The Brand Who Turned off Facebook Ads Completely

So much engagement on this post. Clearly, this idea is striking a chord.

Here are the 6 things I learned, and 6 things you can do if you're having some of these thoughts. All of this is informed by mistakes I made as a cofounder of a brand that had an IPO.


1. “The ads don’t return like they once did.”

What I learned: It happened so gradually that we missed the signs. The big red flag was when we started looking at the traffic sources of new customer revenue. We found paid channels gradually started to comprise a larger and larger portion of total new customer revenue.

What you can do: Check your paid vs unpaid new customer revenue traffic sources. If paid is becoming larger over time - even if you're growing quickly - it's time to change.


2. “We need to let go of the idea that they still do.”

What I learned: For us, what made the decision challenging was the perceived lack of other attractive options that aligned well with our internal talent skillset and areas of confidence.

What you can do: Remind yourself that when you started the business, you were't an expert in direct response either. Your success happened because you and your team can learn and adapt quickly. This will help you see more objectively.


3. “It’s a lazy way to build a company. You end up not investing in brand”

What I learned: I hate to admit it, but it is true. Just because your people are spending all their time on it, doesn't necessarily mean it is the highest leverage use of their time. As companies with limited resources, we are constrained by the total number of 'people thought minutes' to allocate across opportunities. Every time we choose a direct response time investment, we are choosing NOT to invest thought somewhere else

What you can do: You don't need to turn off DR spend, but maybe put it on cruise control for a sec. Accept some decay, but use the freed up time to get creative on the best way to get your brand out there. See what comes of it


4. “...other marketing channels”

What I learned: The reality is other channels like linear TV or radio simply drive a higher quality of engaged attention

What you can do: Reach out to someone at another brand who has had success with these channels and learn how they got confidence


5. “You become a clickfunnel, not a brand”

What I learned: The financial definition of 'brand' is what revenue you have if you turn ads off. If you have no revenue, like us for a long time, we learned we were a clickfunnel. No moat, and therefore, no asset value. If you have a strong business with resilient revenue, you have a brand, a moat, and real asset value

What you can do: choose your destiny


6. “reliant on the Facebook ad algorithm to grow”

What I learned: For a long time, the vast majority of our new customer revenue came through paid channels. if ads stopped delivering, revenue would stop. Not that we stopped using the platform, but we took more control of how we used it

What you can do: De-risk your business
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Thanks for reading. If this post was helpful, here are 4 things you can do right now to 

• Get more strategic + tactical nuggets on brand building, 

• Tactics on connecting brand building to financial impact, 

• And specific things you can do to build strong emotional connections with your audience: 

1) Subscribe to the Brand Builders podcast on YouTube or Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 
2) Apply to join our brand builders slack community (suuuuper small group exclusively for brand founders and operators), 
3) Follow Tom and Preston on Linkedin for regular posts on this stuff
4) And heck, share this with someone