The DTC Podcast
Eric Dyck
What does it take to build and scale a successful direct-to-consumer brand? The DTC Podcast is a marketing strategy podcast hosted by Eric Dyck, with practical ecommerce growth strategies from founders, operators, and marketing experts. Explore DTC marketing, customer acquisition, performance marketing, paid media, conversion rate optimization, customer retention, creative strategy, AI, and brand growth. Hear what works, what fails, and how leading consumer brands adapt and grow. Subscribe for actionable insights to help you build a stronger, more profitable ecommerce business.
Recent Episodes
20 episodesFounder Story Ads: How DTC Brands Win on Meta Without an Obvious Product Edge
What's the best DTC marketing strategy on Meta when every competitor makes the same claims?Liam Robinson, co-founder of Marlbank, says to stop arguing features and lead cold prospecting with your brand's growth story. On this episode of All Killer No Filler, he walks through how that switch got a supplement brand built by chemists scaling on Meta after months of feature-led ads went nowhere.Get the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coKey takeaways:- How to sell a product that's better than the competition when the reasons don't show up in an ad- Why feature-led ads turn into a shouting match in cold Meta prospecting- How to imply product quality through your brand's growth story instead of claiming it- What to use when you don't have big numbers yet: a first farmers market, a first hire, a first customer- How to build a then-and-now prospecting ad from your own camera roll- How Marin Skincare and Vyper Industrial pair a product distinction with a founder story- How to turn a Dragons' Den appearance into an ad, whether you got a deal or walked away without one- Which brands this angle won't work forAbout the guest:Liam Robinson is co-founder of Marlbank, a Meta-only agency for early-growth ecommerce brands, built in partnership with Pilothouse. Before Marlbank, he was one of Pilothouse's first media buyers. Reach Liam at [email protected] or his co-founder Nate at [email protected] connected:Subscribe to The DTC Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.Get the DTC Newsletter at https://directtoconsumer.coWant to be a guest? Email [email protected]
How to Get Your CFO to Approve a Bigger Marketing Budget: CAC, Meta and Brand Spend | Harness the Halo 5/6
How do you get your CFO to approve a bigger marketing budget for a DTC brand? Drew Fallon, former CFO of Mad Rabbit, says finance is watching one number, CAC, and that brand spend only gets funded once direct response is efficient enough to pay for it.Drew is now CEO of Iris Finance, a finance platform for CPG and DTC brands, where he sees the books of 200 brands, most of them between $20 million and $300 million in revenue. He joins Eric Dyck and Claudia Lauture, VP of Client Services at Keen Decision Systems, to work through the argument between marketing and finance, including who should own the budget and when a brand can afford upper funnel. You walk away knowing what to bring into the budget meeting and how finance will score it.Get the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEYou don't know what finance is judging your plan on. Drew's answer is CAC. If CAC, retention and LTV to CAC land where his model has them, he says he does not care how much you spend or what you spend it on.You need money for a bet that won't pay back this quarter. Drew wants one of two cases made: that it raises MER and contribution margin, or that the upside is big enough to be worth the risk.You want to start brand marketing and direct response is only just carrying the business. Drew says there is no room yet. Most companies he sees don't start brand work until somewhere past $30 million in revenue, and he would not do it at $10 million.You think you have topped out on Meta. Drew says Meta takes a brand farther than most operators expect, and that you can probably ride it to $100 million.You are looking for the next channel after Meta. Across the 200 brands on Iris, Drew has not seen one scale AppLovin spend and make more money. The pattern he describes is a brand that reaches $50 million on Meta, puts $200K a month into AppLovin and watches its margin go away.Your upper funnel keeps getting cut to hit the quarter. Claudia's team at Keen runs both plans out two and three years, so the cost of the cut is on the table next to the short-term number.Your cash position keeps surprising you. Drew builds a bear, a base and a bull case, then tests the base at 40% over and 40% under. Beating plan by 60% can still run a brand out of money, because of inventory.Nobody agrees who owns the marketing budget. Drew says it is usually the marketing lead and should be the CFO, on the condition that the CFO understands growth marketing, which he calls rare.Your agency bill is being questioned. At Mad Rabbit, Drew let go of an Amazon agency he liked because it cost roughly $60K a month and he could hire two full-time people for two thirds of that.You are planning Q4 the way you did last year. Drew is hearing more brands pull back on TikTok after losing money there last year, and supplement founders tell him they are waiting for January because Q4 brings higher returns, more churn and discount shoppers.You are reporting platform revenue to finance. Both guests named it as the number they stopped trusting. Drew: "It's all higher than what you get on your P&L."ABOUT THE GUESTSDrew Fallon is co-founder and CEO of Iris Finance and the former CFO of Mad Rabbit. https://irisfinance.coClaudia Lauture is VP of Client Services at Keen Decision Systems, the marketing mix modeling, planning and forecasting platform. https://keends.comHARNESS THE HALOHarness the Halo is a six-part series from DTC and Keen about the spend that doesn't pay you back the same day, and the measurement that gives you room to make it. This is episode 5 of 6, and a new episode drops every other week.SPONSORHarness the Halo is presented by Keen Decision Systems. Keen measures the incremental impact of every channel on sales, revenue and profit, and forecasts how a channel will perform before you spend in it. https://keends.com
DTC to Retail: How Flex Reached 30,000 Stores After Turning Down Target Twice
When should a DTC brand move into retail? Flex founder Lauren Schulte Wang said no to Target twice, and retail is now over 60% of revenue. She waited until her supply chain and her marketing engine could handle it, and she went because customers told her every month that they wanted to buy the product in a store.On the DTC Podcast, Lauren tells Eric Dyck how Flex got from a landing page with 200,000 emails and no product to 30,000 retail doors and more than 185 million menstrual discs sold. She covers the DTC strategy behind the timing of the retail move, how connected TV and subway ads lift every other channel, and what she is doing about a category that only 3% of people have heard of.Get the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEA big retailer wants your product and you are not sure you are ready. Lauren turned Target down two years running until supply chain, manufacturing and margin-based LTV to CAC were dialed in, because a marketing engine that cannot scale before retail will not scale once you are on shelf.Your subscription keeps missing the moment customers need the product. Flex changed pack sizes, changed frequencies and opened fulfillment centers on both coasts. The fix was in the customer research the whole time: people wanted to buy it in a store.Your product needs explaining before anyone will buy it. Flex ads without an education piece perform worse, so the answers to "will it get stuck" and "is it messy" go inside the ad itself.You are about to spend real money on your first TV campaign. Flex hired a big agency, shot a high-production spot Lauren had doubts about, and had to spend out a contract on ads that did not perform. The rule since then is that nothing runs on TV unless it has already worked on YouTube.Your category has almost no awareness and you cannot outspend the giants. With unaided awareness of menstrual discs at 3%, Flex added CTV, New York subway ads and