Giving you highly actionable marketing advice from someone who's been in the weeds of profitably growing ecom brands. To get involved in the conversation & clarify anything Nate talks about in this podcast, tweet @NateLagos any of your Tactical & Practical questions! If your shopify store needs helping increasing revenue & profit, check out our sponsor Intelligems.io for all your split testing needs.
6 Steps To Fix Your Meta Ad Performance, with Cody Wittick
Cody Wittick makes his Tactical & Practical debut by outlining the 6 steps he takes when Meta performance drops, rather than panic pulling levers. His full breakdown can be found in this tweet: https://x.com/Cody_Wittick/status/2059355220358955458?s=20 This episode is brought to you by Intelligems.io, which is my favorite tool to use to increase meta performance. Test headlines, copy, images, offers, prices, and everything else you can think of on your shopify store! If you're struggling to get meta to reach new people, you need to be using WasteNot.io | I've used it at two brands now and seen an immediate reduction in CAC that resulted from us getting better at excluding past customers. Click here to sign up today: https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel
Gifting Messaging Without The Discount
Did you know you can start running gifting messaging on your site & in your ad account BEFORE you launch a sale, like Father's Day or BFCM? Early in the month of May, I tested Father's Day Gifting Messaging across websites of 4 different brands that all sell products that make good father's day gifts. Even before the sale or the offer is launched, this messaging outperformed evergreen site content, increasing CVR & RPS. Then, and maybe most importantly, once the sale does launch, we already know which messaging is best to roll out across the site and ad account, and can squeeze every single drop we can out of the promo period. One client, YoY father's day comps are nuts: They spent 30% LESS money on ads, and did 34% MORE revenue. You 1000% need a plan to test gifting messaging in OCTOBER this year, weeks before you launch any kind of holiday sale, so that when you launch the sale, you're launching it already having your messaging dialed in. Tactical & Practical is brought to you by Intelligems.io - they're the software solution that allows me to test all this messaging on site and shows me where we're increasing Conversion Rate, Revenue Per Session, and a lot more! Tactical & Practical is also sponsored by Waste Not! A software that fortifies your Meta ad spend to cut waste, reduce audience overlap, and decrease cost to reach new audiences! Check out what they've done for me here: https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel
Linear TV Outpaces Meta At Better ROAS
Proof Wallets is spending as many ad dollars on Linear TV as they are on Meta, and performance is better on TV... If I was consulting for @DanaPeters0321 at the time they launched TV campaigns, I probably would've told him not to do it. I would've argued that it's a distraction this early in the business, and that there was still a lot of room for them to grow & optimize Meta. Good thing Dana and I didn't meet till a few months later, because now there's one ad that has spent multiple millions of dollars and isn't slowing down. This episode of Tactical & Practical is SUPER tactical, we cover the logistics of Tatari advertising (this episode is not sponsored by them btw), how performance has been, and their trajectory for this channel. This episode is brought to you by Intelligems.io. Optimize every piece of your shopify store by split testing prices, offers, content, new landing pages and more. It can even split test by traffic source which is necessary if you're going to be testing new channels like we talk about in this episode! If you're struggling to get meta to reach new people, you need to be using WasteNot.io | I've used it at two brands now and seen an immediate reduction in CAC that resulted from us getting better at excluding past customers. Click here to sign up today: https://app.wastenot.io/users/register/?ref=nathaniel
To Iterate? Or Not To Iterate?
When should you iterate? And when should you test net new creative concepts? The simple answer for me, is when you hit a point of diminishing returns with iterations, shake the etch a sketch, and start over with net new concepts The first round of headline testing increased CVR by 27% The next round, we iterated on the winners, and increased CVR by 11% The next round, we iterated again and only increased CVR by 2% It’s time to start the cycle over This episode is sponsored by intelligems.io - the best way I know how to run tests like I show in this episode.
Fashion Meets Marketing
Great conversation with @heyitsalexP around perceived value, marketing in the world of fashion, upsells, bundles, and more. Tactical & Practical is sponsored by Intelligems.io - my go to testing tool to help find new ways to increase the percieved value of our products. Check them out! Follow Alex on twitter and subscribe to her newsletter here: https://x.com/heyitsalexP https://t.co/kIyKSdSSQ1
Country Music Meets Creative Strategy
The most valuable copywriting inspiration I've ever gotten is from songwriters. They're the best at writing in a way that makes people feel something. They're excellent at making the aspirational feel within reach. They're better than any marketer at making people feel at home, and comfortable in their lyrics. Great advertising should aspire to do those things too. So, in this episode, I share 3 songs that taught me how to speak to our customers with more familiarity, how to hype up our customers without being too cheesy or on the nose, and how to bring an aspirational lifestyle to appear within reach to our customers if they use your product. This episode is brought to you by Intelligems.io so you can test copy, content, prices, and offers all across your shopify site to make more money! Sign up for my copywriting skool here: https://www.skool.com/bottomsup/about
Bottom's Up Copywriting (I want to write copy for you)
Since I'm taking some time off from full time employment, my entire steak & whiskey budget is now dependent on freelance work... So, I'm going to market my freelance services the way I wish freelancers & agencies marketed to me while I was on the brand side. Which means... 1. I won't make you hop on a call if you don't want to, I'll explain everything in this podcast. 2. I won't gatekeep my process, I'll lay it out in detail. If you have an internal team that are experienced & talented copywriters, & they have the spare time to adopt new processes, you can send them this and you can execute on it without paying me a dime. You're welcome. 3. I won't charge bigger brands bigger retainers just because they can afford it. The price is the price is the price, and I explain in this episode why my flat fee (no percentage of spend bullshit) is a no brainer and you're guaranteed to make a ton of money off my work. Who's ready to write better copy & make more money?
