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The Unstoppable Marketer®
Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhardt bring you quick marketing and entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and trends for DTC business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. These are lessons they've learned through the years of being right in the thick of scaling dozens of businesses. Whether you have an established business looking to grow, just starting your business journey, or trying to become a digital marketer, this marketing podcast will not let you down.
The Unstoppable Marketer®
EP. 129 Branding Blunders: Jaguar's $500M Mistake
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Trevor Crump and Mark Goldheart dissect Jaguar's disastrous rebranding, which led to a 50% sales drop. They explore the perils of alienating core audiences and the misconception that constant growth is necessary. The duo offers insights on doubling down on existing markets, understanding true market size, and the nuances of customer acquisition costs. They caution against hasty pivots to new audiences without proper market research.
Jaguar's Rebranding Disaster
Speaker 1So it was like copy nothing . And then I was like what are you ?
Speaker 2And then Elon , immediately , do you sell cars ? Question mark , because the ad was so terrible . Jaguar sales have been cut in half and the rebrand has been like an absolute debacle . It doesn't mean that it was all from this . Things have been going awry for a minute . It was just the nail in the coffin . Yo , what's going on everybody ? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast . With me , as always , is Mark Goldheart . Mark , how are you doing this afternoon ? I had this weird glue that was on my can , Do you know ? I was watching like a .
Speaker 1Why is that ?
Speaker 2It's probably from the packaging . Like you know , those come in like cardboard , oh yeah yeah , and sometimes that cardboard has glue on it . That's happened to me before . I was watching a video where this guy will put certain things under the microscope to see how clean they are .
Speaker 1And they're really gross .
Speaker 2And one of the things he did was , if you were to just get a can from a cool , how gross they are . And I was pretty disgusted with it . I had never really thought about it .
Speaker 1Good immunity builder .
Speaker 2Yeah , got to get some immunity . What's going on this week ? Any like any news for us to tackle ?
Speaker 1Yeah , meta Forbes is reporting that Meta aims to have all ad buying in-house dictated by AI . Yeah , by 2026 .
Speaker 2Mostly for what I've read is small businesses . Small businesses will not have to have agencies .
Speaker 1That's what they claim . Yeah , yeah . They'll be able to do the creative They'll be able to do that Anyone who's dealt with meta long enough knows that every time you give the reins to meta , trouble .
Speaker 2Trouble follows trouble , trouble ensues yeah they .
Speaker 1Uh , it's interesting , right , because they're trying to maximize profit for meta , which you know there are some . There are some mutual benefits there . Yeah , like to try to get the best performance and maximize profits for meta , but not always , which I think is why the auction system needs coercing yeah , I agree with that . I think the targeting is pretty good , but the the auction system needs some coercing yeah , so that'll be very interesting .
Speaker 2I don't think it'll end up happening . Personally , I think it'll be like PMA . I do think that it's going to be great .
Speaker 1I don't think it'll end up happening . Personally , I think it'll be like PMAX with Google . Pmax started , it was all A let us optimize everything which quickly turned into . Oh , that doesn't work .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , to now there's a lot more controls within PMAX and you can kind of do things a little different , but you still have to supplement PMAX and Google with just regular campaigns .
Speaker 2So yeah , I think . I think that it will be helpful for those businesses that are just getting off the ground who need to run ads . I think , so they have no money , yeah does I get people all the time on TikTok who are messaging me ? Hey , can you help me ?
Speaker 1I also what this means for creative . I don't know it means you're gonna need 10 times more creative output , sure yeah so dynamic . Ai created stuff and more variations with your catalog ads but we're gonna run to this . Yeah , I mean , we've talked about this I've been saying this for five years , like eventually they're gonna try to take away control under the guise of privacy . Yeah , which don't , don't buy it .
Speaker 1Anyone if you're , if you're listening to this meta does not care about your privacy no so they don't care about privacy at all , but they're gonna try to do something like that because it's going to be advantageous for them .
Speaker 2Privacy yes .
Speaker 1It's advantageous for them to take away controls because they're probably missing out on some profit .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , I agree , the better efficiency you have in meta the worst If I'm just looking at this from like a pure cynical perspective , it's not really like this the more efficient your business is , the less money they make the less cut they get , yeah , so and and they might look at it as okay the more efficient you are , the more money you're going to spend , and so you can kind of look at it in the same way like but but the cynical profit margin is yeah I understand technically , for every purchase that comes through at five5 , when , if Meta , could make that $10 .
Speaker 2They just doubled .
Speaker 1That's a lot of .
Speaker 2I mean yeah , depending on what the and then you times that by however many people . Yeah .
Speaker 1So anyways . We'll see , we'll see , business is hard , everyone Business is hard . Welcome to Business 101 . Business is hard , yeah , don't let anyone .
