Chubbies Had A Strong Brand. But We Didn't Do Brand Marketing.

Yes, Chubbies had a strong brand. It was the main reason for our 9-figure exit.

But we didn't do brand marketing.

Yes, effective brand building took us from a money-losing company to a fast-growing, profitable brand where most new customer acquisition came organically.

But we didn't do brand marketing.

While this sounds completely confusing - and insane - it's true.

Here are my lessons on the topic so you can accelerate your path to the strong, increasingly profitable Brand you've always envisioned.


1. The Problem with Brand Marketing

The main problem lies in the brand association we all have with the term

It immediately conjures associations like: 
- Lacking accountability
- Immeasurable 
- Big expensive campaigns 
- Lighting $ on fire
- Requiring a different creative and media-buying skillset that many modern brands don't have


2. What We Did Instead

Direct response.

😕 😖 😵‍💫

Hold the phone...

Direct response marketing? To build brand?

We learned that all marketing has to be direct response marketing in order for it to be effective for us.

What does that mean?

We learned that every marketing thing we do has to drive a direct response.

We just had to learn that a purchase is not the only direct response we should be focusing on and tracking.

Ultimately, all we're doing with marketing is driving consistently increasing profits over a long period of time at the lowest possible cost.

The only way to do that? Deconstruct how best to connect your marketing activities to the aforementioned financial results.

It comes down to 2 things

a) In traditional direct response marketing, your marketing activities drive a purchase response in the short term

b) With Brand building, your marketing activities drive non-purchase responses in the short term that then LEAD TO purchases in the long term

In the same way you get a conversion value when you drive a purchase response in your traditional direct response marketing, you can calculate the 90 day forward-looking conversion value of these non-purchase responses (social engagements, list subscribes, searches, etc) to find the ones with the highest conversion value and the lowest cost.


3. The Changes We Made

We evaluated ads in our conversion ad sets BOTH by short term AND long term financial impact

We’d knowingly accept a lower "purchase ROAS" within our short term attribution window.

We got 90 day "conversion values" of the non-purchase direct responses (engagements) on the actual ad units, AKA the 90 day "Brand ROAS".

Once we had this additional data point, we had a new definition of 'what works'.

We made different budget / creative optimization decisions, and our content / creative team had a new feedback loop.

The compounding impact of this new method of evaluating ad success had a huge impact on strengthening our brand, increasing our resilient base of revenue from direct and organic traffic, which is the definition of brand building.