034: How To Launch New Channels and Identify Incremental Value In Your Ad Spend

Summary

Marketing Operators Episode 034: How To Launch New Channels and Identify Incremental Value In Your Ad Spend

Release Date: November 19, 2024
Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker

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Introduction

In Episode 034 of Marketing Operators, hosts Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, and Cody Plofker delve into the intricacies of launching new advertising channels and determining the incremental value of ad spend. Recorded on election night amidst fluctuating market conditions, the episode offers listeners valuable insights into navigating the dynamic landscape of digital marketing.

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Election Night Analysis and Its Impact on Ad Performance

The episode kicks off with a discussion about the recent election and its unforeseen effects on advertising performance. Cody shares his initial optimism, which was later tempered by declining conversion rates and rising CPMs (Cost Per Mille).

• Cody Plofker reflects on his experience:

  “[02:29] ... I think I was probably a little arrogant and tweeting about it... Conversion rates went way down.”

• The hosts note a consistent increase in CPMs during October, correlating with pre-election activities:

  “[03:50] ... our year over year CPM bump is at an enhanced rate in October. Swing states are even higher.”

Cody attributes the downturn to underestimating the election’s impact, leading to a humbling experience:

“[03:47] ... I rode too close to the sun and got burned.”

They discuss data from No Commerce, highlighting consumer spending expectations during this period, which remains a bullish sign despite short-term challenges:

“[05:14] ... people are planning to spend more until pretty much right before Black Friday...”

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Strategies for Launching New Advertising Channels

The core of the episode revolves around developing a playbook for launching new advertising channels. The hosts emphasize the importance of a structured approach, balancing risk and reward, and ensuring measurable outcomes.

• Cody Plofker outlines key considerations:

  “[21:56] ... risk versus reward. How much effort is this going to take versus how much impact is it going to have.”

• Connor Rolain highlights prioritizing channels based on consumer presence and creative readiness:

  “[39:42] ... one is, I just don't think there's a lot of digital channels that people have proven to scale...”

Key Steps Discussed:

1. Identify Customer Platforms:

   • Understanding where your audience spends their time is crucial. For example, launching on Meta and Instagram to capture new intents.

2. Assess Creative and Resource Readiness:

   • Ensure the team has the necessary creative assets and resources to manage the new channel effectively.

3. Set Clear Measurement Metrics:

   • Implement robust attribution tools to measure the incremental impact of the new channel. Cody emphasizes the use of comparative analytics:

     “[25:45] ... comparative analytics across channels and then really save our...”

4. Allocate Sufficient Budget:

   • Avoid the "middle ground" of insufficient spend by committing a meaningful budget that allows for clear performance evaluation:

     “[43:39] ... you want to kind of find the balance between minimum viable product but also doing enough where you are.”

5. Conduct Incrementality Tests:

   • Use tests like geo lift holdouts to validate the effectiveness of the new channel before fully scaling:

     “[26:48] ... we will run the holdout next which will be our like gold standard of truth.”

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Case Studies and Real-World Applications

Jones Road’s Transition to Prussian AI:
Cody shares how Jones Road leveraged Prussian AI for their Media Mix Modeling (MMM), allowing them to quantify the impact of traditionally hard-to-measure channels like TV.

• Cody Plofker praises the tool:

  “[30:00] ... Prussian AI has been a game changer. Boiler Alert Test of the week is actually looking great. It’s actually looking like our most efficient channel thanks to Prussian AI.”

Hexclad’s Expansion into New Channels:
Connor discusses Hexclad’s strategic move into Linear TV and YouTube, emphasizing the need for a scalable and consistent advertising approach.

• Connor Rolain explains the selection:

  “[39:05] ... we have to be generating net new intent. That's what pushes us into okay, a meta and Instagram obviously.”

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Optimizing Conversion Rates and Site Speed

In the "Test of the Week" segment, Connor highlights a successful experiment that underscores the importance of site speed in conversion optimization.

• Connor Rolain presents the findings:

  “[55:32] ... we saw a 14.8% bump in conversion rate during the test. A double-digit percentage increase just from having Edge Mesh rolled out on site.”

The discussion further explores how such optimizations can significantly impact overall business metrics by enabling more effective scaling of ad spend.

• Cody Plofker adds:

  “[61:55] ... you can go with the positive and say, hey, this allows for so much more volume.”

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Balancing Measurement and Creative Excellence

The hosts emphasize the delicate balance between rigorous measurement and maintaining creative excellence. They caution against over-reliance on metrics while advocating for intuitive marketing strategies that sometimes defy stringent measurement.

• Cody Plofker remarks on the importance of creative strategies:

  “[47:03] ... being confident that's a revenue driving tactic for us. Even though I can't measure it, I'm not going to skip it.”

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Looking Ahead: Future Channels and Strategies

As Q4 approaches, the hosts discuss upcoming initiatives and potential channels to explore in the new year.

• Connor Rolain outlines future plans:

  “[51:46] ... next year we're going to Applovin. We're going to do that.”

• They also plan to enhance partnerships and explore modern forms of collaboration, such as podcast advertising and influencer partnerships.

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Conclusion

Episode 034 of Marketing Operators offers a comprehensive guide to launching new advertising channels, supported by real-world experiences and data-driven insights. The hosts underscore the importance of strategic planning, adequate budgeting, and robust measurement tools in successfully identifying and scaling incremental value in ad spend. As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, adapting these strategies will be crucial for sustaining growth and maximizing ROI.

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Notable Quotes

• Cody Plofker at [02:29]:
  “I think I was probably a little arrogant and tweeting about it... Conversion rates went way down.”

• Connor Rolain at [39:42]:
  “... there’s not a lot of digital channels that people have proven to scale...”

• Cody Plofker at [55:32]:
  “We saw a 14.8% bump in conversion rate during the test. A double-digit percentage increase just from having Edge Mesh rolled out on site.”

• Cody Plofker at [61:55]:
  “You can go with the positive and say, hey, this allows for so much more volume.”

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Key Takeaways

• Strategic Channel Launch: Prioritize channels based on where your audience is and ensure you have the resources to manage them effectively.

• Robust Measurement: Utilize tools like MMM and comparative analytics to assess the incremental value of new channels.

• Optimize Continuously: Focus on backend optimizations, such as site speed, which can have substantial impacts on conversion rates.

• Balance Metrics with Creativity: While data is essential, don’t let it overshadow the importance of creative marketing strategies that build brand value.

• Plan for Scale: Ensure that optimizations and channel launches are scalable, allowing for sustained growth and increased ROI.

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For more insights and detailed strategies, listen to the full episode of Marketing Operators Episode 034.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to another episode of Marketing Operators. We've got a jam packed episode. We talk about end of October, early November results. It's election night when we're recording. It'll come out in a couple of weeks, so we got a little bit to talk about that. And then we get into the meat of the episode, how to launch new channels, whether that's applovin, Snapchat, linear TV, etc. And we talk conversion rate optimization test that Connor just ran and jam on that for a bit. So thank you again for listening. As always, thank you to our sponsors, Motion Prescient Rich panel. Motion is a company that we've all been using forever. Hexclad, Jones Road Ridge. We were all early adopters and now they're really gaining momentum. Motion just raised $30 million in their series B and a ton of new stuff is coming along with that. They've been pushing out new features. If you haven't checked them out in a while, you can book a demo and see all the new stuff that they've been shipping. But a few of the ones that really stood out to me 1. Creative research and Reza was on our podcast, so he talks about this a bit. They want to improve the input into the creative strategist role. So one, you have Creative analytics and two their new tool, Creative Research, completely free where you can build swipe files from all your favorite brands. Connor, Cody and myself put together our own so you can start there and then add some creative from your favorite brands. 2motion released a new advanced analytics feature called Winning Combinations. Winning Combinations helps you instantly answer complex business questions like what ad concepts work best for specific product lines? What messaging themes are working across different influencers? What angles, hooks and concepts are working best across all ad formats. This will help you get real clarity from all your testing variables and it takes seconds to pull insights. Plus they have even bigger features cooking that they'll be releasing soon. So head to motion app.com to book a demo and when you mention the marketing operators, you'll get 50% off your first month or just start using the Creative Research tool as they are free. So an easy win for you and your team. All right, we're back with another episode of Marketing Operators. It's a special day. It's election night. This is coming out like November 19th, so hopefully the election will have been decided by then. But we're spending election night with the boys here discussing e commerce. Cody, how's performance looking for you? You came out of October feeling fantastic, unaffected by the election. We missed you on the episode last week with. With Zach, how the last two weeks been?

