What E.L.F. and Levi’s Know About Getting In Front of Customers

e.l.f. Cosmetics and Levi's just paid for something that so many of you do every Saturday. So what we're gonna talk about in this episode is what the big brands are catching onto or what they're starting to realize and how they're creating more visibility, more opportunity in real life on something that you are probably already doing. So let's get into it. Hey everyone, I am Jacqueline Snyder. I am the host of the Product Boss Podcast, and here we help physical product brands build the brand and the business behind it. And every single week we have a new episode, and so I'm so glad that you're here. Okay, so let's get into the latest shelf report, right? What is going on out there in the real world? Well, many of you know about e.l.f. Beauty, e.l.f. Cosmetics, and this is breaking news. This is something new that they're doing. Big brands are starting to buy booths at state fairs. So here's something that's really cool. e.l.f. Beauty, e.l.f. Cosmetics, they just bought a booth and were at the Minnesota State Fair. Kind of bonkers, right? And they actually, there were about 64,000 people that walked through the fair. And what they had said is they had never seen that many people come to a booth. What's so interesting about this is kind of that idea of what's old is new. And happening again. And now I've done a previous episode on this, but it still remains to be true. 5 out of $6 that are spent on product in retail are still being spent in real life. And so one of the things that I've always taught here at The Product Boss, I teach this to my students in the Collective, or maybe you've been a student in one of my other programs, is what we teach you is how do you get more eyes on your business? How do you use other people's audiences? And then Levi's, the denim brand, has actually also decided to do the Texas State Fair. So, and I think e.l.f. is doing it as well. So what is going on? What is going on? And we might be thinking like, are they taking our space? No, but it's showing a key pattern. Now, one of the people that work at e.l.f., they said that they have never seen that many people come to a booth as well as dwell time. So what is dwell time? Dwell time is how long somebody stays and interacts with the product at the booth. And they were seeing an average of 8 minutes, which was drastically longer than they see when people are interacting with a product online or something else, right? And so what we have to do and what we wanna learn from this is how do you get in front of other people's audiences? How are you live and in person? We've talked about this, I'm gonna say it again. In the rise of AI, in the rise of digital, things will always swing back and forth. So to give you an example, if we all remember the super clean, streamlined, modern houses, okay, if you think about that, When people were starting to build those like really, really, really modern houses, some I'd say about 20 years ago, 15 to 20 years ago, it was during the time that Apple and Apple Stores were coming out. And this is this is through research that Apple Stores were starting to come to market and they were very simplified. Think about an Apple Store versus where we used to buy computers, where maybe you went to Best Buy or Fry's. May Fry's rest in peace. But let's say Best Buy, and it's it's cluttered and it's shelves and it's technology, and there's all these different areas. And then Apple came out with a new retail. Concept of a super clean, like clean line experience. And so then what we saw happen in people's homes was there was this transition from analog to digital, like full digital, like all the products, right? Digital headphones and, and iPhones and iWatches and computers and all this stuff. And so the home started to transition from analog to digital as well. And people started to live and experience this world in which things felt more simplified. Okay, so that was that swing back. Then cut to a few years back in the pandemic, and people were home more, and they couldn't go out. So then people started to think, how do I create experiences at home that I would have experienced outside of my house? Examples, people started to create like spa-like environments. Sales went up in infrared saunas, beauty rooms, movie theaters were incorporated. There used to be like people would have wine cellars, then now people were building movie theaters into their homes. They were creating at-home experiences to stay there. Now in the last few years, if you've been paying any attention to the way people are living, people are wallpapering their ceilings and bringing carpet and color and things that are handcrafted and made again. They're finding vintage products and they're starting to go back to old school, kind of probably maybe how we used to look at houses from the '70s and '80s with like shag carpet and yellow walls. People are starting to texturize and add a human element, hand-touched by humans, back into their homes, okay? And so seeing that shift in how people are living, which also affects consumer behavior, you can see that there's this way back