campus marketing so that a friend's recommendation, a subway poster and a TikTok from a small creator all reach the same person.You do not know which content will move retail sales. A plain YouTube video explaining how the Flex Cup's pull tab works went viral and lifted Flex's velocities at Walmart by double digits.You launched to a huge waitlist with no way to fulfill it. Flex could not ship in the US yet, so the founders flew to Europe on cheap Iceland fares and hand-packed discs at local post offices. They had $80,000 in pre-orders before demo day.You found a competitor's patent on the product you wanted to make. Lauren pitched the company, got turned down, designed around the patent, and then acquired that company while she was still in Y Combinator.ABOUT LAURENLauren Schulte Wang is the founder and CEO of The Flex Company, the period care brand behind the Flex Disc, the Flex Cup, Softdisc and Softcup. She started Flex in 2015, went through Y Combinator in 2016, and coined the term "menstrual disc." Flex products are sold in 30,000 stores including Walmart, Target and CVS. https://flexfits.comInstagram and TikTok: @flexSTAY CONNECTEDDTC Newsletter, daily ecommerce marketing and ecommerce growth tactics: https://directtoconsumer.coYouTube: https://youtube.com/@dtcnewsletterLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/directtoconsumerTIMESTAMPS00:00 How Flex turned viral attention into growth08:00 Why doing things that don’t scale works12:00 How retail became Flex’s biggest growth channel17:00 Why product education drives performance32:00 What makes TV and YouTube creative work
AI Agents for Ad Creative: The Workflow Saving a Pilothouse Strategist 5.5 Hours a Week
How can AI agents speed up ad creative for a DTC brand? Braydon, a creative strategist at Pilothouse, has agents build his swipe file every Monday and Claude write his design tickets, which saved him five and a half hours last week.Braydon joins Eric Dyck on All Killer No Filler to walk through the full workflow. Grok Bot handles the research with a chief of staff agent that manages a team of sub-agents. Higgsfield turns the references he picks into on-brand mockups. Claude writes the tickets for the designers, who still make the finished ad. He also explains why he is not bullish on AI-generated ad creative right now, and why some of his clients have asked for zero AI in their ads.Get the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEYou trigger every AI task by hand. Braydon sets up a chief of staff agent in Grok Bot that manages sub-agents on a schedule, so the research is waiting for him on Monday morning.Competitor and creative research eats your week. His agents go through Pinterest, the ad library and Motion, and one run came back with a swipe file of around 70 creatives relevant to the brand.You write the same design tickets over and over. Braydon loads his internal processes into Claude, hands it the ideas he picked, and it writes the ticket descriptions for the designers.You can't tell where AI belongs in the creative process. He uses it for strategy, references and mockups, then gives the work to designers for the finished product.Your AI images look like AI. Braydon starts from a reference photo taken on a phone or a real UGC image, which gets the output closer to an iPhone shot.Your client has banned AI creative. Eric shares what he heard from larger brands, who test AI creative on a separate third-party brand page instead of the main account.You copied an AI ad trend and it stopped working. Braydon on Pixar-style video ads and why formats like that grab attention for a moment and then fade once everyone runs them.Your team keeps building the same AI tool three times. Braydon and Eric talk through shared context, token bills and what Pilothouse is building internally to fix it.ABOUT BRAYDONBraydon is a creative strategist at Pilothouse, the performance marketing team behind DTC. To talk through this workflow with him, fill out the form at https://pilothouse.co and ask for Braydon.STAY CONNECTEDDTC Newsletter, daily ecommerce marketing and ecommerce growth tactics: https://directtoconsumer.coYouTube: https://youtube.com/@dtcnewsletterLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/directtoconsumerTIMESTAMPS00:00 How AI workflows save hours every week05:00 Building an AI agent team08:00 Where AI creative works best16:00 Using AI as a personal assistant22:00 Building shared AI workflows for teams
The New Fundamentals of Brand Strategy (While Shipping Hundreds of Ads a Week), With Eugene Healey
Brand strategist Eugene Healey on DTC marketing at high creative volume: why creative is the new targeting, why brand books fail with creators, and how teams approve hundreds of ads a week.How do you keep a DTC brand coherent when you're shipping that much creative? Eugene says the fundamentals of brand still hold. The job around them has moved from controlling every campaign to orchestrating hundreds of pieces of creative the brand no longer controls.Eugene lectured in marketing and brand management at the University of Melbourne, runs a brand strategy studio, and is an equity partner in the brand tracking platform Tracksuit. On his second DTC Podcast appearance he tells Eric Dyck where brand strategy goes when media becomes the key variable, and how a team builds the judgment to approve work at volume.Eugene's live cohort course, The New Fundamentals of Brand, starts October 12. It runs seven weeks, with live sessions, studio groups of five or six people in your time zone, and interviews with brand leaders from Hinge and Nothing. Final-release seats are limited: https://thenewfundamentals.coGet the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEYour team ships more creative than any approval chain can review. Eugene's model has senior people approve the overall pattern while juniors and mid-levels own the day-to-day sign-off.Your brand book can't govern creators, partners and communities. Why you hand third parties a suite of assets that can travel into their context, instead of 80 pages of logo rules.Your team still works strategy, then creative, then media. Creative has to be conceived inside its distribution, which is why on Meta the creative has become the targeting.All of your brand knowledge lives in one long-tenured person. How to spread that judgment across the team by debating why a piece does or doesn't feel right.AI is producing work nobody on the team has read. Tobi Lütke's "slop grenades," and why saving money on copy makes little sense when media costs more than it ever has.Your brand keeps trying to make memes. What Gap and the studio Invisible Dynamics did instead, bringing back music video culture with dance covers people remix on their own.Your positioning sits in the aspirational middle. What Everlane's sale to Shein says about brands whose promise is that tomorrow can be a little better than today.ABOUT EUGENEEugene Healey is a brand strategist and co-founder of The New Fundamentals of Brand, a seven-week live course for marketers and brand leaders. He previously lectured in marketing and brand management at the University of Melbourne and is an equity partner in Tracksuit. https://thenewfundamentals.coInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/eugbrandstrat00:00 Cold open: the funnel is now a tornado00:22 Two years of making content, and what changed01:51 Why he turned it into a course03:50 The central thesis: from control to orchestration04:50 Salience in the Andromeda era05:39 Creative is the new targeting06:56 Walter Cronkite and the creator model of trust08:51 Everlane, Shein and the death of the middle12:16 What happened to the analog revival15:23 Private social and the entertainment platforms17:26 Creative velocity and who approves the work19:39 Slop grenades and human discernment22:56 Can AI hold the brand's judgment?25:06 Hiring top screenwriters for UGC scripts25:45 Stop making memes and become the meme: Gap29:08 Tracksuit, queryable brand tracking and Hall30:17 Sydney Sweeney and why we let ourselves get rage baited34:54 Inside The New Fundamentals of Brand38:02 Seats, and where to sign up38:30 Wrap
Black Friday Discount Strategy for DTC Brands Hooked on 30% Off | AKNF