Speaker 2Business is hard yeah .
Speaker 1Don't let anyone tell you that it's easy . It's not .
Speaker 2So interesting discussion I want to bring up today that I think will maybe dictate the conversation . So I want to say it was . How many months ago was it ?
Speaker 1It was I think I have it right here back in , okay , november .
Speaker 2So what are we ? November to december , january , february , march , april , may so we're six months into this jaguar , the car company which , if we go back , we both believe were quite adamant that it was going to wreck them . Yeah , I mean , and that wasn't like holy cow . Trevor and Mark are brilliant . I think a lot of people saw that .
Speaker 1Oh yeah , I'm not saying we're the only ones , For sure . But we did say this is just a bad move . Everyone knows it .
Speaker 2I created a big TikTok that I think got some good off . The look here really quick .
Speaker 1We thought it might be a hoax . Yeah , it almost seemed like it was so bad that it was actually a joke . And then they were gonna unveil , like , the real new brand . Yes , yes , like of course , we're not gonna get rid of all of our yeah it was like an april fools , but in november
Meta's AI Ad Buying Plans
Speaker 1almost , because it was so crazy .
Speaker 2Let's see . Um , yeah , it got like 10x the amount of views on on my instagram than anything else yes , you know that so and when was that ?
Speaker 2november 18th , so and I probably made the , I probably made the tick , tock the video A couple days later , I'm sure , but Uh , essentially To so the world whoever's Listening , and we'll have to pull in some clips so that you can show this . It was Like the Stereotypical Audience For Jaguar Was like 50 plus Year olds with a household income of over three hundred thousand dollars . Um , not necessarily conservative people , um , but uh , um , luxury , uh , country club Esque . That was the Jaguar audience , right , and they essentially went Like very , um , uh , trying to think the best way to Say this without it being political .
Speaker 1They just went very millennial .
Speaker 2More Gen Z ? I don't even know if .
Speaker 1I'd say Gen Z . I mean because technically Gen Z is skewing , politically at least .
Speaker 2A little more conservative .
Speaker 1Maybe the creative aspect , but it was very new age , millennial , modern , modern .
Speaker 2Very much tied to the younger audience yeah , you know liberal yes , yeah , liberal is a great way to kind of yeah , like just you know , um very interesting , completely different from the audience that they had built for the last 60 years yeah , right , yeah yeah , like , like went from like I'm trying to get out of like a political lingo , because I don't think it was necessarily political , but it was like you go from , Jaguar is a elegant luxury brand for rich people , you know like and it
Speaker 1you and it was , like , always centered around more of a masculine identity . Yeah Right , not feminine identity at all , very masculine identity , yep , right . Like you had the Jaguar , like the , like the Prowl logo you had , you know they always were dark interiors , like the , the , the . The actual logo was like gold , like that , you know , depends on like what decade , but it was either like gold or silver , black the , the coolest emblem of any luxury vehicle arguably , but by very cool like it sticks out .
Speaker 1It's not like plush or yeah , like yeah , and they left it . Yeah , and it was so . Anyways , they went from that to teal , like that's all you have to say is like they went from black , gold and silver to teal .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1And they got rid of the actual Jaguar for just like a lowercase j .
Speaker 2Yeah , I feel like we're not even doing it justice , so hopefully we get some videos .
Speaker 1Hopefully we get some videos .
Speaker 2Hopefully we get some videos . It was terrible . Everybody just blew it up online .
Speaker 1And terrible , especially because of who their audience is and will always be .
Speaker 2Yeah , it was less about the brand and sure , visually it wasn't great , but I've seen plenty of visually non-great brands that crush it . Okay , yeah , but it was the total disregard for an audience .
Speaker 1And the only audience that's ever bought a Jaguar .
Speaker 2And Jaguar does tend to be on the lower end of the luxury cars Right , I can't remember which I don't know if it's lower end . I think it's comparable with like a BMW no , no no , I don't mean quality , I mean um popularity oh , yes , yes , yeah yeah , of all of them , and I want to say BMW is maybe number one yeah .
Speaker 1I can't remember um yeah , because you do have luxury is interesting , because you have luxury and then you have like ultra yeah like Bentley's sure .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Like Bentleys , sure . Or like Beamers , aren't Bentleys ?
Speaker 2Right , yeah , like Maseratis . And then you have like Acuras that are like high performance , yeah .
Speaker 1So Lexus like those are like almost like lower luxury .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1And then Jaguar is in the realm of like yeah .