[B]

Yeah, man, I feel like it's been a. It's been a minute. I was feeling great. I was probably feeling too good. I think I was probably a little. Little arrogant and tweeting about it. And like, half. Half of my tweets are jokes and stuff, but I was just like, hey, I. I haven't really noticed that much elections. I was more like curious. Just looking for data because I don't know about you guys. I haven't really gotten any election ads. Like, maybe I'm just not in the market or I'm not in the States. So I was just looking for data. I didn't really feel any CPMs or TV. CPMs are still sub $2. But whatever it was, maybe it was two weeks ago. I was tweeting that. It definitely caught up to me. I actually told a Wall Street Journal reporter who first reached out to me about an article about election ads and spend. I was like, yeah, I really haven't seen that much this. This. This year, you know? And then the. Then, like, performance just kind of took a nosedive. I dove into everything. CPMs went way up, conversion rates went way down. And then she replied and she was like, oh, that's so interesting. It's so different than what I've seen from somebody else. And I had to reply. I was like, I spoke too soon. Like, it hit us. Like, she was like, oh, do you think it's beauty? It's not affected? I was just like, no, I'm just an idiot. And I got arrogant and like, this game has a way of humbling us all when we need it the most.

[A]

Yeah, you. You tempted fate.

[B]

I rode too close to the sun and got burned.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

When did it. When did it hit you, though? Like, when did you see it? Because, like, we've been feeling it for the entire month of October. Like, our year over year CPM bump is at an enhanced rate in October. Swing states are even higher. CPM bump. Like, those data points seem pretty clear to me that it's. That it's election driven. I also haven't seen, like, any Facebook ads. It's mainly been on, I mean, streaming TV for me and linear tv. So it's interesting that we're seeing the CPM bump and also not getting served ads. I feel like we would be, but. Yeah, when did that hit for you, Cody?

[B]

You know, it's hard to kind of tease out. I don't look at CPMs unless there's an issue. Usually like if Amy looks good, I'm not necessarily looking. And you know, we had such strong performance most of October, but we did launch holiday and very end of October and that was really when I noticed it. Conversion rate on the 27th just nosedived. I think we've been seeing a steady increase, but it just kind of jacked up probably October 15th, maybe October 20th, but. But the conversion rate was 27th and has. Has rebounded somewhat but not, not where it was, but it took a very steady drop. And then I was looking shout out to Jeremiah from no, he kind of sent me some data and was looking at that and very similar thing 2020 last year, week, week prior to the election, just sharp declines in, you know, Amer new customer performance. So hoping things pick up but like I said, got humbled.

[A]

Yeah. And, and the, the data from Jeremiah no commerce was about the same time range, like you know, 10 days out or so from the election is when.

[B]

It looked like it was about a week, maybe, maybe 10 days and then looking like it was coming back to, you know, pretty much to normal baseline a few days after. So very hopeful that, you know, we have a November again in a few weeks because obviously it's a big time of year. It's our Super Bowl.

[A]

Yeah, totally.

[B]

That's enough election talk.

[A]

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not really election talk anymore. But you sent a voice note around also data from no commerce, around consumers expectation, around spending. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit.

[B]

Yeah. So I think this is one thing we've talked about in the past is like, how do you know how much existing demand is out there that you've created? And we've talked a lot about, you know, filling your funnel. Houses published some cool data about filling your funnel. But I think, you know, as I was reforecasting November just kind of on the heels of, on the heels of our disappointing holiday launch, you know, I was like, hey, is this going to be something that's permanent? Maybe I was trying to tease out is this a product thing and is our product offering just not landing or is this some type of a seasonal moment where, you know, we're launching at a different time than we did last year, so we can't really compare apples to apples. We've got the election. And so one very interesting data point that they collect, they ask people that are, I guess, that are opted in, you know, to some of their, their questions and surveys, like are you, are you planning to spend more or less in the future? And if you look at that Trend. It's super interesting because around this time of year, you see it go up, up and up. And I think that is a. A bullish signal. If you're seeing that go up for, you know, you're filling your funnel is working. And if you just keep, you know, holding on for dear life and keep spending that, you will, you know, hopefully recoup that value. But it seems like there's a very similar chart to last year where, you know, right. There's a steady increase in people saying they're planning to spend more until pretty much right before Black Friday. And then people actually say they're planning to spend less in the future, which makes sense. Goes with what we've talked about a lot. So at least I'm feeling good about that, that I think once we finish this election, I think we'll have a few difficult, challenging days and then hopefully we get right back to business as usual, if not even better. What do you guys think?

[A]

I totally agree. I mean, that is an interesting data point. Another form of validation that, like, you can tolerate worse results right now, late October, early November, considering we know consumers are going to expect to spend more in the future. And then it reverses post Black Friday Cyber Monday, you actually need to tolerate. You need to hold yourself accountable to higher performance because you can't count on that future revenue. So, yeah, it makes total sense to me in line. I. I think we all kind of approach this differently. Connor, you've been like, you're psyched every time I talk to you about Q4. You're like, you're, like, ready to go. I am deeply anxious about it and I am every year.

[B]

Every year?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Has anything happened this year that makes you more anxious?

[A]

No. Aside from, like, Q2 was hard for growth. Like, I feel like I've. I've been scarred more this year. But, like, in terms of what I also say, you know, knock on wood, I. We are more prepared than we've ever been. We've got great offers, we've got great landing pages. We've got a great strategy. I was also saying the team's been here now a long time. I think our director of retention. This is for sixth Black Friday. This will be my seventh. Our search media buyer, I think, has been here for four. Like, the team is super seasoned and we know what we're doing. So, like, all signs point to us executing on this. Well, but still. And it actually goes back to, like, the con, the consumer point, where that's just what concerns me.

[B]

It's not. You have an Amazing team. You guys like, run, run your shit super well. Doesn't matter almost how well you execute if the consumer is not there.

[A]

That, and that's what makes me anxious. I don't think. Like, I used to maybe stay up late, be like, oh my God, our, you know, site's going to break or our content's bad or whatever. Like, I don't have many concerns about that. Um, it is just the result.

[B]

Yeah, I feel you. Yeah, I, I, I'm usually more on the paranoid side. And usually I'm like, hey, hey, I don't think this is gonna be great. And then it just, you know, it beats and surpasses expectations. I think I just got too cocky. And again, it's not over. Right. Like, we're still very much in the, you know, the, the first half of, of Q4. Um, so it's definitely not over, but I think definitely I got a little overconfident. So it's nice to bring things back down to reality sometimes.

[A]

Yeah. Let me ask you guys this, this comes out November 19th. Our Black Friday Cyber Monday sale will be live. Will you guys, do you guys have any big launches over the next two weeks?

[C]

No, we don't. We're, we're launching ours about halfway through the month. So once this comes out, we'll have been live, but no new, like, no new product drops or any like, major brand splashes happening until we actually, you know, drop our sale on the, on the 15th. One thing that is so interesting to me though, and I'm curious if you guys see this November 1st hit and all of a sudden conversion rates just like way up and nothing changed. Actually, if anything, things didn't change. We, we ended the sweepstakes and then if you look at like this Monday, which was the fourth over last Monday, again, nothing changed if anything. Actually, the previous Monday had a leg up on the, on this Monday because for previous Monday had sweepstakes running and conversion rate just like again, nothing. Literally nothing except for that. And conversion rates up, sessions are up, direct traffic's up. Like, it's like November hits and all of a sudden we could do nothing. And like, we just start to see that creep happen. Slowly, slowly, slowly. And then BFCM launches and then that's the big bang. So, like, yeah, nothing planned aside from our BFCM launch yet we still saw that just like naturally conditioned spike in conversion rate starting November 1st, which I just thought was super interesting.

