Just when you think you've got a handle on things, Utah's weather throws you a curveball – sounds familiar? That's because it's a lot like digital marketing, always keeping us on our toes! We open with a lighthearted look at the state's meteorological mood swings and segue into the warmth of family ties, sharing a chuckle about the various endearing names we have for our grandparents. Plus, you'll hear a sweet note from Grandma Peggy, who, spoiler alert, is possibly our biggest fan.
Running a business can feel like a high-stakes game, where high expectations often crash into the harsh walls of reality. In our lively discussion, we unpack what it means to have grit in the face of these challenges, especially in the fast-paced world of digital marketing. We talk about why the 'spray and pray' approach might leave you out in the cold and stress the importance of fine-tuning your strategy for the long haul. And with insights from our journey at a performance marketing agency and a digital marketing software company, we're spilling the beans on avoiding common pitfalls and setting yourself up for success.
To cap it off, we put the spotlight on the art of predictable customer acquisition and the significance of building a brand that sticks. As Meta's performance hiccup sent ripples through the direct-to-consumer landscape, we explore the alternatives like server-side tracking and the wisdom of a well-rounded strategy. Preston Rutherford from Chubbies joins us to dish out his take on the power of a compelling brand narrative and how it can create enduring connections with your audience. So tune in, and let's get your brand story on the path to becoming one for the ages!
Please connect with Trevor on social media. You can find him anywhere @thetrevorcrump
Just when you think you've got a handle on things, Utah's weather throws you a curveball – sounds familiar? That's because it's a lot like digital marketing, always keeping us on our toes! We open with a lighthearted look at the state's meteorological mood swings and segue into the warmth of family ties, sharing a chuckle about the various endearing names we have for our grandparents. Plus, you'll hear a sweet note from Grandma Peggy, who, spoiler alert, is possibly our biggest fan.
Running a business can feel like a high-stakes game, where high expectations often crash into the harsh walls of reality. In our lively discussion, we unpack what it means to have grit in the face of these challenges, especially in the fast-paced world of digital marketing. We talk about why the 'spray and pray' approach might leave you out in the cold and stress the importance of fine-tuning your strategy for the long haul. And with insights from our journey at a performance marketing agency and a digital marketing software company, we're spilling the beans on avoiding common pitfalls and setting yourself up for success.
To cap it off, we put the spotlight on the art of predictable customer acquisition and the significance of building a brand that sticks. As Meta's performance hiccup sent ripples through the direct-to-consumer landscape, we explore the alternatives like server-side tracking and the wisdom of a well-rounded strategy. Preston Rutherford from Chubbies joins us to dish out his take on the power of a compelling brand narrative and how it can create enduring connections with your audience. So tune in, and let's get your brand story on the path to becoming one for the ages!
Please connect with Trevor on social media. You can find him anywhere @thetrevorcrump
Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. With me, as always, is the lovely co-host, mark Goldhart. Mark, how are you Doing great On this Thursday morning?
Speaker 2:On a Thursday morning Doing good.
Speaker 1:Weather looks good today. Weather does look good today, but I heard that it was supposed to be like crazy winds. Yeah, but it hasn't started yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's supposed to be like crazy winds yeah, but it hasn't started yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's supposed to be really really windy tonight oh, it starts tonight yeah for a couple days, but it feels like spring's almost here, like we're almost almost to some sunshine what's crazy about utah and we referenced this before on the podcast like this time of year is very schizophrenic for Utah like doesn't, can't decide if it's spring or if it's like dead of winter. Yeah, and it's been chilly, like cooler the last little bit and then supposed to be sunshine and up into the like 50s 60s, and then yesterday it was a blizzard, yeah, like an absolute blizzard.
Speaker 2:Two inches of snow on the road well, I don't know about your forecast, but my forecast said it would have been done by 10 am, mine said eight and it just kept going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mine said eight am six yeah, what's going on well, it was crazy because in utah county I drove up to davis for those of you listening, that's like an app like a 50 minute drive, hour, minute, hour, minute, an hour drive for me and it was snowing and a blizzard and I couldn't see 50 yards in front of me and until I hit, like you know, Mill Creek or something like that, 25 minutes and then by the time I got to Kaysville it was sunny and 40 degrees. Oh nice, Versus like blizzard and 30 degrees and usually Kaysville is really windy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was so bizarre, Just sunny, and I can't remember if my kids have been snowing. No, it's been a great day today.