to this real-world experience, things that are of texture or handmade or human-touched at home, because the opposite swing is happening from this digital world, right? Online, Zoom fatigue, purchasing online, not being able to experience it. So we're seeing this play out in the state fairs. We're seeing this play out with 2 massive brands that people are paying to do experiences more. Concerts are up, festivals are up, dinner parties, in-person events. We at the Product Boss are doing more in-person events, right, where we're gathering people together. So people are coming together in this digital world, more people are together. So state fairs are gonna have this rebirth, and people and brands are looking at that and saying, how do we get in person? So how is this supportive to you? So if you are doing in-person markets, yay. Maybe you're seeing more people start to come to them, more people starting to walk the aisles and hang out at your booths, more interested in handmade, how it's made, the story. They're moving away from mass, mass, mass produced and more into interpersonal relationships and the story behind products. I actually this morning saw an Instagram post of when did we— what did it say? Like, when did we get so boring or lose the flavor or something? And it showed silverware, like old-fashioned silverware. Think about like really, if you think about like your grandma's silverware versus the silverware now that's super, super plain. Plates and dishes that maybe were like, again, think about your grandma's dishes and then the dishes that are now. And it's like, when did we lose all of the human touch, the individual elements? And so there's this comeback to it. So I would say probably over the last decade, there has been this belief that we need to all be online. We need to be growing our audience, our followers, growing on social media, being present there, and also having an e-com online store. And while I believe all of this to be true, I think there's a different approach to this. What I've been teaching for so long is being backed up in these stats, in what's happening. So how does a $7 billion brand decide that they're gonna go do a state fair? Well, let's talk about it. One, anytime you guys are in front of real-life people, anytime you have the opportunity to activate at an event, whether you're sponsoring an event, whether you— I was just at Powerhouse Women in Arizona. I had multiple clients there that had booths people who listened to the podcast that I'd never worked with that came up to me and they're like, oh my God, I listened to the show. Shout out if you're listening. And so there are people I've worked with, people who I haven't worked with, but maybe listened to this podcast. And so they were activating, right? They had these booths, they were selling. It wasn't a true market, but they were getting exposure. They were getting social media exposure. They were getting, um, press exposure, exposure to the ideal customer. That's why they choose to be there. Or maybe you're doing an in-person market, something you've always done, craft fairs. Art shows, farmers markets, that kind of thing. Now, one thing that I work with my clients on is that it's really important that wherever you are, the ideal customer avatar is there. Let me give you an example. I had a client once that was selling a $90 candle. I know I bring up candles a lot. They're easy to talk about. But a $90 candle, she went to a farmers market and she's like, nobody was buying my $90 candle. It's too expensive. So she drew this conclusion about her candle saying it's too expensive because nobody bought it at this farmers market. But when we actually dug into it and we looked at it, it was like, actually, the people going to this farmer's market are not people that would— the location, the place— are not people that would normally buy a $90 candle. Not in Bloomingdale's, not at Nordstrom's, not at a boutique. They're not even the right customer. So of course, yes, you're there in front of them, but they weren't the right customer to start with. Versus if she took her $90 candle and went to the Beverly Hills farmer's market, Santa Monica, somewhere, let's say, in Los Angeles that's trendy and these people are buying $12 lattes and $30 omelets, you know, they're already spending money on things, and they're so used to spending on a candle, like they're already shopping at these stores and buying $90, $100, $300 candles, then finding a $90 candle at a farmer's market where things are already priced at a different level than this other location, then it would make sense. So what I want you to also think through is, is the right customer there? Now if we talk about e.l.f. Cosmetics, e.l.f. Cosmetics is, Not a brand that sells at Sephora. Sephora, we get to think about as like a higher level beauty beauty brands. Like anyone who sells at Sephora, it's a little bit higher of revenue level versus if we were at Ulta. Ulta is a different price point, a different customer. Elf sells at places I think like CVS, Walgreens, at drugstores. So if you think about the general population of who's going to the Minnesota State