[A]

Did you see the same thing last year?

[C]

Yes, always. It's always the same thing. Like November hits and like Our, our consumers intent just starts to creep, creep, creep, creep, creep until it really spikes once we hit the sale launch date. But that's like I am anxious and. But the reason I'm the, the side of me that's not anxious is a. The reason you just mentioned we're not as deep as you are. Like you said, you're on year six with a lot of your team. We're on year two with our internal team. But like I still feel so much better being on year two with the team than I did year one. But then b, I just think consumer has more of a reason now than ever this year to wait until the absolute best offers of the year. And it's no secret that those are coming from every brand that's out there. So that's what makes me bullish, is that I think the maybe slower growth rate we've seen year to date is because they're waiting for the absolute best offer of the year because they're just more margin cost sensitive now more than ever with the election and interest rates and all these things that are going on in the world that are making consumer a little less strong. So that's the part of me that, that makes me bullish. But I'm still. Yeah. How could you not be a little anxious when you're trying to do half your revenue in 45 days? Like. Yeah, that's. That's worrisome.

[B]

Yeah. I just want to share that we're not seeing the conversion rate increase on November 1st.

[C]

Interesting.

[B]

Just wanted to share that. We're not seeing that.

[A]

No. Yeah, not us either. I mean it was, I think we grew weekend over weekend. We, we never look at it to that degree. We're hitting our projections, but it's definitely not the pop that you described.

[C]

Yeah, well, that's, that's the other. We, we did hit our first few days of the month projections, which I'm, I'm also making me hopeful. Do you guys remember in 2020 you would go to the Facebook ads library and it would tell you what. Or maybe it was. Yeah, it was 2020. It would tell you what each candidate was spending on Facebook ads. Do you remember that? That ux.

[B]

Oh yeah. Like adds transparency.

[C]

Yeah, that was so cool. Did they do that this year? I don't remember seeing that.

[A]

I don't think so, but I don't know. Yeah, obviously not news this cycle.

[C]

Yeah, I thought that was interesting that Facebook did that, that in 2020. But yeah, it doesn't look like they have it this year. One note, one Note here. I think this is interesting because I was doing some data jockeying when you guys were talking. So our June 1st to August 31 cpm bump 2023 to 2024 is like four bucks. It's like I don't know, 30, not probably under 25%. Our. What was the data? I was just looking at L14 like back 3rd of October through yesterday, 2x bump. So like just like mass. Yeah. Massive increase in rate or growth rate on CPMs. But in theory, it all should stop tomorrow, right? Theoretically. Like the ad should be turned off tomorrow. Is that how it works?

[A]

Well, yeah, hopefully. I, Dude, I've seen way too much discussion like that. We, we'll see. We, we're, it's just so case by case, I think like we, we seem relatively unaffected on a CPM basis. Like basically flat year over year. We saw crazy CPM spikes in like March. And we'll see it by category too. Like Ring CPMs will be up 60% randomly. So I have no idea what's going on in the Facebook auction, but Zuck giveth and taketh.

[C]

How much is that from like scale? Like, is there a, like the same way that as you spend more, you need to spend more to acquire a customer and that like if you have a blended CAC at let's say a hundred bucks, in reality you have a subset at 30, a subset at 50, a subset at 150 and it's all blending is the same set of like that next incremental thousand impressions. Like, does it work that way? I don't, I don't know.

[A]

I'm not sure. I don't have a, I don't have a POV on on it. Like I, I, I don't have enough data or experience to, to have an opinion one way or another. But I will say, like, it doesn't feel all that much scale related. I, I like it feels more once your scaling conversion rate will go down, things like that you're reaching less qualified people. But are they coming at a higher price? I mean, maybe they're engaging at a lower rates. You're getting, you know, lower, lower quality scores and things like that. But I never see it like highly correlated with CPM increases.

[B]

No, I think, I think yeah, you'll see the conversion rate drop. I don't. Unless you're reaching a new audience that you know is just more valuable. Right. Like if like you are tapping out on a younger audience and you're going to an older audience that happens to, you know, have more competition, you might But I think otherwise I wouldn't necessarily, you know, see that. Connor hexcloud. I have a question. What day did you end sweepstakes?

[C]

We ended sweepstakes on Sunday was our last day.

[B]

What was that? Of the month? Was that the 31st or was that.

[A]

That's the third.

[C]

That's the third. Yep.

[A]

Dude, are you sure. Are you sure that all the conversion rate and direct traffic weren't people entering at the last couple hours of the sweepstakes?

[B]

Well, I was just wondering if, like, sweepstakes was, like, I want to say bad traffic. Like, it's still valuable, but, you know, maybe you had elevated traffic that was a lot that was, you know, coming for that and then shut that off and it goes back to, like, baseline.

[C]

Yeah, well, so part of it definitely was that. That Friday through Sunday stretch, like, we did a last chance to enter email, and it was a clear spike in traffic. And. But I was actually in. So that was. That was like utm, source email, sms. I was still seeing that, like, direct traffic bump over the whole weekend was pretty big. But then the. So that was my initial thought. I'm like, okay, this is like, sweepstakes last chance. But even then, like, the growth rate in that weekend, year over year, was still much, much, much higher compared to sweepstake, like, growth rate previous weekend. So I was like, okay, like, there's something else happening here. And then yesterday was the data point that I was like, okay, something's really happening here because Monday sweepstakes ended and we still saw that enhanced growth rate. But then today's like, today, our conversion rate, period over period, is, like, down 23%. So, like, today now kind of fell off again. So I don't know. My. I'm just, like, jockeying a bunch of different hypotheses. But then, like, today over last Tuesday, conversion rate flat, and sessions are just up 18%. So, like, I don't know, there's a lot of different data points giving me some different. Like, slightly different. Exactly. Slightly different direction.

[A]

Okay, I've got. I've got one more because I tweeted about this. And then we could get. We've got a couple topics that we want to hit, so we'll eventually get to maybe something more productive. But you said period over period just now. You said Yesterday Monday, the 4th was bad. Period over period. Are you looking week over week compared to the previous Monday?

[C]

Oh, I'm. I'm saying yesterday, yeah, yesterday Monday compared to the previous Monday that had sweepstakes live was great.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Like, and then. And Then I'm. What I'm saying today period over period. I'm just saying, I'm saying today over yesterday and then also today over, over Tuesday. I'm looking at all period over periods, all sorts of.

[A]

Right, right.

[C]

All sorts of comps happening.

[A]

Yeah, because I, I, I was tweeting about how the world would be a better place if SaaS platforms defaulted into better weekly scheduling. Like, I found. I've, we've talked about this briefly before, but we're almost exclusively trying to adjust for days of week when comparing over months or over years. And I find it so odd that I haven't seen an analytics tool do that. Like, no tool defaults until like last full week, Sunday through Saturday and then doing that same full week, year over year, week 44, year over year. Nobody does that. Despite, like, it feels very common in retail and merchandising to be measuring things that way. And it feels nascent. So I'm long, I'm making the prediction now. I'm long on DTC brands and their software providers better adopting weekly reporting cadences.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Are you guys five calendar? Like, are you guys on retail calendar?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, dude, I hate that. We were on it last year for that reason. It drove me crazy because. And I get the value. But all softwares, shopify, meta, whoever you want to look at, they're all monthly. And so trying all monthly, all last.

[A]

Seven days, all last 30 days. It is completely misaligned. But I'm a 4, 4, 5 proponent now.

[B]

Oh, it killed me. Yeah. You have to fully make the switch and do everything custom.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And that's what we're doing now. Like all of our internal reporting. It's like, yeah, look at week to date, Sunday through, you know, Thursday or whatever that same time period, year over year. We're committed now and I think I'm excited about it. And now I've got like a, Now I've got a bone to pick with all the SaaS providers. I'm going to, I'm going to get them one by one.

