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- From Aliexpress Drop Shipping to a $100M Brand - BrandBreakdowns #002
From Aliexpress Drop Shipping to a $100M Brand - BrandBreakdowns #002
Noah Brewer
December 10, 2023
Edition #002
11/22/2023
Introduction:
Welcome to BrandBreakdowns, where we find brands that are crushing it and deep dive into their world, figure out exactly what makes them different & deliver it to you.
Our goal is to hand pick out the most creative strategies that brands are using to grow so that you can instantly implement them into your business & make more money.
If we do a good job this edition, make sure you let us know by replying to this email.
Our Process
In the Deep Dive section, you will find an in depth study on the brands internal assets (Offer, website, Socials, Etc.). You will also find a study on their external marketing & internal marketing(Advertisements, Email, Marketing Strategies, Etc).
In the CRO Analysis we will take a look at the brands home page, product page& sales process and point out 3 things they are doing great! Then we will pointout 3 unique ways they can improve their CRO. We learn through analyzing others!
In the Insider Report we go undercover as the brands customer & document the entire sales funnel, customer experience & product delivery experience. We look for & document anything cool we see along the way & give some cool ways they can improve!
BrandBreakdowns - Edition #002 - 11/22/2023
Context:
Let’s take a visit to 2017, when I first heard about the wonders of e-commerce & its possibilities. A brand began, www.trysnow.com. I remember when this store first popped off, it was tight on my radar. Starting as a regular ol’ drop shipping store & eventually turning into one of the biggest teeth whitening e-commerce brands in the world, it is definitely worth looking into their story & offer and see just how they were able to take a standard drop shipping product & turn it into a HUGE brand.
“DEEP DIVE”
INTERNAL ASSET REVIEW:
The Offer: This entire brand is 100% based on teeth whitening. While they have expanded their product line quite some bit over the years, they have not strayed away from this one solution they offer. Even going as far as coining certain products as “Teeth Whitening” that you would not normally expect, hereby creating their own niche product & having ZERO competition. (Maybe even creating a whole new market, such as their “Whitening Water Flosser”. It’s almost as if they could take any dental related product & add “Whitening” to the beginning of it, just because that is what their customer base WANTS. |  |
In terms of pricing & offers, there is nothing really special here. Other than the normal bundle deals & discounted product lines, you aren’t going to see crazy pricing models or incentives like we have seen with other brands on BrandBreakdowns before.
At the time of writing this BrandBreakdown, Snow was having a 60% off storewide Black Friday sale. Funny thing is, it is November 10th & they are already running a Black Friday sale & acting like it is normal. I’ve seen brands do this before, But I wonder if that lack of urgency helps them or hurts them.
The Website:
Other than what you would expect from their website, there are a few things they do differently that are worth calling out & emphasizing. One of them is their frequent mentions of their PR campaigns & social proof. I’ve seen a lot of this from brands, but the way that Snow has done it is quite unique.
They often mention that they are “Award Winning” & “NewsWorthy”, showing their features in numerous news channels & blog style newsletters. The feature on “The Ellen Show” has its own entire section on the website, along with the video clip of their feature on the show.
Funny enough, the reason I mention it is that if you read the articles on the news channels & their mentions, it is very obvious that it is either a paid promotion or a genuine review (Some of which the person reviewing it wasn’t even that happy), yet they still show off the mention as social proof on the website.
Another thing worth mentioning is their extreme attention to statistics & data. They have turned standard value propositions into statistical facts that they can show off on their website. Presumably through surveys & other data collection methods. One of my favorite ones is them stating that “With 75+ whitening treatments, customers save up to 61% compared to alternatives.”
Which is basically them taking an average cost of use & comparing it to likely the most expensive alternative & adding “up to” to it. It really works and looks great on the website even though you can find cheaper alternatives to Snow, even.
“Our Stores“:
In multiple locations on Snow’s website you will find mentions of Snow's presence in physical & internet retail locations. For a brand that is mostly direct-to-consumer, this is a huge step. As we’ve observed in previous BrandBreakdowns this adds a ton of social proof & stands alone as a “legitimate” certificate of the brand. Showing that companies such as Target, Best Buy, Walgreens & more trust Snow as their teeth whitening offering.
