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- [00:00]
A
Taylor Holiday tweeted recently, Shout out to Ari. You are a true force in nature. It's so rare to see your leader come into an organization with as much force of impact as you have. Incredible to watch. So I saw this and I was just like, I need to learn more, know what she's doing, especially as a competitor.
- [00:14]
B
So I'm a law school dropout, had no hard skills. Then I worked at Poosh, which is Kourtney Kardashian's beauty brand. Then About Face, which is Halsey's beauty brand. Then I spent the last four and a half years leading Sharma Brands as Chief Growth Officer. Now I'm at Salton Stone as Chief Digital Officer.
- [00:28]
C
Amazing.
- [00:29]
B
I feel like it's a brand where you can tell it's going to be much bigger than it is and it's already really big.
- [00:35]
C
What is like one quick hitter rule that you abide by when it comes to all things marketing growth digital?
- [00:41]
B
No copy that. Every single person on the team doesn't know the definition to the word you're about to put in front of customers.
- [00:47]
C
We're talking about media mix. Where are you spending?
- [00:49]
B
It's definitely a paid social heavy brand and we are adding more channels by the month. I'm here. I don't care which channel is responsible as long as it's like, like a top of funnel. New customer is being reached. We're on YouTube, we are on Snap, we're on Applovin, we're Pinterest. Every channel sort of has to sort of every day fight for its own budget. I want to be channel agnostic. I also at some time want to be product agnostic because you can have so many rules and I think you can't decide your hero. The market will tell you.
- [01:23]
C
And before we go deeper here, we want to thank the sponsors. Motion after sell revo prescient enrich panel. Let's get into it. Welcome Back to episode 104 of the Marketing Operators podcast. We have a special guest today, Ari Murray. Ari, how are you doing?
- [01:37]
B
Good. Good to see you.
- [01:38]
C
Yeah, good to see you again. So we want to start this, the show just slightly different today. Right away, I want to kick it over to you and I want to hear what is like one quick hitter rule that you abide by when it comes to all things marketing growth digital.
- [01:52]
B
No copy that. Every single person on the team doesn't know the definition to the word you're about to put in front of customers.
- [01:59]
C
Okay, what's, what's an example of that
- [02:02]
B
verdant is not a word to use. Another example would be like, in saying times, you shouldn't say like pst, you should just say Pacific or pt. Like, just everything should be beyond clear. But verdant, I think is a good example. Not too many, like $4 words.
- [02:28]
C
Is that something that, like, was coming up with your copywriters recently and you're like, hold on, like, I have to Google this. So, like, yeah, a hundred percent.
- [02:35]
B
I. And I am, like, kind of smart at writing. Like, I. I took the ap, I got a five. Like, I know some words and if I don't know the word, if I have to ask Claude, then the answer is we can't use it. And that is of a rule and a hill I'll die on because if I don't get it, they're not going to get it. And no one's going to give us as much time as we'll give ourselves.
- [02:56]
C
I love it. I think that's a great rule. All right, let's. Let's get into it a little bit more here. So real quick, we want to understand your background. I think you, you have a similar background to me and Connor McDonald in the sense that you've got agency background experience, you have in house brand experience. So, yeah, could you run us through your. Just like your, your career to date in digital? Like kind of the real quick checklist?
- [03:17]
B
Yeah. So I'm a law school dropout and then I dropped out, had no hard, hard skills. Became a customer service agent. Then I started to work at a company called Press Juicery, where I ran wholesale and E commerce. Then I worked at Poosh, which is Kourtney Kardashian's beauty brand. Then About Face, which is Halsey's beauty brand. Then I spent the last four and a half years leading Sharma Brands as Chief Growth Officer and now I'm at Salton Stone as Chief Digital Officer. And I also write a newsletter called Go to Million.
- [03:48]
A
And I'm super excited to chat today. Ari. We. We've only met once in person in. In Indy. Jason was there actually, so. So that was fun. But I. I don't know you super well, even though I know we run in a lot of the same circles and I've heard great things. Friend of the pod, Taylor Holiday, even tweeted recently, I guess you guys are working with me. Said, shout out to Ari. You are a true force in nature. It's so rare to see your leader come into an organization with as much force of impact as you have. Incredible to watch. So I saw this And. And this was maybe like a month and a half ago, and I was just like, I need to know. I need. I need to learn more and kind of know what she's doing, especially as a kind of competitor. You know, we're in the. We're in the body space now and stuff like that, so maybe there's some over there. Yeah, would. I'm very excited to chat and learn a little bit more about you.
- [04:31]
B
No, it's good to see you again. I'm, yeah. Really happy to be here.
- [04:35]
C
All right, sweet. So I want to. I want to, like, double click on the. On the agency to brand experience and transition and kind of how those have influenced one another. So I got a bunch of questions on that. I'll start off with this one. So what made you want to go? You were doing growth at Sharma Brands for, I think, over four years, so working on, you know, a lot of brands and growth for a lot of brands, big team. And now you're. You've moved in house to IT for a single brand. So not the first time that you've been in house, obviously, but, I mean, you're at the agency for four years now. You're back in house. So. Yeah. What. What kind of inspired and motivated that move from you to go. Yeah. From the agency to back in house.
- [05:12]
B
I always. Once I found agency life, I really liked it. I liked seeing many brands. I also didn't. I like the feeling of not hitching your wagon to one brand at a time because we've all seen things in our past. Like, sometimes it's hard to be at a brand that changes course or a celebrity gets canceled or whatever it might be. But over the years, I've watched certain brands and, like, felt fallen in love with certain brands. And I've always said to myself, like, I have ideas for that brand or I care more about this client or whatever it might be. And I've always been enthralled in beauty brands, and that's always been, like, the type of clients that I spend the most time with. And so this came up, and it was a perfect fit because I'm a customer. I get it. I love it. And I only wanted to go in house to, like, a real brand brand, and that's what Solemstone is. And I feel like it's also good to have a relationship with that brand for a long time before you go, because then you kind of can hit the ground and understand.
- [06:14]
C
Interesting. So how. How long were you. Have you been a customer of Salt and Stone?
- [06:19]
B
Like, over A year. And then I've been watching them really closely, I'd say for the last, like, two years.
- [06:27]
C
And what were.
- [06:28]
B
It took me a while to buy.
- [06:29]
C
Yeah.
- [06:30]
A
And what.
- [06:30]
C
So, okay, so you are long in the funnel for a long time. Then you finally converted. What. What about Salt and Stone? Really? We'll get into. We'll get into Salt and Stone a little bit later, but, like, just, just to like, hit on that draw for you. Like, so beauty, of course. But I mean, there's a lot of beauty brands, right?
- [06:48]
B
Sure.
- [06:48]
C
What. What about Salt and Stone was like, ooh, like, I like that brand a lot. Like, if that, if an opportunity, like they're going on my short list of. Of brands, like, if they were ever hiring, like a growth leader or a marketing lead, like, I would, I would jump at that. Like, is there anything or a few things that really stand out about that brand that you really like and we're excited about?
- [07:06]
B
Yeah, I feel like it's a brand where you can tell it's going to be much bigger than it is, and it's already really big. And then it's also a brand that, like, in my life, random people would. I'd, like, see it in their counter or influencers that I really liked. They would have it and it wouldn't even be an ad. They would just like, have it and you'd see it and zoom in and I to. There's just like a design point of view that I really resonate with. And the product is really high quality, but also in a category that is a little less noisy, which I also find to be really interesting. So it just feels like you're really early. And then it's also like a Sephora brand, which I've always been enthralled with and I always wanted to experience that.
- [07:53]
D
Motion just dropped their 2026 creative benchmarks report, and it's been getting shared everywhere. Slack channels, LinkedIn, Twitter, sharing it in our private group chats. And it's great because everybody's been asking the same four questions forever. What is normal? How many ads should we actually be shipping? What is a healthy hit rate and which formats really win? The report analyzes over 575,000 creatives from 6,000 advertisers and over a billion dollars in ad spend to answer these exact questions. And the report has some really interesting findings, like the fact that only 4 to 8% of ads actually become winners and over half of ads actually lose. And for Motion customers, this report is especially helpful. You can upload it into your Motion dashboard with a runneth AI chat and compare it directly against your vertical benchmarks. Hit the link in the show notes. I promise you won't regret it. And as always, go to motion app.com and tell the marketing operator sent you.
