For socks sake, educate your audience.
I founded a sock company called Jollie’s.
A social enterprise working on a ‘Wear a pair, share a pair.’ model. For every pair sold, a pair is donated to a shelter. Why socks? Because they are the most needed but under-donated item of clothing that shelters receive.
And I love socks.
I kicked it off at University selling at pop-ups, then through marketplaces like Not On The High Street and Trouva. Then we developed our own ecommerce site, and scaled our sales through retailers including John Lewis, Anthropologie, Fenwick, Fortnum and Masons, and 65+ nationwide.
Sounds like a story of a kid stepping his way up to the top of the Footsie 100.
It wasn’t.
Despite selling over 10,000 pairs of socks a year, and donating to over 52 shelters across the UK, there was something missing: a steady business model. In the first few years B2B channels gave great volume, low CAC but minimal margin; B2C channels gave margin but slow volume and high CAC. Performance in each was sporadic, extremely seasonal and lumpy in revenues.
Focus is the classic challenge startups face fresh after product-market fit. We were in limbo over what marketing machine to build, which value proposition would drive acquisition and how we should reach our early majority audience.
Choosing which sales channel to champion and how to maximise your marketing efforts is hard. Because in order to know, you need to get your feet wet and test a few.
We learned that trying to build a marketing strategy without a messaging strategy didn’t work. Deciding which product feature, benefit, or USP to focus on was one thing. Figuring out which channel that message belonged to was another.
And despite knowing we had a faithful bunch of early adopters buying, we didn’t really know why. So we went back to the pop-up to get face-to-face with our customers.
During a three week pop-up, we A/B tested three lead messages:
- Product features. “Quality. British made. Tin packaging. Organic cotton.”
- Charitable value. “For every pair sold, a pair is given to a shelter.”
- Price. “Competitive to UK-made socks at this quality.”
The results were clear: no single message converted in isolation. We realised our problem wasn’t picking ‘the key’ value proposition, but understanding where to deploy each message through the customer journey.
We discovered that those initially engaged by the opportunity to give to charity were most likely to go on to buy i.e the prime driver to purchase was an opportunity to help the homeless. Not sensational socks.
Sounds simple, but communicating our ‘giving message’ relied on teaching our customers about the sock crisis in shelters, why socks were specifically needed, how they could help by buying Jollie’s and then which shelters we gave to. All before even talking about our product.
We now knew this message was optimal at the top of the funnel, but had no idea how to communicate it simply, at scale and with sole.
The answer: build a educational marketing machine.
Or in other words, a content strategy that engaged people with the social issue before our footloose and fancy features.
Innovation takes different forms, so whether you’re creating a channel, pitching a new product or a building a fresh business model there’s a strong case for educating prospective customers.
Social, email campaigns and partnerships proved to be our best teachers. Allowing us to tell stories, interview shelters, and debunk the myths around homelessness in a differentiated, light hearted way. This content allowed us to ‘evangelise’ to an audience not previously engaged with the social issue as well as ‘radicalise’ our early adopters. Turning transactions to customers and customers to brand ambassadors.
Market education is often considered costly and time consuming. Increased CACs, untraceable ROI and longer sales cycles. And it’s true. With a well understood product for a well understood segment, market education isn’t necessary. But when you’re doing something new, this approach can be extremely powerful. Providing the opportunity to create dialogue with customers, build communities and ultimately grow LTVs whether you’re B2B SaaS or B2C sock.
I guess that’s why Aristotle said, “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
I’m sure Sockrates agrees.