After doing some digging, it turns out more of these are online retailers than physical retailers & the physical locations near me (Arizona) that are available are Walgreens & Best Buy. The products are unavailable at Best Buy local to me, & Walgreens was mostly sold out but they did have Snow products.
It’s cool to see that they are mentioning so many retailers, yet they are only physically available in one or 2. Might be different in different cities, but it goes to show that as a brand to offer this level of social proof & retail presence is not as hard as it seems. It could be as simple as getting listed in their online marketplace, then you too can show their logo as a retail location on your website for social proof. Cool concept, great execution.
Educational Resources:
One very cool thing Snow does is offer educational resources to their customers. This is something a lot more brands need to do as it for 1. Brings you new customers, for 2. Positions you as the authority on your topic, for 3. Allows you to lead with value when following up & marketing your products.
They have their blog on the home page, writing about topics commonly searched by their target audience. Likely trying to tap into SEO & provide interesting relevant content to customers. It’s really good, too.
They have also highlighted some blogs in their footer & called it “Education”, almost implying that these are the most important blogs to read & gives customers an easy path to start consuming their content.
They also do 1 more remarkable thing with their content, which we will take a look at in the insider report, as you don’t see it until you actually become a customer!
EXTERNAL MARKETING REVIEW:
META Ads:
It’s no secret that this brand has been popping on Facebook & Instagram Ads. It seems to be one of the main ways they’ve scaled, at least in the beginning..
Here is the link to their META Ad Library -> Snow Facebook Ad Library
Their top headline of their ad copy which appears in 65 different ads at the time of writing appears to be this:
“Guaranteed teeth whitening in minutes a day ❄️🦷”
They do mention the words “Guaranteed” & “Minutes a day” in almost every single ad though. Those must be the key words they pinpointed as the highest converting.
Youtube Ads:
Snow is very active on Youtube, yet most of their videos do not have many comments & they do not have many subscribers. Which could only mean one thing, they are running lots of Youtube Ads. And one of their ads is INSANELY good & the feedback was incredible (Also their most viewed video).
The ad is well done. Entertaining, funny, hits all of the pain points of target customers & main selling points of all of their products. If you look at the comments, people say they can’t stop watching it because it is so good. Some even saying they went from the ad, searched the video separately just to comment about how good it was.
Here are some other successful Youtube ad campaigns they have ran:
INTERNAL MARKETING REVIEW:
Instagram Story:
There are a few stories that Snow posted that would be worth modeling:
In this story post, they posted that they offer a free gift with orders over $49 (More on this later)
In these stories they did a “Review Roundup” which is basically a bunch of slides highlighting their very good reviews.
Affiliate Program:
One of the only internal marketing strategies I see this brand utilizing in a different way than most (Remember, we only call out different/remarkable things brands do) is their affiliate marketing program. It’s not that they have one, all brands do. It’s how hard they push it.
Smack dab in their main menu, “REFER, GET $10”. Also in their footer. And, a pop up on the post purchase thank you page (Which we will look at in the insider report).
Obviously, I can’t see what % of their revenue comes from affiliates, or how well their affiliate program performs. But we can assume that by how hard they are pushing it on their MAIN menu & post purchase thank you page, they are either trying to IMPROVE it, or trying to SCALE it. Either one, I think it’s cool to see & think about how you can implement in your brand.
“DEEP DIVE” KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Once you have a winning solution (Teeth Whitening) do not stray away from it, even when introducing new product lines. Snow has tied teeth whitening to almost every single product they sell, even if it isn’t standard for that product type.
PR mentions on your website can increase conversions, and they are easier to get than you think. Snow has tons of articles on online blogs & was even featured in Ellen. They show these on pretty much every single page on their website.
Turn your product’s results and selling points into statistical facts. Snow does really well with this, assumably by running surveys & customer audits. This builds trust & provides an overall higher credibility level to your claims.
Providing educational resources on your homepage, post purchase emails & footer positions you as an expert in your field & gives you a unique way to lead with value when following up with your customers.
Do not be scared to promote affiliate programs. People want to promote your product, and they will sign up if they know they can earn rewards for referring people. Everybody is an influencer nowadays, take advantage of that & don’t hide your “become an affiliate” button at the very bottom of your website.
