Latest / Scalability School / BFCM: Your Questions Answered

Transcript

BFCM: Your Questions Answered · Scalability School

0:00
Legal plays a big role.
0:01
And I think to your point, Brad, those
0:04
people that come in and ask
0:05
questions and have curiosity,
0:07
I mean, it's honestly
0:08
such a better route to go.
0:10
Because if you're not undermining the
0:13
employees that are
0:13
already there too, right?
0:14
The employees that are
0:15
there, they have opinions.
0:16
They've seen what's going on.
0:18
Like why aren't you asking them instead
0:19
of just coming in and
0:19
being like, well, here
0:20
I am, you know?
0:21
So we had a client run their annual sale,
0:24
which happens to be
0:25
in September, you know,
0:26
August, September.
0:27
If you run a Labor Day sale, this is a
0:28
good indication for that.
0:29
It's like, go look at that and see what
0:31
you did creatively and
0:32
what conceptually worked.
0:34
And for them, we just had a ton of
0:36
low-fi, lower-effort ideas
0:38
for making organic-looking
0:40
posts.
0:40
Low-fi, which is like the
0:41
very hot, ugly ad method.
0:44
They had their team records and videos.
0:45
They made the graphics, whatever.
0:47
It's like, go back throughout the course
0:48
of the year and look at
0:49
your promo periods and
0:50
see what worked.
0:51
And every single time you do a promo,
0:53
what we're trying to do
0:54
is what conceptually worked
0:57
that we can pull
0:57
forward to the next promo.
0:59
And then what didn't we do that we want
1:00
to try and throw into the mix?
1:01
Or what didn't we do enough?
1:02
Who was actually getting the
1:04
gift was the important parts.
1:06
We had a product that did
1:08
really well for customers.
1:10
Male demo that was like 18 to 25 was a
1:13
huge demo for us of who
1:14
would receive that gift.
1:15
So a lot of this was targeting moms and
1:17
it was a lot of
1:19
language around the gift that
1:21
your kid will actually
1:22
want in their dorm room.
1:23
Like shit like that, that
1:24
seemed to do quite well.
1:26
So it was kind of like calling out the
1:28
maybe obvious, but then
1:30
like being a little sassy
1:31
about it, it seemed like really resonant.
1:34
And now let's take a listen to the
1:42
Scalability School podcast.
1:43
Welcome everybody to the Scalability
1:45
School podcast, the Q4
1:47
Black Friday, Cyber Monday
1:49
Q&A, among many other things, potpourri
1:52
of ideas coming out
1:53
of this episode today.
1:55
Brad has a meme that
1:56
he wants to talk about.
1:58
Brad, do you...
1:59
I misled you with the meme.
2:00
It's not actually a meme.
2:02
I don't know if you guys have seen this.
2:03
I watch sports.
2:04
I don't know if you guys watch sports.
2:07
There's something I've been seeing that's
2:08
really fascinating
2:08
that keeps popping up on
2:09
my timeline related to sports is the
2:11
Colts, the football team.
2:14
Indianapolis Colts, their
2:15
owner died like not that long ago.
2:17
And his daughter has like taken over.
2:19
And it's really fascinating because like
2:20
everything you see about
2:21
her taking over is like she's
2:23
on the sideline.
2:24
She's got a headset.
2:24
She's got a notepad.
2:25
She's in every single practice.
2:27
Like she is fucking
2:28
locked in and it's like sick.
2:29
It's really cool to see.
2:31
Maybe he's outside looking in school, but
2:33
she's just like, she
2:34
seems like she's obsessed
2:35
with learning about anything that she
2:38
needs to know to help
2:39
like operate the team.
2:40
And obviously they've had like a
2:41
successful start to the
2:43
season if you've watched any
2:44
any football.
2:45
It's just cool.
2:46
Like, I don't know.
2:47
I just like really not that she needs my
2:49
stamp of approval, but
2:51
I respect the commitment
2:53
that they're just like learning, learning
2:54
by showing up and just being there.
2:56
I don't know.
2:56
It's just cool.
2:57
So it is amazing, isn't it?
2:58
Like when you bring somebody outside into
3:02
an organization, right?
3:03
And they're like, they have a different
3:04
way of thinking about it.
3:06
They have a different like way going
3:07
about it and they'll
3:09
see things you wouldn't.
3:11
And I mean, I think that's, that's good
3:13
in any organization.
3:15
Honestly, I've seen
3:16
that happen so many times.
3:17
It's why consultants generally do well
3:19
because it's, they're
3:20
just a new person coming in
3:21
sometimes and being
3:22
like, have you seen this?
3:23
What do you think about this?
3:24
Right?
3:24
Because you get stuck in so
3:26
much of that day to day grind.
3:28
Yeah, I think the, I mean, everybody,
3:29
every agency person has a
3:31
story of a marketing manager
3:33
coming in and like having a really bad
3:34
experience or really good experience.
3:36
Like it's, it's usually the extremes and
3:37
like the good ones that
3:38
we've had is, is just like
3:40
they care to listen.
3:41
They want to learn if they know that
3:42
you're a partner and the
3:43
bad ones are like, they
3:44
come in with the plan of what they're
3:45
going to do and they
3:46
don't, they don't, there's
3:46
no question asking.
3:47
It's coming in swinging.
3:50
And you know, when somebody comes in and
3:51
they fire all the vendors, it's going to
3:53
be great immediately.
3:55
Yeah.
3:55
Oh yeah.
3:56
That usually was the signal.
3:57
Incredibly well.
3:58
It always like, I mean, it's like how
4:00
much agency attrition
4:01
could be attributed to got
4:03
a new marketing director.
4:04
That's a fucking idiot.
4:06
Honestly, it's like what?
4:08
10% annually.
4:09
Like, yeah.
4:10
I mean, because like,
4:11
the MO is another 10%.
4:13
Yeah.
4:14
Because there are incredible
4:15
leaders that come in waxed.
4:18
It's absolutely waxed, especially if
4:20
there's a brand of like
4:21
substance, like 50 million
4:23
plus in revenue.
4:24
Yeah.
4:24
You're cooked.
4:25
If that brand is hired a new C CMO.
4:28
That's a lot of it too is like, I think a
4:32
lot of people look at, look at experience
4:36
within DTC and they'll, or without
4:37
outside of DTC and they'll
4:39
go to like a brand that's
4:40
sort of a, you know,
4:41
that they want to be like.
4:42
And the person has managed, has managed a
4:46
big team or whatever,
4:47
but they haven't been
4:48
in the weeds as much and they, and
4:49
they've managed people, but
4:51
they haven't managed growth
4:53
and they come in and you know, if they
4:54
start, you know, digging
4:56
around and how many times
4:58
you've been on a call where a client will
4:59
bring it, they'll like
5:00
be, be sharing a screenshot
5:03
with you from GA four that they found.
5:05
And you're like, or, you know, from
5:06
universal analytics back in the day.
5:08
And you're like, where
5:10
did you find this report?
5:12
We haven't been looking at this for like
5:13
three years, you know,
5:14
and you get blindsided by
5:16
it.
5:17
And I think, I think that's true
5:18
sometimes in senior
5:18
leadership too, like ego plays a
5:21
big role.
5:21
And I think to your point, Brad, those
5:23
people that come in and ask
5:25
questions and have curiosity,
5:27
I mean, it's, it's honestly such a better
5:28
route to go because if you're, you're not
5:32
undermining the employees that are
5:33
already there too, right?
5:34
The employees that are
5:34
there, they have opinions.
5:36
They've seen what's going on.
5:37
Like why aren't you asking them instead
5:39
of just coming in and
5:40
being like, well, here
5:41
I am, you know, if I ever get hired as a
5:43
CMO number first day,
5:44
I'm renting a renting
5:46
a Bentley, driving it to work.
5:48
Because you're in
5:48
office, coming in in a suit.
5:53
Also the main thing that's really neat to
5:54
me is like, how many
5:56
new SaaS products for
5:58
DTC do you guys hear about every day?
6:00
For me, minimum three.
6:02
I easily, you texted me one yesterday and
6:06
I'm like, we're probably paying for this,
6:08
but I don't know what the fuck it is.
6:11
It's not, it's just like, that's a hard,
6:13
that's an incredibly
6:14
hard thing to manage.
6:15
Just like validating it for seven and
6:16
eight figure brand owners, right?
6:18
Like who this podcast is made for.
