The Farmer's Dog: Scalable DTC Marketing Playbook

While exploring The Farmer's Dog, I couldn't help but recall a quote by Steve Jobs that perfectly fits the vibe of many successful DTC brands. They're like mini-media powerhouses, constantly nurturing their communities with valuable products and engaging content.

Thought it was insightful and so simply communicated. Anyway, diving into today's newsletter, I hope you all find something incredibly valuable in this week's breakdown 🙂 - Dev

This is what I’m covering in today’s edition:

• Snapshot of their customer acquisition principals

• How they capture new customers through content marketing

• Creating offers that bring new customers into the product lifecycle and reduce churn

• Meta ads strategy that helped increase sales by 57%

• Elements that influence their word-of-mouth marketing

• Other news and rabbit hole reads!

CASE STUDY
The Farmer’s Dog

What they do: The Farmer’s Dog (TFD) is a fresh pet food delivery service. Meals are personalized based on a survey that the pet owner takes during the onboarding process. The service claims to have delivered over 100 million meals to date, and their search growth rate clearly shows their steady growth rate year-on-year. The founders were fed up with highly processed, burnt brown balls being marketed as ‘natural’ so they created their category of dog food that was different to what was available then.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY
Acquisition Principals in Three Phases

One thing that makes them a successful DTC brand is understanding not everyone will resonate with the same messages. Their acquisition strategy reflects this, and their funnel ethos can be broken down into three stages:

First Stage: At the start of their customer sales cycle they focus on making people brand aware’, attracting people to the brand with simple messaging and light introduction.

Second Stage: To get in front of people who are already ‘problem aware’ and are seeking products like theirs for their dogs. The focus shifts from introduction to helping them understand what they are doing with their products and why.

Third Stage: The third stage involves helping customers to educate customers about the tropes of typical pet food and the benefits of fresh food. Helping them understand what TFD is doing as a brand.

CONTENT MARKETING
Capturing New Customers Through Demand Creation

New customers enter the funnel and become aware mainly through their content marketing. For them, it’s about getting dog owners who are already feeding their dogs highly processed foods to explore their product. They are a low-hanging opportunity and through content, they are educated about TFD food benefits vs other competitors. This is what the key pillars of their content playbook look like:

An educational blog called Digest: Covering topics relevant to dog owners and offering valuable information, they position themselves as an authority and attract potential customers in the space. Blog articles revolve around fresh food benefits and why it’s good for their pets.

Pain point-driven keywords: Content keywords are centred around a specific problem that dog owners are trying to solve or learn more about. For example, they cover topics like ‘Should dogs take probiotics’ or How to Enhance Your Dog’s Health Span’.

Converting blog traffic: Since they generate over 1.3m organic monthly traffic and rank for over 237k keywords, they use this to get new customers by making an effort to convert blog visitors with a 50% discount on the first trial purchase.

OFFER CREATION
Personalised Quiz Has Helped Drive Higher Conversion Rates

Personalisation is a core part of their business and a simple customer quiz that helps drive conversions and improve their customer lifetime value.

What’s in it for customers? The quiz helps potential customers find the ideal meal for their doggos based on their unique needs and health issues. It also guides potential customers about the appropriate portion size.

Collecting critical data: TFD collects first-party data like emails, which they can use to drive more conversions through specific follow-up sequences. Plus, it allows them to run tailored remarketing or look-a-like campaigns with the emails they collect by feeding that dataset to paid social platforms like Meta.

How they use the quiz to drive conversions: People who have completed the quiz but don’t make a purchase get sent an email sequence that offers 50% off the first purchase. They’ve nailed their offer, it’s enticing and removes the price barrier when trying something new.

FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM ADS
A Strong Offer Helped Increase Sales by 57% While Maintaining Costs

Their leading channel is Facebook ads because it allows them to target a broader audience who have some affinity to their ideal customer profile. Recently, Facebook used them as a case study, here is what their campaign strategy looks like:

Campaign structure: Recently they shifted from having multiple ad sets targeting different interests and audience groups to only running a single ad set with a focused budget.

Cost-cap bidding: They use Facebook’s cost-cap bids to closely control ad spend while trying to get new customers into their eco-system. With cost caps, they know exactly what they're willing to pay and have a clear idea of their goals. This helps them somewhat predict how much it'll cost to get customers through their ads, which is always ideal for cash flow and projections!

Retargeting: A simple retargeting campaign runs to people who have visited their website and may have fallen out of the customer journey, increasing the odds of recouping lost sales.

Lookalike audiences: With the data they collect through their quiz and from previous ads, they can create an audience who have similar behaviours to their website visitors and customers. Running ads for this group is much more cost-effective than going after someone who is a complete stranger.

Strong offer: A 50% offer for first-time customers is compelling and this has helped them to increase their sales by 57%!

WORD OF MOUTH
Leveraging Social Proof, Affiliates & Shareability

At the core of their marketing is to provide good products that people will be happy to share organically. Doesn’t sound very growth hacky but it works so well for them. This is what helps them to get the word out:

Social proof: They use video ads that have testimonials, studies, and thousands of five-star reviews to show the quality of their products. Strategically distributing this content, helps them to solidify their relationship with existing and potential customers.

Affiliate marketing: TFD work with niche influencers and has an active program on their website. It offers commissions based on online sales and provides an opportunity for affiliates/fans to earn by promoting the brand.

Shareability: Receiving personalised packages addressed to your furry friend encourages dog owners to share the product and moment on social media. TFD also reciprocate by re-sharing UGC content on their socials, and people love it!

WRAP UP
TL;DR

Customer Journey & Acquisition Principals:

• Focuses on tailored messaging for different audience segments.

• Funnel stages: Brand awareness, problem understanding, brand education.

Content Marketing for New Customers:

• Their educational blog "Digest" establishes brand authority.

• Pain point-driven keywords attract high-intent shoppers.

• Converts organic traffic with a 50% discount offer, visible on their blog.

Offer Creation with Quiz:

• Offers quiz to tailor ideal meals for dogs.

• Collects first-party data for targeted paid social campaigns.

• Use email sequences to re-engage and drive conversions.

Facebook & Instagram Ads:

• Emphasizes Facebook for broad audience targeting.

• Shifted to a more consolidated ads structure vs separate ad sets

• Cost-cap bidding for controlled and predictable ad spend

• Retargeting and lookalike audiences for efficiency.

• First-time customer offer (50% off) has a higher conversion rate and helped increase sales by 57%.

Word of Mouth Strategies:

• Social proof through video ads and testimonials is at the forefront of all creative assets

• Implements affiliate marketing with niche influencers.

• Encourages shareability through personalized packages and UGC content, with customers sharing on their social media.

NEWS & RABBITHOLE READS
Google Partners With Disney+ to Provide Higher-Quality Ad Inventory

• Instagram launched its new “Ads with Promo Codes” option to all brands globally, providing another consideration for your IG campaigns. Promo codes listed in the caption can now be applied via a little popup banner in the checkout process.

• Amazon is developing a new AI search tool (Project Theia) that can create images based on shopper queries and product photos as they seek to become the source for shopping inspo.

• Google announces a partnership to integrate with Disney’s ad platform, streamlining premium inventory for marketers across the industry. This also enables advertisers to re-engage their audiences across Disney’s ad inventory.

• You should checkout these other newsletters that I’ve been finding helpful:

  • Thumbstop: Deep dives into performance marketing ads.

  • BookBub: Getting ebook deals for your next marketing read

  • Techpresso: Digital moves fast, and understanding tech is critical to staying ahead, a good newsletter to get the low down in a few minutes.

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