absolutely with you.
I think if you've not purchased off of your top competitors, you should be doing that. If you find brands that are killing it, also you should probably purchase their product, right? Because to your point, you should be funnel hacking them. You should be paying attention to their creative. I mean, I'm a sucker when I sit in, I don't have TV. So when I sit in hotels, I'm like, I'm like watch, I'm just flipping channels to watch the ads. Cause I'm just so curious, like who's still on TV and what are they doing? And especially when it's not a huge brand, right? Like I'm always.
Yeah, that's the main question. Yeah.
curious just just what they're doing and I and I love that stuff so Levi you've shared a ton of knowledge I really really appreciate you for being a guest if anybody wants to reach out to you is there a good place for them to reach out?
Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So if you want to send a message there, more than happy to chat. And yeah, maybe keep it to LinkedIn. I won't give my phone number out yet. Next time you have me on, Samir.
Perfect. Sounds great. Let's have a recap a year from now after the election and discuss how that went. Again, I really appreciate the time, Levi. Two.
good. Yep, thanks, Samir. Have a great day, man.