- [08:45]
C
Very cool. All right, so let's, let's keep going down this like, agency experience and how that's maybe set you up for success in your current role. What would you recommend people? Like, I love, I love my agency background. I think it was really, you know, it's kind of like I, I always liken it to like the, the equivalent of like what I think investment banking's like, where you kind of go there and you, you really grind it out. Like you're working on a lot of different brands. You're, you're working long, long hours, long weeks and it's, it's stressful, it's hard because a lot of times you're like, you know, hitching your, your like happiness to the performance of the brands that you're working on. And like, to a certain extent, you don't always have control over the brands that you're working on. Right. Like, I don't, I'm not the one managing the deal flow, but like, really, really like interesting, fun, cool times looking back on it. So do you first off, like, do you recommend that route? Like, do you recommend the route of going agency to in house and then could you call out any specific advantages of that path if you do recommend it?
- [09:47]
B
I would say I don't recommend. I think agency to in house is an amazing flow, but I actually think that in house to agency to in house is a better flow because it's really hard to actually understand your clients and that pressure and why they care so much if you've never had one brand. That is how you live. And I feel like even to understand sort of the like minutia that comes with working at a brand too, and decks and all these things. And it's just really, I think you can put yourself better into your client's shoes. And then when you go to an agency then you can experience more, learn more, learn more quickly, have more access and then as you go back to a brand. For me, I like knew in going back to a brand I would probably work even harder than I worked at the agency because I know that that like a certain responsibility, the pressure is crazy. And so it's like a pressure of one brand is still like always to me going to feel heavier than okay if this client, you know, doesn't work we have that client. I think it's really hard to like feel as deeply towards more than one brand. So for me it's like you can better get it if you've been inside even at like a different level.
- [11:11]
C
That's, that's a good point. Yeah, that's a very good point. I think looking back, I had, I did, I started at the agency, so I didn't have that in house. And I think you're totally right. Understand the inner workings and like we did, we did ads, you know, we're buy media, doing creative, doing retention, doing analytics. And I remember thinking like, gosh, like we're, we're making these recommendations to them and they just like aren't doing it like on, on parts of the business that we didn't.
- [11:36]
B
That we weren't that on your scope.
- [11:38]
C
Yeah, yeah, that were not in our scope. But we're like, oh, like we, we're, we're noticing CRO issues and like we're making all these what we think are fairly simple recommendations. But in retrospect there's a lot that goes into updating the website, you know, design development, setting up the right testing framework.
- [11:52]
B
Approvals.
- [11:53]
C
Yeah, approvals and, and all that. Yeah. So you're, you're totally right. In retrospect, I'm like, okay, now I now work in a hexcloud. I see it because a lot of these things do take a lot longer than they seem like they might on the surface. And the bigger the brand gets, the, the more approvals and checks and balances there are. So that makes, so you like, you like in house to agency to in house. You think that's the good.
- [12:12]
B
Yeah, I actually like, not even just in house. I like starting in like a really customer facing role. Like I was a customer service agent and that's pretty brutal because you can see the impact of when marketing's not clear or when the site breaks or when you short shift or when things are back ordered and you still sell. Like you can see sort of you have no control over what happened, but you have to clean it up. And I think it also makes you more empathetic to checking your work when you're the marketer who's making it sort of fall from the sky. Because if you switch the SKU by accident in the Shopify setup because you didn't check, like all hell's gonna break loose.
- [12:49]
C
Yeah. So you're saying you have like being in that CS role, you have the most front lines. Look at.
- [12:55]
B
Yeah. You just, you have like I'd say the most pain when there's a mistake. Like everyone has pain when there's a mistake. But like the three of us, if there's a mistake, we know there's a mistake and it like hurts revenue or it hurts. It's not good. But you don't actually have to like hand clean like 3,000 tickets. And I think it like starting more ops role, I think also gives you more of an understanding of the customer because you see customers mad and you're talking to customers one on one.
- [13:23]
C
Right? Yeah, we see the, we see the wins and the losses from the perspective of, yeah, revenues up or efficiency up or wow, look at the one day click roas on this new ad we launched. But you don't. Right, but you don't actually. We often don't see it in the. From the feedback of the customer, good or bad.
- [13:39]
B
Right, right. That's not where you spend like all your time.
- [13:43]
C
So you have this like very strong like connection to the throughput all the way to the end customer, which is ultimately where all brands are. That's the finish line for all brands. Right. Is the impact you're making on a customer.
- [13:53]
B
Right.
- [13:55]
C
So what about. All right, so now, so now that you've been, now that you're back in house, like, are there any. And you've been back at, you're at Salt and Stone for what, six months? So still like relatively.
- [14:03]
B
A little less. Yeah. Really?
- [14:05]
C
Relatively fresh. Yeah. So is there any, like, can you speak to any specific experiences from your first six months that you think you handled better or like drove a better strategy? It could be anything. It could be like literally how you handled like marketing rollout to how you handled like communications internally. Like, is there anything that you think you did better because you were at Sharma Brands for the previous four years that like, you just maybe wouldn't have been able to handle because you didn't have that experience if you weren't there?
- [14:34]
B
I'd say I came in in October and that's obviously setting up for Black Friday and cyber and I think attacking one brand for cyber, no matter what is done or not done, by the time you get in there, it's a lot of work. But I'm used to being awake and watching and on my computer and approving and standing up and keeping track of like, at Sharma Brands, I led every team and every person. So every brand was my responsibility in terms of their cyber. And so it's like, I know how much has to get done and I know how to do it and I know how to, like, systematize it where we can make, you know, 500 ads, where maybe the month before we made way less. Because I just know how to. How to field that.
- [15:25]
C
Yeah. So that checklist of things is just, like, so ingrained. Cause you were doing it for just,
- [15:29]
B
like, the time commitment, too. Because you just know, like, to me, like, Thanksgiving is like, I would never leave my house, not for, like, 20 minutes. And so, like, I think that that, like, feeling that you get from agency of clients on different time zones, clients with different deals, launching in the middle of the night, whatever, knowing all that and being ready for all that, I think it brings, like, a different level of intensity into a brand.
- [15:52]
C
Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I was making my decision to come in house, I think Matt Bartuli actually had tweeted something about, like, cutting. Cutting a whole 1 inch wide, but a mile deep. And that really resonated for me. That's, like, why I came in house. I was like, I wanted to just focus on a single brand. I didn't want to be spread. I didn't want that feeling of being spread thin. So then when you. When you did come in house, and it's like, what I'm hearing from you is you have all the checklists, but now you're only doing it for one brand. So now you can make sure that that checklist is just, like, executed absolutely flawlessly, as opposed to being like, all right, like, this is good enough for brand A and I got to move on to brand B and C and D and E. Right. And. And I think that's. To me, that was very empowering. That was, like, very exciting for me at the time. And it sounds like that's kind of what.
- [16:39]
B
Yeah, it's really fun. And it's like, you can just also demand, like, more output because you have. I've seen in the past how other brands have treated like you just have so much more information coming from agency where you can see 50 brands or 20 brands or however many you have. And I think knowing what's. What is enough to be prepped is also, I think, something that you can better grip that you always could get more.
- [17:04]
C
How many. How many brands did you have your eyes on at. At the, like, in, like, during a Black Friday season? I mean.
- [17:11]
B
Yeah.
- [17:11]
C
How many. How many brands would you be having some level of viewership of or like,
- [17:16]
B
Shopify access to, like.
- [17:18]
C
Or just like, you had. Maybe not necessarily like, how many brands did you have access their Shopify, but how many brands did you have? Did you feel some level of personal responsibility on like, like their strategy or just like oversight on how things are going?
- [17:32]
B
Like up to 30.
- [17:34]
C
Dang. That is crazy.
