Interview with RESULTS MAGAZINE: Pietropinto’s Passion for D2C Marketing Drives Desire to Do Things Differently

Seasoned marketing professional Nick Pietropinto, founder and CEO of Double Diamond VIP, dedicates most hours of his days to helping businesses capture the advantages of direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing. In between flights, speaker panels, client conference calls, and managing his clients’ campaigns, Pietropinto found time to answer a few questions about why he focuses on D2C and why encourages growing brands to do so as well.

Results: You recently launched Double Diamond VIP. Can you tell us about it?

Nick Pietropinto: Gladly! Double Diamond VIP is a team of D2C marketing experts who call on 50 years of combined experience to help our clients maximize the success of their D2C marketing campaigns and to accelerate their growth — whether they’re new to D2C or have already dipped their toe in and now want to take their efforts to the next level.

To be clear, we are not a marketing agency. We don’t purchase the media for our clients’ marketing campaigns. What we do is deliver what I’ve come to call our "1-2-3 Punch."

One, we help brands lower their per-lead costs by introducing the correct agencies that buy the optimal mix of media at the right price to reach target audiences across all marketing channels — an omnichannel approach. We also help our clients managing their media agencies.

Two, we manage high-quality inbound and outbound call services through nearshore call centers to really drive those conversions and sales, while our clients stay focused on running their businesses.

And three, we help brands improve their customer experience and lifetime customer value, so all the investments they’ve made in acquiring that customer continue to pay off.

Throughout it all, we connect our clients to data and analytics they can use to precision-target their audience, measure results, and continue fine-tuning their D2C campaigns so they keep seeing returns.

Results: Why did you decide to launch Double Diamond VIP?

Pietropinto: I’ve been in the marketing and sales business for more than 25 years now, starting on the B2B side and helping a small group of companies to grow exponentially during half of my career. I then moved to the B2C side, where I spent more than a decade managing a multi-million-dollar media budget for a leading cosmetic brand, catapulting its sales conversions and increasing customer retention by introducing save the sales techniques. Ultimately, I helped grow the company’s revenue tenfold.

I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. In my experience, D2C marketing offers clear advantages over traditional marketing for growing brands that benefit from bypassing the middleman and selling directly to their customers. But you’ve got to have the right D2C strategy and plan to really make it work for you. That’s where my experience and passion come in.

D2C marketing is like a complex puzzle with many constantly moving parts that require attention. It makes me think of a video I saw of a kid juggling three Rubik’s Cubes and solving all of them at the same time, within minutes. I thrive on the challenge of solving this ever-moving, ever-shifting puzzle. I enjoy that it requires constant learning about evolving technologies and digital platforms, having to adjust and finetune your strategies and methodology, and staying on top of your game.

It’s always changing — think about the demise of the third-party cookies, otherwise known as the "cookie apocalypse," that makes it more challenging to follow site visitors across the web for retargeting and attribution purposes, or the shift of eyeballs from traditional TV to streaming and over-the-top (OTT) services, and now the lurch toward artificial intelligence (AI). It’s always new, always interesting and exciting, and that’s what I love most about D2C: it’s always evolving.

I wanted to take this passion and use it to help businesses harness D2C to propel their hypergrowth without having to undergo the learning curve and long periods of trial and error. With Double Diamond VIP, brands can hit the ground running with their D2C marketing, see results quickly, and stay focused on their core business while we do the work of solving this ever-evolving marketing puzzle.

Results: Where did the name Double Diamond VIP come from?

Pietropinto: When you think about a diamond, you picture this beautiful, almost-perfect gem that’s polished and brilliant. But that diamond came from rough, raw, imperfect material. That’s how I see my clients’ brands: as raw material with the potential to shine. We take that potential, hone and shape it until it’s a beautiful, near-perfect diamond, unique unto itself.

At the same time, we’re continually honing and refining what we bring to the table as well — our vision, our experience, our methodologies. That’s the second diamond. By continuing to evolve and perfect our own assets, we’re able to stay ahead of the ever-changing D2C landscape and keep generating results and growth for our clients. And of course, every one of our clients is considered a VIP, and gets treated as such. We strive to make D2C marketing smooth, seamless, and enjoyable for our clients. We’re elevating D2C marketing — not only the results, but the entire experience.

Results: How do you think Double Diamond VIP does D2C marketing differently — and better?

Pietropinto: Without giving too much of our secret sauce away, I’d say our most significant differentiator lies with our methodology — which has been shaped, tested, and refined over years and years of experience. So, we start each engagement by identifying our clients’ goals and expectations, as well as the opportunity. Then we move into the planning phase, where we develop and adjust the media strategy and mix and find the right partners to execute the campaign. Next, we set up all the necessary tools and analytics, and build their individual dashboard that will allow us to track the results of the campaign and see where we need to adjust and fine-tune.

Learn more about Double Diamond VIP by visiting www.doublediamondvip.com/contact

Original article: https://www.resultsmagazine-digital.com/results/library/item/september_2023/4137505/