[C]

Because you want Connor, because you're saying. And this is how I do it too. But like, if I'm looking as an example at November 1 through 3, which this year was Friday through Sunday, my best year over year Comp is not 2023, November 1through3. It's actually the first Friday through Sunday clip in November, which is actually like, I don't know, it was later. But is that what the, is that what that retail calendar you're mentioning is? Is it like a Date like, like day of the month. Comp. Not like exact date. Comp. Okay.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So one through theory. Last year would have been the third through the fifth, and now we're like, we're in the weeds. But I'm. I'm passionate about this. We can expect a weekly segment on the dude.

[C]

Same. I'm. I'm all for this. I'm all for this. Like, I'm always writing out like. Like this time period over the analogous time period, the previous year, which was like, these dates. So everyone's not like, why is he comparing, you know, December 15 to 20, this year to December 18. Yeah.

[A]

Right.

[C]

It's like, why is this guy doing, like, this doesn't make sense. I'm always like, long form, writing out my methodology.

[A]

All right, so Connor and I are aligned. Cody, we'll try to win you over.

[B]

I. Yeah, I feel like you guys do a lot more. Maybe it's because you guys have more mature businesses. You guys do a lot more like year over year looking at than I do. I think I just look against forecast. I probably don't look against, like, year over year enough. But I. Everything I try, I do is mainly just looking at how are we doing against our forecast for that day or week.

[A]

Yeah. Well, cool. All right, so first. First topic here. I've got the very broad question of how to launch a new channel. We had David Herman on two weeks ago. Everybody on Twitter's talking about Applovin today. We've talked about it before. Everybody's excited and scaling. I was thinking the listeners. And I've been thinking about it more like, what is the. What is the playbook for launching a new channel? And maybe it's different. Connor, I know you guys just started doing out of home, so maybe you could speak to that a little bit. But how do you guys approach it internally with. With your teams when. When setting up and launching and wanting to measure a new channel? Cody, you want to take a first pass at this?

[B]

Yeah. Do you want to start at the level of, like, here's why. Like, how you should think about which channels to launch or get straight into. Like, if we were to go and do one, here's how we're going to plan it and evaluate it.

[A]

Let's do it. Let's start at that wider one. Why. Why launch a channel?

[B]

Yeah, I think. Right. I think. I think marketing is probably the least important of all of the variables. I think it's, you know, it's production, market, you know, and channels are probably the most important ones. And then I think, you know, and by channels I mean like, I mean like so market would be like, you know, eu, Australia, uk, us you know, product is obviously one of the best ways to scale and I think channel more, you know, Amazon, DTC wholesale, brick and mortar. Like, I think those are probably bigger levers. But I think as you grow the business, you know, definitely being on more ad channels is, is a great way to find new people, you know, be incremental. I'm very curious how you guys think about it. I think, you know, risk versus reward. Kind of like how much effort is this going to take versus how, how, how much impact is it going to have, right? Like for example, setting up Twitter or Pinterest, like it's not that hard, but it definitely requires, you know, more data integrations, more measurement, more media buying. But you're sometimes more creative, but you're only able to get like a few thousand dollars a day. Like, it's kind of a pain in the ass. And I think a lot of times people will be better off. And I'm curious, you know, like, Ridge, your guys take. Because I know that you have been on a lot of places, I don't know if you've consolidated at all, but I think you can get like spread really thin. And maybe they're not incremental. Maybe they are. But even if it is, like, what's the downside versus, like you could have just spent $2,000 more a day on meta and you know, and got in that reach. Like, I think a lot of times people haven't tapped out there, but obviously you get to a point and you do tap out and we can talk about how to figure out if you are actually tapped out, you know, getting diminishing returns, thinking about like, are you trying to go for awareness? Is it more of an upper funnel play? Like, is TV going to really fill your funnel and get, you know, just more reach, more eyeballs that you're maybe not going to get on more of like a performance direct response channel. So I think that's, that is part of it. I think you definitely want to find diminishing returns before you go and just do it. Like, it's a lot of fun to test new channels, but I really think you should just, you know, nail other, you know, channels. Know that you don't have really any room to grow. But I think, yeah, like, for example, like for us, like, you know, we launched EU because we're like, hey, most of our business is meta. You know, meta is what drives a ton of it like let's just have more markets that we can run meta ads in. You know, I mean we didn't do any new creative. I think in the future we will need new creative, we'll need to localize. So I think that's one part of it. But yeah, I mean we're, we're scaling up loving. We launched a CTV test. So like we definitely feel like we are getting to the size. We're like, you know, we're going to hit some less incremental spend just by increasing on these channels and we want to get some net new eyeballs on us. But I think it's like, what's our plan for how are we going to measure this channel? How are we going to know if it works or not? Because I'm totally down to put 50k, 100k, whatever it is and do a new channel if I feel confident that I can measure and actually know what kind of impact it has. If it's going to be kind of murky and I'm not going to know, like it's hard, like it's a harder one to know. How much new creative do I have to go and shoot this tv? I like we launched TV ads like a year ago but a, you know, you got to commit 150,200k to the initial media buy. You've got to do a TV shoot that's probably 50k for, for most brands on, you know, medium low end. So you're looking at 250k and you're, you know, a month into it before you even have any idea if it's worthwhile or not versus something like an Apple when you can probably get live for $1,000 a day and have, have some confidence and you know, so those are just all the factors. I feel like I'm not super in order. It's like not a great framework, but I feel like those are some of the factors. So it's like, do we even need to do it? What channels would make the most sense? Where are our customers? Right. You know, obviously that makes the most sense is understand what platforms your customers are, are using. Do you have the right creative approach to it? Does your team have the right approach? Do you have the right resources? Do you know how you're going to measure it?

[A]

Yeah, I think that's good. And we've talked about what is it? What's the way to rank and prioritize projects, efforts and yeah, effort, impact, impact, confidence, effort.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Boom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's like almost a. You described a Lot of that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. For, for sure. Like there's one thing, if it's like a, you know, let me, let me get live on this Snapchat, right? And it's like I can just use my ads, I've already got the integrations done. But if it's like one of those like TV things, like yeah, I think that'll have a huge impact. You know, we're, we're spending a ton on tv, we're reaching a lot of new customers, but all of the other stuff is harder and so just trying to figure out where to prioritize it.

[A]

Awesome. And then Connor, before, before I hand it to you here, Cody, you, we, we've all. I know actually maybe you and I have just launched Applovin. You were earlier to it. So like how did you set budget? And then I know you're planning a house test soon, so I'm curious in the order of operations, you launched at some budget, you see some sort of results that you like, you triangulate measurement in some way and now you're going to like seek more clarity with it with the Geo lift holdout.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. I was skeptical. I think in an ideal world we could do it from the beginning. Like that's how we launched or relaunched Twitter, you know, a few months back, that's how we launched Pinterest. Like that's the most confidence is if we can just launch a geo. But then we also have to commit to a certain amount, you know.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We have to say we're going to run 30, 50k spend on that. You know, we did get some credits without loving to start. We were kind of doing that like manual spreadsheet integration into North Beam, you know, and it looked pretty good on a, and it got better on a, you know, a one day click. And so we felt confident, you know, percent of new visits wasn't bad, wasn't great, wasn't bad. So I think we scaled that up to just like a level that we felt, we felt confident where it's just to me, I don't know why but like $5,000 a day where I'm like, I don't yet know the incrementality but like if attribution looks good, you know, let's do that. And then we got it integrated. So I saw the momentum go in there and I was pushing them every day for the house, you know, the GEO stuff. But I also got them integrated into North Beam, which helped and got them integrated into Prescient. And so Mike, from Prescient like they move super fast and so they got integrated. I think it's like a beta right now, but it looks great in there. So that gave me confidence to scale above that level. And then we will run the holdout next which will be I guess our like gold standard of truth. But I'm super bullish where. And that one. So that one's great because there's scale there. There's 140,000 apps that it can run across. I know brands are spending, you know, close to six figures a day. It's right now more efficient than meta on a one day click for us. No new creative and currently they're doing the buying for us. So it's like very low lift for us. There's very little we've had to do, obviously take some time, we have to talk about it, we have to figure out how much we should allocate, get it into our mmm. But it's pretty low lift. I think some of our data sources, we have a VA who's inputting our daily upload and spend into a spreadsheet, you know, but it's really pretty low lift. But it's not, you know, new creative. Yeah, that's a big ridge one, I'm sure. But that's a, you know, it's pretty low lift and also the scale is there. It's not like we just relaunched on Twitter, but like, you know, we're spending a few thousand dollars a day and like we've got to open up a new platform, buy a new thing, like add stuff to our workflow and it's like that money's probably better spent somewhere else. So. Yeah, but that's, that's the plan is if you get some type of attribution, we're not really seeing anything on a post purchase. I'm not sure why, but I'm still feeling good about it. And then just move up in terms of like your rigor of your marketing stack. So for us it's mmm. And then we've got our, you know, a geo lift, which is what we'll do soon.