Fair. Fair, if you think about the income and the— what they make in that location, if you think about what they have access to in terms of stores and the general consumer that's going to walk through the state fair, e.l.f. makes so much sense. Do you see that? So if you were trying to sell La Mer, which is like a $300 face cream, at a state fair in Minnesota, it might not make sense, but e.l.f. Cosmetics does makes sense. Levi's jeans, which are— you can buy bougie Levi's, but Levi's have been around since the Gold Rush. So Levi's are just like the all-man's working jeans, like the all-woman's working jeans. And so Levi's is definitely— it's not a cheap product, but it's not the most expensive bougie denim. So finding Levi's, which is an American brand through and through, at the Texas State Fair would make sense. Okay. So when you are thinking about getting a booth, getting a stand, get paying or investing your time and money into being at a physical location, I want you to first check and say, is my ideal customer avatar there? Right? Because if they're not, then I would say don't do it. If they are, do it. Because the things that you benefit from are exposure, awareness. If you have any sort of version of them taking photos and tagging you, fantastic. Okay? The second benefit of being in person is that You don't have to pay for the customers to come find you. The way I teach visibility is POP marketing. It's paid, organic, and partnership. Okay, paid is traditional marketing where we're gonna run ads potentially, and you pay for people to come. You might even be paying for user-generated content, affiliates, that kind of thing. Organic, we could think of organic like social media is organic. We're hoping that something's organically gonna go viral and then people are gonna discover the brand. and they're going to do it. Organic is a way of discovery. So organic is they've decided to come to the show, walk the aisles, and then discover your product. You paid to be there, but the, the fair, the, the event is paying for and acquiring the customers, the ideal customers to come through. So you don't have to do that. The other thing is partnership. So partnership is if you're doing a collaboration with a brand, partnering with another company, like there's some sort of partnership exposure. Okay. So being at an in-person market, you're using their audience, their customers, they're doing the marketing, you just get to be there ready to sell. All right, so those are the benefits. The next part is selling. So now you've got hopefully a percentage of those people that are walking through the show that are your ideal customer, and they're coming up and they're interacting with the brand. They're just, it's discovery, they're learning about the brand, they're interacting with it, they're interacting with you or a salesperson. This can also be true about retail stores, okay? And it's a little bit of a side caveat, but this is why I also teach wholesale as a way of exposure. It worked for me. That's how Kim Kardashian and Carrie Underwood discovered my products, by being on retail shelves, okay, which is other people's shelves. But we're going to talk about in-person markets again, fairs, festivals, that kind of thing. So now they're in discovery of the product, they get to interact with you and hopefully buy from you. Okay, that means you've converted, you've created a new customer. If they buy from you or they don't buy from you, here is what is gonna go back to that dollar out of the $6 of how do we get them to come buy from you online? How do we have you not reliant on these markets on the weekends? And how do we get them to be customers of yours in other times? So one of the biggest things that I teach people is this exposure to customers is a marketing event. Okay? So we get to look at it as a marketing event as well as a sales and conversion event. Now they come in and they learn about you. They learn about the product. They they interact with it. They try it on. They taste it. They smell it. Maybe they buy it. Maybe they don't. But you know what you've got to do? You've got to grow your email list. The asset, the only asset. Okay, there's two assets you're going to own that are yours: your email list and your website. We love Shopify, so Shopify is one of them. And if you guys want to try it out, it's theproductboss.com/shopify. And there's like a free trial in there and we hook you up. So if you wanna try Shopify, but no matter what, if you have an e-com site, you want to work on how to grow your email list in person. Because guess what? I don't care if they take a business card or they follow you on Instagram. Business cards get thrown away and Instagram, I don't know, I follow people all the time and unless the algorithm puts 'em back in front of me or I save them, I'm never finding them again unless I think about them and think about looking it up. So you get to use this as an acquisition point, as a marketing point. To grow your email list. Now, my clients in the Collective and students of mine, we've always worked on different incentives, ways to get them to join the list. First tip, my friends, is