6:20
Like it's, there's so many of these that
6:23
you're like, what do they even do?
6:26
Like I was just thinking about, there was
6:27
a senior staff of one
6:29
SaaS company that just
6:29
went to another company and this person
6:31
announced they were
6:31
going to another company.
6:32
And I'm like, I've never, what does this
6:34
other company even do?
6:35
Also I'm definitely standing up a shell
6:38
company and just saying
6:40
we do agentic commerce.
6:43
Yeah.
6:44
I like it.
6:44
Oh yeah.
6:45
I'll invest.
6:46
I'll get you.
6:46
I'll get you a 20k MRR
6:47
right out of the case.
6:49
I mean, give me a red phone.
6:51
What do you do?
6:52
I mean, I don't, it
6:52
doesn't really matter.
6:55
It's agentic.
6:57
I should close that out by saying like
6:59
all of our experiences
7:00
with marketing managers
7:01
have been fantastic so far this year.
7:03
Like genuinely.
7:04
I want to make sure that someone's in
7:05
case they're getting
7:06
their clients just in case
7:08
this gets into anybody's hands.
7:09
Like genuinely, no, genuinely.
7:11
Like we've had really good experiences.
7:12
I've had, I've had some crazy.
7:13
Okay.
7:14
Sorry.
7:14
I'm going to delay this.
7:15
We had one time we had somebody join
7:17
calls for the first time
7:18
and he was getting his,
7:19
his house renovated is
7:21
literally like he was the one sawing.
7:24
I was shit, you know, for like, for like
7:26
the first three months
7:27
every single week is joining.
7:29
It was like, he was like, I'm not joking.
7:31
Like his house has been renovated and he,
7:33
it sounded like he was the one doing the
7:34
sawing and he was like the senior
7:35
marketing person that
7:36
just joined this company.
7:37
It was, it was wild.
7:39
Like nobody, but
7:39
nobody asked any questions.
7:41
I think that over time though, to your
7:43
point, you know, you're
7:43
saying that the people that
7:44
you're working with
7:44
now, like they're great.
7:45
And I think over time, like one of the
7:47
things that one of the
7:48
marks of a great operator
7:50
of a great agency operator is you know
7:52
how to communicate
7:53
with a breadth of people.
7:55
And you also know what's going to like,
7:57
what's going to read
7:59
what they're looking for so
8:01
that you're able to communicate back to
8:02
them and say like, Hey,
8:03
I know this is a concern
8:04
to you.
8:05
I could tell based on the call like, and
8:07
it's a, you're able to
8:08
level with, with those folks
8:10
and that's a big part of retaining
8:13
because everybody has different opinions.
8:14
They have different reports are looking
8:15
at things that are important to them.
8:17
And you know, you get better at that over
8:18
time when you start, I
8:20
mean, you have to take
8:20
on clients because of
8:22
where you are, right?
8:23
That you revenue wise
8:24
need it and you don't know.
8:25
And you also don't know what to ask,
8:28
which is why I think
8:28
those people that are in an
8:29
agency operation, it's so common to hear,
8:33
yeah, we, you know,
8:36
we're, we had some churn,
8:37
you know, we're doing okay.
8:38
Or like, it feels very frenetic because
8:41
you aren't, I haven't
8:42
gone through the paces of
8:43
understanding here's what I have to ask
8:46
to make sure to get to
8:48
the discussion and the
8:49
level of discussion that we need to.
8:51
And so that's just like a
8:52
big learning curve thing.
8:54
That's a great point.
8:55
I don't know if frenetic needs, but
8:56
everything else is always awesome.
8:58
I just say, I don't even know.
9:00
I knew breakfast is
9:00
going to call that out.
9:01
I was, I saw a blank extra hard after he
9:03
said frenetic and I'm like, he's Google.
9:05
That's just the kind of stuff that, you
9:07
know, I use to sound smart.
9:10
I don't even know.
9:11
I'm a agent to commerce.
9:12
Yeah.
9:13
That's the name of it right there.
9:15
I'm like 25 grand MRR baby.
9:17
Yeah.
9:18
Just off of that.
9:21
That's good.
9:21
No, I think I know we're like segueing
9:24
super hard right now,
9:24
but the one thing I do have
9:25
to say is that's been really interesting
9:28
at Homestead is watching just the quality
9:32
of people that we start working with has
9:37
definitely leveled up in
9:39
the last year to Brad's point
9:40
that people know more.
9:42
They understand the business more.
9:43
I remember going back a few years ago and
9:45
people had no idea what they were doing.
9:47
No clue what they were doing.
9:48
So that's been cool to see.
9:50
The other thing though, the point that I
9:51
was really trying to
9:52
make was that when you're
9:53
an agency owner, you have
9:54
to have time and market.
9:56
Time and market adds so much more just
10:00
quality of clients, amount of inbound.
10:03
It is pretty wild to see.
10:05
Riley will sometimes remind me of what
10:07
clients are working with
10:08
us now because I'm not fully
10:09
in the day-to-day at Homestead.
10:12
He told me about one that's a very
10:14
well-known, huge influencer
10:15
that didn't even know we were
10:16
working with.
10:18
It's pretty wild to think that we would
10:21
have never been able
10:22
to work with this brand.
10:23
Even four years ago, three years ago.
10:25
But now that we have the team, the senior
10:27
leadership and everything, it just starts
10:29
to fall into place.
10:30
I think a lot of these people started an
10:31
agency right away and
10:32
they're like, "Hey, it's not
10:33
working.
10:33
I'm doing this lot of churn."
10:34
That's just part of
10:35
the game when you start.
10:36
You have to figure the shit out.
10:39
The patience and time and
10:40
market is a huge part of it.
10:43
So breaking news, I just got a message.
10:45
Just got a text.
10:46
Read it live to our tens of listeners.
10:49
Fox will love the Q&A
10:50
episode that was released recently.
10:53
I liked it, subscribed, I unsubscribed,
10:56
and then resubscribed
10:57
again to make your numbers
10:58
look great.
11:00
So there you go.
11:01
Fantastic. All right.
11:02
Appreciate that signal.
11:04
I'm not a zero.
11:04
Dang that.
11:06
That's good stuff, everybody.
11:07
Put out a little tweet or post on D2C
11:14
Celebrity Zach Stux account
11:15
asking for questions about
11:19
Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
11:21
We're not hosting a operator style 400
11:27
speakers two day summit.
11:30
We don't have Aaron Orndorf.
11:32
All right.
11:32
It's just us.
11:33
So what we have here is a bunch of
11:37
questions that we will go
11:39
through and that we hope are
11:41
helpful for you to make a bunch of money
11:43
during Black Friday,
11:44
Cyber Monday, and Q4.
11:46
My favorite question to kick things off,
11:48
what is Scalability School?
11:50
Damn.
11:51
This episode is brought to you by
11:52
Northbeam, the marketing
11:54
attribution platform that we
11:55
love here at Scalability School.
11:57
We know that there's a lot of attribution
11:59
solutions out there,
12:00
but Zach and I want to
12:01
talk about what makes Northbeam a little
12:03
bit different and why so
12:04
many e-com legends like
12:06
Zach trust their data.
12:09
Zach, why do you love Northbeam?
12:11
We've been using Northbeam
12:11
now for almost four years.
12:14
So I think the initial thing where it
12:16
kind of got started was
12:17
we had kind of from Ridge
12:18
kind of told me, he's like, Hey, days of
12:21
last click are gone and
12:23
we need a new solution
12:24
to kind of take a look at this.
12:26
And this is before all of
12:27
the crazy Facebook updates.
12:28
He was already kind of
12:29
thinking ahead about this.
12:30
So that's how I initially got introduced
12:31
to it and just started
12:32
using it obviously, you
12:33
know, as a customer.
12:35
And, you know, as of recent, I think the
12:37
biggest thing is that
12:38
it's not just last click and
12:40
it never, it never was just last click.
12:41
And it spreads the credit of the purchase
12:44
across the entire customer journey.
12:46
So like, you know, it's going to give
12:47
credit to each piece of
12:49
the funnel that had its,
12:51
you know, touch point.
12:52
And I think that that's what's allowed us
12:53
to really decide in, in
12:55
spend ad dollars appropriately
12:57
based on what's actually working.
12:59
So we use it across all of our brands,
13:01
across all of our
13:02
Homestead clients that are paid
13:03
clients of ours and Northbeam one day
13:06
click Northbeam seven
13:06
day clicker, kind of like
13:07
the golden North star on how we're making
13:10
decisions on a day to day basis.
