As the Founder of The Inlay, an NYC startup innovation lab, Desiree works at the intersection of product, marketing, strategy and operations. She has partnered with dozens of pre-seed to series A brands such as Getaway, Common Living, Veracity, Included Health and The Muse. Many have gone on to reach major fundraising milestones with notable VCs and investors such as L Catterton, Human, Silas Capital, 23andMe and more. Through this work, she fostered meaningful relationships with founders, and began angel investing in order to further support category defining brands. Previously, Desiree has served as Senior Brand Strategist at agencies where she led high-performing teams to develop digital product strategy and award-winning campaigns for some of the world’s most influential brands, including Google, Viacom and Autograph Collection Hotels. Her work on interactive campaigns for the launch of Google Photos would help the platform secure over 100 million users after just 5 months. 

So starting off with, why was digital marketing so successful in the first place?

There were a collision of a few things that happened that really sparked a major revolution in how people were developing their marketing strategies. The first thing was this huge rise in the 2010s of smartphones, as we all know, that really gave us the ability to have so much at our fingertips, and really allowed the rise of social media platforms to exist. And on the other hand, we're having this shift of purchasing power heavily to millennials, who we hoped were generation that grew up with being very digital savvy. And so we were very comfortable purchasing online in a way that previous generations just wouldn't have been as comfortable with so early on. So, these two things were just the perfect, perfect combination to start this revolution in marketing, and really set the stage for digital marketing to truly take off.

What was this recipe that was being leveraged so much?

There were three major things happening. There are three major parts of the formula basically.

The first step was heavily, let's develop this very trendy brand. A lot of them put together a very clever messaging system and a very particular looking feel, then developing very quirky and unique content. And part of the reason that these first two steps are working so well too was because people had become so comfortable with interacting and absorbing content online that everyone was becoming, especially millennials, very critical, almost too insensitive to the way things looked. Instagram had created this perfect little house of beautiful content, that's what we were engaging with and attracted to the most. So these brands almost felt like, well, if I can create beautiful content, and really lean into that and be good at that, I'm going to really resonate with this target audience.

Secondly, let's pour millions and millions into digital marketing. And of course, there were many other things that these companies did, but this generally, at a high level, was the formula that a lot of them were taking.

And for that third point, the throwing millions into digital marketing.

Part of the reason they were doing it was because now digital, especially these social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, were allowing you to target and micro segment to a degree that you could never do before. And think about how revolutionary this was, because up until that point, a lot of marketing, if you think about traditional marketing, like commercials and billboards and things, think about that time when everybody was watching the same cable channels, getting the same commercials. A lot of us were absorbing the same advertising, whether or not it was relevant to us. So now with this platform, how amazing that you can actually target exactly who you want for your product. This could never be done before. And the funny thing is that it was really easy to do.

I think a lot of people that might not be so close to this think that there's this genius behind all this, and not that there aren't, but really, it was as simple as ticking some boxes in the back end of, I want to target this audience that lives in this particular city, so on and so forth. And then that combined with the algorithm that would basically be able to see, okay, this user is clicking mostly on this content, so we're going to feed them more of that content. Again, complete dream for a company and marketing to consumers.

And the problem, though, is that the ground has recently shifted heavily for both those consumer brands and even the VCs that backed them. A lot of these VCs in this era were expecting this level of growth to happen so rapidly that it was just like feeding fuel to the fire with how companies were setting themselves up.

So why has the ground shifted so much recently?

First of all, it's become a really noisy space. And just like any type of marketing initiative, really, whether it's digital marketing or something else you can have, you might have a lot of success if you're the early mover into a space. But once everybody starts doing it, it really loses its cachet. That of course has created such a problem, because now there's a million people, everyone's doing the same kinds of things, and targeting to the same people.

Then, secondarily, people, and this is something I think everyone talks about so much in the marketing world, is just how people are craving more authenticity and truth. And because this formula played out for so long, people have also become a lot more savvy about it. They can cut through the noise a little bit more and see this is just another brand. Not that all of those companies didn't have great products. But in a lot of cases, they were leaning so much onto, let's just create these really beautiful things and objects, and not necessarily even care about quality as much. A lot of consumers are even seeing that now, and becoming a lot more sensitive to it. A

And then the third one, which I'm sure most of you are aware of, which is the biggest piece. The 2021 iOS update, which basically would ask users if they wanted to opt out of data tracking. So of course, whether or not users even care to, everyone is choosing, yeah of course I want to opt out of data tracking. So now all of a sudden, these social platforms that built all of their digital marketing around this segmentation, now can't do this anymore, not to the degree at least that they were before. And they can't track users' data the way that they were before. So that ability of reporting and optimization has just dropped significantly.

Now we know, this old marketing playbook, it's just not the path forward to grow the next generation of unicorns. It doesn't mean that digital marketing is not still a huge, huge part of all of your marketing efforts. But it no longer is just that magic wand that's going to turn you into the next unicorn.

So what do we do now?

First of all, there is no magic wand and magic bullet that's going to give you this viral effect. And, the solutions also are very idiosyncratic. They're going to change from company to company, from audience to audience, and there's no one size fits all solution. And I think really knowing this and understanding this is so important, because again, it starts to give you the foundations for being able to think outside the box.

I've broken it down into essentially four key principles.

The first one is, solidifying your vision and your audience. Have a very clear understanding of what your mission and vision is, and who your audience really is that you're trying to target. It's very easy, especially as you're developing your target audience, people are often a little scared to do this. They want to create a target audience that is so broad. Women from the age 15 to 60, or something. That's an exaggeration, but it's such a bad starting point, because you can't be everything to everyone.

And then second, really strengthening your core offering. And this, again, is echoing my first point, which is not trying to be everything to everyone. The same goes with your product and services. In the early stages, a mistake that I sometimes see happen is, well, we're just going to build all of these things because then we'll catch something if we build all of these different products and services. But there is a way of doing product extensions that are valuable, and can still stay very true to your core mission without diluting your company.

The third, which I'm most excited to talk about, is really that idea of how do we challenge these traditional marketing avenues to create something that really works for you.

And then fourth, the ability to learn and evolve. How to always be very customer focused, listening to your customers, and evolving in a way that is still true to your value proposition and your mission, but that you're constantly figuring out how to better solve the pain points of your customers. I'm going to jump into each one of these and show you examples of each principle.

Find out more here.