How do you run Black Friday when your DTC brand is already hooked on discounts? Split your customers into new and repeat, keep the coupon-trained cohorts on their deal, and use the Black Friday offer to bring in new customers who have never seen your 30% off.On the second DTC Rundown, Eric Dyck is joined by Jordan Gordon, who leads email and retention at Pilothouse, and Rafael Gi, who works on partnerships and client strategy there. Each topic runs on a timer. They start with a brand that has run 30% off sitewide five times this year, move to why Meta keeps spending in the markets you have already saturated, and finish with the worst things Pilothouse finds when it audits a brand's email program.Get an audit from Pilothouse: https://pilothouse.coWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEYour customers only buy when there is a coupon. Jordan separates the coupon-addicted cohorts, keeps showing them their price through email, and controls the offers new customers see so they settle on a new normal.Your Black Friday offer is the same one you ran all year. Push it to 35%, or lead with an "up to" offer on a door buster that is not your most important product.You treat your discount as a flat rate. Rafael budgets discounts like media spend, with a goal for each offer, such as a one-day drop on your best seller to capture new customer emails.You give away margin in Q4 and get nothing back in January. Set an AOV threshold that earns a gift card customers can only redeem in Q5.Your early access list waits weeks for the deal. Give them the Black Friday offer the day they sign up, then use the flow to sell them on buying from you all year.Meta keeps spending where you are already strongest. In one Pilothouse audit of a nine-figure brand, two regions near where the company was founded held 8% of its addressable market, produced 40% of its revenue, and were being over-delivered by 20 to 30%.Every region carries the same ROAS target. Set targets by market maturity instead: higher efficiency in saturated markets, break even or a small loss in new ones, and something in between for markets that are emerging.Your email program is turned up to maximum. Jordan found one brand with 700 live flow messages sending up to four campaigns a day, and another using 30-day open attribution that credited email for sales driven by ads.You do not know what email earns on its own. A control group that only receives the first welcome email shows you the incremental revenue.Your SMS budget looks expensive. At one brand, email click-through sat at 0.09% while SMS reached 2.5%, and an SMS click cost 25 cents against roughly $1.30 for Meta and Google retargeting.The algorithm narrowed your brand to one message. How a testosterone supplement ended up with a site built around libido, and why the fix meant rebuilding creative, site and email together.Your pricing sits behind a quiz. At one subscription brand, only 3% of people who went through the quiz checked out.ABOUT THE GUESTSJordan Gordon leads email and retention at Pilothouse and hosts The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-worlds-best-email-and-retention-podcast/id1772940578Rafael Gi works on partnerships and client strategy at Pilothouse, a performance marketing agency. https://pilothouse.coSTAY CONNECTEDDTC Newsletter, daily ecommerce marketing and ecommerce growth tactics: https://directtoconsumer.coYouTube: https://youtube.com/@dtcnewsletterLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/directtoconsumerWant to be on the Rundown? Email [email protected]:26 Raf's hamstring and Jordan's white belts04:49 Budget your discounts like media spend07:15 Do bundles and gifts with purchase fix it16:06 How a market matures27:16 The supplement the algorithm turned into a libido brand33:08 The subject line typo the investors saw34:20 Budweiser Red Light and the Bud Light UFC promo37:36 The $10,000 retreat ticket paid in Bitcoin
How to Test Connected TV for a DTC Brand: $20K a Month for 60 Days | Harness the Halo 4/6
Carve Designs gave connected TV 60 days at a $20K monthly minimum before deciding it worked, which is about as clean a test as a DTC brand runs on a new channel. The lift showed up first in direct traffic and search, and conversion rates rose across channels for customers who had seen the ads.Hannah Fleming runs performance marketing at Carve Designs, the coastal apparel brand that grew out of swim. She joins Eric Dyck and Jesse Math of Keen Decision Systems to walk through the bets that take months to pay back: direct mail, connected TV, TikTok and whitelisted ads, plus the Pinterest test that never worked. You walk away knowing how to size a first test, where to look for the halo, and how long to wait before you cut a channel.Get the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEYour direct mail gets credit for every buyer on the mailing list. Jesse's question is how many of them would have bought anyway. Carve answers it with holdout panels, including tests that also suppress email and paid social for the held-out group.You can't tell whether to mail more. Carve tracks contribution per piece, tests catalog count, page count and size, and reweights audiences between 0 to 12 month and 13 to 24 month buyers.Your average ROI says spend more. Jesse's example: a $2 return on $1 million tells you nothing about the next dollar, because the first dollars into a channel return more than the last ones.Your other channels swing around the catalog drop. Carve plans spend in every other channel around catalog in-home dates.You don't know what a first connected TV test costs. Carve ran 60 days at a $20K monthly minimum, with a fixed window, set objectives and targets, and landed on target or slightly ahead of it.You can't find where connected TV sales land. At Carve they land mostly on the site as direct traffic, with a small portion on Amazon, and GA4 shows higher conversion rates for customers who saw a CTV ad and then clicked an email or a paid social ad.Your CTV attribution looks too good. Jesse sees brands arrive with platform numbers their CFO doesn't believe. The question to ask is whether you are buying new customers or buying inventory your existing customers already watch.You judge upper funnel on a 14 or 30 day window. For brands buying CTV for awareness, Jesse says Keen sees roughly 30% of the measured impact in the short term and roughly 70% over time.You're about to kill a channel at month three. TikTok took Carve about six months to gain momentum, and whitelisted ads took close to 18 months before they became a top performer.You treat every test as a pass or a fail. Jesse's alternative is to find the 30% that worked, pare back the rest, and keep going.ABOUT THE GUESTSHannah Fleming is Performance Marketing Director at Carve Designs. Shop the collection or request a catalog at https://carvedesigns.comJesse Math is VP of Strategic Partnerships at Keen Decision Systems, the marketing mix modeling, planning and forecasting platform. https://keends.comHARNESS THE HALOHarness the Halo is a six-part series from DTC and Keen about the spend that doesn't pay you back the same day, and the measurement that gives you room to make it. This is episode 4 of 6, and a new episode drops every other week.STAY CONNECTEDDTC Newsletter, daily ecommerce marketing and ecommerce growth tactics: https://directtoconsumer.coYouTube: https://youtube.com/@dtcnewsletterLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/directtoconsumerSPONSORHarness the Halo is presented by Keen Decision Systems. Keen measures the incremental impact of every channel on sales, revenue and profit, and forecasts how a channel will perform before you spend in it. https://keends.com
How Terra Kaffe Pre-Sold 10,000 Espresso Machines With No Reviews