- [17:36]
B
Yeah, that is crazy. Which is awesome.
- [17:38]
C
You guys also had a big team.
- [17:40]
B
Yeah my a huge team. And different types of brands, different types of services, but like input on what they're going to offer. Like usually around 30
- [17:51]
C
operators. Quick gut check here. Q1 is when everyone realizes the same thing at once. Traffic gets more expensive, growth slows down. So the question isn't how do I drive more demand, it's how do I make more money from the demand I already have. That is exactly why we use After Sell by Rocked. Most brands think upsells are about being aggressive, but they really aren't. They are about timing. And the best time to upsell someone is when they're already in buying mode, which is when it's right after someone buys. So after sell it lets you put the right offer at the right moment with one click. There's no reentering payment info. There's no extra checkout steps. Brands using after sales see around a 30% lift in Aova. And when you're running real volume, that adds up fast. But here's the part most people miss. It's not just upsells that after sell ads. Once you're live, you unlock the entire Rocked monetization suite. Rock thanks monetizes your thank you page with premium non competing offers. Think Disney plus hello Fresh and brands are seeing $0.30 to $0.50 in pure profit per order Rock Pay plus as a clean wallet placement at checkout and kicks back another 10 cents to 15 cents in profit per order without hurting conversion. And in some cases it actually improves conversion. No inventory, no new ads, no operational lift, just margin. This isn't growth hacking, it's just found money. If Q1 is about tightening margins and getting paid more for the traffic you already earned, go to after sell.com/operators, activate Rock thanks or Rock Pay plus and you'll get the full after sales suite free for a year or an extended 60 day trial for post purchase upsells. That's all right. So. So that leads well into the next question because I know you're working with some agencies at Salt and Stone. Like I'm pretty sure you work with Common Thread Collective. You know, my perspective on when and why Branch should work with an agency has been such an evolution over time and it's like, it's very interesting just to like see how you know as brands grow and mature, like certain agencies are really good fit with that brand and then six months later or a year later they might not be. And then, and then two years from now a different agency might be a really good fit. And it's been really interesting to kind of see because I've been a hex bad now it's my fourth year full time, my fifth year working on the brand. So it's been very interesting to see like how that has evolved and changed over time. So I'm curious, like what, what's your perspective on when and why a brand should work with an agency? And then has this changed at all since you've been in house again?
- [20:20]
B
Yeah, it has. I think I'm a big agency fan but you also need to know how to manage your agencies. And I think from being at an agency you like, I know we were better to clients that were nice to us as an example, like just truly like human and nice. And so there's not a nicer client than me because I would never treat anyone because it's not even just because I'm like trying to be a good person, but it's just truly inefficient to be the bad client. And so I think for me, I'm a big fan of agencies. I'm a big fan of specialized agencies that are also performance incentivized, which I think can be tricky because you obviously can overpay that way. But I would rather not have a sort of output retainer versus a like output plus sweetener. And so I think it depends. But yeah, we, we rely on so many different types of agencies but also we don't put too much power into anyone else's hands because there's only like so much that an agency is going to care about your brand and then also so much context that they can have. So big agency fan, big fan of switching agencies, big fan of many creative agencies that launch once as an example. But like the agency isn't like doing all the things in their scope as the only person doing it. Like we're also like asking to like spend like 700 more dollars on like this one ad and looking at it and talking.
- [21:49]
C
Right. You're not, it's not like a 100% download.
- [21:53]
B
Yeah. And I think at Sharma Brands, so many of our brands just gave the keys and I don't recommend that. I think, yeah, like to your point about, at an agency you could recommend some CRO changes and they'll never get done. Like I think there has to be ownership on both sides but the brand has to be more responsible and you have to set it up that way.
- [22:12]
C
Totally. Yeah. I think, you know, you mentioned Sharma Brands. I think because we work together at Sharma Brands for a while and like, we had a very evolving scope of work over time as our needs changed. And yeah, like, created like ad production was one of those things, right. Where you guys did produce, like Sharma Brands did produce ad creative for us, but it wasn't like you guys had 100% ownership of the ad creative.
- [22:34]
B
Like, you had such an opinion, you had your own tracking against it. You had your own, like, iterations you were trying to make to beat us, which I also think is healthy. And then you had your own ad styles that we were never going to touch that you wanted to take in house or to a different partner. And I think that's also healthy where over time maybe we were like a bigger piece of that puzzle. And then you start to test other people or bring it in house. And the whole point is to just get everyone producing their best. So it was evolving, but also because you guys were so on it.
- [23:09]
C
Yeah. And that's not bad, right? I think that's like the thing.
- [23:11]
B
I think it's good.
- [23:12]
C
It's good, right? And it's like it's not, it's not a knock. Like if, if you're an agency or you're a brand and you're working with an agency and at like one moment in time, it's a great fit. But then eventually it's not. Like, that's not bad. Like, that's, that's probably even a good thing because that means the, the brand created a better competency. Because I think that, I think brands should own their, their core competencies. Like, if you are a, like a paid, social, driven brand, like, I don't think you should have all that outsourced to agencies because at that point you're just, you're giving up too much control over. So like, if you're like, you should probably have media buying in house, you should probably have some level of like create a production flywheel in house. You should probably be able to produce and design landing PA house. Like, if that is your core competency, that's. You probably need to own that. Whereas what's a good example, if it's not like there are certain things that it just won't make sense for you to own in house. Like we like super bowl ad. Right. That.
- [24:09]
A
I was going to say TV buying.
- [24:11]
C
Yeah, TV buying. Right. Like, I'm probably not going to go hire someone like a, like a trade desk buyer, maybe at Some point I will. As that becomes a bigger part of our mix or like another great.
- [24:21]
B
Like in hiring, you could get someone as amazing and like the best of the best in that one thing. Like, it only makes sense to bring it in house if you're going to pay for and get the person you really, really want to do it.
- [24:35]
C
Right. Right.
- [24:36]
A
Yeah. And if you're going to consider that one of your core skill sets, if, like, yeah, you know, like when Jones launched, like, media buying was more important and I was like, hey, we're always going to do that internally. It's just like, it's super important. We have outsourced a lot of creative and I think no matter what, you always need to outsource creative. Like, you cannot just do it internally. It's just not possible. But I think one of the changes we're making is we've gone heavily on agency for creative and we're trying to build that flywheel much better internally because it's just. Is that important and we, and we need to do it. You know, I don't necessarily want to manage a dev team, you know, so we don't, we don't need that, even though that is something that's important. So. Yeah, I, I totally agree about that.
- [25:17]
C
Another example I have at Hexclad is our, our website function. Like, we, we worked with Van Group and I have like, they did a fantastic job in 2022. I think on. They did a full, like, full website redesign and, and redevelopment. Like, very different. We went from like a templated.
- [25:37]
B
Yeah. Kind of copy and there was the flame. Like, I was there right before Jason's like, oh, we're gonna have the best new website. And then we saw it. I was like, yeah, yeah, it is.
- [25:45]
C
Yeah. And it was great. And like, they, they crushed it. They. It like really looked great. They. They did a split test on it. It converted better than the previous website. But then over time we're like, well, web is such an important function for us. We have new brand experiences. We're always creating new brand activations. I was creating experiences with. We are always trying to optimize the conversion rate and AOV and RPU performance. We have a fairly robust CRO program. We're designing a bunch of new landing pages to optimize our paid media stack. At the time, though, like, we didn't have any UX designers. Like, we were. It was a totally, like, we just did not own that function. But, but again, over time we were saying, you know what, we are doing enough things on the website over and over and over again that we should have our own UX designers. Like we should own this function more so now. Like in 2022 we didn't have any of that. Now we have, I had a website, we have a director of, of web, we have two UX designers, we have a director CRO. Like we've slow and like we still work with an group for certain things but we've brought that function in house because that is so core to hexclad and what we do to sell our products online. Again that's not a knock on fan group. It's just us recognizing hey, what's core?
- [26:55]
B
You still work with them because for the things that they're best at, you'll always want them or someone else.