CRO ANALYSIS
HOME PAGE:
PRODUCT PAGE:
SALES PROCESS:
“INSIDER REPORT”
The Sales Process & Funnel:
Time to make my purchase! I go to their website, pick out 5 or so products that I want to buy & add them to my cart. As soon as I do, I realize that Snow is utilizing a ladder-style upsell system to increase AOV & encourage people to buy more things!
If you have less than $49 in your cart, it prompts you with “Add $X to unlock a Free Traveling Whitening Serum!”
If you have between $49 & $70 in your cart, it prompts you with “You are $X away from FREE SHIPPING”
If you have between $70 & $150, it prompts you with “Add $75.50 to unlock a Free Mystery Gift!”
I really love this concept & it will definitely work to increase AOV. When complete, it displays the bonuses you are getting: (P.S. I did actually buy more things to get the free shipping, so it worked.)
After adding all of the items I wanted, I proceeded to the cart page. It is a standard Shopify checkout process, but there are a few notable tactics used to help you through the sales process which I will mention in the additional observations section…
It is worth noting that on the thank you page, there were no special upsells or anything but there was a pop-up to get you to sign up for their affiliate program. It is outstanding how well Snow has done at promoting their affiliate program!
Overall the sales process was very quick & easy. They got me to spend more money by offering free shipping which was a nice & quick way to increase AOV without distracting the sales process & keeping things very streamlined & incentivized all the way through.
Post Purchase Email Marketing:
Email marketing seems to be a major lacking point for this brand. I received 2 emails prior to purchasing, one standard thank you email that is not even worth showing here & another showing off their cash back reward system they offer their customers. Which I really like, I have seen many big brands do this before. |  |
It has now been a few days since i have made my purchase & I have received 4-5 total emails with different discount codes, offers, features of different products & honestly nothing that really stands out BESIDES this one email. This is a “Concierge” type of email that is promoting a discount code for future purchases & promoting different blogs that their customers can read. It’s really cool, basically reaching out as a personal brand advisor offering advice on how to use your new products. This definitely brings a luxury feel to the brand & shows one of the benefits of adding consumer content to your brand. |  |
Additional Customer Experience Observations:
There were a couple of fun tactics used by Snow in the sales process that are valuable for you to see.
#1, as soon as I made it to the cart page, I was prompted with my American Airlines Miles Reward Program pop up. I wonder how many people actually use this & if it was a worthy collab for Snow, but cool to see on an e-commerce brand nonetheless…
After filling out my information in the cart page, I noticed this mysterious little box that said “Get 25% off next order of whitening refills”. I was wondering why there was a random box to check making an offer for a discount… Until I realized what it was.
It’s actually an SMS marketing confirmation box, yes the one SMSBump & other similar apps require for you to be able to SMS market to your customers. Snow has disguised it as an offer for a free discount code bonus. Pretty genius, actually.
Product Experience:
It took about a week for my products to delivered. No tracking number, emailed their support numerous times to which they responded with essentially “Your order will be there soon” & actually received my tracking number after the products were already delivered. Presentation of the products is very beautiful, this is definitely a high quality brand. Shout out to “Josh Snow” the founder for putting together a beautiful product line & scaling it into a respectable brand that we can all learn from. |  P.S. I have tried the products, and they work very well. |
Insider Report Key Takeaways:
Snow uses a ladder style bonus program that unlocks a new bonus the more money you spend, and adds a loading bar to display your progress so you can “Unlock” the bonuses. They have a small free gift, free shipping & a mega bonus for top spenders. Add unlockable gamified bonuses to your website to increase AOV, it worked on me!
After purchasing, Snow has a “Concierge” reach out to the customer to recommend the best ways to use their products, and offers links to different educational resources to help the customer. This brings a very luxury feel to the brand & shows how the company cares enough to educate you even AFTER buying their products.
You can use bonuses & promotions to get people to select the “I permit my phone number to be used for marketing” box. Snow does this by offering a discount on the customers next order, simple but I bet it is very effective. This also allows them to comply with SMS laws while still getting a high opt in rate. Creative.