How do you grow a DTC brand without a big brand awareness budget? Terra Kaffe founder Sahand Dilmaghani pre-sold 10,000 espresso machines from a single page with no reviews, and word of mouth has been the top reason customers buy every month for five years.On the DTC Podcast, Sahand tells Eric Dyck how he left investment banking to bootstrap a super automatic espresso machine, what he cut to get it shipped with $2.5 million already spent, and why Terra Kaffe now puts its money into community and performance marketing instead of brand awareness. Terra Kaffe has 70,000 machines in homes today.Get the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEYou sell a high-ticket product and cannot seed it to a thousand creators a month. Sahand built word of mouth by calling customers himself, and it now drives well over a third of Terra Kaffe's orders.Your brand awareness budget is too small to register. Why $15K to $20K a month will never make you a household name, and when to hold that money for one campaign big enough to count.Your best video flopped on Meta. A $30K shoot that never converted on Instagram or Facebook became one of Terra Kaffe's strongest performers on CTV.Your investors want proof of demand before the product is finished. One pre-order page, a teaser campaign, an email to the subscriber list and a booth at a New York coffee festival produced 10,000 orders.Your product is over budget and behind schedule. The features Terra Kaffe cut in a do-or-die meeting to ship in six months, and which ones came back later as a fast follow.Your outside partner has spent double to go half the distance. How Sahand replaced his engineering firm mid-build while it still held most of the product knowledge.You cannot afford tooling or a production deposit. The trade he made with his manufacturer on the first machine's design rights, and what it cost him later.ABOUT SAHANDSahand Dilmaghani is the founder and CEO of Terra Kaffe, the Brooklyn-based maker of super automatic espresso machines, including the TK-02 and the Demi. Before Terra Kaffe he worked in investment banking and at an electric vehicle startup. https://www.terrakaffe.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrakaffeSTAY CONNECTEDDTC Newsletter, daily ecommerce marketing and ecommerce growth tactics: https://directtoconsumer.coYouTube: https://youtube.com/@dtcnewsletterLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/directtoconsumer00:49 From Wall Street banker to "barista"02:25 Carrying a 30 pound espresso machine on the subway04:40 The only espresso brand anyone could name05:22 The Larry David campaign idea06:13 Building complex hardware during COVID08:52 $2.5 million in, with no guarantee it ships09:09 Funding one milestone at a time10:42 The meeting where the features got cut13:36 Replacing the engineering firm mid-build16:33 Giving the manufacturer the V1 design rights20:44 Answering the dropship accusations21:32 The investor test: does anyone want this23:22 10,000 pre-orders from one page25:11 The Terra Kaffe manifesto26:16 What a super automatic machine does29:39 Why people bought before they could try it32:33 70,000 machines in homes33:25 Word of mouth, every month for five years36:28 Brand spend versus performance marketing38:23 The three problems every operator hits40:39 Why a small brand awareness budget is a trap41:15 Coming for Nespresso42:37 CTV and the $30K shoot that flopped on Meta46:34 Survival by a thousand band-aids47:34 Raising $2.6 million in 13 days48:03 You are going to get punched in the face
Meta Partnership Ads Now Make Up 30 to 50% of the Ads on Our Biggest Accounts
What are Meta partnership ads, and how should a DTC brand test them before Q4? They run through a creator's handle with your brand tagged, so Meta combines both accounts' engagement signals, and Pilothouse typically sees lower CPMs on them than on ads from the brand handle alone.Jacob Geary runs Meta accounts at Pilothouse and joins Eric Dyck on All Killer No Filler to lay out how partnership ads work in practice. On the larger accounts his team runs, 30 to 50% of the ads now go out as partnership ads, and most of the creators behind them are micro-creators. You walk away with a test plan for a brand spending $50K to $100K a month on Meta: the budget, the number of creators, the formats to brief, and the metrics that decide what scales.Get the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEYour customers have seen your brand ads so often they scroll past them. The same message from a creator's handle, with your brand tagged, gives them a fresh face and tends to deliver at a lower CPM.You don't know where to find creators. The Partnership Ads Hub inside Meta suggests creators in your vertical, surfaces people already posting about you, and hands you the ad code once both sides approve.You don't know what to brief. Jacob's starting formats are "why I switched" problem and solution videos, holiday gift guides, and raw unboxings shot on a phone.You don't know what to pay. Jacob's range is $100 to $300 per creator for a few videos and 60 days of usage, and some creators will take the exposure from your ad spend without a fee.You assume you need big names. Micro-creators make up 80 to 90% of what Pilothouse runs, with performance Jacob describes as very similar and a faster testing cadence.Your Q4 creator ads die the day the sale ends. Brief creators three to four weeks ahead and have them mention the sale in general terms instead of reading out a discount and a date.You don't know how big the first test should be. At $100K a month on Meta, Jacob puts 10% toward three to five creators with one or two videos each, then builds toward 20% by month three.You're not sure how to judge the results. Use the same purchase conversion rate and ROAS benchmarks as any new creative test, with a little more patience in month one.ABOUT JACOBJacob Geary is a Meta media buyer at Pilothouse, the performance marketing team behind DTC, where he runs paid social for ecommerce brands. To talk partnership ads with his team, go to https://pilothouse.co and ask for Jacob.STAY CONNECTEDDTC Newsletter, daily ecommerce marketing and ecommerce growth tactics: https://directtoconsumer.coYouTube: https://youtube.com/@dtcnewsletterLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/directtoconsumer00:49 Intro: Jacob from Pilothouse on Meta partnership ads01:28 What partnership ads are, versus whitelisting and dark posts02:53 The Partnership Ads Hub as a creator discovery network03:53 Why they matter: combined signals and ad blindness05:17 Are partnership ads incremental?06:30 Why partnership ads get cheaper CPMs07:34 Fresh looks, Andromeda and ad sequencing08:59 Formats that work: why I switched, gift guides, unboxings10:30 Gifting angles for each creator's audience11:24 Usage rights and how creators get paid12:10 Deal structures: affiliate, paid per video, or free13:32 Planning creator volume for Q415:40 Briefing sale language that won't expire16:12 What share of Meta ads run as partnership ads17:37 Test budgets for brands just starting out19:38 Micro-creators versus mega-influencers21:17 Post-click: when a dedicated landing page earns the build22:06 Creator communities and leaderboards23:06 Setup steps, and why to get permissions before November25:11 A test plan for a $5M brand spending $50K to $100K a month27:58 The metrics that decide a winner29:43 Close and how to reach Jacob
Raising Prices in DTC: How Last Crumb Sells a $140 Cookie Box