- [27:01]
C
Right? Exactly, exactly. So I think that's how I, that's how I frame it up. We still work with a ton of agencies to this day. I'm sure some of those who won't work within a year and I'm sure a year from now will have new agencies serving functions that we don't own internally or we kind of own internally but want some support or we don't own it internally now but eventually we might. And like that's, there's just so many different like yeah. Phases of when it makes sense or doesn't make sense to, to work with an agency.
- [27:29]
A
It's also like strategic sometimes. I mean maybe it's not always strategic but I think like it can be. It's like hey, we're in this phase right now. Our org is shifting, right. Or we're always growing and restructuring. We're going to go with an agency for six months. Like we just launched TikTok shop. So I'm like, hey, let's go with an agency, we'll sign a six month deal. Like I don't have the ability to hire somebody internally and I want to learn from them. At a certain point maybe their fee gets too high, maybe the program gets big enough where now we can invest in it and we can kind of build the team but you know, it's, you can pay a five to ten grand retainer, you know, for, for a little bit and get kind of the resources you need because you need multiple people to run a program and maybe it's not a big enough channel for us to have you know, that team internally. And so you kind of want it fractionalized but then as it grows it's like, all right, this is becoming a behemoth. We want to invest in it and we Think it'll be better to do it internally. So always think about it that way as well. It's not like a black or white.
- [28:18]
B
Something I'm also scared of is for TikTok shop as an example too. If you do in house it then what about the fact that your team only knows your brand? Like I'm always scared that by in housing we lose access. Because the best part about working with an agency that sees really good brands is that they have really good data and really good understanding of other ways to do it. And I think the longer everyone sits at the same brand and sits with each other, the harder it is to hear from the outside world as to what's working. So I think like the more even maybe you bring it in hospital you keep like some sort of an advisor or you have a friend that you share with or whatever it might be. But I'm always scared that I like become insulated and I can even feel that in six months that I. I know like a little less about new software. I know a little less about like setting up new ad account. Like, like some of the things that I used to be really like the one to know. I. If I also. If it's like a channel that I no longer play in, I know nothing about it now and it like if we ever played in it, I would be a year behind, two years behind, however long.
- [29:30]
A
I love that. I think so much value. Yeah, I think more brands should think about that. I think I remember like talking to like Connor and Sean early and like Ridge used to do it that way they would have like, you know, internal media buyers but they'd have somebody on retainer who's just like popping in the ad account once a month or something like that. Like there's so much value in that and just getting an outsider perspective. I highly recommend it and like setting some side, some budget aside for that and just getting some fresh ideas in and then even if they're not executing, you know, so it's more of like a advisory.
- [30:00]
B
Yeah. Better that they're not because then they can go, they can be like, look, you want someone who's like looking at a lot of things and that person is hopefully like not actually touching too many brands because they wouldn't have a ton.
- [30:11]
A
Yeah. And then I'm also a big fan of just, just connecting, you know, teams with other other teams. So I don't know if you guys do that a lot but like my growth team is like now talking to like runes like every day and I was joking With Connor the other day like every like counterpoint at Jones Road is talking to like the counterpoint at at Grooms and it's just like it's cool because like oh like we're struggling with this. I wonder what they would do. Let me go reach out and just like having a few kind of like friends of the brand, like brands that, that your team can reach out to. Do you guys do that at all?
- [30:38]
B
Kind of. And I think because I come from agency too, a lot of my friends from the agency have like gone and moved on and we're all in really different categories I think. Yeah. To have like a friendly like groons and Jones Road different customer but like
- [30:50]
A
well we're launching gummies soon so.
- [30:52]
B
Oh, good for you. Yeah. Beauty gummies for yourself.
- [30:55]
A
Exactly.
- [30:56]
B
But no, I think, I think like the more non competitive then the more information you can really share and then the more help you can really get. But yeah, when I was looking for a new creative agency I asked my friend who is at Hollow which is like couldn't be less similar to solid study if we tried. But it's like she's going to know and. And we ended up bringing on one of our agencies.
- [31:18]
A
I'm curious who you, who you went with offline. I'll tell you, always, always on the search for something good.
- [31:25]
C
Yeah. I think there's also like groups like Andrew Foxwell, like Foxwell Founders. I think it's a really awesome resource for in house. Yeah, in house marketers. You know Bar hosts this event called DT Ski in Aspen Colorado every year and like there's this slack group chat that like stays pretty active throughout the year. So I found that those have become. Because you're totally right, you don't have as much ecosystem knowledge. But you know, as, as we're sitting here talking about this and I'm thinking about all of like our core functions at Hexclad. I think every single one probably had some level of either external freelancer or agency support at some point. Like, like Influencer is a huge one for us where we like developed the seating program with aligned growth for like two, three years and over time we brought it in house and like we've carried that momentum internally but like they were very instrumental in helping get it set up. Same thing with TikTok shop. Like we worked with freelancers on getting that going and now we do that internally. So it's to your. I think Cody, you call something out really, really well that I think it's important for both in house marketers to Know and, and agency founders, I think agency founders need to understand like the life cycle as well of like their relationship. But there's probably no better reason to go activate with an agency that has a very specific focus than to learn from them and really get that knowledge for yourself and then internalize it from a brand. And that's not like, and that's less like extracting all the value you can from working with the agency. I don't think that's like a shady or sketchy thing to do in any way. And I think agency owners know that.
- [32:59]
A
So I think you should be transparent about it. Like I'm transparent about it when we bring on an agency and I'm like, hey, I want to bring you on to start. I plan to bring this internally and I want to learn from you as much as possible and like the right partner is going to be a good partner and they're like cool and like they'll kind of take you along. I don't think you should be trying, you know, you obviously can't poach their team and stuff like that. But I think you should be transparent about it from the beginning and then vice versa. Like you know, we're hiring director of like they're also like, like I already said you need both. You can't just have a full function at a, you know, at a nine figure business, just externally. So like we're hiring a director, influencer and affiliate right now. But you know, being honest with Super Bloom, the, the influencer agency we love, it's like, hey, this is how we see the program evolving over time. Like we, we love working with you guys. You guys bring the value. We always want to. Like we need one person to own the relationship and strategy. But like also we plan to do these parts internally and we plan to do these things with you guys. So I just think being transparent about it from as early as you can be is really important.
- [33:53]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:53]
B
And I think too that transparency from the agency side too, maybe you're transparent to the person who sold you that deal or like the owner of that agency. But when I find out something like that, that like, hey, this brand's going to come to us as an agency for six months, we're going to kill it for them and then they're going to like take what we like. I will tell my team that from the beginning because I also feel like it's so demoralizing if someone is killing themselves to work on a brand and then they turn you don't tell them the reason why and everyone knew. Like, I think you can see a lot of that information withheld because maybe at an agency people don't want to demotivate their team or whatever it might be. But it's like you're, your team's not going to also like come correct. They're going to be guarded. They're going to not like tell. They're going to try to sort of set it up in a way that we all know it's not true. And I think that's a big lesson to agency too, because a lot of that like churn then can be passed to the person who's responsible for the account. It's not their fault. It was like set up that way. So I think just everyone needs to get aligned and, and that's where the performance incentives come in too, because maybe then the agency can stay on in like a specific way and like keep trying to earn their keep.
- [35:03]
C
Yeah, Cody, that was something that stuck out to me. I remember like maybe a year ago or half a year ago, you hit me up like, hey, you know, I'm looking for a media buyer and, and you asked me about who we were working with and I think you ended up working with this person, Mike. But you were like, hey, this isn't going to be the long term solution. And you, and you let him know right away. And like, I actually followed up. I'm like, oh, you're still working on that? Like, I kind of say, oh, no. Like they, they brought it in house. Like that was the expectation. And like this like the relationship was so great and like everything and it was like it really, it just had that expectation set from the beginning and you know, he had nothing but like a good, you know, good things to say and a good experience because you were like, hey, we want to work with you, but only for probably like six months. And like, here's our long term plan. And yeah, just not enough people like do that.
- [35:48]
B
Honest, you know?
