Mistakes Made While Trying to Get Out Of The Direct Response Doom Loop

How the heck do you get off of the direct response hamster wheel and start brand building?

Figuring out measurable brand building unlocked meaningful profit generation that contributed to Chubbies' acquisition.

Here are the mistakes we made and the steps you can take to do it right.


*first: the four commitments you must make before getting started*

1. You're committed to getting out of the direct response advertising doom loop.

2. You're committed to steadily increasing the portion of new customer revenue coming through unpaid (owned and organic) traffic sources and know it's more important than achieving a high Return on Ad Spend.

3. You're committed to the fact that the reason you invest in brand building is because it, if done correctly for a long enough period of time, leads to increased long term profit. Why? Effective brand building impacts people's thinking so they purchase from you repeatedly without having to be prompted by an ad. This is the free money machine.

4. You're committed to this forevermore.


*mistakes I made*

1. Assuming I'm abandoning much needed revenue -- I assumed every dollar moved from direct response to brand was taking 3 out of our company's pockets. This is wrong. Especially when we understood the marginal customer acquisition cost of the 'last' dollar we were spending (super high) AND Meta's over-reporting of revenue driven.

2. Thinking this is a one-and-done endeavor -- The first thought was, "ok so we gotta make a video, and then we'll see if brand building is right for us". It was a tentative approach.

3. Thinking brand content costs lots of money -- My assumption was that brand content had to look like a traditional TV ad, and would probably cost >20k to take a single 'shot on goal'.

4. I did not find any validation before choosing the metric of success -- We chose views as the definition of success. Ultimately, it was the wrong metric to optimize for.


*some steps to consider to get started (and keep going)*

1. Acknowledge the over-reporting in Meta's direct response 'attribution' -- once we know we're reallocating the least productive dollars, loss aversion diminishes.

2. Commit to brand building for the remainder of the life of your company -- If you're committed to 1-4 in the top section, this will not be a problem.

3. Spend zero -- Start with everything you can do that cost zero dollars. Find free ways to convey the reason you exist and what you're unique impact on the world is.

4. Find the metric & commit to the feedback loop -- Admit you have no idea what brand building tactics will drive $. Therefore, you need metric/s you will aim to move. With whatever tools and data you have, look at historical changes in digital brand behaviors (e.g., organic sessions, share of search, follows, subs) and see if you can find any connections to changes in historical sales. Commit to the feedback loop. Optimize around driving that metric.

enjoy
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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
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