This is a really tough period in DTC/Ecom for many of us, JRB included.

Here are 7 ways I'm planning to get through it: 1. Re-forecasting

For many brands, the focus is more on bottom-line profitability than topline growth. Growth is extra hard to come by this year. The last thing you want to do is force topline growth to hit an arbitrary number there and erode margins.

As CMO of a DTC brand that is growing 200% YoY, most of my time is now spent on team building, management, and leadership. Here are my 3 biggest lessons there this year... 1. People Want More Feedback Than You Realize

Maybe more than I realized? The best team members want to know how they are doing and what they can be doing to get better. This, sadly surprised me as a new leader of a team this size.

Enough sharing wins. I need to share more losses and mistakes. Here are the top 3 I can think of in recent memory with tips to not make the same ones. 1. Shifting Too Much Budget To TikTok

There was a time last year where we were spending equal parts on Meta and TikTok. Man that was a mistake. Even though the CPAs were low, I would later learn that the quality of those cohorts were poor and we would many months later...

Spend less time debating between account structures, optimization types, and attribution. I've seen businesses having success with a range of available strategies on them. But they all have the below 5 things in common... 1. A Great Product Offer

Ok you're a marketer, so you can't make a better product. But you can improve the desirability of it. Of course people have to love it. How do you improve the desirability of it aka improve the offer? A few options to get creative with and test:

At a certain point, brands should invest in MMM. But until then, you need a quick and easy way to help allocate spend between channels. Wouldn't it be helpful to know what other brands spend on each channel? It would also help to know what differs between top performers and not. Enter Media Mix reporting by @Varos_com. It is now possible to see, across nearly 4k brands, what % of spend goes to not only each platform, but each campaign type. Some notable findings:

A few random thoughts on what’s working and some tests you should run on Facebook Ads.

1. ASC is back to crushing it for us and some of the accounts I advise or audit. Last 7 days, conversion rates are higher than standard campaigns 2. If you’re running creator whitelisting, which you should be, you should test running to a personalized listicle. For example, if I’m the creator for @Feastables, the listicle should be “5 Reasons Why Cody Plofker loves Deez NUTZ by Feastables”.

ChatGPT and AI are going to take over and replace your job if you are a copywriter.

Here is 1 really amazing way to make sure you don't get replaced by a robot...

It should be illegal to know this... Ready for it? @jonesroadbeauty is hiring a full time, real-live HUMAN copywriter. Despite what all of Twitter is telling you, AI isn't taking any jobs. If you're good at your job, no great at your job, you have nothing to worry about.

So if you're great at your job, see below...

A few semi-controversial opinions on paid media and DTC growth that I currently believe... 1. Media Buying Is Still Important...Kind Of

The best practices have changed. I don't think you can win on FB anymore with great media buying, but you can definitely make it hard to win with bad media buying. I still see too many terrible account structures that don't give...

As CMO, I'm tasked with driving the demand to double our 8 figure businesses from 2022 to 2023. Here are the 3 things I'm focused on to make that actually happen... 1. Forecasting

It all starts with forecasting revenue, spend, efficiency, and rturning customer revenue. There are people way smarter and experienced than me here so I won't share too much. But you need a model that uses cohort level data, as well as reasonable assumptions of...

I Am Incredibly Bullish on Facebook Ads Going Into 2023.

This year alone, we easily spent over 8 figures and plan to double that in 2023.

Want to know a secret?

Media buying on FB is really simple. There are the only 5 things I focus on... 1. Creative

Look, we all know creative is important. But what does that mean? You need to constantly be producing and testing new creative. You need a combo of net new and iterative creative.

The sad reality is, your CAC is nearly guaranteed to rise as your DTC business grows. How do you offset that and stay profitable as you scale?