just ask them. Have the form out there, like have them write their name in and their email address, okay? This goes a little bit next level. If you are a 6, multi-6, 7-figure business, you probably already have this system. If you're still kind of growing it, this is something you're gonna wanna work on. But you grow your email list, you start to build your list, and then you send emails, whether it's a welcome series of emails, And then it goes into your traditional promotional emails. Your job is to grow your email list, and your job is then, as you've acquired them, to market to them, to remind them to come buy from you, and then drive them to your website. That is how you get people to buy from you when you're not in person. But how cool is it that you get to get in front of all of these customers, and they get to interact with your product? 64,000 people for e.l.f. is gigantic, where maybe somebody who didn't know the product now discovered it and bought it, and now maybe when they see it at a store in a retail environment, they remember it from the fair and they buy it again. So all of these activation points are really, really important. And what I want to tell you is that digital is beautiful. We'll always have online, we'll always have digital. But what we're seeing over and over and over is the in-person experience is going to continue to grow. In fact, TJ Maxx brand, and I've talked about this in a previous episode, just opened 500 new stores. 500 new stores for an off-price market. Okay, like off-price product. Why? Because people love TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, their whole chain of brands. They love it because it's discovery, because they're going and they're exploring and it feels like they're at a market without being at a market. They roll up and they're like, okay, I'm gonna walk through this section and maybe there's one rug or 2 chairs and that's it. Or, you know, a couple things. Sometimes there's more product, but it's like, oh, I found 4 towels, and that's the only 4 towels I see, and I have to buy those 4 towels because I can't come back in and buy it again. It makes people buy in the moment. It's the experience and it's the discovery. And so what I want this episode to land for you is that big brands are doing what small brands have been doing, but it backs us up and basically proves to you that being in person and in-person discovery is so important and so crucial. So if you can take anything away from this, and especially as we're rolling into the holiday season, I want you to think, how can I go get in front of other customers? Even if you are a million-dollar brand, because if you're a million-dollar brand, you might be paying for ads and acquisition. You most likely are selling wholesale at this level, or you're paying for some version of acquisition to get them to your website, okay? So there's 2 things. It's either you're doing wholesale or you're paying for people to come to your site. Typically, that's what's happening unless you've got some massive organic way that you've grown. But most of the clients that I work with that are in that million, multi-million, they're doing all of them— paid, organic, and partnership. But think about and get curious about how can you activate the same way that e.l.f. and Levi's did? How can you activate other opportunities that might bring in a different crowd, that might give you a different exposure, that might kind of freshen up how you show up for people. And if you're not yet at a million-dollar brand and you're on your way there, there's so many things that you probably got from this episode right now of ways to think about exposure, and then realizing that what we've created is what big brands are starting to catch onto. Don't take it as competition, take it as validation. Take it as validation of like, oh— Yeah. They have more data points, they have more money in research and development, to know people are going out and they're being exposed to stuff. So by seeing that and knowing that, we get to follow what the big brands do as well. All right, I hope this episode was helpful to you. Um, if you're watching this on YouTube or you're not, go and follow me on YouTube, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment because I put my makeup on and do my outfit even though I did like 700+ episodes without video. Now we're doing video. You might be watching it on Spotify or on Apple or listening. So make sure you're following the show and you're subscribed. If you are building a 6 and 7-figure product-based business and you're like, I want help, I want to be supported, you want to learn how to lead, run, and grow your company so that it doesn't stall out, it doesn't break at $1 million and beyond, I'm teaching a workshop. All you have to do is head to theproductbossworkshops.com, register, it's totally free. And in that workshop, we're going to talk about what it takes to grow to a million-dollar brand, what the gaps are, Your path to scale without breaking, and then really see how we can support you. So head to theproductbossworkshops.com. Until next time, I will see you in the next episode.