Olipop

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2024. Nine days in. And I’m feeling the energy. The momentum. The team is dialed. The roadmap is scoped out. The goals are outlined. Clear. And ready to be executed.

On our front here’s what to expect from us this year:

• The best B2B content to make smarter marketing decisions

• Scaling the hell out of our organic content (Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn)

• Launching other pillar assets like our YouTube channel, growing our podcast, and launching more newsletters

• Creating more content around your businesses, products, and services (more on this next week)

• Hosting many more community events

• Launching a paid product

Did I say the best B2B content? Yup. Just emphasizing what we’re doubling down on.

Very grateful that you’re part of this journey…

And it’s only the beginning,

But first, a huge thank you to our partners AddGlow and Neurons.

In Partnership With AddGlow

My 2024 Community Building Predictions:

1. Revamped Loyalty Programs

2. Brands Hosting Onsite Communities

If I’m bullish on anything in 2024 - it’s community.

The best loyalty programs this year will transcend the transactional and reward customers for engaging.

Companies will build community on their websites (think Reddit for brands) to capture rich data that’s unavailable on social media.

Brands like AddGlow make it possible to:

• Reward engaged users for posting, commenting, and sharing.

• Gather unique data from customer profiles.

• Boost SEO with unique URLs for every community post.

• Organically collect on-site UGC.

Book a demo to see how AddGlow can shape your community growth strategy.

As you’re strolling down aisles listening to the latest Huberman pod, new beverage brands are in the fight of their lives for shelf space and relevance.

Few stay around and make a name for themselves.

Olipop is one of the outliers that actually stuck the landing.

Founded in 2017, Olipop hit $200M in revenue in 2023, more than doubling its $70M in 2022.

The brand is so successful that it’s rumored to be a “prime target” for acquisition by larger companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

They didn’t grow by spraying and praying with ad dollars.

Olipop didn’t even launch its first TV ad or out-of-home campaign until 2023!

This means whatever they did - you can apply to your business.

Adapt Positioning to Expand Target Market

Olipop debuted as a prebiotic seltzer. Positioning as a healthy soda to improve gut health, especially for those with digestive issues - a sparkling tonic.

Clever differentiated positioning to enter the market.

However, as Olipop grew, this positioning became limiting.

Is this “tonic” only for those who want to improve gut health?

Customers love Olipop for its health benefits, flavor, and most importantly, as a healthier alternative to traditional soda.

In 2021, Olipop repositioned and changed its tagline from “A Sparkling Tonic” to “A New Kind of Soda”.

This simple repositioning expanded their market from gut-health drinks to a healthy soda for all.

Ditch Advertising And Go All In On Influencer Marketing

Don’t try to beat the big guys by outspending them on paid ads.

Because you can’t.

Olipop did what no other DTC brand would do… they ditched paid ads in 2021.

Instead, they went all in on creator partnerships and organic content on TikTok.

When we say all in, we mean it.

They hired creator Sara Crane to take over the Olipop TikTok account.

She became the face of the brand.

She embodied it and grew the account to nearly ~325k followers.

She develops content as a creator vs. as a brand– creating trust, connection, and brand affinity.

You don’t fall in love with a brand.

You fall in love with people who are the face of the brand.

Need more evidence?

Sean, the CEO of Ridge, is offering $1 million plus equity to hire an in-house creator to be the face of the brand.

Creator partnerships

The TikTok hashtag #olipoppartner shows 1.7B total views.

This is from working with hundreds of creators on TikTok.

They match creators to specific campaign goals.

Top-of-funnel - Focuses on organic product placement to create awareness.

Middle-of-funnel - Features product usage like recipes.

Bottom-of-funnel - Where to buy the product.

The key to Olipop’s influencer content strategy is the products are organically plugged.

They feel natural, subtle, and genuine.

Because people come to TikTok for entertainment and education, not a sales pitch.

How do they measure the success of influencer partnerships?

Olipop Co-founder, Steven, shared some numbers in an interview with @Shwinnabego.

They generated 1.3 billion views at $0.61 CPM on TikTok.

Brand awareness growth made organic search volume increase from 20k visits a month to over 150k.

TikTok is not a platform for direct conversions - they haven’t seen a major uptick in DTC sales, but Olipop’s store locator has become one of their most visited pages.

This leading indicator of intent resulted in velocities growing by 2-3x in all major retail accounts.

So how do you run with these insights?

Here’s the playbook:

1. Adapt brand positioning to grow your target market. Listen to your early adopters and find the thread that appeals to a broader audience.

2. Develop content as a creator vs. as a brand to create trust, connection, and brand affinity.

3. Scale awareness with influencer partnerships.

4. Match creators to specific campaign goals at each stage of the funnel.

5. Track the relationship between CPMs and sales velocity to see what’s working.

_{In Partnership With Neurons}

And if you’re running paid ads, here’s how to find winning creative before you spend a dime.

1. Use the best-performing organic content from your influencer partnerships; and/or

2. Run your creatives through Predict by Neuron to:

   • Run instant A/B tests

   • Understand how your customers will respond to creatives

   • Find attention gaps

   • Fine-tune your assets

Creative is the variable between incremental progress and moonshot success.

And I love moonshots.

🕳 Rabbit Hole Reads and Resources

• Post Holiday Rush: How to deal with the headaches of returns and exchanges from Eli Weiss, Former Director of Customer Experience at OLIPOP. (LINK)

• Hot this Christmas: How Elf on the Shelf created a Christmas tradition and achieved retail success. (LINK)

• Any publicity is good publicity? Temu is using its lawsuit against Shein as a PR engine. (LINK)

• TikTok Shop: 39k+ creators on TikTok have more than 1M+ followers. In 2020, there were just 2,200. Here’s how thousands of creators are driving millions in revenue on TikTok Shop. (LINK)

• First 1k Users: How the big dogs like Lyft, Tinder, and DoorDash got their first 1,000 users. (LINK)