They just don’t trust you yet. Here’s why that’s ok this holiday season.
By: Zach Frey
Tags: Startup, Dtc, Marketing, Crowdfunding, Thanksgiving

We sold a lot of shoes via our Indiegogo debut on November 3. It was a pretty great day. After reaching our goal of $15k in just 2 hours, we eventually made it all the way to $30k. Granted, we’d been prospecting for 6 weeks prior to that with the help of a marketing agency that specializes in crowdfunding (Launchboom is the name, and they did a great job…and here’s to hoping this article goes viral and you remember us when you get all those new leads).

Since then, we’ve only raised about 15k more. That means we raised more in the first 24 hours than the ensuing campaign combined (up until now at least).

I should preface this by saying I’m not really a “business” guy. I design shoes. But I realized a while ago that if I wanted to design shoes the way I really wanted to, I’d need to blaze my own trail. Thankfully, I found some great business partners to join forces with on this project who fill in a lot of my weaknesses.

I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that right now, businesses are hurting. And what I’m noticing is that DTC brands in particular are struggling to attract NEW customers. I’m not saying all DTC brands are struggling, but I am noticing that a lot of them are throttling back on ad spend. I read an article today about another young startup that’s literally pulling all of its prospecting advertising dollars this holiday season. They say it’s a matter of inventory, but I don’t buy it, mostly because as a former customer of theirs, I’m still getting ads. So while they may not be prospecting new customers, they are re-targeting existing ones. Which tells me this isn’t about inventory, but about negative-return ad spend.

Marketing expenses are up and purchasing is down. And I think the brands without an existing customer base are struggling especially. And I think it’s ultimately a matter of trust.

The question of trust is currently front and center in our national conversation. We don’t know who or what to trust in politics, news, or even among our family and friends. 2020 has taken a severe toll on our ability to trust.

The trend I see is that people are buying from brands they’ve already bought from, not from unknown brands. We all know the truism that people are much more likely to buy from you if they already have; something especially true at this moment in time. We don’t have the emotional bandwidth to expand in even this area of life. “What if this product is poorly made and they don’t honor their return policy?…And what even is their return policy?” and, in our case “I’ve been burned on crowdfunding before (or at least read a story about people who got scammed.) How do I know if these guys are even going to get the product made, and in a reasonable timeframe”?

These are completely reasonable questions. And honestly, we’ve reached our wit’s end, sinking advertising dollars into a consumer base that just isn’t into all the levels of risk we’re asking from them. (Don’t worry, we’re still making the shoes, we just wired several thousands of dollars today to have the molds made for the shoe soles, and it’s not too late if you want to jump on board. Consider this your advert).

What should you do instead? If you have the luxury, you could do what we’re doing and just wait. I believe things will get better sometime in January when the presidency is no longer contested, and stimulus checks start rolling in. And if you’re a more established brand, it may be wise to invest in your customers. Find ways to entertain them or make them laugh (TikTok anyone?). Educate them about your brand. Pull back the curtain in an honest, hopeful way. Right now is a great time to focus on building trust with your customers through hopeful authenticity, and it might be the time to try a new way of connecting. I imagine Thanksgiving Day is going to be a particular bore for many this year. And as I found out a few years ago when my dad wrote a LinkedIn article that garnered several million views on Turkey Day, people already have basically nothing to do on Thanksgiving even when the nation isn’t in lockdown.

That’s about as much as I can feel good about advising with my limited experience. Keep moving, but stop long enough to be grateful in whatever ways you can this Thanksgiving…even if that means being grateful for a 50 person zoom call looking straight into all of your families’ chins for an hour. We can do this. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.