D2C Marketing Mistakes and the Power of Pinterest | Sandy Dedeian

David McBee: Hello, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I am David McBee. Our guest today is Sandy Dedeian, founder and CEO of Rectified Inc. Sandy is an atypical marketer and entrepreneur who has been shaping brands since 2004. With a diverse background that combines academic knowledge, traditional work experience, and an entrepreneurial spirit, Sandy is known for creating compelling brand and go-to market strategies. Passionate about digital marketing, including social media, lead generation campaigns, customer acquisition and relationship management, Sandy's ultimate mission is to help D2C brands get discovered and achieve remarkable growth. Sandy, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Sandy Dedeian: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. David McBee: Sandy, I'd like to highlight your expertise in D2C, direct-to-consumer, advertising in today's episode. So I'd like to start by asking you what is the number one mistake that D2C brands make as they try to market their brands and scale their businesses? Sandy Dedeian: The number one mistake that direct-to-consumer brands make and not just direct-to-consumer brands, but really, everybody is to use hacks and tactics for short-term gains. And that's something like... if you're scaling your brand, you can't really rely on that. Maybe today you did some hack or something to grow your brand or grow your sales for the current period of time. But if you want to grow your brand and scale it for the long run, you cannot rely on hacks and tactics. You have to actually build your brand on the right foundation and actually do the work, give it some time in order for you to grow it and scale it on the right foundation. David McBee: What are some examples of hacks and tactics that you've seen people use that maybe backfired on them in the long run? Sandy Dedeian: There are so many things. For example, going viral on TikTok or on Instagram or any social media platform. Today, if you go viral on, let's take TikTok for example, and you're selling a product online, you're so happy because everybody came and bought your entire inventory and you think you're doing great. But what happens next is that, for example, people will still want your product and you don't have enough inventory. Did you think about how you're going to replenish these quantities, how much time it's going to take for you to create this product, or if you're ordering it from some country or even if it's in your own city, how much time it's going to take to create, to manufacture the new products, all of those components. How are you going to pack all these orders? Who is going to help you? And usually in these situations, direct-to-consumer brand founders, they start alone and they don't have... they're going to bring their mother and sister and friends and they're going to all pack things together, but how is that sustainable on the long run? Meanwhile, while you're doing things slowly and gradually and then increasing all your sales and doing the right strategies, that's when you're going to be able to grow and stay where you are and not just increase sales and drop down and then everybody will forget about you and have bad reviews because you shipped late or you didn't have enough product and all of those things. So that's one of the examples. David McBee: Let's shift the mindset from a D2C brand to an agency that's working with a D2C brand. What are some of the mistakes maybe that they make in this same regard? Sandy Dedeian: Usually, agencies, in the traditional sense of an agency, they come and then tell you, "Oh, you're not doing TikTok or you're not doing Pinterest. Let's do this" because it's what's missing in the equation sort of. What I usually like to do is to actually analyze the business and create the strategies. So I start with a consulting part first before saying, "Let's go start with Pinterest because this is what you need for your business or let's do Google Ads or whatever it is that's missing." David McBee: Now, you mentioned Pinterest and I happen to know from doing my research that you are a big fan of leveraging Pinterest. And I don't think Pinterest is the first place that most of us think of when building campaigns for our clients, so what are we missing? What's so great about Pinterest? Sandy Dedeian: I really love Pinterest for product-based businesses, even service-based businesses. I use it for my business and I use it for the direct-to-consumer brands that I work with because Pinterest, first of all, it's a happy place. There's no bad news there. There's no all those negative vibes. And second of all, it's not really a social media platform. It is a visual search engine. That's how they define it. So imagine you are selling something, a product or a service, and then there's somebody else on the other side searching for this product or this service. So when they go there, they're going to see, let's say you are, I don't know, decorating your living room. David McBee: furniture store. Yeah, we're on the same page. Furniture. Sandy Dedeian: Yeah. Exactly. You're decorating your living room. You go on Pinterest and you start looking for things, ideas, and then you're going to find pictures of different living rooms. And then there are products in these pictures and these products are provided by a brand that sells, I don't know, a couch or a table or a lamp or pillows, anything that you can find in the living room. And then you're going to click on this picture. You're going to go to this brand's website, and here you go, this thing that you really wanted and you added it on your board and you really want to have your living room looking like this. There's the brand that sells this exact product and you're going to go and buy it from there. So it's just something that you start there, you post these things, and then the more the account grows, it becomes a snowball effect. Sometimes, there are pins that you pinned, I don't know, three years ago, and they're still bringing traffic to people's websites. So that's why I love it so much. It just becomes a marketing machine sort of. David McBee: That really kind of puts it into perspective. And I can see it for brands that have products like sofas and tables, but I'm struggling with the idea of a service provider, say, an insurance company or a hospital. How would they leverage Pinterest? Sandy Dedeian: Usually, for service-based businesses, the goal is to bring people from Pinterest and have them to your email list or just bring traffic. If you're doing retargeting ads, that becomes a whole other thing. But if we're talking organic, I bring them to my email list and then from there, you can build those relationships with them, depending on what kind of service you are offering. And in terms of hospitals, I've never seen hospitals, but I did work with a client who was providing women's health services. So like postpartum services or people, women who are pregnant and they were on Pinterest and people were actually converting, so they were offering one-on-one consultancy online or they had doulas and things like that for pregnant women and it was working very well and they had all those rules about HIPAA compliance and I don't know what. I don't know the details, but it was working very, very well for them. David McBee: What were the pictures of? Sandy Dedeian: So a pin is a very long rectangle on Pinterest, so I always have a title and a call to action and then some sort of a picture. If it's a podcast episode, I have the guest, me and the guest or just the guest. And if it's just something about social media or something about email marketing, et cetera, I just put some relevant image in the center, but with a big title and a call to action. The same applies for a product. The same applies for the health service. It's pregnant women with a big headline that says, "Need help." I don't know. It depends on what the topic is about. And then a call to action like "click here" or "book now" or "buy now" or whatever it is. David McBee: They're almost display ads. Sandy Dedeian: Yeah, it's very static, but nowadays, since two years now, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, I forgot the date, but they started also adding Idea Pins, which is a little bit like TikTok meets Instagram Stories kind of thing. So there are some dynamic videos also on the platform. David McBee: Awesome. Well, we're almost out of time, but anybody who wants to learn more about all your expertise on Pinterest, they can look for you online and that's fantastic. Before we go, do you have a podcast or a book that you'd like to recommend to our audience and feel free to share your own podcast here if you like. Sandy Dedeian: It's on almost all podcast platforms. It's called the Rectified Podcast. It is specifically for direct-to-consumer brands. Other than that, I'm currently reading Never Split the Difference. I don't know if you've heard of it. David McBee: I have. Sandy Dedeian: Maybe I could recommend that. Yeah. David McBee: Thanks for being my guest on Simpli.fi TV. What's the best way for viewers to learn about you? Sandy Dedeian: I'm mostly active on Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. It's my name is the handle, @SandyDedeian. David McBee: All right. Well, thank you for being my guest today. Sandy Dedeian: Thank you for having me. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.