Case Study of a Customer-Centric Journey

On LinkedIn, I call myself a "Growth Generator.”

Ultimately, I landed on this moniker because I love to drive growth (and have been doing so my entire career) that benefits the whole. Growth that is long-lasting, sustainable, and considerate of the customer, team, the environment, vendors…everyone.

One of the ways I do this is by connecting to the heart of the customer through effective customer journeys.

LinkedIn has an overview of the businesses I’ve grown and the metrics achieved, but here’s a deeper dive into one example showcasing my creative and strategic capabilities, despite challenging circumstances.

DAYGOLD

Introduction & Background

Methods

Advertising

Website

We created content that led to strong engagement and traffic, achieving a 3-5% engagement rate on Instagram and thousands of views on YouTube.

Portland Business Journal

By positioning me as a wellness expert, we secured numerous interviews and features, which provided exposure and social proof.

Given the challenges Daygold faced, I needed to quickly pivot, pivot, pivot and create a new growth strategy.

Recognizing the time required to build trust with Baby Boomers (and being in a six-month pilot), I shifted focus to Millennials and Gen-X, the largest segments of the cannabis market. These demographics were open to using cannabis and could influence their parents—Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation—to try Daygold for ailments like disturbed sleep, anxiety, and aches. Emails, social posts, and website copy were adjusted to target this new demographic.

The "doctor-formulated" label was not a differentiator in the crowded cannabis space, so I decided to focus on a niche market. Daygold was a terrific product, and I believed that establishing a foothold within a niche could lead to broader growth. The yoga community became our niche market for several reasons:

• The yoga community is open to alternative therapies, and no CBD brand was specifically targeting this industry

• Research showed many similarities in how the body and mind respond to yoga and cannabis via the endocannabinoid system, resulting in a similar “runner’s high” with both CBD and yoga

• There is a centuries-long history connecting yoga and cannabis

To build this niche, I created a memorable and unique tagline: “Yoga in a Bottle.” It immediately resonated with consumers and wholesale partners, becoming the cornerstone of our marketing collateral and outreach. One wholesale buyer remarked, “Oh, that’s genius,” when I described Daygold as "Yoga in a Bottle," as it painted a clear picture and stood out from the dozens of products on his shelves.

Without the ability to advertise, we needed to quickly find other channels to connect with our target market and convert sales. The channels we focused on were:

• Influencers: With advertising off the table, I allocated our budget to build an influencer strategy. While this took time to cultivate (identifying on-brand influencers, outreach, product distribution, etc.), many influencers created content that garnered thousands of views, driving traffic to our Instagram and website.

• Collaborations: Instagram drove 10% of our website traffic, as we partnered with more established brands to do giveaways, exposing our brand to larger audiences and boosting our followers.

• Cannabis Clinics: I established a relationship with a cannabis clinic in Oregon with 15,000 patients and created a three-part email sequence that outlined the science behind CBD’s benefits and the specific advantages of Daygold. By offering a discounted price and sharing helpful information, this sequence became the largest driver of auto-pay monthly purchases of Daygold.

• Cannabis Non-Profits: By the end of the pilot, I secured an agreement with Americans for Safe Access to promote Daygold to their 100,000 members.

• Wholesale: I began to build out a wholesale strategy to include boutiques, wellness studios and practitioners, & health food stores. Industry veterans dissuaded any attempt to sell through cannabis retailers as the sell-through rate for products that don’t elicit a “high” is very low in those channels.

• Events: We participated in various events to increase brand visibility and engagement. I found success in generating sales when I could talk about the benefits of Daygold and enumerate all its benefits, in person, and made plans to attend upcoming yoga events.

I was hired by a B2B company to launch Daygold, a direct-to-consumer CBD brand, and conduct a 6-month pilot to determine its market viability. Daygold was a CBD tincture formulated by the renowned cannabis neurologist Dr. Ethan Russo, combining his extensive research in cannabis and aromatherapy. The tinctures, based in coconut oil, came in three blends: Calm Mind, Restful Night, and Easy Relief, each offering a unique and effective formula of cannabinoids and terpenes.

Before I joined, the company had spent over a year working with various agencies to conduct focus groups, formulate the product, build the blueprint for the brand and create a go-to-market strategy. During this period, the CBD market was rapidly growing, with numerous brands seeking exposure in a crowded and unregulated landscape.

My task was to use the existing blueprint to create a brand and execute the go-to-market strategy:

• Daygold would launch as a direct-to-consumer brand without wholesale channels

• Advertising through Google and Facebook/Instagram would be the primary method for driving exposure and sales

• The target market was Baby Boomers, the fastest-growing segment of CBD consumers

• Daygold’s unique selling points were: "doctor-formulated," "safe," "third-party tested," and "rich in terpenes”

After we built the product and structure to drive growth, we launched within six months; and then it was time to connect and convert.

The agency responsible for Daygold’s strategy had a strong track record in driving growth for online brands through advertising on Google and Facebook/Instagram. However, these platforms unexpectedly banned CBD advertising due to congressional scrutiny, even for compliant products.

Without the ability to advertise, we needed to pivot quickly and I began to focus on building an exceptional customer journey (website, email, social media, press, collaborations, events, customer service), to gain exposure through every available channel and find wholesale partners.

I designed the website, wrote the copy, curated imagery, and created a site with a 4.75% conversion rate. We adopted the tagline "Yoga in a Bottle" after redefining the target market based on findings.

We developed an educational onboarding sequence and newsletter designed to build trust, achieving up to 70% open rates.

Social Media

While the initial go-to-market strategy seemed sound, shifting market forces rendered it irrelevant for Daygold's timing.

Although Baby Boomers were the fastest-growing segment within cannabis, they also proved to be the smallest market for several reasons:

• Baby Boomers tend to have strong opinions about cannabis, influenced by the era they grew up in, making them resistant to marketing efforts

• They are slow to adopt new brands and rely on trusted sources, such as doctors, for recommendations

• Without FDA approval, most doctors are unwilling to discuss cannabis solutions with their patients

Despite Daygold being formulated by a respected cannabis doctor with decades of research, this was not a differentiator in the crowded CBD market. The formulating doctor was not well-known outside of the cannabis space, and many established CBD brands were already using "doctor-formulated" as their selling point (e.g., CBD MD). Additionally, without FDA approval, the cannabis industry remains unregulated, making safety claims unreliable, even with third-party verification.

Conclusion

Instagram

While extensive thought and time had gone into creating the product, branding, and go-to-market strategy, it wasn't until we launched Daygold that we truly understood the market and what it would take to make the company viable.

Despite pivoting quickly, finding new revenue channels, and driving $30,000 in sales with a solid structure for steady growth, the parent company decided to shutter Daygold at the end of the six-month pilot. The inability to advertise, combined with a number of other factors including the time required to grow Daygold, presented insurmountable obstacles for the parent company.

However, with the structure we put in place and a customer journey that connected and converted at every touchpoint, Daygold was growing consistently. With a longer runway (six months is a very short time to determine a product's viability) and adjusted growth expectations, Daygold was positioned for steady, sustainable growth.

In conclusion, while a well-converting customer journey is foundational to growing a customer-centric business, it must be supported by many other factors, including exposure to the target market and time.