Speaker 2Mercedes , jaguar , mercedes , porsche , yeah . And then Jaguar is in the realm of like , yeah , mercedes , jaguar , Mercedes , porsche , any , yeah , so , so the point is they do this terrible rebrand . Everybody predicts it's gonna fail and they like double down on it hard . I mean millions and millions of people like especially on tick-tock , just blew it apart from regular , like average Joe's people who talk about , who just do like news updates to Jaguar audiences , to be like I cannot believe you're doing this to people like us who are like , hey , we're marketing experts and let me give you a take on something that was so crazy like hundreds of millions of views on this and they double down and say we don't care . And they double down and say we don't care . And I remember like one of the most epic tweets that somebody Put out was Elon Musk tweets you sell cars , question-mark . So no , do you sell cars ? So it was the that their their slogan was copy nothing . See that , yeah .
Speaker 1So it's like copy nothing . And then it was like what are you ? And ?
Speaker 2then , elon , immediately do you sell cars Because the ad was so terrible . Well , it showed a car at the very end it looked like Paris Fashion Week . Just crazy fashion .
Speaker 1Yes , yeah .
Speaker 2And so , anyways , the reason why we're bringing this up is because , six months later , it's been reported that Jaguar cells have been cut in half and and the rebrand has been a like an absolute debacle , and they are now in the hunt . It's speculated . I I could probably do a little bit more research . We could probably look this up in on in ai , but it's speculated that they're now looking for a whole new like marketing agency team , um , so it'll be very interesting to see what they're gonna do . So why do we bring this up ?
Speaker 1Well , because it's hilarious .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean , I think we're going to take this conversation a few different ways , but the way I looked at it and when I saw this article a few days ago and I thought you know we probably should talk about this because this is a mistake . Now , jaguar's mistake was worldwide , global disaster , right .
Speaker 1At least 90% of the sentiment was this is horrible .
Speaker 2And 50% of your sales and , to be fair , the metric I'm talking about is over the last two years it's been cut in half , so it doesn't mean that it was all from this . Things have been going awry for a minute for these guys . They it was just the nail in the coffin , okay . So every , every now and then , you have these big brand things where , like , for example , bud Light and the Dylan Mulvaney thing like that was this , whether you agree with or not , that was a such a big thing that hurt their brand . Like . There's these things where you start to when you cater to a new audience . Oftentimes catering to a new audience means that you are leaving behind the old one . It's not always the case .
Speaker 1Yeah , but here , yeah , yes , yes , you're right . And going back to Jaguar , I think what we need to identify in this case study here is one of the big mistakes they made is they were assuming the younger generation doesn't grow up .
Speaker 2And they have the money to buy a car like that .
Speaker 1And they have the money to buy . So you're you're trying to appeal to a younger generation when your brand is more luxury .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Like if I , if I remember right , like they still have really good performance , but their performance isn't quite as great as like a Mercedes but , they are more luxurious , if I , if I remember right . Yeah , so , but anyways , like you're doing this like luxury brand , like who's buying luxury it's usually older people .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Right .
Speaker 2And the reason being is because they have the money , they have the money for it , right , and it's a status symbol .
Speaker 1Yeah , like , once you're able to reach a certain status symbol , a lot of these older people who grew up , you know , seeing those jaguars and their neighbors , driveways or garages and loving them . Like they grow up , they want one . So you're trying to appeal to a young generation , but it's like every generation , when they're like our parents were in the 70s , like they , they were dressing in vibrant colors and all this I'm like that's not how they dress now yeah , I'm looking up the average household income it's like once , once you hit 40 , 50 , like your style is not quite as vibrant as it was when you were 20 .
Speaker 1So the the idea that you have to appeal to younger generations now seems like a big mistake because , like you said , you're not like we're thinking of , like you're leaving an audience behind , but like that audience is still there and it leaving an audience behind , but like that audience is still there and it's still .
Speaker 1People are growing into that audience totally so it's not like that audience is disappearing either , it's just like why like just just just know , like , if you're moving into a new audience , a make sure that audience has the money to afford you , right , or that you're actually going to appeal to them in some kind of way for they're going to want to spend the money with you and is it worth it alienating a prior audience ?
Speaker 1Yeah , because that's always just going to be the risk reward scenario , like , and sometimes the risk reward is absolutely , your old audience isn't going to get you to your new destination , sure , so you , you got to bridge that gap in your branding strategy , of right , hey , this audience is great and we love them , but , like , there's only the . The total obtainable mark is just too small , right , so we , we have to start expanding outside of that totally . But the caveat that we want to talk about is most people listening to this like you're never going to be in that situation sure , but but every brand I
Analyzing Jaguar's Brand Identity Shift
Speaker 1mean , at least not in the next year or two .
