CTC just had our best quarter ever.

It came just 18 months after our worst.

If you run a service business I hope to save you a lot of pain and failure by sharing mine.

Here are 5 things that led to a dramatic turnaround despite a worse macro environment. 1. Product/Market fit.

I have been leading boot strapped businesses my whole life. We think like boot strappers and market like boot strappers.

Profit has always been the focus of our service.

This was the wrong message for the last era, I failed to understand that then.

But in THIS moment, it's everything. All of our methodologies and systems have been a preparation for a moment when business objectives would change to a focus on profitability.

Takeaway:
Press hard to understand how your offering UNIQUELY matches the present need of your customers.

CTC has been responsible for delivering tens of thousands of ads a year for over a decade.

Here is the creative strategy process we have built.

You won't be surprised to find that it begins with clarity of the financial objective and flows out from there.

It goes like this... Step 1 Set the financial goal and media budget

Retention model + Spend/aMER model set both

Growth strategist sets the channel allocation and efficiency expectations based on whatever measurement you want.

Only NOW do we have the necessary constraints to build a creative plan

Anyone wanna bet I can increase your monthly email revenue next month in one thread?

Here's how to do it: Right now for February determine how much email/sms revenue you need to generate.

Whatever number you get add 10% to it.

Got your number?

Offer > Audience > Angle.

Its the perfect creative ideation framework.

Struggling to come up with new ways to approach the account?

Here's how you can use this rubric to come up with unlimited ad concepts. Start by holding 1 constant.

Choose your best offer:

For the sake of this example we will use the Bambu Earth ultimate mini kit...

We sold over $100M worth of silicone wedding rings in 4 years with QALO.

We did it primarily with product on white ads like this one.

No fast edits, crazy hooks or fake UGC.

Here's how we made this ad so successful without touching the ad account... I believe the job of a direct response ad is to get the customer to buy RIGHT NOW.

But in order to do that you have to till up the soil a bit.

You need to prepare them to purchase. That involves surrounding them with signals that this is the product for them.

1/ You have heard me say you should never turn off a Facebook ad.

But what about an entire ad channel?

Many brands come to us wondering about Pinterest, Snapchat, Tik Tok and other media channels.

So how do you know if an ad platform is worth it?

Let's get nerdy... 2/ While we believe that your aMER should ultimately govern your media budget there is an important question to be answered about the allocation between channels.

Here's where Statistical Hypothesis Testing steps in - an advanced math concept comparing data sets.

My tweets often have slightly unintended consequences for me that im learning to navigate.

But 1 I am aware of is that it puts us on the hook to deliver a service consistent with what I'm saying publicly.

Here is how we are trying to improve our organizational integrity... First let's define "organizational integrity".

I believe this is the alignment between a businesses stated beliefs and behaviors.

The connection between the promise we make publicly and service you receive.

There have been times where this has gotten too low for us...

We sold over $100M in silicone wedding rings in 4 years at QALO.

FB ads were a huge reason why BUT there is another, easy to overlook reason why all our campaigns were so successful... Campaign briefing.

We planned four major campaigns a year (4 peaks theory anyone?) and gave ourselves a TON of time to plan for the execution.

I would start by coming up with a "theme" for each campaign and then let @sadielewandoski work her magic and bring it life.

How @thesamparr sold me on Hampton and why I think it’s going to be a rocket ship…

(And it’s not because the product is awesome… yet) Ive been a Hampton member for 6 mths and its been great

Were still building trust and it isn’t life changing yet. The slack is noisy and it’s hard to keep up

But I have learned a lot from watching @thesamparr build and I believe it’s gonna keep improving

Here are 3 reasons why

We have swung the pendulum way too far with the "branded search" hate.

Here are 5 brands with holes in their funnels RIGHT NOW because they aren't dominating their own branded search terms. American Giant giving up value real estate in the Shopping feed to a major competitor in Custom Ink.

How much of your budget should be spent on search?

Well that depends on which of these four quadrants your brand exists in...

Let me explain 🧵 Google search opportunity exists post-intent, meaning that something has to prompt a user to create a search query in order for your ad to be shown.

Your job is capture as much of that demand as currently exists for your brand and category.

I start getting interested in an ad platform when I see the drop ship arbitrage crowd start going hard…

Something might be brewing on Twitter

My feed is JAMMED with stuff like this: 🐊

https://twitter.com/ravitystore/status/1595681515597623298

Today we crossed our first $1M month for @bambuearth.

We’ll do it with ~20% EBITDA and 80% free cash to profit.

But 12 months ago we were weeks away from running out of cash and under extreme debt pressure.

Here’s what changed… First @JoshRodarmel deserves a ton of credit. Not many people know Josh but he has been my partner in CTC and 4x400 for over a decade. Crazy life circumstances forced him to step back from running 4x400 for a few years but in Jan he came back.

There have been a lot of questions about whether or not the triple whale data report is accurate.

I believe it's absolutely right.

And here is what I believe is contributing to the pending implosion it describes... First, if you haven't seen it, this is what I am referring to:

https://twitter.com/rabahrahil/status/1593693447415701504?s=20&t=cbD3XRvnRNIQJnvQMm_7QA

TLDR; Spend up 54.6%, GMV -22.6%. Blood bath.

Now here is why I believe it is happening:

Are Black Friday customers really “worse” customers?

Let’s take a look at what the data says… First let’s define a couple of cohorts.

1. Black Friday customers = new customers acquired during Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend

2. Gifting customers = Tuesday after Cyber Monday through 12/19

You can now OPTIMIZE for LTV with Facebook Ads 🤯

Let me show you how, and give you some real data on what the early results have been... Since iOS 14 hit in May of 2021, the DTC world has been desperately searching for the answer to one crucial question:

How do I get clear attribution to make better decisions in my ad account?

Time to share more...

Here's a thread on what we have tapped into:

https://twitter.com/TaylorHoliday/status/1573408079911198720

At CTC we have been building the core of our growth service on the principles of LTV:CAC going back over 3 years to when @KohlmanVerheyen and I built this model by hand for @bambuearth

The next phase of growth in eCommerce will require significant "margin innovation".

A few thoughts on:

What that phrase means

How it might happen

And how big the reward will be when it does... Right now eCommerce profitability is under pressure at every line item on the P&L. Privacy issues, inflation and a highly competitive job market creates:

- CAC ⬆️
- COGS ⬆️
- Labor Costs ⬆️

What is a "good" Lifetime Value for eCommerce brands?

Here's some data, ranges, and examples of what the "best of the best" looks like... First, you can't compare LTV without creating a time-bound.

"Lifetime" references a variable period for every brand based on how long they have been alive.

So to normalize we like to compare two key periods:

60-day value (we call it the cash multiplier)

and

1-year value

The Google robots (PMAX!) are coming🤖

Here's 5 reasons that could be a GREAT thing for you… Performance Max (PMax) marks the biggest shift towards complete automation in search engine marketing to date.

Google’s promising to move all advertisers to the platform by September 2022 and I’m excited.

Here’s why:

A few brands are continuing to crush paid media through 1 world class skill

It’s not creative volume

It’s not whitelisting

It’s not first party data

It’s product development.

Here’s 5 different examples of brands that have a product dev super power… 1. @APLbasketball nails product every time.

On trend, socially native skus that generate a ton of clicks and build and organic flywheel of socialites sharing their product on IG.

Check out their recent @McLarenF1 Colab as an example.