Speaker 2:today I'm like just drove out of the blizzard. Not for me. Yeah, so well that's utah storms and sunshine. A lot of people are going through that in the digital marketing space.
Speaker 1:Nice, great tie there. Wait, hold up before we jump into the storms of digital marketing. Can I just read you a text message that my grandma sent me?
Speaker 2:yeah, please do, she's gonna love this. We always like to hear from grandma Peggy.
Speaker 1:From grandma Peggy for those of you, it's been a minute since I've talked about her, but I got this text message from her.
Speaker 2:So you just call them Grandma in your family? Yeah, you know how some families have like different names Poppy Nam. Nam Nona Mimi.
Speaker 1:It's all Grandma, it's just Grandma and Grandpa, my grandparents, great-grandparents. I have never called a grandparent anything but grandma or grandpa. Uh, neither have I. And then with their usual, oftentimes with their first name grandma peggy, grandpa lee is that a?
Speaker 2:it's got to be some kind of language thing, right? Or those just nicknames like nona or mimi?
Speaker 1:I well, I think it used to be like uh, my, my uncle, like my cousins would call their other grandma Oma and Opa, because that's a German. Is it?
Speaker 2:German. I don't know Greek, feels like it.
Speaker 1:I can't remember what it is, yeah, but so I think oftentimes it used to be things like that. You know where it was like, or like my. What's the Spanish version for abuela? Yeah, abuela, so-and-so. You know like. I've got a friend of ours who's Hispanic, and so they call their grandparents their abuelas. Yeah, but Abuelos, abuelos. Abuela would be grandma though, right?
Speaker 2:Okay, so if you're talking about two grandmas, it'd be abuelos.
Speaker 1:abuela would be grandma, though, right okay, so if you're talking about two grandmas plural you're talking about grandma and grandpa's abuelos, right, yeah, so anyways. But yeah, I think now people just want to make it up like that's what, like we have friends who are like hey, what do you, what do you get? What do your kids call your parents? Grandma and grandpa Like oh, we want ours to call them Pappy.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 1:Have you asked them why? No, I feel too aggressive when I do that.
Speaker 1:You feel aggressive, I feel aggressive Like they know, I think it's weird and I don't want them to. Why, yeah, why would you do that? All right, anyway. So, grandma Peggy for those of you who are listening, grandma Peggy has become and she's listening to this right now and I can promise you to everything, she is absolutely beaming right now that we are dedicating this portion of the podcast to her. But she has been the number one fan of the Unstoppable Marketer podcast from day one In. In fact, every one of my cousins will jokingly come up to me and say we will never be at your level anymore.
Speaker 1:Now that you have this podcast and now that you have mentioned grandma, you're the favorite, yeah, and they'll just like. They'll just like say all the time, like, oh, was talking to Grandma and she just came up to me and said hey, have you listened to Trevor's most recent episode? So, anyways, grandma, I love you and I hope you're okay with me sharing this, sharing personal messages. Yeah, she says March 5th, okay, hi, honey, I was walking around the mall today with Grandpa and, of course, listening to your podcast, and I couldn't believe it. You mentioned my name again. So sweet, it's just such a surprise and just so sweet. So, thank you, and I don't know what I do to deserve it. Love you. And I'm not saying that to tease, I'm saying that because she is just like it is so funny how sweet she is, like I shouldn't say that's a funny thing, but she is, she's just the best and she is the number one fan of the.
Speaker 1:Unstoppable Marketer podcast. Grandma you need to go review the podcast, by the way. You gotta go leave us a review. What's great about?
Speaker 2:Grandma Peggy is that she? She clearly has very low expectations For me.
Speaker 1:We got to get her to.
Speaker 2:But I say that and that's a positive thing. She's not expecting anything out of people, she just lets things happen and she enjoys them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's an artist. We should get her to design us a little logo like another logo, alternate logo. Alternate bestie logo. Yeah, no, I mean unstoppable marker logo yeah, let's do it. So that's Grandma. That's the story for the day. Grandma. Peggy guys, maybe we'll have her on the podcast one day. Have her come in and introduce herself.
Speaker 2:Interestingly enough, kind of a tie-in with that with expectations is there's a clip going around of the CEO of NVIDIA saying that people with high expectations have low resilience. He's talking to Stanford, I think. I don't know if it's Stanford. I think he's talking to Stanford students or alumni or something like that. I thought that was kind of interesting. High expectations, I think. I don't know if it's Stanford, I think he's talking to Stanford students or alumni, or something I thought that was kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:High expectations, low resilience yeah, but to tie that into business and marketing, I think people that have high expectations of what ads should or shouldn't do have low resilience.