Speaker 2By the way , the average household income for somebody who's under 30 years old is $45,000 . Yeah , so yeah , good luck there's no possible way that that car , those cars , are going to be under $45,000 . No , right , so so , yeah , many problems , but okay , so let's , let's talk about this audience stuff here , right , so let's say you're a brand , so we see this all the time . A brand hits $5 million and I , we look at , we look at um , okay , there's this the real status symbol .
Speaker 1In 10 years we'll be having a vintage V8 Toyota .
Speaker 2Forerunner .
Speaker 1No , a V8 like Sequoia or Tundra , just the , you know , just like a standard V8 . They won't even make them anymore . Yeah , but those things go for 300,000 miles , for sure . So okay , so , and AI is going to just wipe out sedans , like Everyone's just gonna want to self-driving car anyways , yeah , and people might not even have a car right . Yeah , there's a good question . Like the car market might completely collapse .
Speaker 2Oh yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah 100% like , the only car I'm betting on is Tesla , because they're gonna have the robo cars .
Speaker 2So so okay . So In business , as we work with tons of different businesses there , there are certain , certain thresholds . There is the zero to a hundred thousand threshold , right , so there's the six figure threshold , then there's a seven figure threshold and then there's the huh then there's mid seven and then eight yeah , and then there's the like how do I get to like 500 for 5 million ? And then there's the 10 million , and then from 10 million it's 50 , 50 , it's 200 it's kind of like the mid yeah eight , mid eight , nine so , um , everybody , I see it more on .
Speaker 2The 5 million plus is where people like hit a wall and they have . They feel like they start to have to make big decisions yeah , but oftentimes , sorry , am I butting in .
Speaker 1Are you trying to make a point ? Big decisions , yeah , but oftentimes , sorry , am I butting in ?
Speaker 2Are you trying to make ?
Speaker 1a point .
Speaker 2Uh , you might help make my point if you're feel free to jump Well .
Speaker 1I like where you're going , because the brand everyone often will be like it's the brand . We hear it all the time , like do we need to rebrand or rename or like go after this audience ? But what , what really is happening is like you're just getting outside of your initial stronghold , yeah , and there's really no reason to adjust . Like you don't even have to change ad channels . Oftentimes you don't have to adjust anything , you just have to accept a new reality of growing .
Speaker 2This episode of the Unstoppable Marketer is brought to you by BFF Creative . Let's be real H hiring designers and video editors can get super expensive , and that's why I'm excited about what BFF Creative has done . They've built a subscription design service that gives you the feel of an in-house creative team , but at a fraction of the cost , which I'm sure we all could use right now . From ad creatives to social media posts , video edits to full website designs . Bff gives you unlimited designs and unlimited requests , starting at just $1,000 a month . The best part about this their custom app makes it super easy to submit projects , give feedback , review , work and store all of your creative in one place .
Speaker 2As a listener of the podcast , you get 25% off your first two months with code UNSTOPPABLE25 . That means unlimited creative for as little as $750 a a month . Go check them out right now at bffcreativeco . And here's one thing that I want to like . I want to . You and me have always tried to . We don't do it a lot , but we maybe internally . We talk about this like brands don't always have to grow .
Speaker 1Yeah , that's a great point . It depends on what your goal is as a business owner . If you don't have to grow . You don't always have to be growing 20% .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think there's this stereotype or there's this myth that if you're not growing every year to eventually sell , then you're going to be unsuccessful .
Speaker 1Here's a good example of that and it's easy get out of the e-com bubble and think of , like the plumber you know who owns a plumbing business that probably hasn't grown too much but makes a great life like has a great lifestyle , earns really good money . You know , if they're smart , they're probably investing it .
Speaker 2Yeah , pass it down to his kids like one day you can do that in e-com too . Like you don't have to have the next unicorn or the next darling , there is this weird thing in e-com and listen , we make a living by people wanting to grow their businesses , so like but we all , we always advocate for healthy growth yes , yes , a hundred percent .
Speaker 2So that , yeah , there's this . There's just this weird ethos in e-comm that it's like I need to be growing , like I need to be doubling my sales every year and and the only way I am going to be a successful entrepreneur is if I sell this company one day . But we know plenty of people and some of you might even be listening to this several businesses , just one business , especially here in utah , I can think of on , like I can count on two hands . I can count 10 businesses .
Speaker 2think of 10 businesses right now who at one point were the darlings of ecom , of ecom , yeah making tons of money going super fast , going from like 1 million to 10 or 1 to 15 or 20 , and they ended up selling for next to nothing because they they tried to grow and get their business and they got their business in such a bad spot that they weren't growing profitably in a healthy way and and you can be making $15 million and only sell for a million dollars .
Speaker 1Yeah , right , yeah , I mean . Yeah , it depends on your brand equity . Yeah , equity and revenue , yeah , yeah , so one .
