Eight Sleep's 9-Figure Growth Loop
Most viral growth strategies are only applicable to brands that have a big budget and are ready to scale.
Luckily, our friend Trent Turner, Director of Performance Marketing at Eight Sleep, shared a masterclass on how to maximize growth on a budget.
And you should 100% sign up here.
But, It comes down to a 5-step growth loop you can start to act on right away.
Work with Influencers to promote your product
This isn’t groundbreaking. But from a cost-efficiency perspective, this is the best starting point for young brands.
You can kill two birds with one stone:
- Build awareness with audiences in different niches.
- Get UGC-style creatives to repurpose.
Search for creators related to your niche and see who is already posting reviews and reach out.
And get creative by working with influencers who don’t typically create with brands from your niche.
For Eight Sleep, you would think they should work with health lifestyle influencers.
Instead, they collaborated with a variety of influencers, including athletes, TV personalities, tech influencers, and neuroscientists.
Turn top creator creatives into paid ads
You know about the importance of creative testing for paid ads.
However, testing = bleeding money.
If you cannot afford to do that yet, simply turn the top influencer creatives into paid ads.
You’ll find the best creatives by looking at which creator’s post has the highest engagement, what type of content drives the most traffic, etc.
It’s less risky because you already know that creative is a top performer.
Eight Sleep turned Marques Brownlee’s post into a BFCM ad.
Bonus tip: Repurpose creators’ posts into a wall of social proof on your site.
Get the most out of paid & influencer traffic with a custom landing page
Eight Sleep created a custom landing page for the Marques Brownlee ad.
This is called “keeping the scent trail the same.”
Where the ad creative matches the landing page design.
The page is optimized to achieve a few goals:
1. Contextualize the page based on where users come from with Marques’ testimonial and photo on the top.
2. Highlight brand story, and product benefits and remove objections.
3. Capture users’ emails for remarketing efforts.
4. Squeeze more juice out of paid traffic through remarketing.
Most people won’t purchase on the first visit, especially when you have a high AOV, so make sure you are set up to retarget these people.
Trent recommends two primary email flows before running ads:
- Welcome series flow
- Abandoned cart flow
For those who don’t become a lead, you can use a tool like Smart Recognition to turn anonymous traffic into leads.
How to increase your conversion rate and average order value.
If you increase your conversion rate and AOV, you can improve marketing efficiency (lower CAC, better margins).
Simple as that.
Trent recommended two areas to focus on:
Simplified checkout flows.
Think about how you can motivate shoppers to check out easier & faster.
Eight Sleep features ShopPay as a one-click checkout option directly on the product description page (PDP), as Shopify claims that “Shop Pay can deliver up to 50% better conversion compared to guest checkout”.
Eight Sleep also highlights its shipping, warranty, and return policy to remove objections at the moment customers are considering a purchase.
Cross-Sell/Upsell to increase AOV
Eight Sleep cross-sells their mattresses along with the pod cover (core product) and makes it easy for shoppers to learn “why add a mattress” without having to leave the page.
This is not a playbook adopted only by Eight Sleep.
Many high-growth brands have used the same growth loop.
Ridge Wallet
1. Work with Influencers.
2. Creator posts as ads.
3. Custom Landing Pages with Creator’s Top Picks.
4. Win back lost traffic with a weekly newsletter.
5. Boost AOV with cross-selling in-cart and on PDP.
6. Increase CVR with “Free Return & Shipping” and “Lifetime Warranty” guarantees.
Merit Beauty
1. Work with influencers and offer their audience exclusive discount code.
2. Use creator posts as ads.
3. Custom landing pages featuring the creator’s recommended products and sets.
4. Win back lost traffic through welcome email and retargeting ads.
5. Boost AOV through add-ons and sets on PDP.
6. Increase conversion rate by assisting users with color selections to match skin tone on site.
So if you’re early stage, you can still grow on a budget.
Make sure to have these growth loop fundamentals in place to get the most out of the spending you do have.
TLDR:
1. Collaborate with non-obvious influencers.
2. Turn top creator posts into paid ads.
3. Drive creator ads to custom landing pages.
4. Capture emails to retarget with:
- Welcome flows
- Abandoned cart flows
5. Optimize your checkout & product description pages.
