Having a great product goes a long way but how do you get people to sample your product amid a pandemic? When Covid shut down in-store sampling, Good Stock‘s Director of Marketing Ricky Fitzpatrick relied even more on the team’s digital capabilities.

Built on a traditional DTC model, Good Stock’s solid digital foundation helped the brand not only weather the pandemic but thrive during it.

“We make prepared food, specifically soup, and we ship direct-to-consumer online. That’s a model that just happens to work really well any time, but especially during the pandemic,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s something we’ve been able to take advantage of but it’s also a trend that’s really not going to go away.”

The biggest challenge for Fitzpatrick and his team has been customer acquisition. Without in-store demos, he’s found success leveraging referrals and advertising.

“Our reorder rate is extremely high,” Fitzpatrick said. “Almost 90 percent of people who try Good Stock would recommend Good Stock to a friend, which is almost an unheard-of number.”

While most teams were adjusting to their new remote environments, Good Stock was actively hiring. Fitzpatrick’s fully remote marketing team is a mix of part- and full-time talent who are in cities across the country.

Taking risks and experimenting are ways in which Fitzpatrick and his team have found success in their marketing efforts.

“We’ve really been pulling all the levers and seeing what works,” he said. “Being small and agile has helped, too, so that we can turn something off that’s not working really quickly, and then when we identify something that’s an opportunity, we can double down on it.”

You won’t do that without taking risks, he said.

Read the full marketing thought leadership report from ForceBrands here.