Speaker 1:When they don't perform.
Speaker 2:When they don't perform.
Speaker 1:Or don't meet what their expectations are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I mean by resilience in this situation is just staying the course, right, I think what happens is people start and this is one of the things that we see a lot of companies do wrong, right Is they start, they get a little squirmy, and this is one of the things that we see a lot of companies do wrong, right Is they start. They get a little squirmy when things don't go the way they want, and then they start searching for silver bullets rather than staying the course and fine-tuning a model. It's you have to realize, when you get into business and you're starting a digital market out there, whatever it is, it's not like you're buying a brand new car and driving it and it's working. You're essentially buying a rundown car and fixing it as you go, and you have to have some level of acceptance that there's always something that's broken, and so how do you go about fixing that and fine tuning it as you go?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and oftentimes what happens is the bigger you end up growing and the more resilient you are to those um did not meet my expectation moments, the less those broken things tend to hurt you as you get bigger. Right, when you're smaller, when something breaks, a $5,000 day compared to a $2,000 day can make or break your week, for sure, right, yeah. But a $25,000 day to a $20,000 day, one day in a week, does not make or break your week, correct, right? And so that's the importance of being able to get through those moments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and fine tuning those models right, Because I know this year a lot of people have had problems with meta. So Facebook and Instagram marketing and you know meta had some pretty rough months there for a lot of people. You know Meta had some pretty rough months there for a lot of people. But that doesn't mean that you should just try to squirm your way into like 15 different channels all at once. Sure, Right, Sure. I think the spray and pray approach is what a lot of companies fall into. Let's just try a bunch of things all all at once and see what works. But what you don't realize is like you're just gambling at that point, because you have to fine-tune a process and a model for each channel yeah and each channel is slightly different than yeah, than the other yeah, that's, that's like.
Speaker 1:Um, that's like being on Russian roulette and betting on both black and red. You're going to win on something and you're going to lose on something.
Speaker 2:Well, russian roulette, I think, is where you Not Russian roulette yeah yeah, sorry, just roulette.
Speaker 1:Yeah, where it's like, okay, something won, but you also lost equally.
Speaker 1:Like you didn't end up winning, the also lost equally, like you didn't end up winning. The other thing about like the whole spray and pray model is, what happens a lot of times is is brands will get into whether things are working or not. They'll get into this like I need to diversify moment or thought process, and I think what a lot of brands don't realize is there isn't a good solution out there to help you fully, fully understand which of those platforms or marketing activities omnichannel activities are actually driving the results Right, right Outside of what I mean by that is like there's just not an attribution tool out there that does this the way that people think it does.
Speaker 2:No, and for most companies, an attribution tool.
Speaker 1:you know I think Taylor Holiday talked about this on Twitter from Common Thread Co Is most companies like you're just going to see a direct correlation with Facebook performance and your store performance yeah and so trying to figure out like every little detail of your customer funnel is probably not very helpful in fact probably muddies the data even totally yet when you subscribe to this let me do all these different things like you, you are assuming that you have some sort of model in place that's going to help you interpret if those things worked for you or not, and there just isn't something that does that nowadays, and so that's one of the biggest problems I have with this mistake that we see.
Speaker 1:So, like Mark and I once again if you're just listening to this for the first time or whatever, if you forgot like Mark and I own a performance marketing agency where we help e-commerce brands with ads and scaling their strategies. We also own a digital marketing, a software that helps survey customers and get qualitative data and get qualitative data. And then we have this podcast, right, and so we are like we are only talking to business owners and marketing operational managers. Daily I mean, it's every single day we are talking and hearing the mistakes or seeing the mistakes and seeing the successes that these people are making the mistakes, or seeing the mistakes and seeing the successes that these people are making. So we have this like pretty extensive understanding of what's working and what's not working and, um, when you, when you have all these channels running together, it's just really hard to if something wins, right and let's define winning is revenue. Your revenue increases. What won? What was it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because it's hard to untangle a web, was it?
Speaker 1:meta? Was it the influencer who paid five grand? Was it the TikTok shop you just set up? Was it?