[A]

Yeah. Awesome.

[B]

So one thing we talk about a lot on this podcast is upper Funnel investment measuring, YouTube measuring, TV measuring, you know, out of home, all that kind of good stuff. It's something that's top of mind, but it's not very easy to do. Recently Jones Road turned to Prussian AI to help us as our new MMM media mix modeling tool. And we have been super impressed. No joke. It's really helped to quantify some of the things that we thought were true. Some of the things that some of our tests, you know showed us, but especially TV was very hard to measure. We were spending about 10% of budget on TV and we just weren't really sure how it was doing. Boiler Alert Test of the week is actually looking great. It's actually looking like our most efficient channel thanks to Prussian AI. So we are in the midst of scaling it up and results look good. We are very happy with a YouTube looks great as well. You know been been spending and scaling up YouTube a lot based on this data. So we are very happy with it. It's actually not something that we were getting. We didn't feel like we had confident data back from other MMM providers that we worked with before and so we are thrilled with some of the pressure and data that we are getting. We're getting halo effects. We're actually able to see you know, how much value are we driving directly from clicks on channel versus how much is coming through organic direct and it's quite a bit. Being able to measure TV has been really difficult until now but it feels very accurate and it's giving us a lot of confidence. Things are volatile and D2C we're able to build these new optimizations, these new scenarios, you know, within days. Setup was super easy, unbiased cross channel, you know, measurement. We're not on Amazon but I know brands like hexcloud will use it to also measure and validate, you know, spend going to Amazon and so we're thrilled, we're super happy with it. Couldn't believe how easy it was and the team is getting a lot of value out of there. Those reasons are used by top brands like of course Jones Road, none other than Hexclad, Good American Symbiotica, Timbuktu and many many more. Mike, the co founder hits me and Connor up pretty much every day just telling them I saw some of the new brands that signed a lot of them from from listening to this. So we are thrilled with prescient. It's made a huge difference so far and it's really going to help us leaning into Q4. So if you want to be like us, like Hexcloud, like Jones Road and many more, go to prussian.com operators to book a demo and see for yourself.

[A]

Connor, what's your guys'do? You guys have a playbook as well?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. Well I think that's one one thing I want to say about the post purchase with Applov and I wonder if that's because there's like probably thousands of games that people are as opposed to be. And like I saw you through a mobile game where it's like okay, Facebook serves on Instagram and Facebook, like it should be easy to remember that those two placements versus like hundreds or thousands of games, which, that would make sense to me. I think, you know, something I want to call out is like the identify comparable channels. I think that's the number one way like if you're a, if you're a brand that you haven't rolled out an incrementality testing tool yet that is like in my opinion probably the next best way to decide how well a new channel is performing for you. So a great example that I'll walk through to illustrate this. So we just launched, we've been running with Live Intent for a while now. And when we initially launched Live Intent we said hey, this is good for two reasons. It was a high net new visit rate and the one day click roas was comparable to some of our other top scale channels. Like great, that's, that's a win. And that is one way without a house test to validate through an attribution tool, a winning new channel for you. Because at the end of the day, like if you run Twitter ads and you're spending a tenth of what you're spending on Facebook and the one day clicks half, like why would you spend that on Twitter? Like you should just go spend that additional thousand per day in Facebook where you're getting much more efficiency. So now fast forward and we were approached by this, this newsletter called Arnold's Pump Club. Arnold's Pump Club is all about health and wellness. Cooking is often about health and wellness. We're like, okay, this is probably a good audience fit. Check. Now we had Live Intent though running for a long time. So now our comparison, because we had Live Intent running for such a long time, which is email newsletter ads, we had an amazing comparison to compare Arnold's Pump Club to. So now we're, you know, probably I think three or four, three newsletter buys in with Arnold Pump Club. We're basically amortizing the spend to say okay, like on a per day basis. Like let's get a, let's look at Apples to apples spend per day on both Live Intent and Arnold's Pump Club. And then we're just going in and we're looking at per Edge Mesh, which is our server side analytics tool. Like what's the unique visitors in the last click conversions for each? What's the cost per for each? And now we have a super Apple that super Apples Apples comparison on this email newsletter spot. And like I'm very bullish on Arnold's Punk Club right now because we have more last click conversions. The cost for acquisition is better than live intent, the cost for unique visitors better. And I'm like very bullish on it because of that comparative look. The problem with the household out test is like the bigger you get, the more you need to spend to validate a test. So like hexclad, like as we get bigger and bigger and bigger, for us to actually see a blip among amongst baseline and a new channel, like we have to spend like more and more and more. And honestly like for us like we were looking at Pinterest the same way and we're talking to our rep, he's like, yeah, I think with this holdout percentage and like this projected, you know, cpia, which is a pretty, you know, generous one, like you probably spend you know, significant six figures like 150, $200,000 on Pinterest to get a, to record a blip here. I'm like me and Cam ultimately just decided we weren't, we didn't want to do that at that point in time. So it's like one of those things.

[B]

So did you go no holdout or you just went no Pinterest?

[C]

We have an agency running Pinterest for us right now at a very low spend with pretty subpar in my opinion, content. So we basically just decided let's just let it run as it is right now. We'll revisit it when it makes sense because we really want to like take a really good swing at content and like our organic content team, brand team, excuse me, is planning to take that over. So like once that happens then we'll probably take a bigger swing at it. But yeah, for that reason we often use that first methodology I mentioned of just like comparative analytics across channels and then really save our, at least for now have done our household out testing on our bigger spending channels because it's easier to detect, to detect a blip. But that's, that's the one thing that I don't think people realize with like an incrementality test is actually the bigger you get, the more you need to spend into a new channel to, to understand what the lift is. If there is a lift on the out of home stuff. We are basically actually just quickly to.

[A]

Tease you on that last point. It does. It sounds really hard to be a big brand.

[C]

It sucks.

[A]

I feel bad for you guys over there.

[B]

That sucks.

[A]

Cam, tell Us about out of him, out of home.

[C]

Cam and I are very good yin and yang. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

[B]

No, just on that point, like I totally agree with you and I think even if you had the data, like even if you were comfortable with how much, you know, you would have to spend and it would work, it also might not be worthwhile. Right. Like, so what you found that Pinterest is incremental, you know, how big of an impact is that going to make in terms of giving you that knowledge? You know, it's probably not going to hurt you that much if you're, if at your guys scale you're spending a few thousand dollars on Pinterest and it's not incremental. If you find it super incremental, you also can't scale it that much. And so you're not gonna make a big impact versus if you guys test YouTube and you find that's very incremental and you can scale that, then you know, if you can make a, you know, find an impact there on a channel you're already spending a lot at, that gives you confidence to spend more. Like that'll probably have such a bigger impact on the business.

[C]

Totally. Cam, Cam says that all the time. His, the way he words it is like, so what if it, if we find out it is incremental because we are not in a position to do anything about it. What he means by that is we don't have a creative flywheel for Pinterest. We don't have a very good creative flywheel for TikTok. So even if we find that TikTok our most incrementally efficient channel, you know, we're going to spend the next three months going in, you know, sourcing that and like to the extent that's going to always be the case, like you obviously shouldn't have the TikTok creative flywheel set up before you know, if it's incrementally efficient. So it goes both ways. But totally. Like do you even have the resourcing to do something about it if you find out that it's working incrementally? Well at a lower spend level, maybe. And if you do, then go for it. But, but you also might not what.