- [35:49]
C
Yeah, exactly. Or, or just. I don't even think that it's. It's. I don't think it's. I mean, I'm sure sometimes it comes from a place of dishonesty, but I think sometimes it also just comes from a place of what? I don't, maybe ignorance is maybe the word, but just like not forward thinking to be like, oh, I didn't like, just not proactive communication, you know, it's, it's not even that they're trying to be dishonest with the person as much as, oh, they're super busy and they, they like for God to communicate that.
- [36:15]
B
And now it's, I think you're nicer than me. I think people, like, maybe try to make people super bought in and then this was always like the grand plan. I think so, yeah, I've seen that. Yeah.
- [36:25]
A
I think I, I think people are not willing. And this is a skill that I work hard on and I've gotten better at because I wasn't willing to have hard conversations. And it's like, I won't say I follow radical candor, but, like, I believe in it, which is like, not being upfront with people is actually not an. It's not nice. It's like, it's something that, like, the, the person does because they feel like it's hard to do, but it's almost a little selfish. And it's actually like a kinder thing to do to be transparent. Like, it's not mean. Like, it's. To me, it's like a thing to do to like, do it behind somebody's back and then just like surprise them.
- [36:58]
B
Yeah.
- [36:59]
A
So same thing. Whether it's a partner, whether it's an agency, whether it's a team member. Like, I just think part of, you know, like, I know we normally talk about marketing, but like, if we're going to talk about leadership a little bit, it's just part of it is just being transparent. It's just like, hey, this is something I think you're really good at. This is something that's not going accordingly. Like, I'm going to split this out from your function or even like when somebody gets hired, like, hey, I'm going to have you work on these things and oversee these as we grow. It's going to become too much. I'm going to split these out and just like, the more you can set those expectations ahead of time. Again, whether it's an agency, whether it's a team member, the better it is and there won't be any surprises. But it's, you know, no one likes to just be, you know, think things are going great and then at last minute, it's just like, oh, actually we're going to bring this in house. You guys are crushing it. But we're going to bring it in house and we're not really going to tell you why.
- [37:42]
B
I totally agree.
- [37:45]
A
And I'm sure you've had that happen.
- [37:46]
B
Oh, like, you wake up to like, just some. Like, I am like, oh, wait, we like overdelivered by a million dollars and we're fired. I'm like, this is a Shock. So, no, it's, it's definitely like, I got both sides. But I think the reason, at least on the agency game, people aren't honest is that they think they're going to demotivate their agency. But I think that they might if they don't, like, set it up for everyone to win for like the short amount of time that everyone's together. So I don't know. No right way to do it, but just I feel like agencies, you see some crazy behavior.
- [38:25]
D
All right, this episode is brought to you by beloved sponsor Revo. What is Revo? They are a retention platform for Shopify plus customers. They do accounts, loyalty, referrals, membership, cashback, wallet passes, and so much more. Stuart Cheney is the founder. He's very public on Twitter, building best in class retention features, powered by AI, quicker and with higher quality than anybody else in the business. We are lucky to have them as a sponsor. Revo is working with some of the best brands in DTC like Ridge, Hexclad, True Classic, Dr. Squatch, Portland Leather, Fenty Beauty, and hundreds more that are on Shopify plus and want to provide better experiences for their customers. I think retention is going to be a huge trend in 2026 and beyond. All the effort that we put into incrementality and acquisition will eventually get diverted to retention so that we can continue driving incremental sales. And Revo as an account solution will play a big part in that. If you want to become a Revo customer, go to Revo IO. And right now, all Shopify plus brands get wallet passes 100% free on the platform. Tell the marketing operator sent you.
- [39:25]
C
All right, sweet. So that was, that was an awesome deep dive on the whole, like agency, brand in house relationship and how they've kind of played into one another. So I want to transition now into your current role at Salton Stone. So before we get into the fun stuff, which is like, what are the strategies, the tactics, the channels, like the KPIs, all that stuff that our audience cares about. Can you just talk, tell us a little bit more about Salt and Stone? Like, what are the products? What are your kind of hero skus? Like, who is your customer? Yeah, can you just like give us like the lay of the land?
- [39:55]
B
Yeah, it's a unisex brand that's in body. So we sell deodorant as our hero. We have body wash, we have mist, which is for body and for hair, and then subcategories like body cream, body oil, body lotion, hand cream. But it's all Body care, iconic scents and active formulas is the little catchphrase. And it's sold at Sephora globally, sold on Amazon really heavily. And then home base is the D2C and what's.
- [40:27]
C
Yeah, what is the. So distribution channels. Yeah, can you speak to. Yeah, so you just said Amazon.com, sephora. Can you speak like what can you say about Mix there in terms of sales and distribution?
- [40:41]
B
Yeah, so the brand is like big everywhere, which is always my favorite type of brand. And we're also on TikTok shop, we're also at Nordstrom, there are some indie doors. And then the D2C sells in Canada. In the UK, Sephora is just launched in the EU and also has a big presence in Nordstrom America. Canada is a big channel. So I think, I can't say like the most honestly, but I would say that it's, you know, growing really quickly and new categories are really exciting and it's definitely a scent powered brand where we're really known for our fragrances and for just how amazing each of these products smells. And my favorite is the saffron and cedar. But everyone sort of has their fighter and discovery sets are how many people meet the brand. So discovery sets for deodorant, for body wash, for body mist and that's a good like acquisition play.
- [41:34]
C
Yeah. Yes. I want to, I want to like go one level deeper and I want to talk about acquisition first and then I want to talk about retention because I imagine you guys have like a, you know, probably a big LTV play here and attracting a lot of value over time. So first off, what's your like, what are your acquisition offers? Like what are like what funnels do you guys have built? Is it, is that a single funnel around a single like entry point into the brand? Do you have multiple in parallel kind. You tell us kind of how you're.
- [42:03]
B
Yeah.
- [42:04]
C
What are those offers and like what are the funnels like the channel funnels look like?
- [42:08]
B
Yeah. So that's a non discount brand, which Jones wrote is also in this way where we go on sale once a year only for Black Friday. And so everything we do is value based and we have the gift for purchase, which is I'd say like our only driver into sort of like bigger orders. But there's luckily like many product funnels that people meet the brand on. And it depends also if you're a man or a woman, if you're 50 or if you're 20, if you met us first in Sephora or on Amazon, like there's a Ton of nuance to it. But I like the brand and I've always seen the brand as like having so much room because there's not a single product that works best for acquisition, which I think is a really good place to be because you can then like have different tams for different, you know, like types of customers. And it's definitely like multi generational usage which I think is great. And maybe I buy it and my husband uses it and helps our household and I think that like it's meant to be fully unisexual.
- [43:13]
C
And what does that split look like on like male, female?
- [43:18]
B
It depends on like how you, how you look at it. But some of our reporting it says it's like really even and then a lot of it too is the woman buying. So it depends per channel but. And obviously Sephora is going to have like a really female customer. But over time I think the brand ebbs and flows also depending on what's launching.
- [43:38]
C
Got it. So what is that? Do you have like a, like a primary entry SKU or. It's like the majority of our first orders are coming in on, on this SKU and like we know that's the, the best SKU from like.
- [43:51]
B
Yeah, yeah, anything that's a set. So like, because for D2C it's going to be like, you know, like a certain order value that we're going for. There's. All the ad creatives are typically focused on discovery sets or on full size sets that are kitted and meant to be used as a full body routine. But most of the messaging is speaking either to a single scent or a single product. But then where that lands is often a discovery version of that product because it's really hard to sell fragrance online. To sell like I don't know what something smells like till I smell it. And so we let everyone sort of experience and try a Mini of what they're going to go buy.
- [44:33]
A
Are you and are you looking at, at like cocktail tv? I'll tell you like our journey. But like are you willing to take less margin on a, on a Mini because you think that there's just like more total addressable market or, or better retention on those?
- [44:47]
B
No, honestly, it's meant like we still are working hard on the first order AOB and like each of the Minis are kitted together so we don't sell like a single Mini. Um, so it's definitely the game is trying to get the customer to try as many categories at once so that they can fall in love with the routine. So it's optimized for a bigger first order, which I think is a good place to be because you can meet the customer, like get them to like all of what they've gotten or they fall in love and hear out something by themselves.
