Somewhere around $50M many eCommerce brands go through a similar experience.
I call it "The Shrinking Sponge"
Here is how the story plays out time and time again...
Venture Capital group "Power Johnson Ventures" has just invested some fresh capital in DTC darling "Never Towards".
The first meeting with the executive team lays out one simple, obtuse, ambiguous, unclear goal. Growth.
Absent any clear indication of in what time horizon, at what margin, on which product, from which customer this growth is supposed to happen, the CMO excitedly gathers her leaders up...
1/ What causes long term sustained performance in an ad account?
🧵featuring real examples 👇🏻
If you explore the source of FB ad growth and subsequently revenue growth for eCom brands it is almost never a function of iterative improvements to ad creative or tactics over time.
2/ More often it is a series of moments that unlock an order of magnitude increase in awareness, engagement, traffic and performance.
These moments can be caused by:
A single ad
A big PR moment
A breakthrough campaign
A change in market dynamics
A new product release
Etc.
3/ The problem is they are very hard to predict and create.
I’ll give you an example of a few that happened for us @QALORing that changed our trajectory (and ad account performance) each time...
You've never heard of the brand from this screenshot.
They have no PR, no influencers going viral on tik tok, they just have 1 powerful thing...
Perfect, product-market fit
I share this, not to brag. We did very little. Really, look how simple that ad account is...
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I share this to remind MYSELF and all entrepreneurs that blaming FB for your ROAS is a cop-out.
When you can unhitch yourself from the idea that FB is screwing you, or is broken, or is not what it used to be, then you can begin the powerful process of self-reflection
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Understanding that FB is simply a distribution engine for your message moves you from victim to the one in control of the outcome.
From there, you can begin the hard work of making people care about your message.
Making your product so MAGICAL that people must have it.
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1/ Your brand is much more than a headline away from exit.
“Testing” as the highest value of marketing behavior is deteriorating “brands” down to a series of headlines and image variations.
At its worst it removes the “tester” of obligation to do deep, quality work up front.
2/ It (testing as the highest value) precludes any activity (like community development) that doesn’t fit neatly into a pseudo scientific measurement system or has a more latent value capture.
3/ It also favors “incrementality” over truly innovative thinking. The kind of thinking that isn’t rooted in an extrapolation of past results.