Thread by @jspujji

You spent 18 months getting ready to launch:

- Researching your customer segment
- Designing a product they need
- Lining up suppliers
- Building a perfect website

YOU ARE READY TO GO

All you need is an agency to market your product, right?

WRONG

Here’s what to do instead 👇🏽

1/ First, the biggest mistake I see DTC founders make is immediately trying to outsource growth right after they build the product or *anytime* its not working.

Should you hire an agency? a consultant? a full time person? A mix? None?

What's the right choice?

2/ It's all of the above.

Depending on your company's stage and the strengths of your team.

I believe there are a few major inflection points:

Startup stage is about finding P/M fit, and spending from 0 to $1,000,000 a year

Scaling from there...

3/ Growth stage spends from ~1MM a year to ~10MM a year

The next stage runs from ~10MM to ~50MM a year

The final stage starts at ~50MM and goes into the 100s of millions per year

Here's how to use the stages to think about resourcing your growth efforts

4/ Launch: You are spending nothing and haven't made it work profitably yet.

Your job is to innovate on marketing to connect with customers in a distinct and special way, just like you did with the product

I recc founders stay close to the problem and scale through stage 1…

5/ Agencies are good for pouring kerosene on the fire NOT for rubbing sticks together

Rubbing sticks together is the founders job, and it takes that level of depth and rigor that only a founder can bring to do it.

My general rule of thumb:

6/ ~90 to 180 days of 50%+ of one founder’s time and focus to get a channel working.

Alongside the founder: a channel specific expert and a freelance creative

Keep going until you’re profitably at ~$100k per month in spend

If you can’t get there, it's your product/brand.

7/ When you get to 100k+ there are some smaller agencies who can help you grow.

It can also be a great time to hire one or two full time people to grow and scale the budget.

Either works.

From 100k to 800k/month it's all about hustle and experimentation.

8/ ~10 million/year is where a company like Ampush or a sophisticated in-house team plugs in.

There are at least four major pieces to the puzzle to get right...

9/ First is media management across multiple channels.

This is the time when if you are 80% on one channel, it's time to diversify (incidentally, I wouldn’t worry about diversification before this time)

10/ Second is conversion optimization

So you want to have media management, but you also want to very seriously start to think about CRO like landing page, customer journey, funnel optimization.

You're spending enough this can now drive MASSIVE growth

11/ The third thing is business intelligence and analytics.

For example, we have multi SKU customers who can tell how any given SKU performs all the way down to the ad impression level.

12/ Fourth is creative across the entirety of your media and funnel.

This includes video creative, landing pages, and coordinating it all across the team.

The time to bring in a third party who can build that out, like an Ampush, is before you grow the ability in-house.

13/ At this point you're growing from $10MM to $50MM while keeping the economics similar or better.

Combining all these things into a sophisticated team is challenging. Brands will often hire a 3rd party to learn who they need in-house.

Scaling towards 50MM+ all the while...

14/ When you hit $50MM+, that's when you probably want to bring on a professional CMO.

It's time to seriously invest in a brand team and consider doing channels like television.

That's super critical to take your brand to the next level.

15/ Direct response and the growth team is still supercritical at this point to continue to grow and scale.

But you're also going to be adding additional fuel to the fire in brand, television, sponsorships, PR and so forth.

16/ So that's how I think about when and when not to use third parties while growing a brand.

Having an in-house growth team is a real investment.

You have to help people develop their careers. Otherwise they only stick around for a few years.

Most don't think this through...

17/ 25% of the companies I've interacted with really take that seriously and build a growth-first mentality.

25% very purposely don't want to build that and let an agency handle it.

~50% fall in no man's land where they want to do it but they're not really committed.

18/ So that's my overview of:
• the stages of brand building
• how to think about how to resource mktg
• & whether to use a third party or not.

I’m sure there are pieces I missed or exceptions to what I laid out, reply below to share your experiences for everyone!

19/If you enjoyed this thread, follow me @jspujji

I tweet advice and stories about entrepreneurship and leadership like this every week.

RT the whole thread to share to help others scale their growth

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