- [45:26]
A
Yeah. So we do things very similarly. We've always optimized. We're a bootstrap brand so we always like to be profitable on first purchase. So we've optimized AOV as high as possible on first order and not really looked at like cocktail tv. We have like, we have found the same that cross category shoppers correlates well with ltv and then also kits as well. So we've done heavy kits for acquisition, also just high AOV correlates to LTV for us. But we have always tried to just maximize the AOV and the profit on per session and I think that was great for us for a long period of time. And as acquisition has gotten more challenging, I think we are actually going a little bit in the other direction to the point of trials and samples.
- [46:09]
B
But on that too. I think Jones road was only D2C for so long and that worked so well for D2C. And then now that you're a TikTok shop or wherever else you decide to go, I think you can't have like a 91st order on every channel and expect to win.
- [46:26]
A
No, no, exactly. But I also don't think we can on D2C like I like. So we, for example, last week we launched Mini Miracle Bombs Evergreen because we, you know, didn't like to discount. So we did that twice a year as our like Black Friday Memorial Day lover. And now we're like, hey, we're just doing it everywhere. Like we were willing to take less margin, right. Minis, we're going to have worse margin, lower aova. Um, but we think it'll be a long term thing for a. Our margins are still plenty good in beauty where even if it's slightly worse, the, the, the TAM increase will improve that, right? Yeah, we just dropped, we tested this but we dropped our free shipping threshold from 85 bucks to 55.
- [46:59]
B
That's a big change.
- [47:00]
A
So we're. Big change. But we tested it. Good lift. Actually like better revenue per session than I expected. Like really didn't budge much. But we think just it increases our surface area for tam. Um, and then I don't know, this will, this will maybe be shocking to you, but for maybe for like some people do, we've never done samples. I'm curious if you guys have done. So we have like multi, multi six figure investments and samples this year. I mean so that's part of TikTok shop. Right? We have like a $40 AOV on that right now. But just, it's just really, the philosophy is just like you said, how do we get it in everybody's hand? Like I don't want to say we've, we think we've reached everybody who's willing to spend 90 bucks from a Facebook ad, but it feels like we have. And so now it's like how do we, how do we get to colder audiences and trial? So we'll experiment with, we'll do minis, we'll, we'll expand channels. We're doing a lot of in person stuff. Right. Because we're not in. Part of it is I did a certain, you know, a lot of customer surveying last year and a lot of them, especially millennials were like Sephora is how I try products and I'm just, you know, not willing to spend that. So it's like, all right, I was always too cheap about samples before. I'm like, you know, the moqs are pretty big. But I'm like, we're missing, we don't want to be Sephora, but we are missing out on so much discovery, so much trial that a, we have to expand our own retail stores really quickly. But also like let's take some pretty big investments into sampling and a lot of experiential stuff.
- [48:17]
B
Yeah, and I think the sampling too, it can look like really different depending on what product you're trying to get in hand. But I'm not a big fan of putting like a free sachet into existing orders and not like getting credit credit for that on the site too. Like I think the best way to sample is to be promotional about it and to make sure that the sample's big enough to have value that then it can also be used to like entice your better customer like five bucks higher, whatever you're going to try.
- [48:48]
A
Why is that? You don't think they value it if it's.
- [48:51]
B
Yeah, I mean I, I used to work in, in colored beauty so at about vase it's like a cosmetics brands like really different customer than Jones Road but like you know, 50 shades in the lipstick and I never unders like for me as a Sephora like die hard shopper, even back then I never understood why we would drop like 15 cent items into orders because a random shade dropped in that has no explanation isn't gonna make me go buy that thing. I think a sample should be a mini and there's less of them to give out. But I'm not a big fan of like, every order should have little trinkets with it because also from the Sephora shopping experience, I never even try many of the things dropped into my order. So I'd rather it be like an actual gift.
- [49:38]
A
Do you try to measure any lift to your D2C or whatever from Sephora samples?
- [49:44]
B
Not from Sephora samples, but, like, even just from working with other brands. Like, I think every sampling program needs to have some sort of a measurement so you're at least like seeing if people are even coming back for the thing that they tried. So I think wherever you can unlock actual, like, you need to see a lift in like, okay, we dropped, I don't know, spatulas on Hunter's side, like into these orders. Like, they better come back for spoons. Like at least some better degree.
- [50:15]
A
Yeah, for sure. We are certainly testing it. We're running holdouts on site. If we're doing it either as a GWP or we're doing it as just more of a surprise and delight. We're running holdouts for those ones. We're doing GWP swaps where I feel like that stuff is always hard to measure. Like, because we don't discount, we're not. We don't get a lot of like, code redemption. And so some of that stuff has been challenging to measure and not, you know, totally single lift. Not sure exactly how we're going to measure lab. Like the exclusive experiential stuff, especially a lot of it will be like our retail store focused. So I'm not sure. But one thing we did see is when we had, we had like a fragrance sample and then we did a direct mail to them that was like our most incremental segment that we've ever done. Just, you know, people that get that, get that sample. So I definitely think that there is a lot of value and obviously, as you said, so I'm excited to do a lot, but I'm happy.
- [51:04]
B
But for the gwp, I think that you can apply it with a code and I think that there's like a lot of, at least from email, a lot of understanding of, like, which GW ps can move the needle. When you, like, don't actually just like preload it into the card and you make people jump for it.
- [51:20]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I just don't think you'll get the same redemption, especially if it's above a thousand.
- [51:24]
B
You won't.
- [51:24]
A
Yeah. So it won't show good value. How do you think about GW? P.S. are there specific ones you've tried to do or seen at Lyft? Like, do you like products that people can get or you think that devalues it and you like something that's more of like a, like a merch or something?
- [51:37]
B
I think it's forever in progress for me. I think the closer it can be into your category, the more it makes sense. So if you have a bigger range, I'd rather not give away free hats. If I'm a protein bar brand. Like, I just don't think that that matters. But it, I think it can matter depending on time of year and also if the brand is becoming iconic. So I wouldn't want to wear a hat from my favorite protein bar brand, but I might wear a hat from seed or from like a brand that I feel closer to. So I think if your brand is not a brand yet, then branded merch is like not gonna move it and rather give someone a better flavor or new sample.
- [52:19]
A
Makes sense. Connor McDonald is not here. He would definitely wear a David Barr hat, I'm sure of that.
- [52:24]
C
Yes, he would totally see what if you're still making budget decisions based on platform dashboards, you're not optimizing, you're gambling. This episode is brought to you by Pression AI, the measurement and forecasting platform built for scaling omnichannel brands. Because here's the problem. Attribution tells a story that's convenient, but not always the story that's true. Your best campaigns, they don't just drive direct conversions. They create ripple effects. They lift branded search, they drive organic traffic, direct traffic, and ultimately they improve performance across your entire funnel. Pression is built to capture the full impact of your marketing, including delayed conversions, cross channel effects, and the long tail performance that keeps working even after you stop spending. Repression really changes. The game is forecasting because the real question isn't what worked last month. The real questions are what happens if we scale this campaign by 10%? Are we already saturated or is there still an efficiency pocket we're missing? If we cut spend, will performance hold or will it collapse? And are we balancing top of funnel and bottom of funnel the right way or starving one side of the system with prescient? You can forecast at the campaign level, model different spend scenarios and understand real relationship between spend and outcomes. So you stop wasting budget on outdated assumptions. Because a dollar in December is not the same as a dollar in August. So instead of defending your numbers in a budget meeting, you can walk in with a plan and if you're ready to stop guessing and start forecasting visitors pression AI like GPS for performance marketers. What about. So you kind of hit on this, but I want to dig into a little bit more. So you guys have. So you're really focused on these like bundling on your first order to drive up that first order AOV discovery set, letting people try a bunch of stuff. Cody is a similar first order merchandising strategy. And then how do you think about like your body wash? You have the fragrances, you have the deodorants. So how are you thinking about
- [54:20]
D
media
- [54:21]
C
mix but not in the sense of like channel media mix, which I do want to get into, but media mix in the sense of offer media mix. Like like what percent of your of your acquisition stack is going towards like deodorant versus versus sense versus body washing. How are you guys like do you have funnels built around all those, those different like entry points? And then how are you thinking about the mix for all them?