13:13
I mean, that's, that's the main reason is
13:14
I feel like the data
13:15
is very clear and it's
13:16
not just, you know, it's
13:18
not just a click basis.
13:19
It's, it's proper allocation across the
13:22
entire customer journey.
13:23
Yeah, I think all of
13:24
those things are true.
13:24
And, you know, there's
13:25
things like the Northbeam Apex.
13:26
It's awesome.
13:27
It's integration with ad platforms like
13:29
Meta and AppLovin and
13:30
allows you to, you know, those
13:32
ad algorithms to actually drive your ad
13:34
delivery based on first
13:35
party performance data.
13:36
So for the things you talked about,
13:38
things like Northbeam
13:39
Apex, you know, it's big and
13:41
Northbeam doesn't inflate revenue.
13:43
It's just the real numbers that actually
13:44
line up with Shopify,
13:45
which is really nice.
13:46
So the Northbeam difference, better data,
13:48
sharper decisions and
13:49
more profitable growth.
13:52
And, you know,
13:52
everybody's using Northbeam, right?
13:54
Dollar Shave Club, Hexclad, you guys.
13:56
So if you're ready to cut through the
13:57
noise and stop guessing,
13:59
go ahead and book a demo
14:00
at Northbeam.io forward slash demo and
14:03
tell them that
14:03
Scalability School sent you for a
14:06
little surprise.
14:07
So join the club and check out Northbeam.
14:09
My favorite question to kick things off.
14:11
What is Scalability School?
14:13
Damn.
14:15
Brutal.
14:16
It is.
14:16
Sorry, he did ask that.
14:17
What is this?
14:18
That's funny.
14:19
That's, that's good shit right there.
14:21
Thank you, listener.
14:22
I mean, hopefully now you're listening or
14:24
person on the internet.
14:25
That's super funny.
14:26
Um, okay.
14:27
For first question that we got, how many
14:30
net new concepts should
14:31
brands launch to hit 1
14:34
million in monthly ad spend in October?
14:36
So this was the first question we got.
14:38
What do you guys think?
14:39
Yeah.
14:39
Brad kicked this off.
14:40
Yeah, I'll like set the stage, but I know
14:42
you're probably making
14:43
like 8,000 videos that
14:45
you're gonna, you'll
14:46
tweet about your output.
14:47
That's all I know.
14:49
There's a, there's a way to, there's a
14:50
way to get to the number.
14:51
And it's like, you know, if it makes you
14:53
feel better about like
14:54
having something to shoot
14:55
for, what you can kind of do is figure
14:56
out, okay, what do you,
14:57
what do you, what is your
14:59
average spend per ad right now look like?
15:02
And how much do you want to spend in what
15:04
you've, this question
15:05
says a million dollars a
15:06
monthly ad spend in October and November.
15:08
If you have a $500,000 deficit and you're
15:10
spending 500K right
15:11
now and your average, you
15:12
know, average spend per ad is 2000, it's
15:13
like, okay, well now
15:14
you can back into how many
15:15
you think you might need.
15:16
The caveat to that is you should probably
15:18
expect some efficiency
15:19
improvements depending
15:20
on your category.
15:21
Most categories will see a bump,
15:23
particularly into November.
15:24
So you can kind of factor that in.
15:27
Potentially need less, but
15:29
I mean, net new concepts.
15:32
This will be a question that
15:33
I think we addressed later on.
15:34
Somebody asked about what percentage of
15:36
spend goes into
15:36
evergreen versus like holiday or
15:38
Black Friday specific creative.
15:39
But like, I think you can continue to
15:41
take a lot of net new
15:42
swings going into this moment,
15:44
even if that means you're making them for
15:46
holiday for Black Friday, like for those
15:48
different moments.
15:49
But there's a math way to kind of back
15:51
into it, but it's probably not perfect.
15:53
Zach, how are you thinking about it?
15:54
I mean, the Delta is kind of the starting
15:57
point to Brad's
15:58
thought, which is important.
16:00
So if you're spending $200K a month right
16:02
now and you want to
16:02
spend a million, you have to
16:05
factor that in.
16:06
Now, you definitely have
16:08
to add this multiplier.
16:09
I'm agreeing with basically what you're
16:10
saying, Brad, which is like add a
16:11
multiplier, go look at
16:13
historical data if you have historical
16:14
data last year to see what
16:15
was the lift that it felt like
16:17
you just got in performance or that just
16:19
felt like it was easier to
16:20
scale into and apply that to it.
16:22
If that's 20%, 15%,
16:23
whatever that ends up being.
16:25
I like to think about it as how much are
16:28
you spending right now on testing?
16:30
How much are you willing to spend on
16:32
testing as a
16:33
percentage of your daily spend?
16:35
And then of that, how much are you
16:37
willing to spend behind each creative?
16:39
So if you're running a lowest cost
16:40
methodology, are you going to spend $250
16:42
behind each concept that
16:44
you're going to launch, which then there
16:45
might be five or six
16:46
variants of that concept?
16:48
That is also how you
16:49
could back into this.
16:50
So just very quick back to the napkin
16:51
math, if you're going to
16:52
be spending $250 a day on
16:54
each concept, each
16:56
concept is six unique ads.
17:00
What would this end up
17:01
being times maybe 25,000?
17:07
Yeah, I mean, like I think you can do
17:08
that rough math where it's saying this is
17:10
how much I'm willing
17:11
to spend behind each creative test that
17:12
I'm going to launch 250 day
17:14
for three days, whatever that
17:15
rule is that you've been running.
17:17
Everyone kind of does this a little bit
17:18
differently, especially if you're
17:19
running, you know, cost
17:20
controls and then just
17:21
back into it from there.
17:22
I don't think there's really anything
17:23
that much more specific into
17:25
holiday, October, November,
17:27
besides just kind of knowing your basic
17:29
math and then knowing what
17:30
that lift will be, which I would
17:33
assume can be like
17:34
somewhere between a 15 and 20% lift.
17:36
You can expect an extra performance out
17:38
of the new concepts that
17:39
you launch that will get gain
17:40
spend. For us, like the honest truth of
17:43
this is like we're not making
17:44
more new concepts in October
17:47
or November in preparation for BFCM.
17:50
We're basically just continuously making
17:51
the same amount and or as we have more
17:54
budget and have more
17:55
money in the company to add a new
17:56
creative strategist or add
17:57
a new editor, it's not like
17:59
October, November, we're making a ton
18:01
more ads for that period of time.
18:04
So I would say focus more
18:05
on making better quality ads.
18:08
Keep the pace that you're running now and
18:10
just know that there's a
18:11
chance that you find more
18:12
winners over this period of time because
18:14
buyer intent goes up.
18:15
Again, not the greatest, most exciting
18:19
answer, but that's kind of
18:20
how we think about it too.
18:23
I would go to that thing about what you
18:24
said before, Brad, with
18:25
the how much is spent on
18:27
new versus new stuff for holiday,
18:29
whatever. Let's just jump
18:30
to that. You said you checked
18:31
on a couple of counts on this to look
18:33
through. I think this
18:35
is always a question.
18:36
We talked about this in another episode
18:38
of Black Prize every Monday.
18:39
Evergreen seems to always do
18:40
well and do better, but it can be that
18:44
holiday specific stuff does
18:46
better to the lower part of
18:48
the funnel to win people back. What did
18:49
you find in your research?
18:52
Yeah, so I pulled up one, two, three,
18:55
four, five, six, seven accounts and I
18:57
just looked at their
18:58
spend from November 1st through December
19:00
15th. The question for
19:02
what's worth is for November,
19:03
December, what percentage of spend
19:04
typically goes to evergreen winners
19:06
versus holiday creative,
19:07
either net new or winners with holiday
19:09
overlays. What I found, and
19:10
I'll just read that off brand
19:12
by brand, I won't say the brand name, but
19:13
maybe I'll try to give
19:14
context into is the brand...
19:16
Most e-com brands are impacted by Black
19:19
Friday to the tune of no
19:21
less than 20% of their revenue
19:23
happening from November to December 15th.
19:26
There's some that are 40,
19:28
there's some that are 70.
19:31
Just keep that in mind. I'll try to frame
19:33
this up with context if I can.
