Product Websites for Direct-to-Consumer Test Markets
After a massive layoff at Everything But The House, I was connected with Monica Penagos, from Procter & Gamble. She managed the GrowthWorks Garage, where P&G was using targeted social media marketing to test small runs of DTC products being produced in Cincinnati. Monica invited me to apply to a position on the GrowthWorks Garage Bench, as a contractor, to help build Big Commerce websites and support a digital ecosystem for these DTC brands.
I had interacted with P&G brands before, while working at marketing and advertising agencies in the Greater Cincinnati area, but I had rarely been behind the security gates inside. After applying and accepting a position as UI/UX Lead and Front-End Developer, I was given a partner, Seth Drum, and a desk on the first floor of the Central Tower in downtown Cincinnati.
Seth and I were set up as a two-person team focused on meeting with brand managers, designers and technologists, often all at once. We would listen to their ideas on how to market their product to their target audiences, which was their expertise, then create and run social media ads to point those audiences to a branded Big Commerce website to sell those DTC products. P&G had accounts with a couple of email marketing platforms that tied into Big Commerce, so we were also able to support the brands with templated email campaigns.
I found this particularly interesting because we were able to track users’ across Facebook, our Big Commerce sites, and email. This allowed us insight into valuable quantitative and qualitative data. For instance, we could track a user from a “laundry club” sign-up email, to the website cart, using unique discount codes. We could also see what products were left in user carts, or iterate on which creative was working best across all channels.
Each team within P&G offered a different set of experts focused on doing the best they could for their brands. If a member of their team was interested in learning more about Facebook ad campaigns, email marketing, Google Tag Manager, Big Commerce templating, or anything else, we were allowed to take time to educate them. This enabled us to up-skill the teams working with us and spread the work out across those with more available time.
All together Seth and I worked on over fifteen brand projects over six months. This included designing and implementing social media ad and email marketing campaigns, Big Commerce website templates and custom development work, Google Analytic/Tag Manager setup, and training on the same.