You need to increase Average Order Value (AOV). Here are 7 tactics you can implement to increase your AOV: 1. Bundles

This is a pretty obvious one, but here's our take. Every 2 months or so, we release a limited edition Kit (what we call a bundle). This comes with a discount off full price. But the biggest thing we do to drive value is include an exclusive product

We somehow managed to increase our budget on Facebook by over 200% while decreasing CAC over 15% by doing these 5 things: 1. Spending 40% Of Budget On Creative Testing

I used to think you should only spend 10% of budget on testing because that budget would be "wasted". We actually see better CPAs on our creative testing campaigns. Spend more on testing.

This year, we've almost tripled our ad spend on Meta while reducing our CPA by over 15%. Here's exactly how we did it that you can steal too... But first, a quick disclaimer. Improved performance is not going to come from 1 thing, despite what an agency or SAAS might sell you. It's the sum of all the little, 1% improvements along the way with a few 10% improvements. Here were some of ours:

One thing I am thinking a lot about , especially in planning for 2023 growth, is testing new marketing channels. To get past a certain size, spending outside Facebook may become a priority. Here are a few channels I plan on testing, and how I view measurement and the process... 1. Youtube Ads - We're already spending on Youtube Ads, but not huge. I really want to make sure it's incremental profitable spend, so we're doing a few things. We use @northbeam_io to measure a 1DC ROAS that we have a KPI modeled out. We know a lot of the value in YT comes from

I've done several @MentorPass calls auditing growth strategies and FB ad accounts in the last few weeks, and I've noticed a consistent set of mistakes and areas of optimization.

Below are 5 mistakes I've seen that are all too common: 1. Poor FB Account Structure

I'm still seeing too many fragmented campaigns and account structures. There's no one size fits all structure, but you should shoot for 50 conversions per ad set per week. If you have a $50 CPA target, there's no purpose in running...

If you can't tell, I am obsessing over landing pages right now.

Why? Well I think it's the most "stable" fix you can make for your ad account. Creative fatigues rather quickly, so any improvements you make have to be re-done nearly every week it seems. But... ...landing pages? They're evergreen. Any improvement you make will most likely last for way way longer, even as creative fatigues.

Here are some things I'm currently doing with landing pages, as well as some recent tests:

1. Testing Design Of Otherwise Identical Pages

Have you ever wondered how you can legally spy on your competitors and know exactly how much they're doing in revenue, how much inventory they hold, and what products they're selling the most and least of?

Well you actually can, and it's pretty... ...awesome. Meet Particl (formerly Luz), they empower market research for the world's leading e-commerce brands. Look here, I can see how much Skims has made, as well as how many units they've sold and what their top and bottom sellers are.

Anyone else seeing their Abandon Checkout Rates going through the roof?

Just had a look at some @Varos_com data and one thing is clear... The median Abandon Checkout rate is going wayy up. In this case, 100% up from 6 months ago. What does that mean? People in this data set aren't pulling out their wallets as easily. It can be due to a recession, or it can be waiting for BFCM deals.

Facebook Ads are anything but dead. In fact, I'd argue they're still the #1 source of profitable customer acquisition on the internet.

They're harder than they used to be, sure, but there's a secret. Success relies on what you do outside your ad account more than what goes on... ...inside of your ad account. Below is a list of 7 things that can drastically improve performance of your ad account from the outside. Get these right and you have a chance, get them wrong and you're swimming upstream in a typhoon.

1. Creative Production Capabilities

7 Growth Methods That Are Not FB Ads

1) Affiliate Marketing

Idk why so many people sleep on affiliate marketing. There are publishers with millions of eyeballs starving for monetization.

All you need to do is get in front of the right contact at the publication, get them... ...to sample your products, learn about your brand, and offer them a compelling commission. 20% is the average you should expect to pay. The great thing is you only pay when you acquire a customer, so there's virtually zero risk.

This is the best month on FB ads that I can remember. Here's a bit of what I'm finding work so well right now...

1. Nearly all whitelisting

If you go to our Fb library, you might see one or two ads. I test on nearly every creative and 9 times out of 10, whitelisting wins. Thumbstops, CTRs, and watch times are almost always better. If you haven't yet, you need to try whitelisting!