19:35
First brand spent about 40% of their
19:37
spend into Black Friday,
19:38
Cyber Monday and holiday specific
19:39
assets. I would say they probably do
19:42
something like 30 to 40% of
19:43
their revenue during that period,
19:44
split pretty evenly between new and
19:46
returning customers, new
19:47
customers more aggressively
19:49
recently. Second one, again, 40% of their
19:53
spend into Black Friday, Cyber Monday,
19:55
holiday assets, but three of the top five
19:58
spenders in that case were
19:59
actually gifting messaging.
20:01
This is a pretty gifting heavy brand.
20:03
There's a question about gifting.
20:05
I'll try to fly through this and then
20:06
maybe add more context.
20:07
Another brand spent 70% of their
20:09
spend on holiday specific assets. One
20:11
spent less than 10%, the
20:12
next one spent 20%, the next one
20:14
spent 16%. And then the final one that I
20:16
have spent like 16% on
20:18
Black Friday and 15% on the
20:20
holiday product that they released. And
20:21
so all of this to say,
20:24
there was more spend into the
20:26
specific assets than I anticipated, to be
20:28
honest. I was going into
20:30
this thinking, I would see 20%.
20:32
And we just scaled up evergreen for the
20:33
most part. It's obviously
20:34
going to differ by brand.
20:36
But looking at the breakdown here, I was
20:39
surprised to see how much
20:40
was actually spent through
20:42
those specific creatives. And I can talk
20:45
about what showed up in
20:46
the creative a little bit.
20:47
I scanned some of the top spending ads
20:49
that were holiday specific,
20:50
were Black Friday specific,
20:51
and were evergreen specific. So if that's
20:53
helpful, I can dig into that.
20:54
But I don't know if you guys
20:54
have any immediate reactions to the
20:56
percentages. I thought it'd be different
20:59
as well. I think you
21:02
kind of go through this and think it's a
21:04
lot more spent on the
21:07
existing. So I think that's
21:09
interesting. I think it's also though,
21:12
when you get into certain
21:13
verticals and different accounts,
21:15
and certainly see this in the Foxville
21:16
Founders membership and the
21:17
wrap up that we do each year,
21:19
those people that create not just taking
21:22
the existing product and
21:23
put a bow in the image or
21:26
something. Those people that actually
21:29
have done packaging that is
21:32
giftable, or they've made it in
21:35
a way that's an easy thing to gift for a
21:38
certain person. I know,
21:40
Zach, you've done certainly stuff
21:43
like this with Holo in terms of the
21:45
offer. And I'm not sure if
21:46
you've done any packaging
21:47
changes that I'm aware of. But anyway,
21:49
the point is, I think
21:50
that has a lot of legs,
21:51
because that stands differently than the
21:55
same images that you've
21:57
had next to a pine tree,
21:59
or the same product even next to a pine
22:01
tree or something. It's not that special.
22:04
I just pulled data for Holo, just for
22:06
that sake. So November
22:07
1st through December 15th,
22:09
Metaspend last year was like 1.5 million.
22:12
35% of that was holiday,
22:14
holiday or BFCM language.
22:17
Again, it can be substantial, by all
22:19
means. If we didn't run that, that would
22:22
be pretty substantial.
22:23
It's not going to be the majority though,
22:25
I don't think is the
22:26
average. Would you agree with that,
22:28
Brad? Yeah. It's going to be like maybe
22:30
70, 30, 60, 40 in most cases.
22:34
And it's going to differ by brand. The
22:38
obvious gifting heavy
22:40
brands from the list
22:41
do definitely skew on the 40, 60 and then
22:44
70% side. The 70% one is very seasonal,
22:47
actually outside of it. They peak in
22:50
summer, I'd say a little
22:52
bit more, summer and spring.
22:54
That also skews it a bit. Yeah. I think
22:57
the lesson here is, to
22:59
Andrew's point, is that
23:01
there's two things that I learned looking
23:04
at this. We made a ton
23:05
of assets last year where
23:06
we just put overlays on top of the shit
23:09
that you worked throughout
23:09
the entire year. It was like,
23:11
I'm not convinced that that was worth the
23:13
effort. And it's not hard to
23:14
do because it's just adding
23:16
an overlay. But I don't know what you're
23:18
seeing in Holo, but I'm just
23:20
starting to think that that
23:20
wasn't worth it. And I'm starting to
23:22
think, "Okay, great. If the client's
23:24
going to do a photo shoot,
23:25
or is going to make some video content,
23:27
or we're going to help
23:27
them get video content,
23:29
or whatever it is, lean into the moment
23:31
and send them into the
23:33
warehouse to record something.
23:35
Put them next to a Christmas tree and
23:37
make it look like it's
23:37
gift wrapped and packaged.
23:39
V03 is going to probably have some
23:40
crazy... I'm sure Santa doing
23:42
crazy shit this year is going
23:43
to be very popular with V03. You're
23:45
probably already cooking
23:45
something up. And nano banana,
23:47
it probably makes it really easy to get
23:49
some holiday photos that
23:51
are relevant. But I think
23:52
you got to really lean into that moment
23:53
because that's what I saw
23:54
was the top spending stuff was
23:56
really leaning into those moments with
23:59
something unique, not just
23:59
slapping an overlay. Now,
24:02
statics that are designed for sale
24:04
periods, that's not what I'm
24:05
talking about. That's still
24:06
worth doing. Those still look solid, but
24:08
just dropping the
24:09
overlay. I don't know if that's
24:10
what you're seeing for Holo. Same pitch.
24:12
Same pitch. Yep. And we've
24:13
seen that even this year,
24:14
too, even for the big holidays. In the
24:17
warehouse packing boxes,
24:19
the air packing orders, the
24:21
relevant 4th of July fireworks content is
24:25
what worked for this
24:27
year's holiday. I would expect
24:28
the same. Can't just half acid anymore
24:30
with it. I already got the
24:32
picture of Santa stuck in the
24:34
chimney with the holo socks peeking out
24:36
the bottom. It's great.
24:39
Exactly. There you go.
24:40
There's a free concept.
24:44
Okay, cool. Next question.
24:46
What do you have? The next thing is
24:49
gifting related. In my
24:53
notes, I have a little screenshot
24:54
in there, which we don't have to
24:55
specifically reference, but I think
24:56
something that you're
24:56
saying is really interesting to roll into
24:58
is if you've run
24:59
promos throughout the year,
25:01
you should go promo by promo and look at
25:03
all of the top spending
25:04
creative and the concepts
25:07
throughout the time of year. We had a
25:09
client run their annual
25:10
sale, which happens to be
25:12
in August, September. If you run a Labor
25:15
Day sale, this is a
25:15
good indication for that.
25:17
Go look at that and see what you did
25:19
creatively and what
25:20
conceptually worked. For them,
25:22
we just happened to crank out a bunch of
25:24
"they helped a ton with
25:25
this. It was awesome." It was
25:26
great collaboration. We just had a ton of
25:29
lo-fi, lower effort ideas
25:31
for making organic-looking
25:33
posts. Lo-fi, which is the very hot, ugly
25:36
ad method. They had their
25:37
team records and videos.
25:38
The graphics, whatever. Go back
25:41
throughout the course of the
25:41
year and look at your promo
25:42
periods and see what worked. Every single
25:44
time you do a promo,
25:46
what we're trying to do is,
25:48
what conceptually worked that we can pull
25:50
forward to the next promo? Then what
25:52
didn't we do that we
25:53
want to try to throw into the mix? Or
25:54
what didn't we do enough of? The
25:56
screenshot that I have,
25:57
which I probably shouldn't share, is a
25:59
breakdown of conceptually the type of ad.
26:02
So lo-fi, organic, produced, whatever. Ad
26:05
counts. The quantity of ads
26:06
that we had and then the volume
26:07
of spend for that category. I've talked
26:09
about this before with the
26:10
pillars and angles thing.
26:11
This is just a different way to look at
26:12
it. And then now what
26:13
we're just doing is not, "Okay,
26:14
great. We know that lo-fi and organic
26:16
stuff worked really great."
26:17
Because it's super easy to shoot
26:19
that. Let's just go crank out more. Let's
26:21
have more people, more
26:22
different models do the same
26:23
thing on repeat and just hammer out more
26:25
of the stuff that has
26:26
worked throughout the year.
26:26
So the lesson here is continue to pull
26:29
forward the stuff that's
26:30
working. Don't just abandon it.
