Annual sales surpassing 100 million! Why is DTC brand SNOW known as the Apple of the oral care industry?

DTC brand SNOW is known as the Apple of the oral care industry due to annual sales surpassing 100 million

The overseas oral care market is expanding.

According to data from Huaxi Securities, the global oral care market size is steadily developing, with a compound annual growth rate of 3.2% from 2017 to 2021. Due to the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the growth rate slowed down in 2020. However, with the post-pandemic consumption demand in various countries recovering, the growth rate exceeded the pre-pandemic level. The global oral care market is expected to reach $47.13 billion in 2021 and grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.1% during the forecast period, reaching $66.76 billion by 2028.

Compared with China’s relatively lagging oral care concept, developed countries such as Europe and the United States began to pay attention to oral care in the 1970s. In fact, many oral care products also originated and became popular in Europe and the United States.

Decades of development have not only given birth to chemical giants such as Colgate and Crest, but also incubated a batch of DTC oral care brands after entering the Internet era.

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Among them, SNOW Teeth Whitening (hereinafter referred to as SNOW), a brand specializing in oral care products born in 2017, is one of the best.

Unlike traditional oral care products such as toothpaste and mouthwash, SNOW has always focused on the core demand of “teeth whitening” for consumers from the beginning, choosing more technological and effective core categories such as Mouthpiece and Electric Toothbrush, and subsequently launching derivative product categories such as Whitening Strips, Water Flosser, toothpaste, and mouthwash. After years of development, SNOW’s sales have exceeded $100 million, with a cumulative user base of over 13 million, and has even been referred to by many as the “Apple of the oral care industry.”

So, how did SNOW do it? What aspects of its marketing strategy are worth learning from for international brands?

1. Creating excellent products to win over customers

Although with the development of society and the economy, people’s concept of oral care has shifted from health to beauty, the oral care market has been expanding continuously. However, the entry threshold for this industry is relatively high. This is not only because traditional products such as toothpaste and mouthwash have already been “monopolized” by major players, but also because oral care is largely part of the modern medical system. In other words, consumers tend to go to hospitals or dental clinics rather than simply searching online. Therefore, creating excellent products is the first step to SNOW’s success.

Dr. Brian Harris is one of the top cosmetic dentists in North America. He has published special reports in various publications such as Cosmopolitan Magazine, New Beauty, Allure, and Health Magazine. Because of his professional ability, SNOW hired him as the chief medical advisor. This was very helpful for product development because the landing of “teeth whitening” demand depends on the word “effect”. Consumers pursue almost immediate effects. In addition, when SNOW developed its core product, the “home whitening kit” (shipment of over one million units), it also developed an exclusive app to connect the product with smartphones. When customers use SNOW’s unique LED technology to accelerate teeth whitening, they can check the status of the device, browse their own whitening history, and even track their whitening progress on the app. This visual data display greatly reduces the usage threshold for SNOW’s target customers and improves their product experience. Moreover, by connecting their own products with customers’ smartphones, it increases the frequency of customers using the product to some extent and makes it easier for them to share the product with friends, which is undoubtedly a huge help for SNOW’s brand promotion. Finally, when the initial product successfully entered the market, SNOW’s founder Josh Elizetxe would also keep in touch with the first batch of customers tirelessly and modify the product by listening to their opinions. Currently, SNOW’s “home whitening kit” can achieve the following three points:

1. Wider scope, suitable for sensitive teeth

2. Faster results, removes coffee, cigarette, alcohol, and even soda stains within three days

3. More cost-effective, each kit can be used up to 75 times, with a single whitening cost as low as $2

This excellent product not only brings more and more customers to SNOW, but also wins many influential commercial awards, further enhancing SNOW’s reputation. In the past two years, SNOW has won beauty awards from well-known media such as The New York Times, ESSENCE, New Beauty, and GQ.

2. Multi-channel promotion and user growth

As a DTC brand, SNOW’s potential customers are widely distributed, and therefore the brand and product need to be reached through various channels. Being fixated on one channel is neither smart nor effective.

01 Online Advertising Placement

Currently, mainstream social platforms are one of SNOW’s advertising channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Each SNOW ad video emphasizes the simplicity and convenience of the product, and is accompanied by embarrassing situations in daily life caused by tooth stains and discoloration.

In addition, thanks to the founder’s previous work experience, SNOW has even more refined operations in advertising placement. As an example, during the famous shopping holiday Black Friday, in order to promote their own products during this period, SNOW not only prepared ad content in advance, but also used Facebook’s CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization) function to achieve huge results with a limited budget.

SNOW places every pre-shot advertisement video on Facebook, allowing them to be detected by Facebook and authorized for automatic placement and optimization. This allows Facebook to automatically identify and select the best-performing ads and allocate higher budgets to them. Secondly, through the CBO function, SNOW allocates 75% of the budget to remarketing to people who have watched video ads or interacted with SNOW’s Facebook page.

Through a highly data-driven and results-oriented advertising strategy, SNOW maximizes the use of its budget and gains many customers. In the end, during the entire Black Friday period, SNOW achieved three satisfactory results:

1. An increase in purchase volume by 2.4 times compared to the previous period

2. ROAS reached 1.7 times (income generated per dollar of advertising)

3. 23,000 families applied for free dental care (equivalent to potential customer information, which is beneficial for SMS marketing)

02 Traditional Channels

As we all know, email marketing and SMS are two of the most commonly used traditional marketing methods for many European and American brands. SNOW, located in the United States and radiating globally, is no exception.