[A]

I would say just kind of using that last point as a, as a jumping off point. This reminds me of a couple things. One, I've been telling my team, like I have so little interest in identifying a channel that we think might be working at a couple grand a day. I'm like, absolutely not what we need. And Ridge has gone through periods of time where we've spent relatively small amounts of money, a lot of places. And frankly, it did work really well for a while. I mean, we were growing, but then we came to the point this was like 2021, where it was like, oh, what we are. What is the most advantageous thing for us to do is to get incredibly good at Facebook. So kind of, Connor, to your point, like, let's create a great content flywheel. Let's get better at meta. Let's scale there because we can spend more dollars there. And if we get better from a content and landing page perspective and a media buying perspective, each dollar can also become more efficient. Now we're in the zone of, like I've been telling the team, I want to find really like a second or third scalable channel because we don't have a lot of them. Right. So we're launching on Linear. We got that live this week. We're testing YouTube rigorously because I think that has the. A chance to do it. And then Applovin shows a lot of promise too. I'm less optimistic about Applovin over like a year time. I'm like, I. I'm super glad everybody's seeing great results off the bat here, but, like, longevity is a question in my mind. But that's where we're at.

[B]

So, so how. I mean, I agree with you. I think we're a little bit in that phase. But, like, we could shut off TikTok today and it wouldn't make an impact. I think we're only on Twitter because, you know, they're giving some good credits. But I think overall, I totally agree. And that's the same thing we're trying to explore even on Meta. Like, right? If you approach it with like a creative diversity lens, like, if there's an audience that you don't feel like you're reaching on Meta, with the 2 billion users it has, like, you know, you can probably spend an extra 20k a day if you unlock a new audience on Meta, which is probably easier than another channel. So I agree with that. But how did you land at those channels? For you guys, how did you land at linear YouTube? And let's. Let's call it those two.

[A]

Yeah, linear and YouTube. I mean, one is, I just don't think there's a lot of digital channels that people have proven to scale also for our business. Right? Like, let's talk about the wallet business specifically, because something like men's wedding bands might be a little different. The wallet business is. Is we have to be top of funnel. We have more people searching for Ridge wallet every month and search for men's wallet. It's like we're not going to grow our business through high intent channels. We have to be generating net new intent. That's what pushes us into okay, a meta and Instagram obviously. And then what else can be scalable and consistent to some degree? And I think YouTube and linear could potentially be that.

[B]

Yeah, but there's enough, enough viewers on them. They're, if you're creating demand, they're good, they're good kind of upper funnel channels.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah. So that's what, that's what lands me there. I mean, because I'd be curious if like I don't think there's a lot of options out there. Obviously Influencer is a big one for us. Like if we didn't do any influencer, maybe I list that one, but I think we've been like hitting that pretty hard for a couple years now. And then I, I don't know, just thinking digitally like I don't, I don't know where else we would go if we want a scalable, where can we spend 10, 20, $30,000 a day throughout the year? And it's like there's not that many channels.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, you're right. No, I, I agree. It makes sense when you, when you launch a new channel like that, right. If you're going to try to scale up linear, you're going to scale up, you know, tv. Do you like, are you launching with full product line? Like are you gonna go rings and wallets and luggage? Are you just gonna pick one and be like, this is our bread and butter.

[A]

Yeah, just one. So, so if I quickly walk through our playbook and it's not, it's not too different from what you guys are saying. And I think we're, we're like, it's a good kind of order of operations here, but one, we definitely just choose one category and typically it's just wallets, the ring business, the travel business. Like we should be able to spend a lot more on meta and Google before we have to worry about doing. I mean there's some, some exceptions to this but like rings on Live Intent is like I think far off in, in the future. So one category I like to launch channels when as many variables are consistent because I think a lot of like measuring or like validating where, where whether something is working, you have to do it from a top line perspective. So that's one. It's like I don't love launching a bunch of stuff at once or like a ton of moving pieces or something like that. So you've got to find a good time to launch. You have one category, make sure all data is connected. We all hit that point and I think some people miss that. Or at least I've got to drive it home with my team where it's like, we have to be able to look at it in north beam. Everything has to be piping into our internal reporting the way that we anticipate. Because the last thing you want to do is like, you launch something and you're not tracking it properly.

[B]

Yeah, I think my MER is great. Oh, I forgot to put in this 400k of influencer spending.

[A]

Yeah, 100% really dumb. So. So there's that. And then I have here, like, it also needs to be a big enough budget and that's why it goes back to like, yeah, I don't care if, you know, Google demand gen is working at $1,200 a day. We think it might be working right, like, oh, Rose is okay in north beam. And it's like, okay, yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Like, maybe there's too many moving pieces, budget's not big enough. Etc. I have in my notes here, like, I'd much rather get a clear negative signal than like just a lack of clarity where then all of a sudden we're stuck with this. Like when this weird middle ground of a couple grand a day, we. We don't really know how to measure it, whether it's incremental, we don't know how to prioritize it, et cetera. So I am a fan of. And we just did this without loving. Like, you just kind of send it. You be more aggressive when you're launching the channel we used to, years ago, we'd say like, all right, we'll spend a smaller brand. We'll be like, we'll spend 300 a day and we'll. Then we'll spend 500 a day. We'll like do it. All these different, you know, tranches. And, and I think that's a little. You're not like reaching your end goal fast enough. What do you guys think of that one?

[B]

Yeah, you gotta send it. I've been in that middle ground for a while, I think. For a while. Tick tock. Was there. YouTube was there for a while. Applovin was. Was there for a little bit. And you know, I think where it's like, yeah, I get it from the beginning. You got to give yourself enough of a shot. Like, I always talk about minimum viable product, which is like, you know, you want to know you're doing the right effort or you're doing enough effort where, you know, it's. If it fails, it's more of the strategy than the execution. Because you don't want to be like, hey, we didn't execute it properly. Because a lot of teams will do that. They'll test the channel with like, with the wrong creative, with the wrong measurement approach and it won't work in quotes. And they'll be like, hey, this channel doesn't work well. It's like, no, your creative sucked or your, you didn't know how to measure it or you weren't, you know, you weren't spending enough or you weren't patient enough. So I totally agree with that. I think you want to kind of find the balance between minimum viable product but also doing enough where you are. You know, I'm not going to launch TV ads for a week and spend $1,000 a day on through Tatari and be like, hey, this didn't work for us. So something like that, you've got to send it for, you know, six weeks. So I totally agree with you. We have also paused or pushed back a launch of a channel because we didn't know how we were going to measure it. Because I don't want to be in that middle ground where we're like, hey, like, for example, we talked about doing, you know, YouTube, you know, influencer ad reads and we pushed it back because we're like, we don't know how we're going to measure it. Like, how are we going to know if it's successful or not? And until we arrived at that, we decided just to just push it back. I think we're going to do it in Q1 and do it in January. I think we have a better approach now. But yeah, we're like, we're going to hold off if I don't want to spend money, because that's sometimes the worst position to be in. Like you said, I'm much, I'm much more likely to spend money if I can actually get a clear read on this work or not. Because then I can know and you learn, right? You either win or you learn. But I think if you're just spending a medium amount of money, you're not sure if it works or not. Like, that's dangerous to the business over time.

[A]

Totally. You could be losing more money in the long run by having just a lack of clarity and then you're stuck in this weird middle ground versus you're more aggressive upfront and you just find out quickly that it doesn't work or that it does work. You just end up at a conclusion much faster. And that is, you can save money that way.

[B]

Yes. It's good that you and me, our businesses are small enough where we're able to do that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Thank God.