26:31
Go back and look at it. I think that's
26:34
true. I think that makes a
26:35
lot of sense. I think it's
26:36
a story that we've talked about a lot,
26:38
which is obviously having
26:39
diverse set of ideas and angles
26:43
and the way that you're talking about it
26:44
and all different types
26:46
of concepts out there.
26:47
We're going to talk about creative. Let's
26:48
go back to talking about
26:49
creative in a second. But one
26:51
question I know that you guys have each
26:53
done Black Friday, Summer Monday
26:54
planning. I've been part of
26:56
it for different agencies as well, having
26:58
them go through this. And there's
26:59
obviously this learning
27:00
period that you're going or these
27:02
learning lessons that
27:03
happen and mistakes that happen.
27:06
What are the things that you screwed up
27:08
on last year that you want
27:10
to make sure or that you're
27:11
fixing this year with the team structure
27:14
wise? Zach in your own
27:18
company and then Brad with your
27:19
clients. Yeah. I think the biggest lesson
27:21
from last year was having
27:23
enough creative. This is
27:24
actually outside of even ads, but having
27:26
enough creative for other
27:27
channels. Email and SMS being
27:29
a huge one. So getting ahead of content
27:32
for holiday, for sale
27:33
related and baking that into
27:36
flows that you might update or emails
27:38
that you might update. I feel like
27:40
everyone forgets about
27:41
that. It's the last minute thing where
27:42
they're like, "Oh shit, I
27:43
got to go update emails." Or
27:44
maybe we didn't get enough holiday
27:46
creative. That's one thing
27:47
that we got. We're getting way
27:49
ahead of this year. So we're having photo
27:50
shoots done in October that will be
27:52
content for November,
27:54
December, gifting holiday BFCM. So that's
27:57
one thing that I feel
27:57
people forget about is the
27:59
content for things outside of ads to be
28:02
planning for while in
28:03
advance. So that's one.
28:05
I don't know if I have anything crazy to
28:06
add. I probably need to
28:07
reflect on it a little bit more,
28:08
but there's just the ever present
28:10
checklist of things that you need to
28:11
control for. The website,
28:13
landing page, headlines, email stuff that
28:15
you mentioned. And I think
28:16
it's just really easy for
28:17
to get to do that stuff. And we're
28:18
probably all going to have really high
28:20
anxiety leading into it,
28:21
just trying to remember each of the
28:22
things from that list. But I would
28:24
probably echo similar
28:25
thoughts that just from a creative
28:26
perspective, just having what you need
28:28
with plenty of time.
28:30
And we always start, I mean, in the next
28:31
couple of weeks, we're
28:33
recording this at the end of
28:34
September. In the next couple of weeks,
28:36
we're going to start
28:36
chipping away at building that
28:39
library for Black Friday and Cyber
28:40
Monday. Because you don't
28:41
want to be Friday afternoon
28:43
thinking, "Shit, I need more ads." I
28:45
mean, you can still crank
28:46
about more ads and we'll do that,
28:47
but just not the time to have that
28:49
reflected. One thing to
28:51
Brad's point about looking back
28:53
at ads that worked historically, also go
28:56
look back at brands that
28:57
have run sales during big
28:59
promo periods this year. Go look back at
29:01
brands that you know run
29:02
big DR, big offers. Just go
29:04
look back at their Labor Day sale ads, go
29:07
look at their 4th of
29:09
July ads, and if they ran an
29:11
anniversary sale, whatever that might be.
29:13
That might spike some
29:15
ideas for content that you want
29:16
to shoot now, not in November. I feel
29:19
like we're usually shooting
29:20
content last minute in the
29:22
warehouse or last minute, whatever. I
29:24
think getting ahead of
29:25
that just reduces the stress
29:27
that Brad's talking about. One question,
29:29
Zach, have you ever run
29:31
completely out and then gone to
29:32
a pre-sale or a waiting list type of
29:36
thing? We've never done
29:37
the waiting list. We've done
29:39
Holo has run out of inventory every year
29:42
for the last, this will be
29:43
our fifth year, fourth year,
29:44
every BFCM. We've run out of inventory.
29:47
Basically, we end up
29:47
turning off ads, which sucks.
29:49
It's the worst feeling in the world. We
29:51
tried pre-orders for
29:52
some SKUs that we knew
29:54
that we felt decent about. For Homestead
29:57
clients, we've done that. A
29:58
hex-clad, long-term client of
30:00
Homestead, I know that we flipped over
30:03
some pre-sale stuff for
30:04
them one or two years ago that
30:06
did really, really well. It was like,
30:07
"Hey, we put shipping deadlines on the
30:09
page and people were
30:10
okay with it because they knew that they
30:11
could get the best deal of
30:12
the year." It's definitely
30:14
something that I would be open to if you
30:16
know and can forecast out
30:17
inventory into Q1. I think
30:19
the biggest lesson that we've made
30:20
historically with Holo though
30:21
is we gas the shit out of it
30:24
because it's going well and performance
30:28
is great. Then we screw ourselves for Q1.
30:31
I think the biggest thing is making sure
30:32
that you're not just
30:33
forecasting into Q4. A lot of
30:35
smaller brands will just be like, "This
30:36
is my goal for this year."
30:38
Think about Q1 and Q2 and
30:39
what that impact might have. If ads start
30:41
to break out and
30:42
performance really starts to lift,
30:43
that you can hit it, make sure you don't
30:45
screw yourself over for
30:46
the next year because we've
30:48
done that. Makes sense. Timing-wise,
30:51
let's talk about this. Somebody asked,
30:53
"I've seen some brands
30:53
that are really Q4 heavy start their
30:56
holiday stuff really early,
30:58
like first week in November,
30:59
whether there's wait close to Black
31:01
Friday. What do you think is
31:02
the best time essentially to
31:04
offer this to start putting things on
31:06
sale? How do you navigate from early
31:07
November through Black
31:08
Friday, Cyber Monday into December?" What
31:13
do you guys think in
31:15
reference to this? It's always one
31:18
of the wrap ups last two years with
31:19
Foxville founder members, Black Friday,
31:20
Cyber Monday is like,
31:22
"Start earlier. It is a good thing.
31:24
People are in the mood. They're going to
31:25
be looking for deals.
31:27
Don't be disingenuous if it actually is
31:29
the best deal. Stick to
31:30
that." Generally, trying to push
31:33
inventory and especially push messaging
31:36
through the Black Friday,
31:37
Cyber Monday period because
31:38
that's actually when people are going to
31:39
buy. Even if early in
31:40
November, they're not buying,
31:41
they're looking, they're getting used to
31:43
the offer. What do you guys
31:44
think and how do you go about
31:46
this? Knowing who this was from, I think
31:48
we can tailor it a little
31:49
bit. I'll set the stage slightly.
31:51
They sell a product that's going to be
31:53
very giftable. There's
31:56
another question about
31:58
all things gifting. Somebody wanted us to
32:00
dig into, Hannah, I
32:01
believe, wanted us to dig into
32:02
all things gifting. Zach, you and I have
32:04
both had the maybe pleasure of owning
32:06
gifting heavy brands.
32:07
We can divulge some stuff there. He's
32:10
going to have skews that are
32:11
going to be probably pretty
32:12
solid during November, but more so I
32:15
would bet in December. Then
32:17
he's going to be able to have
32:18
holiday specific products. That's the
32:20
context that I'm going through this with.
32:22
For him specifically, I think it's okay.
32:25
Literally right now,
32:25
whenever you're listening to this,
32:26
if it's October, start your holiday and
32:29
you're gifting messaging
32:30
ads. No, that's fine. They
32:32
won't spend. If you're running into CBO,
32:34
if you're running with cost
32:34
caps, they just won't spend
32:36
until people start to be in gifting mode.
32:39
But the last weekend in
32:40
October, when Mariah Carey's
32:42
song starts to pop up the charts, people
32:44
are in gifting mode and
32:45
they're going to start buying
32:45
gifs. My grandma buys shit two months in
32:47
advance. She's ready. It's
32:49
okay to have it ready for those
32:50
people. My thought is you can start
32:52
gifting messaging now.
32:53
Don't expect that it's going
32:54
to really pick up until November. Then
32:56
literally Cyber Monday
32:58
through shipping cutoff, it should
32:59
really pop up. Our gifting heavy brand
33:01
does more revenue from
33:02
December 1st to December 15th than
33:04
it does in November. It's depressing
33:05
because I want Black Friday to be better.
33:07
That's what happens.
