You are reading 3Bits & Change, Joseph's email about building a direct to consumer business on the internet and an occasional Web3 issue. Today’s email was written to quiet being pierced by the birds chirping in the distance and the stopping feet of the children.
Good morning,
Here’s a drop on that paid media we’ve been wrangling.
Bit #1 • Shopping ads kicked in
There was double in traffic without a double in spend. We’re simply allocating it differently.
Bit #2 • Shopping ads look like
For “knife sharpening”
For “knife sharpener”
The ads are still in an early algo stage. I’d think if the $59 version was shown it’d be better. Who am I to argue with the algo authorities? We’ll see how it “optimizes.”
Bit #3 • The Landers need tweaking :)
The magical gumdrop wonderfulness did not happen when shopping ads kicked in. We’ve sold exactly nothing through them. Ha!
We had imagined our phones having obvious upticks in Shopify cash register sounds, so many that we’d get sick of it. Not yet.
Want to check out some landers and let us know what you think? Got ideas for how to make search convert… more strangers buying? We’re up for perspective if you want to share it.
The current product page
https://vivront.com/products/knife-sharpening
The current lander from paid search
https://vivront.com/pages/kitchen-knife-sharpening-sharpener-by-mail
Sum
The promise of search paid media being a backbone of growth is still just a potential future “hope.” And we’ve heard that’s not a “strategy.” We’ll keep at it but, jeepers - right? Paid media seems to work for other brands. At least that’s what the case studies and agencies say. How new is this idea to searchers? Did we just blow their minds? Just exactly what’s “wrong” with the offer to searchers at this point?
We’ll keep testing.
Change
Knives for movie sets. The same knife in many different configurations. LINK
We heard one of the online knife sharpeners was purchased for $20M. That’s not a typo. We’re pumped for them, the validation of the service offering and for all the families with sharp knives making home cooking more delightful.
A knife store owner is emploring us to sign a big lease and open a store. I just can’t get my head around the balance sheet risk, yet. All help and ideas welcome. Really.
This week we experienced the spectrum of responses on our product(s). One person said “I just can’t see a reason we won’t do this. It’s a slam dunk.” Another person said, “You know there is a place in town that does this already, right?” We thanked them both. We also received a slew of “meh” like responses or lacks of replies (even though we know the go snoop the website). Such is the process of building companies and finding product fit with a market. Different parts of different markets respond differently.
We heard we showed up as a topic in some advanced forums for knife nerds as “a guy and something to do with school lunch programs.”
The last one has us thinking about a transition for the brand we contemplated but did not know would come this early. Vivront can sit at the intersection of knife stuff and school nutrition and home cooks. We’re going to sketch out that content strategy more fully and start activating it. All suggestions for home cook and chef influencers are welcome.
There is a school nutrition bootcamp we’re contemplating attending in the coming weeks. Here’s the wild thing… it costs more than going to #veecon. What?
We’ve signed and kicked off a branding project with a real life, no joke, agency. We’re looking forward to the results in the coming weeks! One core reason to do this that we want to put the logo on a t-shirt and hats and it just does not seem worth it right now.
We’ve sent our first assumptive sample packages. The webpages say they take samples. Ok. Samples they will get :).
On Your Way
It’s Saturday. Enjoy it. There are only so many more Saturdays out there for each of us. Queue the Stoics, “Memento Mori.”
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Order knives sharpened, or subscription so a package just shows up on a schedule, or a gift at Vivront.com.