SNOW collects user contact information in many ways, and on its official website, we can see that SNOW uses multiple pop-up windows to encourage users to fill in their information.

1. They provide a mystery gift to each unsubscribed customer in exchange for an email address;

2. After they fill in their email address, the pop-up window will show them a free gift (exquisite charcoal dental floss worth $22 per box);

3. After the user clicks the button to add the free dental floss to the shopping cart, a new window will appear, and SNOW will use travel-sized toothpaste to entice customers to leave their phone number;

4. After the user fills in their phone number, the entire process is complete.

Upon receiving this information, SNOW will begin email and SMS marketing. In addition, SNOW is also leveraging traditional channels such as magazines, radio, and billboards to enrich the product’s promotional materials and methods of promotion, which for some potential customers is a way to endorse the product’s functionality. SocialBook has rich overseas top magazine and radio resources, which can help Chinese brands go abroad and complete promotional activities through multiple channels.

03 Social Media Influencer Marketing

In recent years, TikTok’s explosive popularity has not only heralded the arrival of the short video era but also provided many brands with new marketing ideas, and SNOW has done very well in this regard. SNOW has collaborated with different types of influencers on TikTok, including top bloggers with nearly ten million followers and waist-level bloggers with only one million followers; both Arab female bloggers from the Middle East and Miss Global from Asia. Thats.ram is a female blogger from Bangladesh who practices Islam. Her account content mainly consists of sharing daily life and shooting funny videos. She has worked with SNOW on a video to promote SNOW’s flagship product – “Home Whitening Kit.” The video shows the entire process of Thats.ram using the whitening kit, first using a test card to check the whiteness of her teeth, and then demonstrating how to use the whitening kit. The magical accent coupled with exaggerated expressions and actions added a lot of humor to the video, which ultimately received 4 million likes and 6340 comments. Considering the relatively low promotion fees of Bangladeshi bloggers, SNOW’s collaboration with Thats.ram can be said to be very cost-effective. Pushpika de Silva is the representative of Sri Lanka in the 2021 Miss Universe pageant. Due to her outstanding appearance and the 2021 title controversy, she still has a relatively high degree of attention. In 2022, she collaborated with SNOW on a promotional video on TikTok, which intuitively shows the process of using the whitening kit.

SNOW hopes to use Sliva’s popularity and attractive appearance that fits the public’s aesthetic to combine the words “charming” and “sexy” with SNOW’s products in customers’ minds, creating an atmosphere of “using SNOW, you can be as beautiful as Miss Universe.” Although Pushpika de Silva is Miss Universe, based on the operation of her account, she can only be considered a mid-level influencer. Therefore, the budget for cooperation will not be too high. SNOW’s control over the budget is worth learning from for every brand going abroad!

In SNOW’s view, “teeth whitening” is a demand that belongs to everyone, regardless of skin color, race, or gender. Therefore, a diverse selection of influencers not only helps SNOW gain more customers but also helps SNOW constantly break through social circles and reach as many customers as possible.

Thirdly, valuing celebrity cooperation for successful brand expansion

In addition to “rough and simple” advertising and “thought-provoking” email marketing, cooperating with well-known influencers and celebrities is another method that can quickly yield results for DTC brands. SNOW’s founder Josh firmly believes in this.

“And honestly, a lot of our A-list macro-influencers, a million-plus, are our customers first. And we’ll reach out to them… For example, the deal we did with Floyd Mayweather, he was a fan of the product, and the team was a fan of the product.” “Honestly, many of our top celebrities and influencers, who have over a million followers, are also our customers. We will contact them… For example, we cooperated with Floyd Mayweather, who was a fan of the product, and his whole team was also a fan of the product.”

Kris Jenner, the mother of the Kardashian family and one of the most top-notch celebrities in North America and even the entire overseas entertainment industry. SNOW has collaborated with her before, in a very simple form, by shooting an unboxing video for SNOW’s product.

In addition, Ellen DeGeneres, the host of the famous TV show “Ellen Show”, has also collaborated with SNOW. As a talk show, Ellen naturally introduced funny events that occur in daily life due to yellow teeth, stains, and other similar situations, and then smoothly advertised for SNOW. The entire process lasted for 2 minutes and 35 seconds. Thanks to Ellen’s excellent hosting skills and the quality of the program, the insertion of this advertising content was very smooth and the effect was very good. SNOW even kept the video intact and put it on the homepage of its official website, which shows its huge influence. In addition, SNOW also made the collaboration video between Kris Jenner and Ellen into an online advertisement, using the influence and fame of both to complete endorsement and encourage customers to place orders. This approach not only controls the budget but also maximizes the conversion rate of the advertisement, killing two birds with one stone!

As a DTC brand focused on teeth whitening and oral care, the threshold for SNOW’s products is actually not as high as imagined. However, through precise advertising placement strategies and clever influencer marketing, combined with the promotion of top-notch celebrities, SNOW has completely raised its profile and widened the gap between itself and other competitors.

For overseas brands that want to quickly enter the market and promote their products to target customers, not only do they need to start with a core product, but they also need to use “leveraging” marketing measures and utilize resources such as influencers and celebrities to promote their brand! Whether it is a celebrity or an influencer, SocialBook, which has rich experience in overseas marketing and first-hand resources of celebrity endorsements, can provide huge assistance!

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