How Nikki Lindgren Scaled Pennock: Marketing Insights 101

Hey everyone, welcome to our AMA session with Nikki Lindgren, a dynamic entrepreneur who’s built her agency, Pennock, from the ground up! Nikki has mastered the art of helping direct-to-consumer brands grow, with deep expertise in paid media and SEO.

Nikki talks about:

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  Navigating the evolving DTC space

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  The challenges of scaling a boutique agency

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  Leveraging creative and data-driven strategies for growth

Host: Hello everyone, I'm excited to introduce Nikki Lindgren. She is the owner of a fantastic agency called Pennock, who we at Bestever love working with. Today, we'll talk to Nikki about the challenges of being an agency owner and how she's thinking about AI. Welcome, Nikki!

Nikki Lindgren: Thanks for having me today. So excited to be here.

Host: Awesome. Nikki, I'd love for you to tell our viewers a little bit about your background, how you got into this. You have an amazing career of being a digital marketer for over a decade now. I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey.

Nikki Lindgren: Yeah, absolutely. We're very close to entering the second decade of my career as a digital marketer, specifically for direct-to-consumer brands. I’ve been in this space pretty much my entire professional life, helping brands build their e-commerce stores and then figuring out how to get traffic and qualified customers there. I've spent the majority of my time doing paid media and SEO, but I’ve overseen teams both in-house and agency side across all areas of marketing.

I like to come to the table with that holistic view—where I can not only speak to our subject matter expertise but also offer advice on other programs brands are running. Right now, we mainly work with beauty and lifestyle brands that are at the emerging level, typically approaching $1 million up to $10 million in revenue. We help take them on their journey until they eventually bring their paid media and SEO efforts in-house.

Host: Makes sense. You've done this for almost two decades now. How have you seen the direct-to-consumer (DTC) space evolve? The face of DTC has changed significantly over the last 10 years. What’s been your experience, and what do you see as the biggest challenges?

Nikki Lindgren: Oh my gosh, so many changes! Where do I even start? When I started this agency, Pennock, about five years ago, we recently looked back at some 2020 decks for a couple of brands, and we were so data-heavy—pages and pages of it! We were proud of knowing all the ins and outs, but today, brands just want simplification. They don’t need to see all the data; they need to know what’s next and what it means for their business.

One big evolution is the focus on Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER), which is calculated as total e-commerce revenue divided by paid media spend. It simplifies things and provides a favorable, high-level view of business performance. We can spend half the budget on awareness campaigns that don’t have a direct return on ad spend but still grow the business overall.

Another big change is the importance of creative. Today, 42% of campaign success is attributed to the creative itself, and we’re heavily focused on that. We want to make sure we’re nailing it for our clients because it moves the needle more than almost anything else.

Host: I know your team really puts a lot of effort into creative, having worked with you for the last year or so. That segues nicely to the next question. From your experience, what are the biggest challenges agencies or brands face in generating creative?

Nikki Lindgren: It starts with the data—looking at what’s worked in the past and then planning what to test next. Just the process of gathering all that information from the last month and analyzing it can take 3 to 5 hours, depending on how experienced the team member is. We do a lot of A/B testing, but if it’s just something small like changing a font color, that’s not enough. We’re always looking for tools that help us identify bigger, more meaningful changes that will lead to those "aha" moments.

As a small boutique agency, we’re an eight-woman team, so we can’t always afford the biggest, slickest tools. Our clients are also smaller, so finding technology that fits our needs and budget is a challenge. There are so many options, but it’s hard to find the perfect one.

Host: What is often the challenge with finding the right tool? Is it because they’re too new, unproven, or is it more about pricing or workflow?

Nikki Lindgren: I’m happy to try new technology, but sometimes it’s a case of over-promising and under-delivering. For example, one of your competitors offered a great Black Friday promo, and I signed up right away. On day one, everything crashed, and I lost all my content. It was such a bait and switch! It happens too often, unfortunately.

And then there’s the issue of time—does my team have time to train and actually use the tool effectively? Sometimes the question becomes, "Is this really going to save us enough hours per month to justify the cost?" We have to be strategic and make sure that any tool we invest in is actually going to be used and worth the time and money.

Host: That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like you're saying there are many tools out there, but not all of them deliver on their promises, and others aren’t quite saving enough time or effort. Speaking of efficiency, how do you see AI impacting your world, especially considering you’re one of the early adopters of Bestever.ai? How do you see AI changing things for you and your team?

Nikki Lindgren: AI is absolutely making things more efficient. It's helping us handle repetitive tasks, so we can focus more on strategy and creativity. Bestever.ai has been great in helping us streamline our creative processes. We’re able to produce more, test more, and ultimately deliver better results for our clients without getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty. I think AI is an opportunity rather than a threat, and it’s about enhancing what we do rather than replacing us.

Host: That’s a great perspective, Nikki! Thank you so much for sharing your journey and insights with us. I’m sure our viewers got a lot out of it!

Nikki Lindgren: Thanks for having me!