For the last ten+ years, I’ve worn many hats in Direct Response Marketing.
In case you’re not familiar with Direct Response Marketing, it’s marketing with an eye to performance, measurement, optimization, and sales.
As part of this, my skillset has expanded to encompass a broad area of bringing in traffic, converting that traffic to sales, and maximizing revenue (and concurrently maximizing value) to those customers.
Here are some of the skills I’ve developed over the years; I can definitely use these to help you out if you need more customers or need help converting traffic, or optimizing your business.
1) Sales-Driven SEO
I was hired by Pineapple Products back in 2016 initially to start a blog for one of their brands.
This brand was a dating-advice company that offered info products (courses, ebooks, and the like).
I started with a domain name and a WordPress install.
This project required a ton of different skills, and I loved it! Here are some of the big accomplishments from my time there:
a) Built the site from zero to $40,000+ per month in revenue within 7 months
b) As revenue increased, hired a team to help with Editorial, Email Marketing, Push Notification Marketing, and Copywriting.
c) Managed and grew this team while maintaining profitability, our target profit margin was 25%, which was frequently exceeded. This included all salaries and overhead.
d) As part of this, I often wrote CTAs for many of the blog posts leading to direct response funnels for our products. This led to…
2) Direct Response Copywriting
I had weekly trainings with a top direct response copywriter in the field for two years. Eventually our entire team joined these calls and leveled-up their skills in copy. I still use these skills daily.
There is nothing that is quite as thrilling to see someone convert from a prospect to a customer “out of thin air” based on something you wrote.
As part of this, I wrote dozens of presale pages that lead to sales pages, often increasing conversion rate in the process. Let me know if you’re interested in this–I have a bunch of knowledge in this regard. (dj@orionscomet.com).
3) Email / SMS / Push Marketing
As part of the new blog, we set up an email list and mailed to it daily. This involved a lot of exciting projects including:
a) Creating email optins, writing copy for them, dynamically serving them based on post categories, testing new variants, and monitoring optin rates to choose the best variants.
b) Writing daily emails, blurbs, and sales pitches to our email list
c) Branching out into push notification copy (some months we did $10k on pushes alone!)
d) Based on my experience with pushes, branching out into SMS Marketing as well. I’ve doubled sales there since taking over, 100% in compliance and on-message.
4) Optimization / A/B Split Testing
Because of the success of the blog, I got promoted into Director of Content Marketing and Optimization in 2020. This added split-testing to my ever-growing utility belt, which was starting to get to Batman-levels.
Optimization is one of my passions–it’s amazing to see the impact a 30-40% gainer (or more) split test can have on a business.
My taking over coincided with the absolute strongest run in company history where we reached new heights, shattered $25 million in annual sales, and became a true powerhouse in the direct response supplement niche.
Some of the skills I learned through Split Testing:
a) Optimization using split testing tools like VWO (obviously)
b) Working with the dev team to manage projects: write up test briefs, work with them through implementation, approve completed work, and ensure the tests were running properly. I am pretty proficient with JIRA and Teamwork because of this, and I work well with (and can manage) technical folks pretty eaily.
c) Reviewing test results daily, calling tests when significance is reached.
d) Interpreting test data, talking through results with the CEO, and planning the next tests on the roadmap.
I still oversee this, though I have a valued team member who is more in the day-to-day of it now. I can (and do) still “get my hands dirty” frequently as needed.
5) Amazon / eCommerce
In 2022, we decided to start selling on Amazon. After a disastrous start with a “done for you” Amazon agency under a different department, I was tasked with taking over Amazon and getting us going and profitable.
Again, went from absolute zero to over $40k per month in sales within a year of starting.
We’ve had all kinds of ups-and-downs on Amazon, including a completely erroneous account takedown based off of a complete misunderstanding between Amazon and one of our vendors in 2024. Fighting through that and getting us reinstated I think shows resilience, hard work, and a willingness to “play Atlas,” take projects on my shoulders, and get them across the finish line.
6) The “Right Hand Man”
Since our last COO departed at the end of 2022, I have been the “Number 2” person at Pineapple. In addition to all of the above, I’ve taken on a number of special projects that help the business out.
Many of these have to do with data analysis, LTV maximization, and go-to-market strategies.
Some of these notable projects include:
7) New Product Go-To-Market Strategy & Optimization
We call this “NPO”–basically it’s everything after we have the product formulation to get to a point where the product is actively scaling. It involved:
a) Working with the Copy Team to get the sales page written and up
b) Initial media buying spends and KPI monitoring – $2,000 per week to start, that ramped up as we saw success.
c) Split tests along the way to improve conversion rate.
d) Creating upsells, banner ads, email copy, and SMS copy
e) Hitting milestones and moving the product forward through checkpoints
f) Maintaining and iterating on processes to streamline the systems we use.
We successfully got 6 products through this process to “scaling” over the 18 months we were actively engaged in NPO. I consider it a great success, and learned a lot leading multiple different teams toward a common goal.
8) Profit Maximization
After we had NPO built-out, and a bunch of new products launched, the CEO tasked me with maximizing the profits of current products.
This involves a weekly call with key stakeholders, much like NPO, and then creating and maintaining action items to achieve internal company goals.
It also requires oversight of Media Buying efforts at the scaling phase, making sure we weren’t wasting money on extravagant or excessive testing.
This is still my focus at the moment at Pineapple.
How Can I Bring Value to You?
Given all of the skills above, I am eager to bring value to you and your company, either as a consultant, or, in the right circumstances, on a full-time gig.
Email me at dj@orionscomet.com and let’s get a dialogue going.