Speaker 2I want to just say like guys one I want to just say like guys , think long and hard about what you want your business to be and what the outcome of your business should be .
Speaker 1Yeah , and I think we should be cool , be more clear , like when we say you don't have to grow like you do . Technically you always probably need to be growing because there's inflation . So , like you do need to grow for sure .
Speaker 1And we don't mean you literally don't have to grow , right . What we mean is you don't have to fall into the trap of growing at the rates that you think you may need to grow at because of , oh , this SAS company grew , or this this other company did this . Like you don't have to be comparing .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1You just have to set realistic expectations and goals .
Speaker 2Yeah . So that's number one , like just set the right goals , yes , and if you can double year over year and it doesn't hurt your family life and it doesn't strain you physically and mentally and whatever , who's going to turn that ?
Speaker 1down . Well , it should strain you , but it shouldn't destroy you . Sure , yeah .
Speaker 2Who's going to turn that down ? I'm not going to turn that down . Right , you wouldn't turn it down . So that's number one . Number two is let's talk about audiences and how important the people are . That got you to the point that you were .
Speaker 1Yeah , the biggest mistake , I think , is people think again . The big mistake is you think you have to adjust what you're doing because growth starts stagnating . Um , and the easiest thing to do is go . Well , we just need a new , different kind of audience a new product that sells to this audience or and , and the reality is just , you know , in marketing terms there's low hanging fruit and you're just kind of getting outside of lower hanging fruit .
Speaker 1Yeah so like so a good , a good , a good example of this is always going to be , um , there's always going to be like kid products . It's like baby products , or kid products , or mom products , or dad like early mom products , like we'll go early mom products because , uh , there's not a lot of stuff focused for , like early dads . Sure , you know , like diaper bags aren't really advertised to dads , for example . Sure , Um , but a lot of times , like , what happens is we see brands go like well , okay , I'm targeting these kids , these babies , so now I need to get into toddlers , and then I need to get into kids , and then I need to get into teenagers , and then I need to also sell things to the moms .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , and it's like , yeah , you can . I mean you can go down that route , but like you really tapped out all babies , you know Right .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Like you really tapped out all toddlers . Like you really tapped out all .
Speaker 2Yeah . But what you don't understand is that there are some of these categories you start to think about like oh , let's , let's take . Let Like , oh , let's take . I like to use Cuts as an example . Not that Cuts did something wrong here , no , let's use Madewell , because I know that that one , like super flopped . Let's use Athleta , because this one for sure flopped . So Athleta was a women's workout athleisure company .
Speaker 1So they naturally let's go do men's too . And they blew up .
Speaker 2They rode the coattails of Lulu workout athleisure company , so they naturally let's go do men's too . And they , they blew up . They , you know , they they rode the coattails of lulu and they blew up and got really , really big and they were like a more uh , budget-friendly option maybe not by much , you know , it was just . It was just different . You know , like I would say that that athletic got a little bit more into . Like you know , lulu was very much like leggings , tops , and athleta got into like sweatshirts and like they .
Speaker 2They almost introduced like a little bit more to the athleisure world okay you know , but they , they launched a brand called hill city , and Hill City was a menswear brand , and your thought is very pure . The thought here is oh , if we can do this with women , we should be able to do this with men . That's number one . And number two is oh , if these women love their stuff for them , they'll love it for their husbands or boyfriends or sons . Yes , all fair . Fair like relatively logical yeah , but probably not .
Speaker 1They probably didn't do any market research for this but ?
Speaker 2but the problem is like , when you've done all this research and when you've tested ads and copy and social media posts and merchandising and all this stuff for the female audience , tapping into an audience where , well , hey , these 10 brands already own this space and now you're getting into an uh , into a space that's already like you know , you have to take resources from what you're doing well over here . Right , like you , you were crushing it On the up and up with women's , but then you had to take all this time , resource , money and put it Over here to something that this probably took you forever to build , but you don't have the patience To build this , and so yeah , sometimes it is a patience game , like do you actually have the patience to wait it Through , but the other side is you have , yeah .
Speaker 1Sometimes it is a patience game Like do you actually have the patience to wait it through , but the other side is you have limited resources , yeah . And then on top of that , like , did you really tap out ?
Speaker 2There's no way .
Speaker 1Women .
Speaker 2And the reason why we know that that's not the case is like there's a million other ones that have popped up . Yes , yes , and listen , I know that Viore or Lulu was selling to women and men and they did a really good job at integrating it Right . But Lulu didn't win because they started selling men athletic stuff . Lulu won because they started selling a pant . No one else sold Like a daily . You're wearing them a daily pant and then their athletic wear took off .