How do you raise prices on a DTC brand without killing demand?Derek Jaeger founded Last Crumb in 2020, priced a box of cookies at $110, then moved it to $140. He says that is when the company took off. Eric Dyck gets the full DTC marketing story on the DTC Podcast: pricing as positioning, ecommerce growth without a repeat purchase, and why he killed the weekly drop model that made the brand famous.Get the DTC Newsletter: directtoconsumer.coGet your brand on TV today: https://www.universalads.com/dtcpromocode?utm_medium=email&utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_campaign=issue-takeoverWHAT THIS EPISODE SOLVESYour premium product is not moving and you are about to discount it. Derek tested upward instead. At $110 Last Crumb was fine, at $140 it had a differentiator, and the drops started selling out in one second.You cannot hold a high price on packaging alone. He built the box as shipper and gift box in one, tested the angle each cookie sits at, and landed on 35 degrees with 90% of the lettering visible on open.Scarcity launched you and has become your ceiling. Why a drop model cannot stay a value pillar forever, and how moving to evergreen was the test of whether he had a real company or a hype company.Your customer acquisition cost will not clear on a single order. No subscription, no natural repeat, and a product that mostly gets gifted. What carried ecommerce growth when paid could not.You are paying creators for content that does not perform. Last Crumb briefs nobody. They watch for organic posts that already work, whitelist those, and run the same asset on Instagram and YouTube. One repurposed video pulled 300,000 views.You lose control of the product the moment it ships. The last seventy two hours in a UPS truck, and why owned retail at $8.50 a cookie fixed what ecommerce marketing could not.ABOUT THE GUESTDerek Jaeger is the founder of Last Crumb, the luxury cookie brand he started in Los Angeles in 2020 and has since moved to New York, with production in Brooklyn and its first store in Williamsburg. He still writes every recipe himself. lastcrumb.comSTAY CONNECTEDNewsletter: directtoconsumer.coRECORDING TIME | CHAPTER00:00 Two ex-affiliates sitting down01:18 The affiliate years, penny clicks and dollar CPMs02:44 Walking away from performance marketing03:33 A year of brand building before a single box shipped04:38 The brief: the opposite of every mom and pop bakery05:47 Pricing as position one06:53 The box, the pull tab, and the 35 degree cookie angle08:45 Liquid Death on the vision board10:01 The Monday noon drop model11:28 Why he banned paid ads at launch12:35 Fifty boxes in LA, and the move from $110 to $14014:01 Chrissy Teigen posts and it goes ballistic15:15 People posting receipts before the box arrives16:43 Sifting flour in the original kitchen17:26 Investors show up, and 1,500 orders left in carts19:16 Building the cap table20:22 Where the first money went21:18 Killing the drop model22:26 Why paid media does not scale on a gifting brand23:34 The company today, 16,000 square feet in Brooklyn24:20 Why he has never been CEO25:58 Managing the operator you hire27:20 Building a smaller pack for TikTok Shop28:53 The last 72 hours you cannot control30:38 A unique dough for every flavor31:59 What he kept from affiliate marketing33:09 Moving the company to New York35:17 Retail pricing and the Levain comparison36:52 Retail as top of funnel38:33 Whitelisting organic creator content39:59 Product as the reason any of it worked41:56 Where the brand goes next43:01 The Crumbl lesson45:40 Why GLP-1s might help a premium cookie brandhttps://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-648&utm_medium=podcast
Google Ads Brand Keywords: Cut 80% of Brand Spend, Buy New Customers Instead
How much of your Google Ads budget goes to your own brand name? Most DTC marketing teams cannot answer that, and the brands defending an ambiguous brand term are paying for customer acquisition they already had. Wildflower Cases is spending the large majority of roughly $3,500 a month on the single term "wildflower," according to SEMrush.Pilothouse Senior Google Media Buyer Zav audits that account with Eric Dyck on the DTC Podcast. Brand clicks at twelve to fifteen cents, a 21,000 subscriber YouTube library with no connection to the ad account, and a word that belongs to Tom Petty, Billie Eilish, a 2022 film and every florist in the country. You walk away knowing your own brand versus generic split and what to move the money into.Get the DTC Newsletter: https://directtoconsumer.coGet your brand on TV today: https://www.universalads.com/dtcpromocode?utm_medium=email&utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_campaign=issue-takeoverWHAT YOU WILL SOLVEYour brand keyword is cheap and converts well, so you cannot tell if it is working. Zav explains the account math that makes a brand campaign look like your best performer.You do not know your brand versus generic split. There is a ten minute check in the search terms report, and a percentage to keep it under.Your budget is fixed and nobody will raise it. Zav reallocates $3,500 a month on air with no increase.Your ROAS will fall when you cut brand spend and somebody will ask why. He gives you that answer before you need it.Your collab partners drive search demand you are not bidding on. Charli XCX and Slushy Noobz fans are already looking.Your generic ads all land on the homepage. Specific query, specific collection page.You have a YouTube library doing nothing for paid. Performance Max and Demand Gen take those videos as they are.ABOUT ZAVZav is a Senior Google Media Buyer at Pilothouse, the performance marketing team behind DTC, where he runs paid search and shopping for ecommerce brands. He wrote the Wildflower Cases search breakdown for the DTC Newsletter. If you want his team to look at your account, go to https://pilothouse.co and ask for Zav.STAY CONNECTEDDTC Newsletter, daily ecommerce marketing and ecommerce growth tactics: https://directtoconsumer.coYouTube: https://youtube.com/@dtcnewsletterLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/directtoconsumer00:00 Who Zav is and what he does at Pilothouse00:47 Why Wildflower Cases became the case study01:17 A brand name that means five other things02:21 Tom Petty, Billie Eilish, and a 2022 movie03:54 Searching "cool iPhone 17 case" live on air04:49 Why their sponsored result sits at the bottom of the page05:22 What decides where your ad places06:46 The case for reallocating a $3,500 monthly budget07:20 Where the money goes instead: shopping plus generic search08:40 Landing pages, and why every ad points at the homepage08:56 Turning collab partners into keyword coverage10:34 The "are they worth it" searches Reddit owns12:23 A 21,000 subscriber YouTube channel with no link to the ad account12:39 Feeding existing video into Performance Max and Demand Gen13:59 24 hours, no extra budget, what changes first14:29 Cutting 80% of the brand spend15:42 Why ROAS falls and revenue rises16:53 The one situation where brand defense earns its budget17:57 The metric agencies over report to clients18:56 Whether $3,500 a month is enough for a brand this size20:19 The brand versus generic diagnostic to run this week20:35 The 20% rule of thumb22:31 What to monitor after you make the cut23:26 How to get Pilothouse to look at your accounthttps://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-647&utm_medium=podcast
Under $50M: Half the Trade Budget Goes to Retail Media | Harness the Halo 3/6
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupA brand doing under $50 million a year is putting roughly half of its combined retail media, trade, and shopper marketing budget into retail media. At larger companies that share drops toward 30, 20, then 15 percent. Mike Chiasson works on Keen's models, which cover $45 billion in marketing investment, and his read on where that money comes from is the part worth sitting with. It is mostly net new, sourced out of trade rather than pulled from Meta and Google, which is why so much of it sits with sales teams and never gets measured the way media does.If you run growth at a brand moving into retail: this is the episode about what the retail media line in your budget is actually buying, and which part of it is buying customers you already had.If you own the media budget: Chiasson makes the case that the untapped return in retail media is upper funnel, inside retailers where almost everyone is still only buying search.What he gets into:Where the money comes from, and why trade budgets rather than media budgets explain retail media's growthThe benchmark: about half the retail media, trade, and shopper marketing bucket at brands under $50M, versus 15 to 30 percent at large onesWhy small brands with a narrow distribution footprint default to bottom-funnel search, and what that costs themThe Amazon question: whether retail media spend compounds on a retailer's algorithm the way it does on a listing, and why brick and mortar has no real equivalentRetail media ads that carry no visible association with the retailer at all, and why targeting is the actual productWalmart, Vizio, and streaming video as the moment upper-funnel retail media became buyableRetail media social, which he calls very small and rapidly growing, with returns he thinks reflect how early the curve isThe two flaws in ROAS, and why the return on your next dollar is the only version of the number that helps you planBayesian priors, and how Keen gives a brand a response curve for a retailer it has never advertised withPatience as a budgeting problem rather than a virtue, and why cash-strapped brands structurally cannot buy upper funnelWho this is for: operators whose product is landing on shelves in more places every quarter, and whose retail media invoices are growing faster than their ability to explain them.What to steal: find out which budget your retail media is actually coming from. If it is trade, the people approving it are measuring a retailer relationship and the people spending it are measuring sales. Those are different jobs and almost nobody has reconciled them.Harness the Halo is a six-part series from DTC and Keen about the spend that doesn't pay you back the same day, and the measurement that gives you room to make it. Episode 1 was the market read. Episode 2 was the first brand. This one maps the fastest-growing line in the budget.Timestamps:00:00 Why retail media is becoming a major growth channel04:00 Where retail media investment is growing08:00 Why retail media ROI is outperforming other tactics13:00 The upper-funnel opportunity in retail media17:00 Why marginal ROI matters more than ROASSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
Bonus: Send Less, Earn More: What Brevo's Data Says About Email Volume and Conversion
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost ecommerce brands are paying for every contact in the database, including the tens of thousands they have not mailed in a year. Then they mail them anyway, because they are paying for them. Channing Ferrer argues both halves of that are costing you money, and he has his own company's data to back the second half.Brevo studied its customer base and found the brands sending the least email posted the highest conversion and click-through rates. The heaviest senders were worse on conversion, worse on click-through and worse on opens. Brevo bills by the message sent, so telling customers to send less costs them revenue. They say it anyway.For a retention lead, a lifecycle marketer, or a founder still building the sends themselves, this is a conversation about where the money actually goes in a retention program. Channing spent six years at HubSpot running sales strategy through the run from $200 million to $1.5 billion in revenue, then ran sales at Semrush and led Brandwatch back to growth.Discover More: https://www.brevo.com/solutions/enterprise/?utm_medium=partnership&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast&utm_term=enterprise&utm_content=dtc-podcast-0926 What you get in 38 minutes:What changes when you stop paying for stored contacts and start paying for messages sentThe mobile wallet as a retention channel, including how a loyalty card gets pushed a new offer and changes appearance on the lock screenSalomon's use of a wallet pass, and how the same mechanic works for a brand with no physical storesWhat Channing puts on a dashboard for a $20M ecommerce brand, and why send volume belongs near the bottom of itHow Brevo customers run campaigns through Claude and ChatGPT over an MCP connection without opening Brevo at allThe three ways a customer outgrows a pricing tier, and how Brevo handles each oneWhy loyalty points should reward a social post and not only a repeat purchaseWho this is for: retention leads, ecommerce founders, lifecycle marketers, and anyone weighing a move off Klaviyo or Mailchimp.What to steal: pull volume off your primary dashboard and replace it with open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate and revenue per send. Then look at what your platform charges you for and ask whether it is charging for the list or for the work.Timestamps:00:00 Why personalized messaging converts better05:00 How Brevo is using AI agents07:00 Turning mobile wallets into a loyalty channel14:00 Why sending fewer emails can drive better results25:00 Building loyalty through customer advocacySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
Ep 646: Neil Patel: Why Your Leads Are Down 40% and Your Revenue Is Up
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-646&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupnpdigital.comEric told Neil Patel that Pilothouse is now getting about 30% of its inbound from ChatGPT, with higher close rates and bigger deals. Neil's response: "I guarantee your leads are down overall. Would you confirm or disagree with me?"Down about 40%. Revenue up.Neil explains why that pattern is showing up everywhere. Someone used to run a Google search, click six blue links, fill out four forms, sit through screening calls, then pick. Now they ask an LLM, filter down inside the conversation with follow-ups, and go to one website with their mind already made up. Same intent, same buyer, one visit instead of seven.The rest of the episode is what to do about it.What's inside:The real search market: Google at 5 trillion searches a year and 27% share, Instagram at 6.5 billion a day, Amazon and YouTube at 3 billion each. Neil's point is that 73% of search is not Google.Whether Google's ad revenue is actually getting hit by AI Overviews (his answer is more specific than the headlines)GEO and SEO are two different scores. Domain authority carries SEO and means nothing to GEO. GEO looks at the last 30 to 60 days.The single highest-leverage GEO tactic he's seeing for ecom, and it isn't RedditWhy he'd skip Reddit if he ran an ecom brand, and what he'd do insteadHis five-step visibility audit: where you rank now, technical SEO and content freshness, the questions people actually type, review recency, and monthly mention volumeThe trust study across 100 eight-figure businesses, and the gap between what those operators thought built trust and what buyers actually weighedDiscounts versus bundles, and what discounting does to LTVWhy he reversed his position on personal brand after building one of the biggest in marketingThe Zappos story about a guy named Jason, a first date, and a shoe pun that got him two-day shippingHis most expensive mistake, on air, with numbersWho this is for: DTC founders and operators watching organic traffic fall while close rates climb, and anyone trying to work out where GEO actually fits next to their SEO budget.What to steal: audit your review recency this week. If your best reviews are five years old, the LLMs are reading a version of your brand that no longer exists, and a smaller competitor with fresh coverage will get recommended over you.Timestamps:00:00 How AI is changing product discovery04:00 Why ChatGPT leads convert better07:00 Search has multiplied beyond Google15:00 How brands can rank in AI recommendations25:00 SEO vs. GEO for AI visibilitySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
Ep 645: DTC Rundown: "Don't Run Ads Until $10M?," Evergreen vs Campaigns, and Sites Built for the Wrong Customer
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-645&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.co"There is absolutely no reason you should touch paid ads until you're doing five to ten million in revenue."That was Codie Sanchez, and the post went wide enough that DTC marketers spent a week arguing about whether they should be doing their jobs at all. Eric came back from vacation, saw it, and used it to launch a format he has wanted to make since the beginning of this show.The Rundown is Pardon the Interruption for DTC. A few topics off the week, three people, everyone gives a take. First panel is Jordan Gordon, who runs post-click and retention at Pilothouse and hosts TWBERP, and Rafael Gi, who works partnerships and client strategy.What you get:Both sides of the Codie Sanchez take. Jordan defends the free traffic position: if twenty percent of your traffic is organic and your total margin is twenty percent, that organic traffic is your profit. Rafael's counter is that paid media is a muscle, and a brand that waits until $10M to build it has to relearn its culture, team, and workflows at exactly the wrong moment.What paid media does: accelerate. Good product grows faster. Bad product fails quicker.The wastage Rafael sees most across ten to fifteen audits a week. Brands paying to reach customers who were buying regardless, the platform taking view-through credit for purchases with no click, and that false signal then deciding which creative gets scaled.Marketing is downstream from business, and business is downstream from markets. Jordan on why your marketing mix is often not your decision to make.Why "evergreen versus campaigns" is the wrong framing past seven figures, and what demand creation looks like next to demand capture."Shift our thinking from tests to bets." Rafael on what changes once you have proof, and why the change is philosophical before it is tactical.Audience hygiene as the precondition for everything. Until existing, engaged, and net new are defined across every channel, none of your tests are valid.Advertising is vertical, email is horizontal. Jordan on campaigns for launches, flows for evergreen, and why someone who re-enters your world nine months later still needs to be sold your core product.Acute versus routine entry points in supplements and beauty, and the cross-sell each one opens.How to spot a brand that has the ratio wrong: growth decelerating quarter over quarter while the new-to-returning revenue ratio inverts. On the email side, campaign-heavy, flow-light, with Klaviyo revenue low against Shopify.Unique opens are brand impressions. The argument for email as an advertising layer sitting just below reach.The IKEA tote bag, and campaigns that exist to buy eyeballs rather than revenue.The car category rule that applies everywhere. If you are not one of the three brands already in someone's consideration set, your revenue and your fame do not matter.Who this is for: founders and operators between seven and nine figures, media buyers, and anyone who owns both the acquisition and retention number.What to steal: the audience definition audit, the growth-versus-new-customer-ratio chart, and the absolutes-not-rates rule for judging new customer work.Timestamps:00:00 Should brands wait until $5M to run paid media?05:00 Building organic traffic alongside paid growth10:00 The hidden problem with scaling paid acquisition13:00 Evergreen marketing vs. campaign moments22:00 Audience targeting and wasted media spendSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF645Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
Ep 644: 77% of AI Shoppers Want a Recommendation: Phillip Jackson on the New Bottom of the Funnel
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-644&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupPhillip Jackson has spent 22 years in ecommerce, first building the software, then running agency strategy, and now running Future Commerce (futurecommerce.com), where the operating thesis is that commerce is culture.If you are a founder, brand lead, or growth operator trying to figure out what AI traffic is actually doing to your store, this one is worth the 50 minutes.What's inside:The Future Commerce study: 77% of shoppers want AI to recommend and nothing more. No booking, no buying, no agent acting on their behalfWhat that shopper does when they land: converts about 3x more often, spends about half as much, does zero browsingWhy the fix is counterintuitive. You now have to add friction back into the buying process and tell more brand story on a product pageNike's decline read from someone with a partnership inside the turnaround: streetwear over sport, owned channels over retail partners, and the running category handed to On and Hoka"Ma," the Japanese cinema concept, applied to brand. Nobody wants to hear from you constantly, and the brands that never rest never get a cultural high point eitherProof of work: Dr. Martens selling pre-broken-in secondhand boots at Brewer Street, Levi's repair, $1,200 Pope tees, and why patina is now the productThe agentic reader. Future Commerce stopped treating a human as its primary audience for discoveryCannes Lions and the collision of retail media with the traditional ad ecosystem, plus what that means for creator strategy in 2026Who this is for: DTC founders and operators watching LLM referral traffic show up in their analytics and not knowing what to do about it, plus brand people who want a sharper vocabulary for what is happening to culture.What to steal: rebuild your PDP for answer engine traffic. That visitor arrived pre-sold on one SKU and will not browse unless you give them a reason.Follow Phillip: futurecommerce.comTimestamps:03:00 Why Commerce Is Culture06:00 How Brands Participate in Culture24:00 Why Consumers Can Spot AI Content32:00 How AI Is Changing the Marketing Funnel44:00 The Rise of Consumer SovereigntySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
Ep 643: Amazon Fees Hit 40%: How to Claw Back Margin and Stop Wasting Ad Spend (Pilothouse)
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-643&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coIn 2020, Amazon's fees ran about 26% of your product cost. Today they run 34 to 40%, and once you add advertising most brands are at 50 to 60% before they reinvest a dollar. For the first time in years, the number of sellers on Amazon is shrinking.Tyler, head of Amazon at Pilothouse, is back to explain what he calls the Amazon paradox: you can't afford to be on Amazon, and you can't afford not to be.If you sell on Amazon, buy Amazon ads, or keep putting off the decision to launch there, this is the operator's version of the math.What you get:Where the 40% actually goes, and which parts of it you can still fightThe hidden fee stack (long-term storage, inbound, freight, returns, chargebacks) that quietly takes another 5 to 8% of margin, one fraction of a percent at a timeReimbursements: Amazon loses and damages inventory and wrongly charges you for it, and will pay it back if you dispute it. Most brands never doAGL / AWD, shipping straight from your manufacturer into Amazon's fulfillment network, and the 2 to 5% freight savings that comes with itWhy the April 15 change (Amazon pulling ad spend out of your disbursement instead of your credit card) is a cash flow problem, not an ad problemThe death of the middle: half of Amazon's GMV now sits with roughly 8,000 sellers, down from 15,000, and what changed in the algorithm to cause itCosmo and what comes after A9: why external traffic into your listing now reads to Amazon as brand authorityNike showed up. What happens to the small sellers who used to feast on big brands' unconverted branded searchTACoS as a vanity metric, and the three-report method (SQP, Helium 10 rank, ad spend) that shows whether your ads are driving incremental sales or paying for organic ones you already hadRufus is now Alexa for Shopping, most people use it on the product page rather than in search, and what that means for your listing copyWhat Tyler expects out of Amazon Accelerate 2026Who this is for: Amazon sellers, DTC founders weighing the channel, and anyone managing Amazon ad spend.What to steal: the reimbursement audit, the AGL freight move, and the zero-sale keyword sweep on your last quarter of ad spend.Timestamps:00:00 The Amazon Paradox04:00 Why Amazon Is Getting More Expensive10:00 Hidden Amazon Fees Hurting Margins15:00 Why Brands Still Need Amazon21:00 How to Make Amazon Ad Spend More ProfitableSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF643Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
How Once Upon a Farm's DTC Ads Grew Its Retail Business | Harness the Halo 2/6
To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupOnce Upon a Farm did $85.4 million in Q2, up 42% year over year, and reached 6.2% of US households against 5.0% a year earlier. Some of that growth traces back to a campaign that was never supposed to produce it. They were running lower-funnel media to their own site, a clean shop-now call to action, the kind of campaign you judge by tomorrow's site revenue. What moved was the retail business. Instacart got more efficient. Programs with accounts picked up momentum. Jennifer Berglund has spent the years since trying to see that effect properly instead of guessing at it, and now she is watching paid search at one retailer lift sales at another, and that's where Keen is worth its weight in premium baby food. If you run growth at a brand moving into retail: this is the episode about what happens to your job when the sale stops closing anywhere you can see it, and what you measure instead.If you own the media budget: Jennifer walks through how a one month TV test in 2021 turned into always-on upper funnel, including the matched-market holdout testing she used to defend it before she had a model.What they get into:The early signal: lower-funnel DTC media running, and the retail business taking off insteadThe finding out of Keen that surprised her most, paid search at Kroger or Target showing an effect on a different account entirelyWhy she treats ROAS as an education problem inside the company rather than a KPIThe trap in "new to brand" at a retailer, and why she takes it with a grain of saltHow she built the case for TV: 2021 test, then TV plus social plus out of home, then geo tests against comparable holdout markets, then always-onStreaming TV and YouTube, and Brad on buying top of funnel through retail media DSPs so the money still funnels to the retailerWhy every retail media network's conversion methodology is different, and what she uses those platform numbers for insteadThe moment a brand should stop putting every dollar into working media and start paying for measurementBrad on awareness as the leading indicator of household penetration, and household penetration as the leading indicator of revenueAmoeba marketing, which Brad coined live on the recording and Jennifer immediately claimed for her LinkedInWho this is for: operators whose business has outgrown the channel their reporting was built for. DTC brands going into retail, retail brands building ecommerce, anyone whose media now shows up in someone else's numbers.What to steal: the biweekly omnichannel meeting. Jennifer runs one across her media team and sales leadership. Sales says "I see this happening here," she says "we were running media during that time." That meeting found the halo before any model did.Harness the Halo is a six-part series from DTC and Keen about the spend that doesn't pay you back the same day, and the measurement that gives you room to make it. Episode 1 was the market read. This is the first brand.Timestamps:00:00 The Halo Effect of Digital Marketing07:00 Measuring Growth Across DTC and Retail15:00 How Marketing Channels Influence Each Other21:00 Streaming TV and YouTube Opportunities37:00 Why ROAS Can Be MisleadingSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
Ep 642: Kick or Keep These Trends with DÔEN's Ashley Kick: AI Creative, TikTok Shop, Amazon, and Branded Resale
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-642&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAshley Kick runs ecommerce at DÔEN (shopdoen.com), the Los Angeles apparel brand founded by sisters Margaret and Katherine Kleveland. Eric met her at the Whalies giving hot takes on stage, so this episode is a new format built for exactly that: World Cup themed, 15 ecommerce topics, kick it or keep it.If you run a premium brand and you are tired of advice written for a $30 AOV, Ashley draws lines most operators are still arguing about internally.What's inside:AI generated ad creative, kicked as hard as anything gets kicked on this show: "they didn't fall in love with the clanker generated things"Her pendulum argument: everything used to be human made, the swing to AI has been fast, and the vacuum it left is the differentiation opportunity for brands willing to keep humans on the work. DÔEN has hired novelists to write copyWhy she will not trade a discount or free shipping for an email address, with the list math behind it: a million names sending at 20%, or 300,000 sending at 60 to 70%Hand Me DÔEN, the resale program that runs on Treet: trade in for store credit, quarterly resale events, and an answer to the dupe sellers, because buying from the program is how a customer knows the piece is realThe AOV line where she thinks TikTok Shop stops making sense, and why discovery on TikTok still matters for the brand through user generated contentLosing money on the first order to win it back on LTV, kicked. Her hero products are chosen as the best first experience of the brand, and they are not loss leadersWhere she is happy to let algorithms work: media buying, placements, and Klaviyo send-time optimizationAI for customer service, kicked. If someone wants to talk about the fit of a dress, that is a personRetail as an experience play, including a roughly 20% brand awareness lift in a market when a store opens, plus wholesale through boutiques with an aligned aestheticAmazon, extended sizing, and buy now pay later, each with a verdictWho this is for: operators at premium and considered-purchase brands, retention and email leads, and anyone building the argument for keeping humans on creative.What to steal: the email capture stance. Stop buying addresses with 15% off and measure your list on deliverability and send rate rather than raw size.Timestamps:00:03:00 AI Shopping Agents00:05:00 TikTok Shop for Premium Brands00:10:00 Branded Resale and the Circular Economy00:14:00 AI-Generated Creative and Brand Identity00:24:00 Wholesale, Amazon and Discount StrategySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
Ep 641: Creator-Handle Ads Ran 70% More Efficient: Aves on Creative Coverage and Hyper Relevant Ads
https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-641&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coDTC Twitter has spent the last few months arguing about volume versus strategy. Aves from Pilothouse thinks both camps are answering the wrong question. Eric brings her back for an all killer no filler on creative coverage: what it means now, how she decides what to make next, and the system she spent her summer building.For anyone who briefs creative, buys media, or signs off on either.What you get:Why a thousand Grok ads in a month spikes CPMs and stops finding your audience, and why one precious video every two weeks fails for the opposite reason.The three layers of coverage that matter now: right people, right product, right angles. Sizes and placements should be second nature by now.Persona coverage past your bread and butter. If the answer is always "a woman in her twenties," you are not covering the audience you need in order to grow.Product coverage, the layer most teams skip. Cross-referencing which SKUs bring people in cheapest against which ones are most efficient to ship, then testing returning-customer-only products at top of funnel to find margin nobody was looking for.Diagnosing by problem rather than format. Heavy cart abandonment usually means a trust gap, which points to whitelisting first and conversion-friction statics behind it. Creator-handle delivery ran 70% more efficient than the same creative from the brand.Selling the cloud when the economy tightens. Aspirational is outperforming pure problem agitation right now.Hyper relevancy. The echo chambers have gotten small enough that a meme Aves sees every third video is one you've never heard of, so the ad has to match the exact font, the audio they've been hearing, even the camera angle. She ran "kinda chic" in ads without ever learning what it means.Nobody is watching. Most people are lurking, and most of them are half-watching from the toilet or a waiting room. Aves watched a woman scroll Instagram through the entire Odyssey.Creative is the new targeting, five years of everyone saying it, and the spaghetti metaphor that finally explains it.Landing pages as the insurance policy on all of it. Spend two thousand dollars on a t-shirt and it still looks bad wrinkled.Ad copy. Aves writes hers first, before any visual, and uses no AI for it. One emoji-only ad carried by copy alone did over six figures in a weekend.Who this is for: creative strategists, media buyers, and founders heading into Q4 wondering why more ads stopped working.What to steal: the product coverage audit, the cart-abandonment-means-trust diagnosis, and starting your brief with copy instead of a visual idea.Timestamps:00:03:00 Creative Volume vs. Strategy00:05:00 Building Better Creative Coverage00:10:00 Creative for Full-Funnel Performance00:20:00 Why Creative Is the New Targeting00:28:00 Why Ad Copy Matters More Than EverSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF641Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video