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...
My wife’s friend just FaceTimed.
My 4 year old daughter answered and brought me the phone...
In the shower.
Here is how tall she is compared to me.
You can imagine the camera height.
🤦♂️🚿🤳🏻
Introducing Bridges 🌉
A new weekly series intended to help build a bridge between marketing and finance.
Episode 1: The Perfect P&L
Redesigning the P&L from a marketer's POV.
I would LOVE your feedback on these early episodes. I want them to be as useful as possible!
Today we completed the first of what will be 3 transactions selling 80% of our company to our employees.
In selling 20% today 140 people transitioned from employees to owners.
The transition from labor to capital offers each of them a chance at financial security for life.
1/ The eCommerce Growth Syllabus:
Read and master these 10 pieces of content and you'll be an unstoppable force of PROFITABLE growth
👍🏻Facebook Ads
🛍Google Shopping
📺YouTube Ads
📧Email
👩🏽🌾Influencer
🖼Ad Creative
👯♀️LTV:CAC
💲Accounting
📈Forecasting
📆Calendaring
Lets go...
The Smile Direct Story is just nuts.
Raised over $1B
Valuation peaked at $9B
Founders are now billionaires
NEVER made a profit.
Lost more than $900M in operation
Stock never traded above IPO price for a single day.
Had $5M on had when filing for bankruptcy
More than…
RIP to these eCommerce bull market artifacts:
- Aggregators
- Raising money on 5 Year LTV:CAC models that improve over time
- Lending based on FB ROAS
- $250k growth marketer salaries
- Never profitable founders doing victory laps on podcasts
- Exits based on revenue
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...
This is the mona lisa of eCommerce.
Bookmark this image, print it out and make your entire team stare at it every day.
It's a perfect picture of how to create predictable profitable growth.
Hold new customer acquisition constant (or slightly grow it) and stack repeat cohorts.…
When we arrived at our
@Airbnb
in Charleston there was an Amazon package on the doorstep addressed to us…
Weird.
I texted the owner and he said he got a surprise for the kids.
Inside there was a lego set for each of them🤯
Remarkable service creates fans for life.
Too many DTC brands still assume that advertising means:
FB and IG newsfeed ads.
The game has changed. Now it's also:
Google Shopping ads
IG Stories
IG Reels
TikTok
Snapchat
YouTube pre-roll
I could go on…
There are so many eCommerce businesses crushing that no one has ever heard of...
Sell boring, expensive, niche, necessary products to a large market and count your cash while the rest of the world bleeds to death selling the cool stuff.
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…
1/ This is an absolute TEXTBOOK e-commerce funnel execution from
@eatmagicspoon
.
One of the best i have experienced in a while, well worth a thread.
Here's how it went...
We are experiencing one of the largest FB overspend issues I have ever seen.
Working on gathering more information and action now.
But PLEASE CHECK YOUR ACCOUNTS.
Learn to brag about yourself at work.
As a CEO of a remote company I can tell you I have NO IDEA what people are doing on most days.
Surface your work.
Give your boss the material to build an awesome story about you!
Bridges Episode 5: From Paper To Liquid
"Good marketers make their managers happy, great marketers build shareholder equity."
In just 30 minutes you will walk away with 4 actions you can take to improve your brand's cash position, balance sheet and wow your CFO.
One of our strategists was on a call in the airport and a college marketing student listened and dropped her this note…
That’s an auto must hire right?
Love the hustle.
Can we please kill the "head of growth" job.
Growth is not a subset of marketing.
It's marketing + product + finance + customer service + hr... oh wait.
That's the whole company.
Maybe head of growth was just the CEO all along?
Screw it.
I’m taking my boys to the lakers game tonight.
I messed up not going to Kobe’s last game, who knows if we’ll ever get Steph v. Lebron again.
Please buy some Bambu Earth or an eCommerce Diagnostic Kit to help offset these insane Seat Geek fees 😖
You are approached to invest in a DTC company with $5M in revenue and $1M in profit in the last 12 months.
Catch is you can only ask for 3 data points to make your decision.
Which 3 do you ask for?
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...
A fail proof way for any couple to solve their greatest challenge…
Choosing where to eat.
Either partner can start a list at any time.
If you receive a list you must promptly respond reducing the list down by one.
You go back and forth until the choice is made.
Last 28 days Yoy Performance:
Facebook
Spend: -33%
CPM: +21%
Rev.: -53%
CVR: -35%
ROAS: -30%
Sitewide
MER (Rev ÷ Spend): +5%
Total Sales: -4%
Interesting 🤔
An analysis about why it’s more hopeful for eCommerce brands than it appears 👇🏼
This week we (CTC) got to help Snoop sell Stoves and Lebron launch a new line of Nike products.