[C]

Do you, do you think some people do the opposite though where they're like, they don't do good? I think Jared Brody mentioned this. He's like. Because Jared's like arguably the most measurement heavy marketer I've ever met. At the same time though, at one point in that interview he's like, listen, at the end of the day you still should always do good marketing if it's good marketing. And I think that sometimes performance marketing is almost swung too far in the like measurement realm in the sense that I see sometimes people are like, well I'm not going to launch this because I can't measure it. Which is very different than like launching a performance channel and saying I don't want to launch yet because I, I know I can measure. I just haven't figured it out yet. Versus like, I don't know, like our influencer product seeding program. Like we don't really measure revenue from it. We measure impressions and CPM arbitrage. But at the end of the day like I'm very confident that's a revenue driving tactic for us. Even though I can't measure it, I'm not going to like, if I, if we didn't, didn't do that just because I wasn't able to measure like last click revenue. We've been a huge L for our business in the last two years. So there's, there's that balance, right, of like do good marketing all the time and then just have a, you have to know what you should really be able to measure. Really. Exactly. And what you maybe, maybe shouldn't be able to.

[A]

100%. I was gonna, I was gonna use that exact same caveat because while I'm like, look, we don't want any random thousand dollar channels that we don't know how they perform. We need to launch things and measure them really methodically. And that's, I'm being very generous because like ultimately what I'm describing isn't even scientific. Like eventually if we get to a glift test, we can gain more confidence around the performance of a channel. But a lot of the time it's just like, hey, we're going to Give ourselves all of the. As many tools as we can to identify whether this works or not and then make a decision from there. So that's like one side of it and then the other side. I absolutely agree. Where we're going to go into holiday and it's like, yeah, we're going to spend money on Snapchat and Twitter and we're going to spend a couple thousand dollars, many thousands of dollars, many places. Because Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we want people on the Internet to understand that, you know, we're running the best sale of the year. We're going to make sure we're hitting our forecast, that we're above projections. And that is a, that's a much softer science that is just like, hey, we want to show ads at the most important time of the year. And Jared kind of, he alluded to that as well. The, the exact quote, I think was like the weekend before Memorial Day, he's like, yeah, I want to show connected TV ads to everybody who's, you know, in market. And it's like, yeah, that, that, that makes total sense. That was a great episode. That's episode 24. I just checked it out. Jared Brody from, from Resident Home. That's.

[B]

That's how we were for TV for a while. I think it definitely works, especially at a certain amount. If you're like, hey, we're going to spend 5% of our budget on this. We just think it's good there. I'll try to look at the numbers, but, like, I don't have to perfectly validate it. Like, I'm good with that. I think it gets slightly challenging where you're like, hey, I think this is working, but I'm in that middle ground. Like, I don't really know and maybe I should be spending 40% of my budget there. Right? Like, I think obviously, if you're going to make a big financial bet, but Connor, I think that's how I feel about out of home a little bit. Like, we don't do that much of it. We probably do similar amounts to you guys, where we've got some trucks that are out in market. We're definitely planning more. We've done some out of home billboards. There are some ways to measure it. We just want to know that it does something. We just want to have some confidence and we've looked at it. But I don't need to give that an incrementality and a return on ad spend. I just think that's good marketing to get out there. And I do think that's more of that brand spend. I want to hold it accountable to something but it's challenging. Um, and there are definitely ways, don't get me wrong. Like, like House did this case study where they had a client who did the sphere and they measured a, you know, quasi geo holdout of that. Like there are definitely ways. Depends if, if you need to.

[C]

That's awesome.

[B]

But I think at lower levels of spend, right, like the trucks that we've done, like, you know, we might spend 10k a month on them. 15k a month, like that's a day that's like, that's like an hour on meta. You know what I mean? So I'm like, you don't necessarily need to hold every dollar to the same level of scrutiny.

[C]

You noted it, Cody. Like that Nick from House at this, obviously, hey, you know, we can basically do. It's really the same methodology of measurement except obviously you're not plugging in any sort of like inclusion exclusion list into your ad accounts. They're just doing the same sort of geolift experiment or measurement in those markets that you've exposed out of Home creative too. So we're going to do it. At the end of the day though, even if we don't see a blip, like chances are we're still going to have out of Home as a strategy moving forward. Because to your point, it's an amazing brand experience. I love the creative. It's a great first touch point. People are going to see that, visit the site, maybe they convert a year and a half later. But like I love that touch point. It's a great brand valence and like that alone is enough reason for us to spend, you know, seven figures on out of home in a single year. Of course I also hope we see a lift in those markets. That would be like the best case.

[B]

Scenario and they're interested in that with obviously Nick. The parts have told me about it, but I'm so pumped you guys are doing that.

[C]

Nick's the best. We got a. We got to shout out Nick from.

[B]

Our beloved sponsor last week for the first time actually.

[C]

Yeah, he's super sharp. He's super, super sharp.

[A]

You guys all work with Nick.

[B]

Yeah, you do too.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do.

[C]

So we should really be. We got to. We got to shout out not House, but Nick Doran of House.

[A]

Awesome. I think we hit.

[B]

All right.

[A]

I think we hit most of the playbook here. You guys mentioned post purchase survey towards the end. I mean Cody, you just said the trucks you feel good about from a brand experience. But you talked about it many episodes ago. But like even validating brand discovery from the trucks, you've got people answering post purchase. So I just think like again goes back to like getting as much data as you can launching a channel in a thoughtful way. Your point around strategy and execution I think is a great one. Do it at a scale where you feel you can tease out some sort of result. It's a pretty good playbook marketing operator stamp of approval.

[B]

I love it. Any channels that you guys are exciting about, excited about, maybe like you're thinking next year, end this year.

[C]

Next year we're going to Applovin. We're going to do that. We've decided not to do it this quarter just to really triple down on our winning channels. But we're going to launch with Applovin in Q1 and see what the dealio is there.

[A]

Yeah. For US I mentioned TV and YouTube, which YouTube we're testing pretty methodically, like I feel good about. But you have shorts, you have in stream. Like there's a lot for us to kind of continue to unearth there. We got Linear Live this week and Linear is going to be one of those things like exactly as I said, we're going to run the exact same playbook I just described. I'm not going to come out of it. It's November 5th with total confidence around what TV can be. But I'm excited about that for 2025. We got some fantastic content back recently that I'm really excited about and then we're going to relook at partnerships. So I told you guys, we've been talking about partnerships in our group chat a bit, but there's just so many different things going on. I think we do YouTube creators well. I think we could do podcasts better. You guys both preach about product seating, so we'll take a pass at that. There's just many more like modern forms of partnerships and I think those could be kind of needle movers for us. So that's really top of mind. It's a relatively short list for next year.

[B]

I like that. How, how did you land on Linear TV over streaming?

[A]

We've been on Linear and we've seen success with Linear. So we'll, we'll also put connected TV and streaming like in the docket to test for next year. But, and I've talked about this a bunch, I mean our strategy for linear is we hit, I've been told they're C tier networks. American Heroes Fishing Network, Motor Trends, History Channel, just male, dense, affordable networks we're getting like 2, 3, $4 CPMs. As soon as you hit Hulu, it's like 12 bucks and it's like three times the CPM. We don't see three times a conversion rate or three times a response rate. So we're starting at a very conservative spot where we're starting with what has worked best.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. No, totally makes sense. That was the exact reason we just launched on CTV about a year later. For that reason.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Who switches a massive software that their company uses right before Black Friday? Well, we did. Jonesboro just switched to Rich Panel and we are thrilled about it. Why did we make the switch? Well, first of all, we recently learned that Ridge did it. Connor told me how much they're loving it. And we also just wanted to make sure that our customer support team had everything they needed to have a successful Black Friday. We had a lot of issues last year just overall with cx and so I wanted our team to be ready before beforehand because we're gonna have crazy volumes. But I also didn't want to have to hire extra help with Rich panels. AI it's a game changer. Since switching, our team has been way more productive, way more efficient. Our ticket volumes are up, but we're getting through tickets a lot quicker. So our response times are actually way down, ultimately improving our CSAT scores. And so, you know, I normally wouldn't recommend switching to a new software right before Black Friday, but it worked out for us. The Rich panel team made it so super easy. I held our hands every step of the way and it just couldn't have been an easier transition. So bottom line, your team will be faster, your customers will be happier, and you'll also save a lot on SaaS costs. Now, if you are considering switching your help desk Rich Panel, they offer free weekly 40 minute webinars that are designed to help your CX team and your CX lead understand the platform, see how it's different, understand what migration looks like, and get support during and after migration. So head over to richpanel.com, check out their weekly webinar schedule and get your team in on a session so you can get ready before Black Friday.

