Merged Marketing Podcast

197 – The Post-iOS14 Playbook with Kyle Hoffman

The Post-iOS14 Playbook with Kyle Hoffman

Have you taken advantage of the revolutionary iOS 14 Playbook to drive explosive growth for your business? In today’s digital world, the role of emerging technologies in the digital marketing landscape cannot be overstated. In episode 197 today, we are privileged to host Kyle Hoffman to successfully discuss navigating the post-iOS 14 world.

Kyle’s marketing career background: He has been in the marketing space for quite some time now, having started at a performance agency before transitioning to paid media and as a fractional CMO for a number of brands. As a fractional CMO, he helped companies make sound marketing decisions and drive strategy. He ensures strategy alignment with the company’s vision through the cooperation of the marketing and sales departments.

How he helped Wello Sock Brand to succeed: In October 2021, they launched Wello officially as a product-based brand after splitting from the mother company. Wello seized the opportunity of the existing gap in the compression socks market. Previously, customers were medically prescribed to wear compression socks neither found them fun, comfortable, or colorful. Consequently, Kyle came in to build the brand from the ground up and achieve function growth. With over 100,000 customers at present, Kyle projects that Wello is on track to sell over 1 million pairs of socks in 2023.

Marketing changes in the post-iOS 14 playbook: Our guest expert today reckons that the marketing landscape experienced major shifts following the launch of iOS 14. He says that iOS 14 placed the burden on the creative, shifting from technical media buying to technical, creative development. As such, companies had to be highly purposeful and creative with development and testing the creative. He explains the testing method for a campaign to figure out what is working. Kyle says they tag a given element of creativity, especially mashed-up user-generated content, with the label. They integrate various modular assets that form a rich database that is tested to determine what is working and what areas need improvement. He attributes 80% of their content to style user-generated content because of the large network of content creators.

How DTC brands can adapt in the post-iOS era: Kyle advises that brands should place greater focus on creative and subtle innovation. It is crucial to make minor improvements to benefit the customer experience. These include optimizing the pricing strategies through bundling and adopting the modular approach. In addition, brands should seek to leverage online engagements with the customer through website visits and video views. Generally, Kyle reckons that the post-iOS 14 era is about offering the customer the best experience in their customer journey.

Best practice metrics for success: Kyle explains that measuring is often easy for single-product companies like Wello, where the different customer groups use the product in the same ways. However, multi-product companies with varying categories of customers present a metrics challenge because of the varied data sets to evaluate. For instance, a brand has to factor in its customer acquisition cost, ROA, and industry benchmarks.

Trends in the digital landscape in the post-iOS 14: Kyle predicts that artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming an essential partner in brainstorming and research. AI has unlimited potential in modular creativity, optimization, and deployment. As such, Kyle sees an increase in the popularization of AI tools for DTC brands in 2024. This translates to the advertising landscape being bound to get even more competitive going forth. However, he reckons that advertising costs will go up for performance marketing as a result.

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