Speaker 2:And, by the way, sometimes you can see, you can see that right, you can see that from direct or direct attribution through utms, just in shopify or ga4 but explain, what direct, that means really quick if you have utm parameters and I'm we're not going to explain those, but just google it, but understanding what a direct purchase means. A direct is just like they clicked on something with that UTM and they bought it right then and there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so UTM is a specific tracking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, which is great for they click on it and they go to your site and buy it. But it doesn't necessarily help you when you're trying to say what happens if they saw it clicked on it. Help you when you're trying to say what happens if they saw it, clicked on it but maybe didn't go to your site. Maybe they went to your social profile.
Speaker 2:Yep, got busy, searched you later got a phone call because you'll see that most people not most people, I guess shouldn't say most, but a surprising amount of people in post-purchase surveys say that what got them to your site today is going to be I remembered you yeah, yeah a lot of them, a surprising amount, even for new customers, not just like returning customers, I mean oftentimes in the surveys that we see for the majority of brands that put that in as a response um, like, that's always in the top three.
Speaker 1:It's in the top three of yeah, how they got there, that day, that day, yep which means there's no direct attribution like what was it for utms or anything?
Speaker 2:yeah and so, again, you don't have to get complicated with the way you measure and I think that's the biggest problem that a lot of brands make is is look, if you're not operating in like five channels and you're operating in like a google and maybe meta and maybe tiktok and some people have pinterest out there, you know, depending on who your target audience is, yep, you can just look at literally, you can look at mer. So, like, what's your marketing spend, you know, divided by your revenue, yep, to see what that ratio is. Or you can just look at GA4 in your Shopify dashboards and look at direct as a way of understanding direct. And then you know, you just kind of break it down into a first touch, last touch model.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you run surveys to figure out what your first touch is.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And where you should start scaling in first touch and then what your last touch is yeah, for your bottom of the funnel. Yeah, but you don't have to turn this into a super complicated mess. No, I mean most, most brands only need to look at really ga4. Maybe, like you don't even have to look at ga4, but it helps, depending on what, how complicated you're getting right, and then the bigger and bigger you get, then you probably want to advance up to like a north beam yeah, yeah, I mean there's.
Speaker 1:I mean an even more simple way too. Right is just like monitor where your spend is and when you make those changes and spend, yes, which is why you don't want to make changes everywhere all at once yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you want to go from spending a thousand dollars a day to five thousand dollars a day, or three thousand dollars a day, you know, are you going to just and you have three different channels. Mark, let's say google, tiktok and meta do you put a thousand additional to each one of those? Yeah, the answer should be probably no, right. It's like maybe I put a thousand dollars to each one of those. Yeah, the answer should be probably no, right. It's like maybe I put a thousand dollars into meta to start, unless you already know how each of those perform for you, Because and I think let's go back a little bit.
Speaker 2:And what a mistake is is what is the point of marketing and advertising? To get people's attention. To get people's attention to then act Yep, but to go a little further in that right, you're trying to acquire customers Sure, that's the action is purchasing and then acquiring a customer Yep, but the whole point of this is to get a consistent and predictable model of customer acquisition. That's how, when you have predictability in how much revenue you're going to produce over time that's the power of marketing, because that allows you to then make all the changes you need yeah, but if you do not have predictability in your customer acquisition, that's when companies start floundering very, very quickly, totally. And I think maybe the biggest mistake not the biggest, but one of the biggest mistakes we've seen some companies make is they don't look at marketing as a predictable funnel and how to develop a predictable funnel. They look at it as I want to try to find arbitrage opportunities to hurry and get a bunch of cheap traffic or game the system yeah.
Speaker 2:When it's like it's not about gaming the system, yes. If you have an opportunity and you can say scale, do it. Yeah, but at the same time like there's also problems for a business if you scale too quickly and then drop yeah there's a whole supply chain issue that you're doing like you're not drop shippers, unless you're a drop shipper right then you can't just sit there and like, try to scale and drop, scale and drop, like you're trying to create a predictable what you know inflow of customers totally.
Speaker 1:You know it's a very interesting question. I think brands should start asking themselves when they want to, um, maybe grow and scale, um, add more marketing budget to, uh, their funnel. And naturally, when that happens, you start to ask yourself questions like okay, well, you know, should we start TikTok shop? Should we start Pinterest? Should we? Should we start influencers? Should we start YouTube? Should we?