- [54:44]
B
I think it depends. But what I'd say is there's funnels against all and what matters and what we're tracking and what like fundamentally is whatever is efficient should be scaling. And so it's not that we. I need to spend a certain amount of money per product and I worked with a brand last year that sold different like devices. So like red light hats, red light masks. And that was a different strategy. They had really different margins for each of those products and goals and CAC targets. But if your CAC target is blended across the whole D to C, then I think day over day, month over month. The mix will change depending on time of year, depending on which ad is working, depending on if some influencer is really popping off. And I think if you're too strict on we need to spend X amount on Y, you can not scale something that is actually like in its moment and succeeding because you're like diverting budget out. I don't know how you guys do it too, but that's sort of my philosophy is like we have business goals and it's like the same way. I want to be channel agnostic. I also at some time want to be product agnostic because you can have so many rules.
- [55:56]
C
Well, this is this. The reason I ask is because Connor spent like Connor and I spent probably 40 minutes talking about this in the most recent episode that we did when it was just him and I because we look at it, I look at it in two ways. You have like the blended business unit. Like, so knives, for example, like, what is our first order revenue in knives? How much are we spending on knives ads? And like what's the aimer on knives? Like, that's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is like, what you already said is at the ad level, like which ads are driving the most spend and efficiency? Because even, even, let's say the, let's say the blended business unit is unprofitable. Let's say you're running like a 1x mer or a mer. They're a silly world where if, if, if your ads in that category are your best performing. If let's say that those ads have a 20% higher efficiency than the rest of the account. Like, I'm of the opinion that you should allocate more dollars into those ads because they are your best performing ads. Even though the blended business unit isn't looking good, ideally they both look good. Right? Ideally you have an aimer that's super profitable and the ads are really good and you're like two big bold check marks. And that's kind of our checklist. When we're like we do bi weekly paid media meetings or that's one of the things we review. And those are the two things we're looking at. Like what is the category performing at in North Beam that has the blended business unit? And then we make spend decisions based on that. Ideally they both point you in the same direction, but I'm of the opinion that like if the blended business unit isn't good, but the ads look really great, like you want to put more dollars into your ads that are the most efficient because that's optimizing the, the account as a whole. So that, that's how we look at it. It sounds like, you know, you kind of have a, and it's changing over time, right? Like, yeah, to your point, like certain products more season. Like our cocktail shaker crushed in December and we really scaled it up and now we scaled it back down. It's not like we put it to zero, but we're, we're letting the North Beam data indicate.
- [57:47]
B
Right. And if the cocktail shaker accidentally is having an amazing march, you're gonna not like ignore that. I think. No, you do have to pay close attention because you don't also want to let inventory sit or like blow your forecast. And you don't want to get, you don't want to also over index over too long in a product that maybe has a little repeat or that isn't where you think the better journey is but also if the market is telling you that something is working, you're gonna be wasting spend to like correct that behavior. And I think when I worked with that beauty brand before I went to Sharma Brands, when we launched like 90% of the inventory was bought against the foundations and the facial face products. And that was the hero. That's what the brand decided was the hero. And then nobody bought it. Everyone wanted to buy the eye makeup. And I think you can't decide your hero. The market will tell you too 100%.
- [58:42]
C
And that's also like we've been shocked at some of the ads that have done well where like the content team's like, hey, we're going to cut together this, this ad because like we had all the footage for it and I was like, okay, like we'll run it. And then you like, like a good example is this like outdoor cooking spot that we cut together last year and it's like a bunch of niche products that aren't our hero acquisition products. I'm like, yeah, like what's the ad? Looks great, let's run it. And sure enough, like it performed as well, if not better than a lot of our evergreen ads. So I think you need to be open to having your mind change about what are your like true like paid media products that you're promoting. And ours have definitely, have definitely changed over time based on tests that we ran and the data that we got back. So can we talk, I want to talk about, I want to talk about media mix. Yeah, like where are you spending? Like what is, what is, what does your channel mix look like and what, whether you can or can't speak to specific percentages. If you, whatever you could tell us in terms of like, you know, general context of size of channels relative to one another.
- [59:44]
B
Yeah. So it's definitely a paid social heavy brand and we are adding more channels by the month. I'm here so I think that like I'm very much of the belief that I don't the same point. I don't care what product is spending for the most part. I also don't care which channel is responsible as long as it's like a top of funnel new customer is being reached. So certain channels have different goals. But we're on Meta, we're on TikTok, we're on Google, we're on like spending a lot of time focused on YouTube, we are on Snap, we're on Applovin, we're Pinterest, you know, like the whole nine. I think I believe a lot in podcasting. We haven't tried ctv, which I'm very interested in, and I think every channel sort of has to sort of every day fight for its own budget. And we have different priorities. But as long as new customer is like growing and as long as like sessions are growing and as long as our top of funnel budget is like blended in the way that we need, it really doesn't matter to me where we're spending and.
- [60:52]
C
Right.
- [60:53]
B
None of our agencies are incentivized, at least on the paid side. We don't at all focus on percentage of spend. And so it's really just every day we set new targets depending on what we see. But what channels are. I guess, like, there's not that many other channels I'm thinking about to add, but it's because we're like pretty well covered.
- [61:12]
C
I would say you're pretty diverse already. Yeah. Yeah.
- [61:15]
B
But a lot of those are new and a lot of them have again, like different targets.
- [61:20]
C
Yep. I think you hit on something that I've been, I've been bringing up on this show a lot, and I think it's an undervalued metric, especially for brands that are at scale. Like, I think all three of our brands are, which is just session growth and new user growth. Like, I track that religiously and I get really, really nervous and sweaty when I start to see my session growth stall or, or decrease. And my, especially my new user growth, we're very, we're very first order driven. So that's. I, I like that you're focused on that. Like, how, how are you thinking about that metric? How often are you looking at it?
- [61:57]
B
Every day. I think that's like the, the biggest change that I came in and decided is like, we need to open up top of funnel. We need to actually like take a longer view on this. And then especially because I started in October and then pre Black Friday, like the sessions correlated so much with like future impact. And I think being able to like prove that pretty quickly is now like a fundamental change in the business. But like, I think every channel again has like different pressures on sessions and we have like different exclusions depending on the full business. But every day, like, if sessions are not even like growing week over week, I'm getting concerned because we're trying to scale every week. So you just need to like really pay close attention. And I think even when adding a channel like Afflobin2, where new customers and always as friendly, it's like, okay, we're adding that, but Then like what are we adding next to it to balance
- [63:04]
A
one of the things so 100% agreed. The things that I would even take it a 7 on is organic session growth. That's my marketing team especially like brand teams like main KPI. So it's not just like paid growth but like you know I think Jake who we had on calls it like baseline but like anything that's like not directly from a paid channel. So is it like any type of like direct organic like growth growth of that more. Just like more people searching for the brand is a good thing A hundred
- [63:28]
B
percent and it shows that like the brand is actually like getting good value out of the offline activities here.
- [63:35]
A
You guys, you guys do any decent amount of out of home. I am two things I'm pumped about. I'm, I'm bullish on it. So we have a launch next month and we're doing like a like a six figure buy and we'll run a house test and house is now getting like mid funnel testing and so we will see even like is it driving site searches? Because for example like last year we did a house test and like it was the only channel that was 100% of the incremental revenue was new for us. Which is like crazy because like no matter how hard we try to exclude we never get that and but it wasn't profitable. But I think it's also probably not one that you need to be for sort of profitable in a four week period, you know, so we're going to take a pretty big one and then in May we're even going to like double that investment to run a few different tests. Do you guys, do you guys do any at home?