Speaker 1Yeah , and I've had these forever . Yeah , it was the ABC .
Speaker 2But guess who's not talking about Athleta anymore , like they're not even on the like .
Speaker 1Yeah , I don't hear about them .
Speaker 2No , like you've got Lulu
Business Growth vs Audience Expansion
Speaker 2and Viorey , who dominate that space 100% , and then you've got a few others that are in there .
Speaker 1And so , going back , we just see people in those spaces always assume oh , if we want to grow and grow faster , then let's expand . But you're not taking into consideration A the effort , right , and then also what I think is the bigger factor , is the opportunity cost of allocating time budget resources and resources into a new endeavor which , generally , you have not even tapped out your current endeavor not even close right right and there's certain brands that do sometimes there's more competition and you know . But you saw , it's just life , you saw .
Speaker 2Apple do this , like five years ago when they started introducing the S models of the phones , so they were the cheaper version . So , like Apple , who is one of the biggest .
Speaker 1Oh , I forgot about those .
Speaker 2Yeah , one of the biggest companies , because you're probably not in the market for it , right , but they were selling $1,000 phones . But does a teenager need a $1,000 phone ? Or somebody whose household income ? Right , but it didn't feel like they were going necessarily fully away from their ethos of what .
Speaker 1Apple is ? No , I don't think they did .
Speaker 2Right . So yeah , I like it . So what should you do , right ? Well , look If you're trying to grow and you're feeling stagnant .
Speaker 1Oftentimes , the answer is just double down . More often than not , that's my hot take .
Speaker 2Okay , but hold on , let me stop you .
Speaker 1Double down on the things that you're doing .
Speaker 2Let's hit double down . Okay , so Mark says double down , and I agree with this , but this is what happens , and this is why I think people are afraid to double down . We just experienced this with the client .
Speaker 1Well , again , when I say double down , it's with the expectation that your cost per acquisition is always going to go up .
Speaker 2Exactly that's what I wanted to address , right .
Speaker 1So , hey , my CAC was $50 and all of a sudden , overnight I hit a wall and now my CAC is $90 . Does that mean I'm doing something wrong ? Sometimes , sure , sometimes . But again you have to have OK , like , let's put it this way CAC is like measuring your BMI for health . Ok , right , like . Bmi is like an overall decent indicator of like averages , yep , but it's not an indicator of quote health no and it's actually oftentimes a very bad indicator .
Speaker 1Sure of how healthy you are , right like your bmi might be going up whereas your health is getting much better , but you might be determined as unhealthy . Right , yeah , by your bmi standards . Totally right , like my , my brother's in the military , and I know that he was always considered obese by the military bmi , but of course he was , he wasn't .
Speaker 2He's like a crossfit guy super fit in really good shape really good .
Speaker 1Yeah , but just for his size , he weighed more than what they claimed . The BMI claims , right , that's what looking at CAC is like . Right , you should not look at it . Hey , our CAC is going up , okay , but what is the health of the overall business ? Yeah yeah , it's not just your CAC right , it's what is your LTV doing right . What is your profitability doing over time ?
Speaker 2What is your AOV ? Right , if your CAC goes up , but your AOV goes up , right , yeah , like your ROI , that changes everything , right .
Speaker 1Yeah , so we just think you have to look at your overall profits and then , obviously , what is the projection of those profits ? Yeah , based off of those cohorts coming through . So , and with the expectation that look guys like your CAC will go up period .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1As you grow , your CAC will start going up . It's just inevitable .
Speaker 2Yes , what your CAC is today , because you're going to start outpacing .
Speaker 1Oftentimes what happens is like the low hanging fruit . Yeah , you start out pacing .
Speaker 2Oftentimes what happens is like low-hanging fruit .
Speaker 1Yeah , you start out pacing , like organic reach and word of mouth , then everything else . So , like , as you outpace all of that and like , your ads become the end-all be-all , which is some people are scared of that , but that's just . Every company operates like that , by the way , like nike . Any big company operates like this . Yeah , right , so your end-all be-all is going to be hey , ads are introducing , ads are reintroducing , ads are getting people back .
Speaker 2And when we say ads , we're not just talking digital , we're talking everything .
Speaker 1Everything .
Speaker 2You know any money you're spending on getting attention .
Speaker 1Yeah , your CAC's going to go up , but that doesn't mean your business is in a bad spot .
Speaker 2Yeah , spot , yeah , or that ads are in a bad spot and if you have an agency or if you like , because , listen , we see this with agencies all the time like , like , we listen , we just talked about this with cody , with kinship , yeah like we , we just , we just parted ways with the client because they couldn't get over cac thoughts like that was a huge , huge .