33:09
Let me get through the schedule really
33:10
quick and I'll pause. Start
33:12
gifting now and run it through
33:14
shipping cutoff. If you want to start
33:15
your promo, November 1st,
33:16
November 3rd is the first Monday
33:17
of November, do it. I don't think there's
33:19
anything wrong with that.
33:20
Then I probably wouldn't go crazy
33:22
heavy on holiday specific collections
33:25
during Black Friday, Cyber Monday. If
33:26
you've got inventory,
33:27
that's really holiday specific. It's a
33:29
holiday box. He sells
33:31
some stuffed animal stuff.
33:33
If it's a stuffed animal with a Santa
33:35
hat, you can maybe have it
33:37
live on the website. I don't
33:38
think you want to run something
33:39
discounted that is holiday specific and
33:42
lose the margin on that.
33:43
When I think you could launch it without
33:45
as an aggressive of an
33:46
offer December 2nd and then get
33:48
the second wave of gifting. That would be
33:50
my recommendation based
33:51
on what we've seen for some
33:52
of these brands. It'd be different if
33:55
it's just the same SKU. For us, we have
33:58
the same SKU. I think
33:59
rolling with the same discount and just
34:01
changing the name of the
34:02
sale, which I know you mentioned
34:04
that's what you're doing with Holzec. I
34:05
think that's okay. But if you've got a
34:07
holiday specific SKU,
34:09
personally, I'm waiting until maybe Cyber
34:11
Monday, but probably the day after.
34:12
Same exact strategy. We owned a gifting
34:15
brand that we've since
34:17
sold, but it would do 80% of the
34:19
yearly revenue from November 15th to
34:22
December 15th. It was
34:23
pretty brutal, to be honest.
34:25
The crazy thing is most brands might have
34:29
this BFCM peak. Black
34:31
Friday, crazy weekend does good.
34:34
Cyber Monday, great. And then it chills
34:36
out, but still has a strong December.
34:37
This brand would literally build day by
34:39
day through December. I think if you do
34:41
have the ability to do
34:43
holiday gifting, anything like that,
34:46
you're December 2nd
34:47
through the last ship days.
34:49
Wait to launch then, but make sure your
34:51
original BFCM offer is as early as you
34:54
can afford to do it.
34:56
Homestead, we have slowly each year
34:59
brought it up a few more
35:00
days or even a week. I think
35:02
Holz is launching, I think I might have
35:03
shared it on the pod
35:04
already, but I think it's the 10th
35:06
that we're launching. You have to double
35:07
check. It's early.
35:09
And we like that because
35:11
ads can get spending, they'll start to
35:13
get traction. And then
35:13
that way, you know if you've
35:14
got a winner or not going into the week
35:16
before Black Friday,
35:17
that Thanksgiving week,
35:19
which then you can really hit the gas on
35:20
those ads and have a little
35:21
bit of proven track record.
35:22
If you wait right up until that same week
35:25
of Black Friday, it's
35:26
really hard for those ads
35:27
to start to break out. Just because
35:30
they'll get buried with
35:30
your kind of evergreen stuff.
35:33
I'd say BFCM offer launch as early as you
35:35
can in November. Holiday gifting stuff,
35:38
same as Brad. Early
35:40
December after BFCM, I'd wait.
35:42
What did you see working from a creative
35:43
perspective for
35:44
gifting brands? I think it'd
35:46
be good to spend some
35:47
time on gifting brands.
35:48
Yeah, I think it was just language around
35:50
who was actually getting
35:53
the gift was the important
35:54
parts. We had a product that did really
35:56
well for customers. Male demo
35:59
that was 18 to 25 was a huge
36:02
demo for us of who would receive that
36:03
gift. A lot of this was
36:05
targeting moms. And it was a lot of
36:07
language around the gift that your kid
36:10
will actually want in their
36:11
dorm room, shit like that,
36:12
that seemed to do quite well. It was
36:14
calling out the maybe
36:17
obvious, but then being a little
36:19
sassy about it, it seemed to really
36:21
resonate. So I think
36:22
understanding who's actually receiving
36:24
the gifts, who's actually buying the
36:26
gift, make sure that you
36:27
understand that relationship so
36:29
that you're not running your year round
36:31
advertising that maybe is targeting the
36:33
person that might buy
36:34
the products when it's not a holiday.
36:37
When it's a gift period, I
36:38
think you just have to re-shift
36:39
that language. Same thing. Our product is
36:42
dumb. So talking about
36:43
white elephant and those funny
36:45
things. Read the room, know what your
36:48
product is used or not
36:49
used for, and speak into that.
36:52
To your point on ramping into December, I
36:54
just pulled up. I have
36:55
two gifting examples. One
36:57
works well for Black Friday. And they hit
37:00
their peak of revenue on
37:00
Cyber Monday. Black Friday was
37:01
just the dip below that. But their peak
37:04
in December following
37:05
Cyber Monday was the 12th
37:08
into the 13th into the 14th into the
37:09
15th. 15th was the
37:11
shipping cut off. So it just
37:12
tanked after that. The other brand that
37:15
I'm looking at, the second week of
37:16
November was great. And
37:17
then it dipped off, which was
37:19
post-election. So it makes sense that
37:20
that was the best one.
37:22
Black Friday was fine. Cyber Monday was
37:24
better. The week after Cyber Monday
37:27
doubled. And then the
37:28
week after that went up another 20%. And
37:32
that was even after shipping
37:33
had to cut off already during
37:35
that point. So if you're gifting heavy,
37:37
you should just be
37:37
prepared for December to be nuts.
37:39
That's where you should start to ramp up.
37:41
So whenever everybody
37:41
starts posting screenshots
37:42
and you're depressed about Black Friday
37:43
not being good, it's like, "Yours is
37:45
coming. Don't worry."
37:46
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. The other
37:48
thing to remember too is
37:49
that transition to buying on
37:51
Amazon is something to remember. So if
37:54
you're selling your
37:55
product on Amazon as well as D2C,
37:58
we always see that shift maybe starting
38:00
the 15th where it'll
38:02
just go very heavy Amazon.
38:03
So if you're running your business off of
38:05
a blended MER between
38:07
Amazon business and D2C
38:08
business and you actually take into
38:10
consideration that halo
38:11
effect, that halo effect gets massive
38:13
those last weeks of around last ship day
38:16
and then especially after
38:17
last ship day. And just be
38:18
considerate of that. Don't kill ad spend
38:20
if you're still seeing performance
38:21
looking good across the
38:22
business. We usually run ads even a
38:24
little bit after that. We've
38:25
even used the Amazon language
38:26
in some of our ads where we'll say last
38:28
ship day, this day, or buy on
38:30
Amazon. And we'll usually see
38:32
that halo pop even a bit more. So
38:34
something to consider if
38:35
you're a big gifting product.
38:37
Interesting to say that because I looked
38:39
at Amazon as a breakdown and
38:40
Amazon did 20K the week of,
38:43
200K in total from the beginning of
38:45
November through the end
38:45
of December and did 20K the
38:48
first week of December. The second week
38:50
of December did 40 and
38:51
then before the shipping
38:52
cut off, it did 60 and then dipped down
38:55
to 35, which was like
38:57
that week ended the 23rd.
38:59
So it was like, to your point, people can
39:01
get it in time if they go
39:02
to Amazon. So there's that
39:03
shift that you just have to be
39:05
comfortable to be ready
39:06
for. It makes a ton of sense.
39:09
The only other reminder, and this is more
39:10
like an operations thing,
39:11
but make sure you ship your
39:13
product into Amazon early. Be the
39:16
annoying brand that overshifts stuff and
39:18
FBA complains to your
39:19
team about it and bitches about it.
39:21
That's what you want to be. You do not
39:23
want to be the brand
39:23
that's waiting to ship stuff because the
39:25
check-in periods, the distribution
39:26
periods go up pretty
39:28
dramatically, especially because of
39:30
you're coming off of Prime Day from
39:32
Amazon, which is happening
39:33
in early October. They will likely launch
39:35
a Black Friday sale on Amazon
39:38
the week before Black Friday
39:40
is what I'm being told. So make sure
39:42
you're getting products in as soon as you
39:43
possibly can to Amazon.
39:45
Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. I think
39:46
that we're all looking for
39:49
that last minute. So it makes
39:50
sense. I think it's also trended last
39:53
year that people were buying
39:54
gifts later. The consideration
39:56
or consideration cycle was longer.
