Brandkenstein Lab Report to $100k #1 [Feb 2024] 🧪

Yo! Welcome to the Lab! 👋

Here, la me will whip out the proverbial microscope to share the DTC brand’s spend, results, strategy, and next steps.

The premise of Lab Reports are simple: I’ll recap the results of the previous month and share my hypotheses and plans for the next month.

Let’s dive in!👇

🤔 Have you even launched, brah?

We’re at a “pre-launch” boiling point right now.

And that’s mainly all she wrote for January right now.

But the DTC product should be ready to launch by the end of the month 🤞.

My wife and I have poured a ton of work and love into the project to even reach this point:

• Actually building the product and our unique premise (took months!).

• Building strong brand identity. We’re going for a premium, luxury style brand. And we’ve had to assess the marketplace to come up with unique colors, style, and messaging.

• Aligning our personal lives around the DTC biz. (We have a 4-year old daughter and and coordinate working times around her and my day job. So TLDR: a lot of early mornings and nearly late nights for me 😅).

Next big thing: We’re looking to launch by end of month. And my wife is currently shooting a snazzy product promo video that’ll feature on the homepage of our site!

Biggest win last month: We released an instructional YouTube video based on our product that’s optimized for YT search. It’s got nearly 200 views without us promoting it, which is a great start!

“The numbers, Mason Hassan”

Not much to report here since we’re pre-launch. Surprisingly, the site has generated 49 sessions (products are not ready to buy yet so there aren’t any sales).

I’d attribute this little trickle of traffic to the YouTube shorts content we’re creating and the instructional video.

• Total visits: 49 store sessions

• Total sales: £0.00 

• Total orders: 0

• Conversion rate: 0%

• Brand growth:

My wife acts as the “Chief Product Designer,” so once we’ve launched she’ll be able to execute the content strategy we’ve created. It’s largely based on YouTube and YouTube shorts.

(Would you like to learn more about this? Reply and let me know and I’ll feature our strategy in the mid-month Branding report).

🧪 What's brewing for this month?

It’s all about eyeballs baby! We need to generate awareness and early conversions. Here’s the plan to do that.

Influencer marketing.

I’m working on a “micro-influencer” strategy to work on the launch and announcement.

We’ll share our product announcement with like 200-300 influencers > give samples to a 20-30.

This should generate the initial traction needed to gather feedback on the product and iterate on our marketing.

I’m estimating this will cost between £500-£1000.

I don’t have the time to do outreach. So will most likely develop a system & criteria for outreach and then share it with a reputable VA online to build the database.

Fleshing out the email list.

Even if people don’t buy, we’re looking to get them to subscribe on the list with a promotional discount or other incentive. I need to think more about this atm tbh!

Promo video.

It will go on the homepage and may be used for a light YouTube ad campaign to help with retargeting.

PPC & retargeting 

I’m holding off on this right until launch day and will only spend a small amount.

My hypothesis: Retargeting the traffic we get from influencers will accelerate our brand’s “stickiness” in the minds of consumers. Think about it:

A familiar influencer will shout us out. They’ll visit our site. And then they’ll get served with ads. Multiple touch points sounds promising to me (albeit expense).

Let’s see. That’s the big “bet” for the coming months.

💡 Your thoughts?

I'm all ears. What else would you like to know about the brand and its performance?

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