Speaker 1Well , there was a misalignment yeah , sometimes there's misalignments with the expectation of growth yep but the , the all and the expectation of what cac should or should not be .
Speaker 2Yeah , and and there's a lot of fault on us right to to maybe not set those expectations a little better .
Speaker 1yeah , yeah , yeah , but sometimes companies are under pressures to grow at certain rates for whatever reason .
Speaker 2Yeah , they might have investors that need X and F and if they , want to get there .
Speaker 1You just got to realize you're going to have to sacrifice things to get a certain growth rate . It's not just a silver bullet . You're not just going to come up with an ad .
Speaker 2Yeah , you don't double ad spend and double sales . No , that's not how it works . No , sometimes it does , if you haven't hit that low hanging sometimes over time , over a longer time , it still works but , like you have to in the immediacy . Yeah , it oftentimes does not right , so um I I think that that's a huge lesson .
Speaker 1So that's number one right is so if you want to grow , yeah , double down , yep , but also to answer your original question , so we don't get too sidetracked with , like the cat conversation because we just had that is , know who your audience actually is . And if you're trying to go after a new audience , run the risk reward of using market research . There's tools like you can figure this out or hire someone to do this for you , because it will be worth it . It's like an insurance policy . It's very worth it to hire a market research firm to do this for you , which is hey , what are the risk rewards of going after a new audience and how would that alienate all the people that I'm I currently have , and is it worth ?
Speaker 1it to try that alienate all the people that I'm I currently have and is it worth it to try to ?
Speaker 2alienate them ? Have I even gotten close to tapping out ? And what am I ?
Speaker 1doing wrong with the current like ? Am I doing something wrong with the current audience ? Where I'm , I'm no longer reaching them in the same way I used to be yeah , no , no , there's here .
Speaker 2Let me add another situation is let's take your new mom audience that you had kind of talked about . Right , the thing about like , let's say , new moms , like how many , how many babies are born , you know , like I don't know .
Speaker 1Probably you could probably probably 15 to 20 million a year . Yeah , in the us and that number is going down right well , no , number per couple is going down , but number of babies being born is not .
Speaker 2So so anyways , a lot of people look at it like 15 million . That's not a lot you know if I'm selling whatever to a new mom but the way you can start to differentiate yourself and start to identify the right audience is understanding . This goes back to your market research .
Speaker 1Okay , so babies born is $4 million a year .
Speaker 2Okay so .
Speaker 1I was way off $4 million a year . So , that's a lot of babies , though .
Speaker 2What you can do is you can start to do your market research and say okay , how is the new mom changing ? So you're not alienating a mom moms in general by saying , oh , I need to now go after grandmas , or oh , I need to now go after grandmas , or oh , I need to now go after single ladies Right , and it is trending down to three and a half .
Speaker 2Yeah , so you ? You instead can say , okay , what is the younger generation ? Right , if the average person when I started my business five years ago is 25 , having a kid ? Now that you know the 25 to 30 year old , what are they having you know five years ago ? Or what are they interested in , you can start doing some , some research to say , okay , hey , the Gen Z moms are now the people having babies , not millennials as much . So how do I create this product to tailor to her ?
Speaker 1Like cause , my maybe my image is the millennial yeah . So you're always getting these people aging in and out .
Speaker 2Yeah . So that's one way you can do it . I think another way and
When CAC Goes Up: The Reality
Speaker 2one way I want to not challenge , but maybe move the discussion as we say hey , how do you grow when you're starting to tap out ? What you actually could do is you could actually double down even harder on your audience . So you say double down . You kind of talked from a spend perspective . I'm talking from a like can double down even Harder into a Segmented part of an audience . So if we're talking about Can I just ? Yeah .
Speaker 1I just want to like Emphasize something here If you take the baby market At 4 million a year , let's just even sandbag it At 3.7 million . The baby market at 4 million a year , let's just even sandbag it at 3.7 million . Right , let's say a realistic expectation is to capture . Let's just say , capture 10% of that market a year .
Speaker 2That'd be 375,000 .
Speaker 1Let's say your AOV is 100 . That's a $37 million business . Yeah , Like that's like a . I'm not saying it's easy to get capture 10% of market share , but even 5% . Right , You're sitting at a 17 , $18 million business a year , which people would go nuts for most .
Speaker 1So again , like that's what I'm saying is like a lot of people will hit these thresholds and it's like yeah it's like okay , yeah , like once you start hitting like five to 10% of , like , total market share , then like maybe your luxury so like that's probably like five to 10% of babies are going to be born in higher income brackets . Yeah , so if you're luxury , maybe that is kind of where you do it , but like no one ever cares to look at what their actual market is . Yeah , like people just make a gut assumptions because things might be getting harder .