39:59
There's obviously Black
40:01
Friday, December, Monday. There's
40:02
a certain group of people that will
40:04
always love that and hit
40:05
that up. But also getting things
40:10
last minute and thinking about it,
40:11
knowing people can get it later. Ben
40:14
spoiled with that, I would
40:16
say. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a
40:20
certain percentage of people that have
40:22
their partner asking
40:23
"Did you get that for your mom?" Knowing
40:26
you can get it on
40:26
Amazon is a really big deal.
40:28
And even if you're offering two-day
40:31
shipping or whatever, that is a
40:34
marketable thing because
40:36
that's something everyone's looking for.
40:38
And the cost of getting it
40:40
to them is not irrelevant,
40:42
but close to irrelevant if they don't
40:44
have a gift for the
40:44
people that they love.
40:46
Two things I want to hit on real quick
40:47
that our channel that we rarely talk
40:50
about, which is Google,
40:51
something to be considering is just
40:53
updating your titles in Google
40:55
to reflect your sales period,
40:57
especially if you don't run sales very
40:58
often. If someone is
41:00
Googling a brand or a product near
41:02
yours and you're running brand search
41:03
campaigns, those are the
41:05
ones that you really want to win
41:05
out. Making sure that your offer is
41:07
showcasing in those. And then the
41:09
secondary piece to that is,
41:10
if you have the ability and have the
41:12
capacity and you know how to do it,
41:14
updating your shopping
41:15
images to have some type of gift ability,
41:18
wrapper, whatever, something
41:19
special that makes those pop
41:20
out and stand out a little bit more in
41:21
the Google shopping feed. So
41:23
those are two things that we
41:24
always forget in the last minute. And
41:26
then I'm Googling our
41:28
brand's name just to make sure our
41:29
website isn't down. And I see those
41:30
things and I'm like, "Oh,
41:31
shit. Yeah, let's go update the
41:33
search listings and the shopping stuff."
41:35
So something else to consider.
41:37
Channel wise, I have two maybe quick
41:40
things. Channel wise,
41:41
outside of Google, are you guys
41:42
experimenting with anything else? The
41:44
reason I ask is we launched Snapchat
41:45
randomly last year for
41:46
a couple of people and it just cranked.
41:48
Now it sucks right now for
41:49
me, which sounds like other
41:50
people are not having that exact same
41:52
experience, but Q4 or
41:53
Snapchat was awesome. So are you
41:56
experimenting with other channels during
41:57
this time? Are you
41:58
going in with what you got?
42:00
App Love and I think it's still a good
42:01
option if you're heavy gift
42:02
ability. Most of the customers
42:06
and users of App Love and where they're
42:08
running ads. So people that
42:09
don't know what App Love and
42:09
is, essentially it's an ad platform that
42:11
runs similar ads, mostly
42:13
video, almost entirely video,
42:15
to people playing mobile games. So think
42:18
of the mobile game user
42:19
for the most part, those are
42:20
like 50 to 70 year olds playing all sorts
42:23
of games on their phone.
42:24
That's a very heavy gifting
42:26
segment. Spending dollars if you have
42:29
really good gifting ads
42:29
that are working on Meta,
42:30
just over on that platform to close out
42:32
the loop. Even from a bottom of funnel
42:35
opportunity is a big
42:37
one. We spent a lot on App Love and last
42:38
year. I think we cranked it
42:39
up at one point to 20k a day.
42:41
So it was working quite well. We were
42:42
looking at one day clicker
42:43
ads and it was holding strong
42:44
against Meta. So that's one. This year,
42:47
because our advertising
42:48
budget has grown, we're spending
42:50
on linear. So as of right now, we're
42:51
spending about 5k a day for
42:53
Holo and I anticipate we'll
42:55
continue to ramp that up. We're using our
42:58
MMM right now, which is
42:58
Prussian to keep an eye on
43:00
that and it's looking decent.
43:02
Post-purchase survey is looking decent.
43:04
We're usually looking at
43:05
dollar spent versus the result in
43:09
post-purchase survey to correlate. So if
43:10
TV budget is 2% of our
43:14
total daily spend budget or 5% of our
43:16
total daily spend budget,
43:18
we're hoping to see 5% or close to
43:20
5% on post-purchase survey within one to
43:22
two weeks after we
43:22
launch. So those are looking
43:24
pretty good right now. So I anticipate
43:25
we'll continue spending
43:26
there. We did some streaming
43:28
ads earlier in the year. They did okay.
43:30
Not super excited about
43:31
that platform. I think linear
43:32
remnant spots are the new hotspot that it
43:35
seems to be working even better.
43:38
So I'd say that, Apple, I mean, are the
43:39
two that we're going to double down on.
43:41
What is linear remnants?
43:43
What is that? So it's a snack.
43:46
It's actually Thanksgiving. Yeah, right.
43:48
It's my new SaaS company, Remnant.
43:52
No. So my understanding of how this works
43:54
is there's basically
43:55
dead spots that haven't been
43:56
purchased yet. They're just random spots
43:59
that someone didn't buy.
44:00
They're not prime time spots.
44:01
They're just random ones that will show
44:02
up. So we are basically...
44:04
We're working with Tatarri.
44:05
We're essentially telling Tatarri, "We'll
44:06
take the random spots at
44:08
random times throughout the day.
44:10
And here's our budget. And here's what we
44:11
want to pay on a CPM basis."
44:12
So when you pay a little bit
44:13
later in the night, random slots, not
44:15
prime time TV or prime time
44:17
watch times, you usually get
44:18
cheaper CPMs. So for us, if we can bring
44:20
that CPM price down, the cost per
44:22
visitor, which is really
44:23
the metric that we're looking at, is
44:25
looking really, really
44:26
good. So we can correlate cost
44:28
per visitor to conversion rate to AOV,
44:30
and we can back into RUS
44:32
that way. For us, we're buying
44:35
those spots versus just saying, "Hey, I
44:38
want to run on ESPN at five
44:40
o'clock when the game starts,"
44:43
or whatever. Those are much more
44:44
expensive spots to buy. So this is the
44:46
cheaper alternative to
44:47
get your foot in the door that we see
44:48
decent performance from. So
44:51
what do you guys think about...
44:53
This isn't one of the questions we got,
44:54
but we got this
44:54
question. We've had this question
44:56
before. We talked about it a little bit,
44:58
but I want to make sure
44:58
we talk about it again.
44:59
Building offers that protect margin and
45:03
how you do that. Because I
45:04
think the classic 30% off or
45:07
whatever is okay, but it also just
45:09
crushes your margin unless
45:11
you're doing a ton of volume.
45:14
How do you think about crafting an offer
45:18
that's holiday forward?
45:20
And how would you take
45:22
a template almost to this to make sure
45:25
that people are building
45:25
something that's logical,
45:27
that's going to make them more money?
45:30
Yeah, it's going to be product dependent,
45:32
but I really buy something, get X of the
45:38
same product. Especially if it's
45:41
socks makes a ton of sense, our gifting
45:42
product made a ton of
45:43
sense. There's a lot of products,
45:46
t-shirts make a lot of... Apparel can
45:48
really work with this. I
45:49
really like that for a couple of
45:51
reasons. I recorded a video for a client
45:55
today where I
45:55
basically explained to them,
45:57
if you run 30% off, it takes more off the
46:01
top than if you just give
46:02
somebody a free t-shirt.
46:05
The cost of shipping goes up by a dollar.
46:08
Maybe the pick-pack fee goes up by
46:10
50 cents. The marginal shipping cost of
46:13
getting an additional
46:14
unit in for many brands
46:15
whilst you're shipping saunas or heavy
46:17
shit is really not that
46:19
much. So the actual perceived
46:21
value to the customer of a free gift is
46:24
probably higher than your
46:25
percentage off. And it costs you
46:27
less in many cases. And the marginal
46:29
shipping cost is not crazy.
46:32
I really scaled discounts or
46:34
buy more, save more for that reason, but
46:36
percentage off can work
46:37
too in a lot of cases.
46:39
We're doing that exactly. This is kind of
46:42
Hollow's current offer and
46:43
it's going to be the playbook
46:44
that we run for the rest of the year,
46:46
which is this buy three, get three or
46:48
some version of that.
46:49
One of our other brands in the portfolio,
46:51
which we don't normally
46:53
do an offer like this,
46:54
but we're going to run a BOGO. So it's
46:56
going to be a buy two, get
46:57
one. And we're positioning it as
46:59
essentially getting more of the product.
