Climbing the Content Mountain: an interview with Lifecycle19 speaker Taylor Coil of Tortuga

Lifecycle19 is just a month away, and will bring together over 300 retail marketers to learn from the best brands in retention marketing, including Hotel Chocolat, Moonpig and Feelunique.

In the run up to the big day, we’ll be interviewing some of our keynote and panel speakers. This is a chance to learn a little more about their role, their challenges and what they’re excited to share with you in October. To grab your Lifecycle19 tickets, head over to the site.

Our first interview is with Taylor Coil of Tortuga, who will be leading a content workshop.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and the company you work for 

Tortuga makes gear for city travel — we’re specifically known for our travel backpacks that blend the ergonomics of hiking packs with the organization and carry on capabilities of suitcases. We’re a fully remote team — one of the only physical product companies operating at scale with no headquarters, I think. I’ve lived in and worked from 20 different countries and countless US cities as a digital nomad since joining Tortuga, but now I have a home base in Durham, NC, USA.

As the Marketing Director, I’m the glue between product design, web / UX, and marketing. My specific areas of focus are product marketing, messaging, email, analytics, and content.

When I’m not working (or travelling) I’m most often found in my hammock with a book, at a brewery with my friends, or riding my bike through town.

What are the 3 challenges you face most in your role? 

1. Firstly, remote work can be isolating if I’m not intentional about building a community of in-person colleagues in addition to my remote coworkers. I address this by working from the WeWork in downtown Durham, NC — a lot of my girlfriends work out of the same building, which helps keep me sane and happy.
2. We’re a fully bootstrapped brand. While we are sustainably profitable, I don’t have the massive budgets that VC-backed brands do and our campaigns are accordingly limited. It can be challenging to break through the noise caused by high-spend competitors. We have to be smarter instead of throwing money at acquisition.
3. We have big dreams for Tortuga and it can be tough, sometimes, to take a deep breath and accept that we can’t do everything at once. Or even in the next few years. But we’ll get there.

Are you an avid conference goer? What attracted you to Lifecycle19, in particular?

Not really – if I’m always at conferences, who will do my actual job? I usually attend skill-based conferences like MozCon or those hyper-specific to the direct-to-consumer industry. I attend the latter in the hopes of meeting people who do my job at another DTC brand so we can swap tactics. (If that’s you, please come say hello at Lifecycle19!)

I said yes to Lifecycle19 because it’s rooted in the idea that marketing is about authentic resonance and deep customer knowledge. I’m excited to meet other seasoned marketers who have figured out how to tap into resonance for their audiences.

What do you hope attendees take away from your workshop? 

I hope attendees have a fresh perspective on content marketing that allows them to do something other than spend money on PPC. I think people want content marketing to be quite complicated, but relatively easy once you grasp the complications. In reality, content marketing is simple but very difficult — and incredibly worthwhile if done well. That can be a tough sell to C-levels who drool over complicated direct response campaigns with immediate payoff. If you don’t have a proven model to follow, content marketing can look like a too-steep mountain to climb when running more Instagram ads sounds easier. I hope to give attendees the blueprint to run genuinely successful content programs.

If you want to hear more from Taylor, amongst a host of exciting speakers and panellists, make sure to get your Lifecycle19 ticket today.