210: Using Ad Funnels for D2C Product Sales

With Taylor Frame, Co-Founder of Focus Funnels

Hosted by Kevin Mako, President of MAKO Design + Invent

Taylor Frame is the Co-Founder of Focus Funnels, a direct-to-consumer marketing agency that has been around for over 8 years and successfully collaborated with hundreds of businesses. Prior to this venture, he drove direct-to-consumer product sales for prominent brands, including The Gap, J.Crew, and Adobe. Today, Taylor will share the extensive knowledge he has amassed throughout his time in the product sales space integral to inventors, startups, and small manufacturers. In particular, he will detail the four core pillars of a direct-to-consumer funnel, how to ensure a sales funnel is built correctly, and the best practices physical product startups seeking to launch their first consumer product online should employ to maximize their success. 

Here are the key takeaways from the episode:

• What are the frameworks for bringing new hardware to market?
• Positioning is how your product is differentiated in the market.
• Placement is key! Put time into researching where your audience is spending their time online.
• Have a good understanding of what your audience cares about.
• A focused acquisition funnel is always best!
• Strive to achieve a customer journey that persuades someone to buy something.
• What are the three critical aspects of delivery for ads?
• Content is about your core pillars; build content that aligns with them to effectively sell the value of your product.
• Once you have content developed, get it out there fast!
• Paid ads versus organic ads.
• The barrier to entry on D2C sales has been lower than ever recently, making it easy to get in front of eyeballs through ad funnels.
• A key step is to ensure that when someone clicks on your content, you have a product landing page that promotes the product’s value.
• Keep your advertising simple, as if you’re talking to a friend about their problem and your solution.
• Keep your ads simple at the beginning, and then begin to test more complex pieces of content.
• Test 3 or 4 different types of ads every week or two.
• It is better to have more information on your website to ensure your page tells a whole story.
• Startups have a sizeable competitive advantage over big box retailers, as they have authenticity behind their products!

Taylor Frame Links:

LinkedIn | Focus Funnels

The Product Startup Podcast Links:

https://www.ProductStartup.com/

Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook Page | Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter

MAKO Design Links:

https://www.makodesign.com

YouTube | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter

Kevin Mako Links:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Quora | Facebook | Twitter

Producer: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to the above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories.