The Weekly Sharpener #125

👋 Hey fam!  

I'm really excited to share this 👊 Wednesday roundup with you!  

Another Add Creative has dropped and it's a doozy. The one and only Kenny Hanson (CEO of Mentorpass) joins us and we dive into what it takes to start a business and keep going through being mission-driven. 

Also in lieu of this weekend's budget fiasco on Facebook we decided to scrap our usual essay and lay out what you can be investing in parallel to your paid media to make sure when it's going well, the value of your spend is being multiplied through GREAT practices. 

Hope you made it through alright and everything has stabilized for you all! 

Cheers,

Chase

Starting using Pencil to Create winning ads 10x faster with AI. 

Special Tip: 

Your hook rate is a great way to see if you're targeting the right people. A high hook % normally means the right people are watching. A high hook rate & hold rate = Golden targeting.

Courtesy of Fraser Cottrell

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🎙Add Creative

Come and hang with the CEO of Mentorpass and learn about what a mentor can mean to your life and how their network of DTC operators can help your business 🚀. This might be my favorite pod yet! 

 Spotify 🎧  

Content That Matters 🐐

We all know about this 👇 and it looks like there with be no refunds. Not unexpected. 

What we're going to share is some resources to become more durable. Times like these make you loathe that you are so dependent on a singular channel to hit your targets. 

Great brands know that they can depend on 3-4 channels to be drivers with ancillary compounding levers. 

These levers are not always what you think they are, but they are truths we hold self-evident in every business on the planet.

• Word of Mouth -> make more money with less effort

• Financials -> keep that money to grow business

• Consumer Psychology -> understand why you made the money so you can make more of it on new and existing customers.

Here are 3 of the best: 

WORD OF MOUTH

This will give you a foundational understanding of word of mouth and how you can turn 1 customer into 2 without paying more. 

This works across any type of business model but you must focus on customer experience. Meaning, if you are a consumer product make sure:

• The ad -> purchase experience is succinct, congruent, and frictionless.

• The product is exceptional

• You remind customers to tell people about their experience (there are tools like eVouch for this)

Word of mouth still hasn't been unlocked for brands in a meaningful way, this article is a great starting point to understand the science behind hi

FINANCIALS

No brainer, duh, right? Wrong - the amount of companies that don't have a clear understanding of their P/L and how to master it. 

Ron Shah gives us clear, concise understanding in an episode of Add Creative that's easy to get through on a morning stroll (21 minutes total)

This breaks down:

• Clear metrics you should be focused on

• How to use cashflow to your advantage

• Why LTV/CAC is the only thing you should REALLY care about

This is what you would call a value 💣

CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY

Understanding your customers has compounding effects upstream in product and campaign development + downstream with conversion and financials. 

Why do so few brands REALLY focus on it and not give it lip service? Because it can live outside of a spreadsheet.

However, leaning into your customers and what will move them can lead to: word-of-mouth virality, better conversion, increased AOV + LTV, and a variety of incredible things. 

Here is a fun breakdown of 7 great campaigns that cut through the noise, leveraging what the brands knew about their customers.

What can you use? Do you know what triggers your customers? 

Our Sponsor: Social Snowball ❄️

Social Snowball is a word-of-mouth marketing platform for e-commerce. (this is a coincidence I swear)

Tabs Chocolate, a DTC sex chocolate brand, uses Social Snowball to manage their army of creators, have accurate attribution for the revenue they drive, and easily send them commissions.

Why is so important? Influencer is one of Tabs core growth strategies and they were having a terrible time initially keeping track of their program, which has also been called an "army" by their CEO, Oliver Brocato. (we've all been there) 

Using Social Snowball, they were able to increase their influencer revenue by 17% in only a couple of months. Here's the full case study showing how they did it. 

Expert Strategy + Learnings

Some amazing learnings from thought leaders in DTC. 

Carl's CRO Tips 🙌

The image banner appeared to be desktop optimised therefore lacking impact on mobile We optimised the section better for mobile by: > Adding a mobile-optimized image > Adding value proposition that explains what the brand offers > Adding cta’s for men and women

For more 🔥 follow Carl Weische from Accelerated.

Rahul's Paid Media Learnings 🤘

Process for understanding your audience 👇

• Understand why they care about your product?

• Why do they need to buy the product?

• What problem does it solve?

Follow Rahul and reach out to Reach Digital to work with him 🧠

From our Library 📚

Join the ✏️ community 

Sign up to learn and meet 200+ other great founders & operators across DTC.

Curious about what we're building? 🧱

Check out our roadmap and upvote what you think is important! If we have missed anything, you can add your suggestions as well. 

YouTube Channel 📺

Check out our library of amazing video content on creative, ads, and ecomm operating. 

Our Preferred Tech Partners 👏

• Foreplay - spy on your competitors ads + save what you like

• soona - studio level assets in days and without the heavy cost. Yes, please. (Use Pencil39 for a free first photo)

• Motion - you want insights on your ads - make it fast/easy/actionable.

• Social Snowball - frictionless affiliate programs for your customers and creators

• Otis - ad buying/management automation(there's a present inside waiting for you)

• Triple Whale - attribution - need I say more

• Air - keeping all of your assets organized is a pain. Air makes it delightful.

• Creative OS - if you love making ads on Figma, you'll love this

Fav Newsie's

• Nice Ads 

• Acquire Weekly

• Your Content Should Sell

• The Performers

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