Getting to work alongside incredible marketers with big visions is inspiring.
If your employer doubles your salary when you accept another job offer, I would run.
It’s an obvious statement that they knew they were exploiting you and were fine with it until they got caught.
As an industry we spend FAR FAR FAR FAR too much time worried about the content of the ads themselves and far too little time thinking about the soil in which they are planted.
Work from anywhere ideas we are playing with:
Each team gets 1 week “work together sprint” anywhere in the world.
Co-working stipend.
Buying homes in rad locations for employees to rotate between.
House cleaner benefit.
HQ as studio first layout.
It’s exciting.
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...
Contrarian take on the Mr. Beast ghost kitchen restaurant launch.
This is drop shipping.
Product matters.
Customer service matters.
I hate the idea of this for the future.
The best thing you can do for yourself early in your career is to try and get yourself into a bunch of rooms with really important people so you can learn a very valuable lesson....
They aren't that smart. You can do it.
Here to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. We focus on ecommerce businesses from 0 - $30M
We have a view into that world from every angle
Community:
Agency:
Operators:
DM's are open, eager to help.
Outliers: Exploring The All-Time Greatest Ads From Your Favorite eCommerce Brands
Every brand has that 10x ad.
The one you can just NEVER BEAT.
It has spent 2, 5, sometimes 50x any other ad.
In this series I explore these outliers and try to dissect what makes them so…
Tupperware parties but for spreadsheets.
I want to host an event where everyone brings a spreadsheet that has been impactful to their business and shares it with the group.
You have to create a templated version and share with everyone in attendance.
Give 1, get 10.
Who’s…
“Top of Funnel” is a scam.
It is a phrase invented by shitty ad platforms to convince you to buy poor performing inventory.
Don’t fall for it.
Demand that every dollar you spend generates incremental profit.
Then have a product so good that people talk about it.
The biggest underlying factor in eCommerce performance is something none of us could measure.... until now.
Introducing The Direct To Consumer Confidence Index
The only realtime macro economic indicator built specifically for DTC
Let me explain...
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...
Discover your marginal frontier!
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you doubled your ad spend?
Or tried to figure out the right budget to maximize contribution margin?
Take a deep dive into our new spend/aMER model that is leveling up our forecasting process at CTC.
We almost shut down
@bambuearth
last July because we couldn't crack the top of the funnel.
We only did $10,883.21 in July of 2019.
Fast forward one year.
We did $438,907.48 in July of 2020.
This article from
@KohlmanVerheyen
outlines EXACTLY how:
There are eCommerce businesses you have never heard that will do $100M at 40+% PROFIT MARGIN in 2024.
Seeing inside these brands changes everything about how you view our industry.
There is no question of its viability.
BUT there are a lot of businesses that have no chance of…
Introducing The All New DTC Index
A Monthly Report On The State Of eCommerce
Built from a data set of:
$1.3T in Credit Transactions
100M Cardholders
10,000 Brands
$6B In Ad Spend
$20B In Revenue
50M Survey Responses
Get January's report today!
Every marketer goes through a season of thinking they can solve attribution.
But very fast they discover it’s like quicksand.
The more you analyze the more you sink into confusion.
Eventually they come out the other side and they have released the need to know the unknowable.
My favorite eCommerce metric that no one talks about.
"Quick Ratio"
Why it’s my favorite metric for determining your “growth health”
How to calculate it
and
How to improve it. 👇🏼
eCommerce friends,
It is our moment.
It is masked in volatility and pixelated by the turmoil surrounding us.
But it’s here. Faster than anyone ever thought.
So it is time we stop predicting and start acting.
What do you say?
Agency owners.
YOU WILL BE IN HOUSED or replaced if your fees continue to scale for the same service.
You cannot take a disproportionate % of the brands revenue and survive. Not in this era.
Here’s some math about why “scaling” an account won’t be justification for…
We have 15x client's FB spend since we started working with them a year ago
While results improved
And they told us they were leaving cause we are charging a performance-based fee, and they want someone with a fixed fee
What's wrong with people...
In 2024 brands need a format strategy not a channel strategy.
Short Form, Vertical Video.
It unlocks all the fast growing channels.
YouTube Shorts, Tik Tok and IG Reels with a single production process.
Forget TV, Podcasts, OOH.
If you win on SFVV, you will win.
@sweatystartup
@sama
Isn’t the problem with that argument that if true the supply of plumbers will just grow so quickly that the value will get destroyed?