- [64:22]
B
We do and like we had trucks that were around New York. I think they're still active and I think it's. Those are like the best uses of brand budget and also concentrating that and making sure you're not only in like one city but also I think it's better to be like super in like to inundate one market at a time. Make sure your budget doesn't allow for you know like like a billboard in New York, a billboard in la. But yeah, very much believe in it. And I also think so many brands do it in like a really cool way, like half days. How they take over the signage at the Denver airport for ski season, like that's really smart. Like it's just where you put these and like what inventory you're taking I think also can either be creative or like really boring.
- [65:08]
A
Totally, totally Agree. You got to get attention. You have to concentrate enough. You can't just go one billboard. You have to get like the frequency and the visibility of that and then yeah, if you could tie it to something where there's actually some excitement and creativity around it to get some earned from it as well.
- [65:24]
B
Yeah, totally.
- [65:26]
A
Podcasts I'm a fan of as well. I think that's huge. And CTV we've seen very good success with so would highly recommend.
- [65:32]
B
I'm excited about it.
- [65:34]
A
Thank you guys. So crush it. Especially because Taylor talks about this. But the more distribution points you have, the more value you can get from upper funnel things. And so because you guys are so well, you know, spread out things like that are probably just a no brainer would do really well hopefully.
- [65:51]
D
All right, so I've got some interesting numbers to share from Ridge from our beloved sponsor Rich Panel. We switched our support stack at Ridge to rich panel about 15 months ago and our cost per ticket has dropped over 70%. That means same team, same volume and over $500,000 in annual savings. CSATs have not changed. We've been sitting at 96% week after week. So the automations did not come at
- [66:10]
C
the cost of customer experience.
- [66:12]
D
Our last platform talked a lot about AI but nothing was really changing under the hood. Rich Panel is genuinely AI first. They came in, they rebuilt our workflows and we were live in under two weeks with basically no lift on our side. And they're about to roll out a returns portal which for us is huge because they can do the same thing for returns as it did for customer service. That would be sick. If you want to cut down your support costs now and save on returns platform with an AI first platform, talk to Rich Panel. Go to richpanel.com demo tell them Connor from marketing operator sent you and they'll
- [66:38]
A
take good care of you. Thank you.
- [66:41]
C
I get asked that a home question more and more. It seems like too and are I think there's a lot of. You just have to check all your other boxes before you're you're doing out of home. Like are we hitting our blended business targets? Check. Is our are our new like are we growing new users and sessions? Check. Do our cord growth performance channels. Are they looking good and like are they growing year over year? Check. It's like all right, great. If all those things are true then you can like go and allocate a budget for out of home because if like if your meta roas is you know, if you're spending, if you're spending Flat year on year. But Your meta row as is down 20 and that's your core channel and you're also coming in under targets. Like I don't think you should probably go and launch a bunch of hours. I think you should go improve your
- [67:26]
B
core channels and I think, dude, there's like a time and place for it and you, if you're gonna take an out of home play, you need to have something to say too. And so like launching a new line or right ahead of Black Friday. But I think I've worked on a lot of launch brands who like want to have, you know, billboards and that, that makes sense because you need to announce or you put that one billboard above, you know, like 10 square, whatever you're going to do. But I think it can be a bit of a vanity play to be like, oh, look at my billboard or look at this thing or we did this event but if you can't afford it, it's probably like the really scariest use of money.
- [68:05]
A
Yeah, well, and also like, and this is what I was telling my team like, so I, I've struggled with like brand spend and brand budget to the point that like it's harder. So I remember talking to Jason like two and a half years ago. You just gotta take like a million a year and just like put it in brand. And like I should have done it and didn't listen. I was like, I don't know how to measure that, you know, and now it's like caught up. It's caught up to us. And so partly is like that, but I don't wanna just blow spend. And so even without a home, it's like, well what we've done in the past, like we'll do trucks, I'm a big fan. Like we'll measure it right? We'll look at post purchase, we'll do a, you can do an incrementality test with Agile, like and we'll see something. But like it's dabbling, right? Like it's not a big enough investment relative to size of the business to really get a good read and impact. And so what I've told my team now is like, I would rather go big, I'd rather put a significant amount of money in and like feel confident that we have a good measurement strategy and we're doing it. And like, I don't want to put, put 50k into a, you know, at home and not get that much exposure and like not really see an impact versus like let's go pretty significant. Let's like give it our best shot and like do it. Because where I've struggled in the past of like testing and launching new channels is going too small. So now it's like any new channel it's like you have to be confident enough that you're willing to A, give it time, like 3 months minimum I think, and then B, you know, everything that's like especially non digital and like give it enough of a, of an investment where you're like if it doesn't work, you're sure that it wasn't just because you dabbled.
- [69:30]
B
Yeah. And I think that that dabbling is true in a lot of channels where it's like that coverage only makes sense if also every time you go into a new channel you're like giving it its proper jail and you're like making creative for it and you're bringing on buyers for it or you can't just like a lot of the channels that I've turned on were previously turned off because they weren't given like a good enough shot. And I think out of Home's a really good example where like yeah, 50k, if your business is you know, making that an hour, that's not going to like even be worth the time. It's just again for like the brand cloud.
- [70:05]
A
Totally agreed. Totally, totally agreed.
- [70:07]
C
There are different like you know, we're ramping up our out of home this year and like we have like a, like a sales strategy or like a like a performance moment strategy where we're going and taking over one to two cities for a specific campaign and we're doing an analysis to look and say hey, what markets have like our over indexing on our prospective customer but we're underperforming on as a market and like that's one strategy to actually go and like take over that city for those two cities for maybe four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. Then you have a totally different strategy which is like the opposite end of the spectrum which is like more of the purple elephant strategy where like we're gonna do something crazy and like very attention grabbing but the goal is to do it in like a popular DNA and like to really go after virality. Like we're trying to get a lot of distribution of the activation so like maybe a, a big 8 a tier product launch, we go and like do something crazy in New York City and that's going to get a bunch of distribution on social and now we're like arbitraging impressions. Like there are two totally different strategies serving very different purposes and like the first strategy it's going to be very hard to measure like yeah, we could try to measure like a lift in revenue or in sales in that dma. And then the other strategy is like I don't care about like driving increased like sales in New York City. I want to try to see how many social impressions I can get, you know, tagging or like calling that activation out and like see if we can get a CPM and an impression and arbitrage. So yeah, very different, different strategies. And I think that the frustrating part, or at least for me some of the frustrating conversations I have have had about like quote unquote brand marketing is like just because something's performance doesn't mean it's not also building brand like CTV and YouTube and linear TV. Like they're the classic examples where you can create like brand forward ads that like build brand and reach new people and drive first time website visits. But it's also a perform, it's like a performance channel but it's also like a great brand moment. Like you don't need to delineate these things especially as an E commerce brand trying to like build a funnel and drive traffic to a website in a conversion. Like you often you can check both boxes and like that's what you should be doing way before you even think about going and dropping a million bucks or 3 million bucks or however much on out of home. Like make sure your YouTube ads are like checking both boxes. Make your CTV ads are checking both boxes. Once you've like done that then go and think about the more pure brand like out of home play. But I just think most brands aren't checking those other boxes and those like more upper funnel performance channels that lend themselves to like a more brand forward like storytelling driven high fidelity asset. And like that's been our approach in YouTube, CTV, linear TV. And it also complements meta which is a lot more socially native a lot better and like then going to out of home once you've once you're doing those things.
- [73:00]
B
I agree completely. I also think even in meta like sometimes that like beautiful ad actually does have a place now and I think
- [73:08]
C
totally like that's actually been a people take it to.
- [73:11]
B
Yeah, exactly. And even like the ads that of course like having a copy and like it's just like that beautiful campaign. I think mixing that into with the loaf like we can play it all ways but yeah I think people are too too pressed on like certain channels and then every channel can't look like incredibly every channel needs like its proper attention in that.
- [73:35]
C
All right, that's a wrap on episode 104 with Ari Murray. We had a jam packed value added episode. As always, thank you to the sponsors Motion after Cell Revo Prescient Enrich panel and if you're enjoying the marketing operators, make sure to like comment, subscribe and share with all your marketing friends. Thanks.