47:01
Let's just call it a
47:02
30-day supply of something.
47:04
You'll be getting a 90-day supply, but
47:05
for the price of two. So
47:07
just a different way, I think,
47:08
than even some companies that are maybe
47:10
they're in health and
47:11
wellness or they're whatever,
47:13
still running some type of free gifts can
47:14
work great. So I would
47:16
highly suggest that too. I think
47:18
to Brad's point, by us doing this, we're
47:20
already forecasting our AOV.
47:22
We'll have a pretty big bump.
47:23
So we're anticipating a $20, $30 bump in
47:25
our AOV by buying two full price products
47:29
to get the third one free. And with that
47:31
$20, $30 bump in AOV,
47:32
we're anticipating overall net
47:34
margin going up 5% net profit versus what
47:37
we're even running right
47:38
now. So there's a chance that
47:40
you can punch AOV up. New customer CPA
47:42
will probably go up
47:43
slightly, but not entirely
47:44
match one for one. Even if it does match
47:47
one for one, there's a
47:48
chance that there's still
47:48
extra margin still there, left over just
47:52
based on them spending more money.
47:55
Yeah, that's definitely
47:56
how we think about it.
47:57
That's a great point, just to add on
47:59
that. Because in the 30%
48:01
versus buy one, get one that I was
48:02
describing, it's like their CAC was also
48:04
substantially better
48:05
on buy one, get one. So
48:06
it might be better margin anyways, and
48:09
then better margin, better
48:10
perceived value, whatever.
48:12
And then on top of that, your CAC was
48:13
better. Now, even if the
48:14
margin was the same and your
48:15
CAC was better, or wasn't better, and
48:17
your CAC was the same, or better with--
48:20
you get what I mean?
48:21
Yeah, I mean, there's really three
48:23
variables. It's like, what
48:24
is your new customer CPA? Or
48:26
what is your whatever CAC, even if
48:28
blended or not? What is the
48:29
cost of delivery? And then
48:30
what is your real margin after those two
48:32
things? And if you can build
48:34
a way where your margin still
48:34
gets better by your AOV going up, your
48:38
new customer CPA
48:39
staying, even going up, you can
48:41
still create more margin at the end of
48:42
the day, which usually means
48:43
that you can get more scale
48:44
out of ads, which usually means the more
48:46
scale that you can get out
48:47
of ads, means that the more
48:48
you can offset your operating expenses,
48:50
which usually leads to more. So
48:51
definitely something
48:53
to consider. Yeah, I just was thinking
48:55
about that, because we've
48:56
had that question come up.
48:57
And I think it's important to talk about.
48:59
Another thing that came to
49:00
my head, I was looking at,
49:02
I asked a couple other members in the
49:04
community what they would
49:05
ask. And one of them was like,
49:08
hey, make sure you guys talk about credit
49:10
card, like making sure
49:11
that your limits are set.
49:14
This is one of those things that I feel
49:16
like can be a real issue.
49:18
Zach, do you guys negotiate
49:19
with your credit card company? Or you let
49:23
them know? Or I feel like
49:25
this is one of those things
49:26
that can be often overlooked. Yeah, I
49:29
mean, ideally, you're
49:30
getting more just in case. It's
49:32
usually the best solution. I mean,
49:34
obviously trying to negotiate credit
49:35
limits up on future revenue,
49:37
people don't really love to do, but
49:39
sometimes they will. So just
49:40
getting more is always a good
49:42
backup plan. For those looking for good
49:44
options, Capital One has a
49:46
great card that I think is 2%
49:48
cashback. And they've been amazing to get
49:50
us pretty big limits. So
49:51
if you haven't worked with
49:52
Capital One, I would just recommend check
49:54
them out, whatever. If you need a
49:55
contact, let me know. But
49:56
they've been really helpful to us and to
49:58
homes and clients that are
49:59
like, hey, I need a scale spend
50:00
by K month over month. And I need a card
50:02
to be able to do this. They've been
50:04
really a good solution
50:05
for that. And then for meta, just like go
50:07
into your meta account, go
50:07
to build settings, billing,
50:09
whatever, and check what your daily
50:10
threshold is. And if you anticipate
50:11
spending more than that,
50:12
start requesting it now. They've been,
50:14
for what my experience is
50:16
that meta has been pretty good
50:17
at increasing limits as you've scaled
50:20
spend. I've actually
50:21
personally outrun into a situation
50:23
recently where we've actually needed to
50:25
request more than what we've
50:26
had. So I did have one time
50:28
where they like knocked it down randomly,
50:30
like 50 bucks a day after
50:31
it was like 12,000 a day.
50:34
And I was spending 12,000 a day. I was
50:35
like, can you help? But I
50:37
haven't had any issues recently,
50:38
but worth checking. A lot of good stuff
50:40
we covered here. As always, if you
50:42
anybody has any questions,
50:44
you can reach out Andrew at
50:45
foxldigital.com. I'm happy to route it to
50:47
the guys. You can find us
50:49
on all of the channels that we are on
50:51
youtube.com. We're on
50:53
there. You can check us out at
50:55
scalabilityschool.com. That's our
50:58
website. I don't know if you know about
51:00
websites and we each have
51:01
a profile on social media, specifically X
51:05
I believe is the name of the site. So
51:08
lots of good ways to
51:09
get in touch with us. All of you that are
51:11
out there listening,
51:12
really appreciate you listening
51:14
to this podcast. Please like and
51:16
subscribe because it does
51:17
help surface us. I think we're
51:20
number two in marketing podcasts in
51:22
Brazil. I got an email
51:23
from some spammer about that.
51:24
So I feel like, you know, this is only
51:27
for us on the come up on the come up.
51:30
It's going to be big.
51:31
So as always gentlemen, great to be with
51:33
you. Thank you for your time.
51:34
This episode is brought to you by
51:44
Homestead's email and SMS service.
51:47
Honestly, we've done
51:48
an episode with Jacob from Homestead.
51:50
He's the man and he's got to
51:52
be probably one of the smartest
51:53
email and retention operators like on the
51:55
agency side. Hands down. I
51:57
look forward to seeing the
51:59
tweets that he puts out basically every
52:01
single month with like a
52:01
recap of the designs and as
52:03
amazing as the designs themselves are.
52:06
It's the actual tactical behind the
52:07
scenes work where he
52:08
just like knows what he's doing and the
52:10
team at home said like
52:11
really know what they're doing on
52:12
email and SMS. Probably if not the number
52:15
one, very close to
52:17
competing for number one retention
52:18
agency in the DTC space. So just killing
52:20
it. Yeah, absolutely agree.
52:22
You know, if you are looking at
52:23
your emails and you're like, these are
52:25
terrible and you know you
52:26
can optimize the flows and you
52:27
know you can do SMS better, you got to
52:30
look at the Homestead team.
52:31
So check them out, reach out,
52:33
and they can definitely help make your
52:35
entire email and retention and SMS
52:38
program so much better.
52:40
And I'm not just saying that we've all
52:42
seen the work. I actually
52:43
had a member who sat down with
52:45
with Jacob at the founder meetup that we
52:47
had and he came over to me
52:49
and said, I just talked to him
52:50
for 10 minutes and literally he's
52:53
revolutionized my entire email
52:55
department. So agencies are
52:57
modeling themselves off of what Jacob is
53:00
giving them for advice. So anyway,
53:02
onwards to hopefully
53:04
working with them. The only way that we
53:13
grow this podcast is by you
53:15
sharing it with your friends.
53:17
Honestly, like reviews kind of don't
53:18
really mean anything too
53:19
much anymore. They're really
53:20
meaningful, but they don't do a lot for
53:22
the growth of the podcast.
53:24
And so sharing YouTube links,
53:26
sharing Spotify links, sharing Apple,
53:28
whatever we call it under the
53:30
podcast app now, anything you
53:31
can share, the better we're going to be.
53:35
Guys, anything else you
53:35
want to say on this? Yeah,
53:37
please go check us out on YouTube, rack
53:39
up those views for us.
53:40
We'd love to see it. And then
53:41
subscribe. Make sure to subscribe on
53:42
YouTube as well. And I
53:43
relentlessly refresh the YouTube
53:45
comments because it dictates my mental
53:46
health for the day. So please say
53:47
something nice about all of
53:48
us. Thank you everyone. Thanks for
53:51
listening. Honestly.