Speaker 1:You know that you start asking these questions like oh well, I want to scale, what else do I need to introduce? You know, and I think what you're saying is, when you start to do those things, you start to break out of a predictive mode because you don't know what those things are going to do. And we're not saying not to do those things at some point in time and eventually. But the question that I like to ask people is anytime somebody comes to us and they say, hey, trevor, like we want to raise our budgets, like we want to, we want to raise our budgets, we got a thousand extra dollars a day that we can spend, or whatever, um, like what do you think? Let's, let's, let's start Tik TOK or let's start this? What a lot of times I'll do is I'll kind of go back and say, hey, like we can totally do that. At the end of the day, you know it's what it's what you guys want to do.
Speaker 1:But what we know right now, let's say Google is working for them, we understand from a predictive perspective what your cost per conversions and what your average order values from Google are.
Speaker 1:So and we don't think you've hit a wall on that yet. So, rather than you say, hey, I've got initial a thousand dollars to spend and let's put it in another channel, ask yourself the question what would that thousand dollars do to the current stuff I'm doing? And if the if the answer is, oh God, I don't know, because, like right now it's, we're getting out of the predictive mode, Performance is dipping or whatever, then that question about diversifying comes a little bit more. It's a little easier to answer like, yeah, maybe we should test that budget somewhere else, because our cost per have just like skyrocketed over here, because our cost per's have just like skyrocketed over here. But if you're not, if you're not at that situation yet, like what Mark said is like, try to stick to this predictability as much as you can and put that money where you know what's going to win at first, and then you can start testing other things that gets out of the predictive mode, but you've got a safe enough kind of incubator to test that those new channels.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
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Speaker 2:Yeah, you can incubate channels, not have to rely on them. But again, you know, I know it's been a rough quarter one on meta for a lot of brands and marketers out there, so it gets uncomfortable at times, but the whole point of marketing is predictable customer acquisition yeah right if you can.
Speaker 2:if you can create and that's the beauty of digital marketing is you can make it a pretty predictable model once you figure things out. Now we're not saying a perfect attribution model, yep, but you can find correlations and predictability there. And the companies that we see that create this inflow of traffic and really fine-tune a channel or two, that's when they can really excel in a third channel.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:Because, like you said, you can incubate it, but you also have a process in place. You know what kind of ads work. You know what your audience likes, and then you can move into another channel.
Speaker 1:It's almost like the insurance policy for a new channel.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right Like this is working so well over here that it can make up the difference for if and when this does not perform the way we think it should and could.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and there's obviously there's channels to choose from. But you know, sean Frank mentioned a while ago that most brands think that they need to be in five channels when in fact they only need to be in one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, he said I'm pretty sure what he said was most brands only need to be in one channel up until like almost 100 million dollars revenue a year yeah and you know we're not saying that that has to be you, but I think it's something to consider from somebody who has scaled a brand from, you know, zero to 100 million a year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on first-time acquisition customers too. I think that's another really, really important thing yes, his brand. They don't have a they don't have a high returning customer rate correct, because they make such a good product that people don't need to continue to buy. Now I think they're diversifying their product depth to try to, yeah, change that. But yeah, I think they scaled to either high eight, low, nine figures on an acquisition alone strategy using one to two marketing channels.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for them it was just meta. They didn't use Google at all. Well, meta was the meat. Google was just brand capture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but no, yeah, he was just saying meta was their main driver. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, of course, maybe that's not meta for your company, maybe it's TikTok.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe your audience is, and that's maybe something to consider is like where is your audience? Yeah, I still think meta is the king of demand capture, like it just is and always has been.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:But that doesn't mean it will be tomorrow, yeah. So that's why we say like it's, we're not saying you should never test things out.
Speaker 1:But just just remember, you're trying to create a process like a machine yeah you're not trying to just hit the lottery yeah, and there's just no more lotteries the way there used to be no 2016 it's like everyone says, oh, tiktok shops, it's a gold mine, yeah and it is for some people and maybe it was for some people and maybe there was some arbitrage there for a minute, but most people that we talk to that are on TikTok shops, like it's okay.
Speaker 2:Is it great? Yep, is it something that you need to change your whole process for Works? Great, for, really shareable products?
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, maybe not. I mean, that's another thing. As we're talking about mistakes, there's an interesting. We just came across this really interesting brand that came to us. Well, actually, this brand came to message me on social media like maybe 18 months ago, or even maybe it was two years ago, and said hey, you know, we're looking to, we're looking to run ads, we have this really cool product and this product was like more of a problem solution style product.