A Vision Of eCommerce Post COVID
The next phase of growth for many brands is going to be far more tempest than tidal wave.
Here is what I see on the horizon...
(warning it's darker than I hoped)
Embrace a hierarchy of metrics over a single data point.
The sooner you release the pursuit of a single source of truth, the sooner you will deepen your understanding of what is actually happening in your business.
Here is my suggested hierarchy for every growth team:
One of our media buyers just got hired to run growth for a Billion $ brand.
I am stoked for them.
Replacing them won’t be easy.
BUT
I love seeing CTC become a platform for people to fastrack their careers.
Feel free to come use us like a trampoline.
Working at an eCom agency like CTC on Black Friday is the best business learning experience
Seeing record days for new brands at $30k
and legendary ones at $7M
Pouring over 100's of brands running every imaginable offer concept and funnel.
It's an MBA in a day.
Introducing the largest publicly available (fact check?) eCommerce data set.
~230 brands totaling $2.3B+ in annual online revenue and over $250M in spend
Updated weekly at:
Thread with benchmarks and YoY %-changes 🧵
Building a business, much like a marriage, is nothing more than solving a million problems over a million days.
The sooner you can come to peace with the perpetually unfinished nature of the work the sooner you begin to deeply appreciate the journey.
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...
If the Triple Whale pricing change makes you sad I'll offer you Statlas Light for FREE for 6 months.
No credit card required.
Just comment 😭🐳 below and i'll DM you.
In this moment where brands are struggling to deal with rising CAC there will be lots of solutions framed as a replacement for FB
- Tik tok
- Programmatic TV / OTT
- Direct mail
- Attribution tools
They aren’t.
Focus on fundamentals.
The arbitrage era is over.
High Standards/Accountability:
Shohei Ohtani, after his 6.1ip/3h/11ks/2bb outing
"I was the one who created the situation where he had to make a change.
I think how you leave the mound is important. That wasn't a good way to leave."
From:
Don’t hire vendors based on case studies.
Results are easy to obfuscate and causality difficult to sort out.
Hire based on principles and methodology.
Ask how they work. And why they do it that way.
If the answer teaches you something new, you have found valuable expertise
This is the profit playbook.
@ashvinmelwani
and
@rabahrahil
jam about how Obvi has redesigned their ad account to pursue more profit.
They hit all the key notes...
1. targeting first order profit, no revenue chasing
2. Setting up your account all cost controls, no lowest cost…
Last year we documented the
#blackfriday
sales of
@2PMinc
top 100 DNVB list and published them for brands to learn from.
This year we stepped it up...
Screenshots of mobile, desktop and emails from over 400+ DTC brands.
Analysis and breakdown coming 2020.
Always learning.
Only .04% of your IG followers will ever swipe up on a link. Here’s the math:
~4% of your total followers even see your IG story. Of those followers, only ~1% will swipe up for a link. That means if you have 1m followers, you can only expect to redirect ~400 of your followers.
Bridges Episode 4: The World's Most Beautiful P&L
Curious what it looks like for a mid 8 figure eCommerce brand to produce 45% EBITDA margins 🤯?
Let me walk you through it and forever expand your sense of what is possible!
Our Head of Marketing just asked me...
What's the biggest problem in eCommerce right now?
My answer.
Financial literacy of leaders.
You cannot steer an organization towards producing profit or free cash flow if you don't INTIMATELY understand how its created.
When capital…
I really want to start an eCom fund right now.
This vintage is going to be all time.
All the venture dollars ran away because they don't understand and its turning operators into capital generating machines.
Problem is the best don't need the cash.
But they are paying lots…
Doubting yourself today?
Last night
@elonmusk
said he once was standing uninvited in the lobby of Netscape trying to get a job
He was too shy to even talk. He just sat there
He described feeling like a total charlatan
Doubt’s a signal ur on the path, not disqualified from it
Meanwhile CMO of Hubspot and CEO of Butcher Box…
“You need 1 channel to get to $50M and 2 channels to get to $100M.”
Channel diversification is a siren song of death for so many smaller brands.
If you're looking to scale your DTC Brand past $100k/month...
Then you should be implementing a paid ads system across multiple channels:
•Facebook
•Pinterest
•Google
•Snapchat
Limiting yourself to one source will cap your growth.
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.
Imagine you are tasked with training Navy Seal level e-commerce growth strategists. You have 90 days to equip them.
Give me the required reading for your training program. (blogs, podcasts, books, all fair game)
Give me the training activities you put them through.
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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