Billie’s Anna Stallings thinks DTC brands should focus more on brand loyalty than on transactions

Since launching its direct-to-consumer (DTC) razors in 2017, women’s bodycare brand Billie has experienced many stages of growth — from being acquired by Edgewell Personal Care in 2021 to expanding into physical retailers starting in 2022.

As senior director of growth marketing, growth is always on Anna Stallings’ mind. She believes DTC brands need to focus more on fostering consumer relationships to drive expansion than on “trying to get the cheapest CPM to convert the consumer.”

Stallings talked to The Current Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Paterik about DTC growth, as well as the evolution of influencer marketing and leveraging advertising channels beyond social.

Billie has written its own playbook and has gained tremendous traction with Gen Z. How do you think about marketing and how are you doing it differently?

At the core, we are our own consumers. Marketers sometimes get so caught up in the mechanics of marketing that they forget they, themselves, first are consumers. When you make that shift in mindset, there are so many [other things] that change. You change the language that you use, the channels that you prioritize. Most importantly, you change the speed at which you respond to culture. That speed has served us. … Hopefully at the end of the day, our customers feel that dialogue that we’re having with them instead of feeling like we’re marketing at them.

You focus on growth in your role. At this stage in the life of DTC as a category, what do you see as the biggest opportunities for growth?

For DTC, it’s been so focused on brands owning the transaction, and I think it needs to become more about brands owning the relationship. That will help serve DTC brands well as they start to expand beyond DTC, because they’ll own beyond their own sites; they’ll own how the brand is represented — building that brand loyalty and getting those consumers to recognize them versus trying to get the cheapest CPM to convert the consumer.

Speaking of brand-building, a lot of DTC brands like Billie are also associated with influencer marketing and social media. How do you view digital media and other types of channels you’re leveraging?

We leverage everything. … There is growth everywhere; that means brand growth as well. We’re not siloed to just digital channels. We just did an out-of-home campaign, and we’re leveraging CTV [connected TV] as well. That’s another space that’s getting smart from an ad tech perspective. Going back to the first answer: As a consumer, where are you? Where are you consuming media? We’re making sure that we’re represented in all of those places.

Let’s talk about innovation. Billie is a brand that, like you said, taps into culture. What trends have the chance to be most transformative?

One of the most exciting things about this industry, and one of the hardest to sift through, is that there is so much innovation happening all the time. AI is a huge hot topic, and we’re dabbling there. But the thing that has drawn my attention is less of an innovation and more of an evolution of how brands are engaging with influencers. The “de-influencing” trend put a spotlight on how savvy consumers are and how much they expect from brands and partnerships and how much they need it to be real and make sense from their creators.

Do you have any tips or tricks to centering the consumer and not forgetting our own humanity in that equation?

There’s so many buzzy words that pop up in marketing. Authenticity and all of these buzzwords that pop up. You can kind of pinch yourself when that’s happening and be like, what would I do if I was a consumer? Where would I shop? What would draw my eye? How quickly would I expect brands to insert themselves? Was it weird that a brand suddenly became part of a trend seven weeks after it was happening? Probably. And just really try and shake yourself out of this marketing mindset and put yourself in the consumer mindset.