Speaker 2Well , what I was going to say is do you , let's ? Let's ? Just since we're on the mom topic , right , if you're starting to see that your sale , like selling , is , you know , dipping . You could actually dip harder into the mom niche , right , and maybe you're going after the breastfeeding mom , right , because there's a lot of discussion around breastfeeding versus bottle feeding , versus both . You know you could maybe double down to the conservative mom and that could actually help scale and grow your business . Or the more liberal mom or the whatever right Like . There's these things that you can do that niches down even harder . That could actually make you more money , even though you're cutting out your total addressable market .
Speaker 1Yes .
Speaker 2Does that make sense ? Totally Now , eventually , that doesn't get you to .
Speaker 1Again , you have to look at what your actual obtainable markets are Like . Most people don't even know what their their true market size is Like . If you look at the baby market like , that's kind of like that's just newborns though .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Like that's kind of like that's just newborns , though . Yeah , so if you're looking at toddlers though , like that's kind of a two year gap , so that's more of like an 8 million Sure Market range . So like , can you capture 2% of that ? Yeah , 3% . Yeah , so yeah , the point of the discussion is just like and is it worth it to alienate your past audience to get you to a bigger goal ?
Speaker 2Yeah Is just like , and is it worth it to alienate your past audience to get you to a bigger goal ?
Speaker 1Yeah , and oftentimes the answer is Oftentimes it's not gonna be worth it .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean , look what's you probably don't even have 1% . Yeah , half a percent . Like does the market share does ?
Speaker 1the Jaguar brand Come back from this . If they're smart , they know how . It's gonna be really easy . You just make something really badass and that's all you have to do .
Speaker 2I think that Budweiser or not Budweiser Bud .
Speaker 1Light seems to have .
Speaker 2They totally came back .
Speaker 1Seems to have come back .
Speaker 2They got Post Malone and Well , they even got Kid Rock that .
Speaker 1Shane Gillis guy .
Speaker 2Kid Rock . Kid Rock , who was like Against him . Got Kid Rock , that Shane Gillis guy yeah , well , they even got Kid Rock who was like against him . Yeah , he was like the guy who was like oh my , I cannot believe because he's an outspoken conservative yeah , you know , especially around woke stuff . And now even he's full team Bud Light , same with same with , uh , ufc , dana White Bud Light is now a sponsor . Oh , the UFC like they .
Speaker 1So I wonder if that boycott I mean it impacted them .
Speaker 2But I don't know if anyone remembers anymore yeah , lost in billions , but I have not heard anybody . You know , we're probably the like . We probably just opened up fresh wounds by me saying that you know .
Speaker 1I don't think anyone remembers so like .
Speaker 2But at the time they had lost like six billion dollars . Yeah , like overnight . It was like a six billion dollar dip in there , like in stock or whatever . It was crazy . It was crazy numbers , you know .
Speaker 1So well , I think that's good .
Speaker 2Yeah , but . But there is a way to reverse it , which is People are forgiving it's if you do it quick , yeah , if it's elongated and it's years of it . People are forgiving If you do it quick , yeah , if it's elongated and it's years of it Right . That's why I'm very curious about Jaguar . We're six months deep . They're still doubling down . Beer costs a lot less to make than a car , so that could be like they could be . You know , they claimed it was a 2026 .
Speaker 1Yeah , but you're talking like a brand . You can change the brand and keep the cars like their cars might still be really cool looking and they do look kind of cool Like they're very futuristic . It's just toss the Flimsy , colorful , youthful thing .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Because those aren't the people buying your cars .
Speaker 2Yeah , so figure out what you want your goals to be . I think that's the number one .
Speaker 1A whimsical , more whimsical .
Speaker 2Do you need to be growing 100% year over year ? Maybe you took on some investment and so , yes , you do .
Speaker 1Yeah , and if you do just set the right expectations .
Speaker 2Then understand and actually look at .
Speaker 1And again , if you're going to take on investment , look at your actual obtainable market and see if it's worth it .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Like can you actually grow and can you actually capture X percent of the share ?
Speaker 2Yeah , and just because your CPAs go up doesn't mean your media buyer in house is doing something wrong or agency is doing something wrong . It can , it can , but it could just mean that broken outside of the low hanging fruit and you got to start going hard . So look at profitability . Look at , and not just profitability now , but projection profitability too , which is huge .
Speaker 1So I got to go .
Speaker 2I like it . Anything else you want to add ?
Speaker 1No , I gotta go Okay .
Speaker 2All right ,
Market Research and Growth Strategies
Speaker 2thanks everybody . We'll see you guys next week . Thank you so much for listening to the unstoppable marketer podcast . Okay , all right , thanks everybody . We'll see you guys next week . 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 .