Reddy at the Helm - Episode 4: Steve Weiss, Founder of MuteSix

MuteSix Founder Steve Weiss on DTC Marketing With an Omnichannel View 

Steve Weiss is the guest on the latest episode of Reddy at the Helm: the official podcast of Voyage hosted by Voyage CEO Rev Reddy. The goal of this podcast is to delve into the stories of leading marketers, founders, and retail executives, to learn how they built unbeatable marketing programs that have spurred innovation and success.

Rev and Steve discuss how MuteSix dominated the DTC marketing space, Steve's journey as a founder, and much more. 

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About MuteSix 

Since 2014, the MuteSix marketing agency has been writing (and rewriting) the playbook for full-funnel performance marketing, capitalizing on historic key learnings from a diverse client base to streamline digital marketing strategies based on proven success.

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How MuteSix Dominated the DTC Marketing Space

While the competitors were focused on Google ads, Steve had MuteSix first focus on paid social. To be the best in the space at MuteSix had to create content at lightning speed, which lead them to build a studio in their office space instead of needing to rely on production spaces. This is where they perfected thumb-stopping creative.

‘We were one of the first agencies to really build out a system of doing our own in-house UGCs and it worked really, really well across numerous clients. A big selling point to a lot of clients was that we know thumb-stopping creative. We know how to create creative fast. We know how to create it cheap. We know how to create creative that will actually perform.”

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Omnichannel Focus is Everything 

Steve is a big believer in looking at marketing from a whole, omnichannel perspective instead of just looking at how your efforts are doing inside a specific platform. Instead of looking at just what Facebook is doing, look at where you are seeing impacts on your business as a whole. 

“We used to, as Facebook marketers, look in platform for guidance. We would look and see what is our in-platform return? What is our in platform CTR? Now we have to get away from looking at businesses from an in platform perspective, whether it's Google, Facebook, or TikTok. Now you really have to be kind of a detective. If you do see a lift in the business you have to figure out where that lift is coming from and you have to really start pushing levers up and down… A lot of brands I talk to are overspending on the platform and I think they would get the same yield to their business if they spent 20 or 30% less. Well, that 20 or 30% margin is really impactful. The next generation of marketers really needs to understand true business outcomes and be able to communicate from a lift perspective… As a paid marketer you have to evolve into a full-funnel marketer instead.”

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Steve’s Journey Into Entrepreneurship

Steve’s journey into entrepreneurship includes comedy, gym showers, and Facebook ads. 

“I didn't really have a background in direct-to-consumer. I've been a digital marketer since I was 17 or 18. My first company sadly was kind of riding the wave. I got into internet marketing super early on, in 2005 or 2006, and my first company was in the mortgage lead generation space... Fast forward to 2012. My stepdad sadly passed away in Hurricane Sandy. At the time I was 25 years old and I was a bit lost. I was really into performing standup comedy. I was doing comedy all over New York City and I thought I had a career in that… I moved to LA and was in a very humble place. My mom set my car out here and I lived in my car. I drove my car into 24 Hour Fitness and would sleep in the car, wake up, take a shower, work out, and that was my life. I had this brilliant idea … What if I could run Facebook ads to generate people to my comedy show that would allow me to get on stage? Because to get on stage you need to bring people. I didn't know anyone in LA, so I started running Facebook ads in early 2013 to get people to my shows, and it worked out better than I'd ever anticipated. At one of my shows, I met someone who asked me to run ads for their eCommerce brand. And that was kind of how MuteSix started. It was me meeting one person and just telling them about my skill set… Fast forward and every year from 2014 we grew, grew, grew to a pretty successful business in the direct consumer space.” 

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