Speaker 1:And, and as he's talking to me about this, in my mind, I'm thinking, gal, we could definitely run ads for you guys, but you don't really have a proven content strategy.
Speaker 1:You don't really have proven, like a whole ton of proven sales on your dot com.
Speaker 1:And I just told him, I said, listen, like I'd love to take your money and work with you, but I think that you could maybe spend the next 12 months or six months or even three months, depending on how long it's going to take you, and I think you could develop a content strategy that's going to just, if you can find a way to win that organic content strategy, ads will will just work for you.
Speaker 1:Right, you know? And I didn't really think anything of it, you know, and he was like okay, great, and I and I kind of tossed out like this hey, if you ever want us to just kind of kind of consult and help you get there, we can do that, but like I just don't think you should run ads yet and it, and we just kind of ended it. You know, and, and that was 18 months ago, and like three months ago he reached out to me and he's like hey did what you said, we developed a content strategy and now we're getting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of likes on some of these videos and for them, a lot of that's on TikTok.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot on TikTok, still on Instagram too. But like they're you know, their videos are very like hit or miss a lot of times, like they're getting consistent like 500 to a thousand views in it and one, you know, then they get one that's got 30,000 and one that's got 250,000 and then another one's got a million views and then they get more 500,000, you know, but they're they're finding these really, really big wins and started just selling organically. So now it's like talk about insurance policies and mistakes brands make Today one of the biggest mistakes I'm seeing, actually probably, probably in my opinion and mistakes brands make today one of the biggest mistakes I'm seeing. Actually, probably in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes I see brands make today is they lead with a paid strategy.
Speaker 1:They try to make their ethos the heart and soul of everything they do their paid strategy, and then they can't ever take away the budget or the time to figure out the organic, because all they're thinking about is well, this money gets me a row as of this, and so I know that if I put this 10 grand into ads, I'm going to get $2,000 or $20,000 back, whereas if I put this $10,000 into organic content creation, I don't know if I'm going to get that. So therefore, I can't make that.
Speaker 1:You almost, it's this golden handcuff like the golden handcuff situation that that a lot of brands get put in, and so I love that. These guys started with the organic and they made that the heart and soul of their business model, and now paid ads has become the gasoline that they pour on the fire that is already ignited.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right Versus pouring gasoline and trying to light a match Right. That's what you're doing with with paid ads. It's just like I'm hope, I'm hoping, I'm hoping, I'm hoping, hopefully these fumes don't die out, you know, and so I think that's another really big mistake and can kind of lean into what you're saying is, you know, mark mentioned that, like Meta's had a really hard time over the last couple months. You know a lot of brands it's it's people are talking about on DTC Twitter. We're seeing it with clients that we work with. Meta just hasn't performed.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's kind of getting out of it now, but so many brands are held hostage to meta performance. Yeah, and, and funny enough, we had plenty. The majority of companies that that we consult and work with were fine, Like nothing happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:And we've dived into the data to figure out why. A lot of that's because of the data feedback loop, making sure their pixels were set up and had server-side tracking to give the platform as much information as possible yeah but another thing is you know, the ones that were on, the ones that weren't using cost caps, that were using just max conversions and had a predictable model from before, were the ones that were fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, because they weren't trying to get the best or the least, because these companies were all built on you know. They weren't trying to scale 30, 40, 50 percent month over month. They were just trying to scale 30 year over year yeah for example yeah just like how do we get steady, consistent growth and build a whole model about that? Those types of companies seem to be totally fine yeah, totally you know quarter one's up for the majority of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, was efficiency down in meta a little bit. Yeah, efficiency went down a bit, but not enough to make anybody panic.
Speaker 1:Right, but a lot of people, but that wasn't the case for a lot of people, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:A lot of people did panic, pulled money, did whatever they did or started diverting money in other places, and so I just think it goes back to the consistency yeah, yeah, like it's better.
Speaker 2:It's so silly because it's one of those tropes that you always hear, but it's better to be consistently good than occasionally great, for sure, and, and I think the 2010s kind of gave people this gambling addiction with digital marketing and the idea that it's like oh, I can do this and make so much money. And oh, it's a money-making machine. You just put a money in and I get $4 out, Instead of thinking of it as oh, this is a way to consistently scale my business in a profitable way yeah and I'm not trying to look at this as trying to scale really quick like you're saying right, like I want to build something solid.