[A]

Next segment, we are back. This was supposed to be a weekly segment. We've been pretty sporadic about it. Test of the week, Connor. Roland, you've got a. You've got a recent test you wanted to walk us through?

[C]

Yeah, Well, I think site speed is one of those, like, hot button topics where no one really knows how important it is and there's Like a ton of different literature out there about like certain thresholds that like as long as you're like this fast, you're good. And there's a lot of awesome tools out there to facilitate site speed. We use Edge Mesh. I know Nostra is another one that a lot of brands like and enhances site speed. We actually, we've been using Edge Mesh in the US for a long time and we're finally scaling it out to a lot of our international markets. But we really wanted to like quantify how much of a lift it can drive. So basically Edge Mesh server side technology, all that means is that if you're in California and you go to hexcloud.com there's probably servers like located closer to you that's going to make you load that site quicker versus like if you're in, I don't know, Tennessee and that'll load, that'll use a totally different set of servers. So that's what Edge Mesh does. It's like, you know, these edge servers that make your site load quicker depending on where you're, you know, typing in hexcloud or ridge.com from. So we rolled this out in the United Kingdom. We saw a 14.8% bump in conversion rate during the test. So a double digit percentage increase just from having Edge Mesh rolled out on site. I love this. Like this is, this is an awesome test. I think it validates a lot of our beliefs and a lot of the literature out there that like site speed does matter. Now I don't know what that like point of diminishing return is. Right. Like if you're above that point of diminishing turn, does making it faster really matter or is it like, you know, what's the, you know, the incremental drop off basically? I don't know what that is but you know, this is just a fun one to look at and like just validate that there's so much you can do just from a technology POV on site to improve, like no content, no offer, just pure tech, like back end technology that drove this bump. So yeah, we're happy about this and we're rolling it out everywhere now.

[A]

Yeah, this is awesome data. How long did you guys run the test for?

[C]

That's a good question. I just have the screenshot from our dev. I mean we ran it for at least a few weeks. I could get you that info though to let you know how long it ran for.

[A]

A couple weeks. Yeah. That basically answers it.

[C]

Also like all conversions obviously are getting picked up in this task. So this is one of those tasks where you know, if you're a brand of, you know, mid eight figures or higher, like you get really good data because you're just getting like every single conversion is in this test versus like, you know, seven piece knife product page test that like might take way longer to get enough conversions to pull through. But yeah, man, it was pretty, pretty fun. Interesting conclusion here.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's cool because these, these tools have been around for a while. Edge mesh, you mentioned Nostra and they've been so, they've been impossible to measure. So like, I mean like, let's just say you just turned this on and you saw a 10% improvement in conversion rate. That would be so hard to like attribute to like the tool that you just turned on. Right? Like you're like day over day, you're like conversion rates up 10%. I mean we started the episode talking about like all the crazy changes between days of weeks and year over year. I think their A B testing like capabilities are relatively new. I don't remember hearing about it years ago, but it's cool that people can actually kind of quantify the lift.

[C]

Well, that's what I'm seeing hap like the server side technology was initially for this and for like event matching. Now I'm seeing and I really think this is like the, you know, the, we're early on and I think a year from now, two, three years from now, this is going to be like the best practice. Like server side technology is so useful for so many things. Yes, it's very useful for site speed and event matching. It's amazing for analytics. Like any, like the data clarity, you know, anything that requires a pixel to load is like, you don't ever really know how accurate the data is. A lot of it's modeled like the server side data is so, so cool. I know the tool we use is also ultimately working to build out a, like a true a B testing tool as well. So it's been really fun to see this company that we're working with innovate and like build out all these different applications using the same core server side technology. And site speed is truly just the beginning.

[A]

Yeah, that's awesome. I've got a, I've got kind of a tangent here that I was thinking about this week. We've been doing some product price testing and we found. I might, I might have told you guys about it. I won't talk about the details here, but it was like a really small product and a relatively small price change resulted in 100% improvement in conversion rate. And I've been on about this. Yeah, I think, I think for our product category and our prices, we're at like a really weird point in the price curve. And I think like small optimizations can make really big impacts. So anyway, it's also on the top of my to do list for 2025 is I think these like, relatively small optimizations can lead to hundreds of thousand dollars in profit. Like straight to the bottom line. But what I was thinking about, which I hadn't like, properly considered, and I think even like this edge mesh conversion rate change is like an example of is, okay, so you implement this and let's say it's like perfectly accurate and you are now making 14% or what did we say here? 20 cents more per user. Okay, that's what happens. But now you can actually pay more to drive traffic to your site. Like what it doesn't quantify is what does this change result? What does this change? How does this change impact your ability to scale?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Which I think is super. Yeah. Which is like, I don't know, I guess I hadn't really thought about. But like this, this, in my case, this hundred percent difference in conversion rate, I'm like, oh, we might have been able to spend like this might have been a massive difference in how much we could scale on Meta. If our conversion rate went up 100%, we could maybe spend $400,000 more or something. And that gets lost in some of these optimizations. But I think it's really cool. Difficult to quantify because it'll also change over time. But that's ultimately what we're trying to do. Right? We're trying to improve the underlying metrics of the business so that we can give more dollars to Meta and Google and applovin.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, you increase conversion rate. Okay, well, you just drop cac now you're below your CAC threshold. Now you can spend more to get back into the CAC threshold. Now you've just effectively increased top. Yeah, totally. It's has so many like obvious next steps from a test like this.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds obvious. I.

[B]

Well, it does, but also the negative because you'll see a lot of people are CRO guys, big, hey, you know, a dollar per order, we make an extra dollar per order across a hundred thousand orders. This is how much more we're making to the business. Like as if nothing changes. And to Connor's point, yeah, you can go with the positive and say, hey, this allows for so much More volume. I also think there's some type of like, it gets to like the median outcome and like it that better conversion rate allows you to scale more which actually gives you more volume. But you probably find that same roas, that same efficiency that you had over time. So you almost end up like diluting that. Yes, there is more volume, but it's no longer like you're making extra dollar per order because now you're spending another dollar, you know, on ads per per order.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Obviously gets you some incremental volume. So I just really hesitate to be like, hey, this is what it added to the business over time. It's like so hard to know in both scenarios, you know, like up and down.

[A]

And you know, Shane bros dad, Ross dad, a couple episodes back he talked about that too and he totally hates that. And it's like a silly thing to say. It's like oh yeah, look my test drove $100,000 in profit or whatever annualize this and like I just, I just made you wealthy. And he like totally rails against that. It is just. His point was when it comes to CRO is just like directionally you want to be improving the site. You're like maybe Connor, you remember exactly how he says it, but he's like you're optimizing towards better. Saying like hey, you're making these like quantified impacts to the bottom line of the business or the contribution margin or whatever is silly, but you just want to make sure that you're measuring and pointing yourself towards getting better because then ultimately that like better just changes all the other economics of the business.

[C]

Yeah, I think his, I think his ultimate argument was like keep stacking. You know, RPU wins on top of one another. But the exercise of trying to say well, because we improve conversion rate by this percent and based on this much site traffic and based on this aov, that's an incre. Like he said, that's a useless exercise because so much changes. And to Cody's point like okay, you just improved your, your conversion rate by 14%. Okay. But now because of that you just scale your spend and you basically just scaled back into the same conversion rate. And I think that's what Shane was ultimately getting at is like you can't like apply that to a 12 month outlook on the business because it just doesn't like that's not how these businesses run. They change. There's so much ups and downs that that's just like a invalid way to like look at the results.

[A]

Exactly. Awesome dude. We covered a lot of Ground Good app. All right, thank you again for listening to another episode of Marketing Operators. So we covered how to launch a new channel and we all kind of talked about our playbooks and sort of formula, what we thought was a good strategy. If any comments or questions come up, we've got a link in the show notes that you can submit any questions to. And in a future episode we'll be coming back and answering any good or common questions. So looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you again all, as always to our sponsors Motion Prescient Enrich panel. Make sure to like subscribe and share with your friends. Thanks again.