Speaker 2:So you do that through organic content, you do that through a predictable scaling model, yeah, and then everything runs. These companies still have problems. Every company has a problem, right?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Every company is a broken car, but the ones that keep running are the ones that have created a process to deal with what breaks in efficient ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it has created the processes number one. Yeah, yeah, it's that, it has created the processes number one and number two. They have other things that are helping, supplementing when those problems occur. Yes, right, which usually are organic social traffic and your retention strategy and retention strategy yeah, I love, I loved, like uh, for the preston rutherford, for the co-founder of chubbies, if you guys haven't listened to that episode, like he rutherford preston rutherford, the third um.
Speaker 1:He came on just that one dropped a couple weeks ago if you're listening to this one now, probably two or three weeks ago and he talked a ton about this, like he talked about how chubby, so chubbies was a nine figure exit and a 10 figure IPO is what he said, right so huge, huge brand. And he said, like he said, we got so caught up in the numbers. You know, when we spend a dollar here, we made a dollar there, when that dollar you know, when we spent a dollar here made $3 here, turned to $2 and 50 cents and said like everything would just fall to pieces. And so he's like what we did is we pulled back, spend a little bit, figured out our processes on that spend front and diverted some of that money rather into another channel. We put it into building our brand.
Speaker 1:And and nowadays the way you build a brand is not your logo and not your colors, whatever. Now the way you build a brand is or is your, the content you put out, the stories you tell, and they just became master storytellers from a relatable perspective. You know like their brand was all about. If you, if you listen to it. He talks about how, like at the time when chubbies came out, it was everybody wearing abercrombie and fitch and these boy boy band kind of clothes and that was what everybody loved to.
Speaker 1:Just flipping it on the on the hero postal yeah, just flipping, flipping the status quo and rather than long shorts, they were like tighter shorts with fun colors and it, and they just became this fun brand that they that connected with people who were sick of what the status quo was and that content resonated so much that it started building their brand. And so, as people, as people thought about swimming suits they weren't thinking swimming suits, they were thinking I need to go get chubbies, you know, and I thought that was really interesting and I loved that like he kind of looped that in as like we were like the pendulum had shifted so much for us, which was we were so paid focus on everything we did and when it didn't work out, you know like there there's this, there's this, uh, episode of parks and rec. Do you ever have you ever watched parks and rec? You know chris trager.
Speaker 1:So chris trager is like that super, super healthy, like health nut guy and in pawnee the stomach flu is going around and he's like he refers to his body as a microchip and he says and he's like talking, he's like I cannot be next to anyone with that If my, if I get that, my body cannot handle it because I'm I don't have any fat.
Speaker 1:I'm like 3% body fat, 3% body fat. So if I get, if I get touched with sickness I'll die. And then he ends up getting sick and it just like shows him, just like absolutely crumble and it just it's like one of the funniest episodes. But that's what I think of is, like you know, sometimes the in these businesses we become that microchip where we're just so focused on this thing that if, like, one thing infects us, we're dead. And so I think I love the insurance policies of organic. I love the insurance policies. I'm an amazing retention strategy so that when the new customers aren't coming, you're finding a way to get your existing customers to come back and help supplement the problems that every brand is going to face.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. So yeah, let's go get lunch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a fair place to end. Yeah, I'm hungry. Um, yeah, lots of mistakes. You know, like I said, mark and I, we, like we were seriously talking about these every single day. Like not only do we ask podcast guests what's the biggest mistake you made, like you probably recognize that trend, we ask it on every single episode. Cause why wouldn't we, when you're talking to a nine figure exit, 10 figure IPO, wouldn't? Would like I want to know the biggest mistake so I can avoid it Like so that's the reason why we asked those questions.
Speaker 1:Like same thing. Like we are in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars every single month. You know, millions of dollars every month in ad spend, and it's like we're seeing the mistakes for sure, you know. And so don't take like, like, don't take this lightly, like we're not just making this up. This is legitimate mistakes that we're going to go talk to a brand about today and then we're going to experience it again tomorrow and it's just, it is what it is and everyone makes them. So, whatever you can do to find ways to build the right processes I love what Mark said. It's like put the right processes in place to scale Number one and what is your insurance policies?
Speaker 2:Number two, and in the next episode we'll actually give you a breakdown of how to make a process.
Speaker 1:I love it. I can't wait for that. Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast, whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.