Media buying can be deadly (Connor MacDonald from Ridge speaks)
CMO of Ridge & the Most Valuable Guest of Tactical & Practical, Couuor Mac joins the pod to talk media buying, on-site messaging testing, and hammock-maxxing.
Why Split Testing Doesn't Work For Some Of You
Some of you have spent a year split testing on your website and don't have anything to show for it... and I think I know why. I ran a headline test on a landing page. The control variant was a very evidence-based, authority / credibility kinda headline. The variant that won the split test, and increased CVR by 48%, was on the other end of the spectrum, it was very emotional & benefit driven. THAT DOESN'T MEAN I SHOULD JUST SET THAT HEADLINE LIVE AND FORGET IT. All the results of that split test tells us is that CURRENTLY, our ads are doing a better job of bringing emotional buyers to our website. It means that we're NOT good at bringing logical buyers into our funnel. So now, my job is to create two separate funnels for the same product, one that appeals to emotional, benefit driven buyers, and the other that appeals logical buyers. Split testing should teach you how to grow your TAM, not just increase conversion rate for one specific cohort of your target market.
The Difference Between $50mm/yr and $10mm/yr
Brands need to act differently at different stages of growth. What works for a $50 million/year brand might drown a $10 million/year brand. Understand where you're at, and act accordingly.
How I Build Marketing Teams
How I build marketing teams When you should hire in-house vs agencies/freelancers How to keep employees accountable & productive without endless meetings & micro-managing & more don't miss this episode.
AI: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Side Of Artificial Intelligence
AI is great at some things It's bad at others And sometimes, it straight up makes mistakes or lies to me... I think it's all important that we take a step back, understand its strengths, weaknesses, how it can help us today, and how we should be building it into our brands for the future. This episode is all about The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly side of Artificial Intelligence:
Performance Marketers vs Brand Builders (Not What You Think)
Don't hire a performance marketers to do a brand builder's job.
Don't Launch That New Channel... Until You Try This
BEFORE you launch that new advertising channel, try these 5 things to try to spark new growth in a product or brand that's hit a plateau: 1. Test new prices & offers on your hero SKU. Price-Market-Fit is not something you can set and forget, just look at gas prices the last couple weeks. The price consumers are willing to pay for your product changes with inflation, election cycles, and category maturity. If you haven't tested your prices or offers in the last year, they're officially out of date, test them again. 2. Shoot new creative in different formats and with different creators than you've worked with in the past. If you're ad account is full of UGC, maybe try producing some high quality, polished assets. If you've relied super hard on videos, try some statics. Not every person in your target market will resonate with the same content format. When I see UGC as a marketer, I assume it's fake and dismiss it. When my wife sees UGC of someone who has the same pain points as her, she trusts it. Don't leave any part of your target audience out in the cold, make creative that can resonate with every corner of your audience. 3. Take this mentality into your copywriting, too. If you typically lean into negative, fear of loss, risk aversion messaging, then you're only going to acquire customers who resonate with that. Try to frame it positively, or be more optimistic in your messaging. Instead of showing them what they might lose without your product, show them what they'll gain by adding it to their lives. 4. Look for anomalies in your customer reviews to give you new ideas for ad angles. If 80% of your 5-star reviews are about how awesome your product looks, that means you're really good at marketing how good your product looks. Acquisition is self fulfilling prophecy... But if 10% of your 5-star reviews are about how good your products makes someone feel, then you're probably MISSING that benefit in your top spending ads. Go make more ads & landing pages about how they'll FEEL, and you'll acquire more of those customers that your last round of ads wasn't talking to. 5. Make new products that appeal to a wider range or a different segment of your market. Jack Daniel's does this perfectly. I never buy their base bottle, Old No 7 that costs $25. But there's 8 bottles of specialty, limited edition Jack Daniel's bottles that I paid over $500 each for on my shelf right now. They never would've gotten that money from me if they didn't push into a new market. Mercedes does this great, too. They make the G wagon for people who are rich. They make the C class for people who want to look rich. Rolex sells the dayjust and the daytona, to completely different tax brackets. Puma sells some traditional golf shoes, and ones with camo print all over them. I'd never by the traditional ones (or anything from puma usually) but I'm on my second pair of the camo ones... and so on. Obviously new product dev takes a lot of time, but you can definitely do those first 4 things BEFORE adding the complexity and unknowns of a new advertising channel. Then, when you do launch that new channel, you'll have more learnings for how to make it work for you. Happy scaling
You're Under Utilizing Your Post Purchase Survey
Did you know that you don't have to just ask "How did you hear about us?" in your post purchase survey? I think it's way less valuable to use it as a form as attribution, and way MORE valuable to ask them questions that'll shape your marketing strategy in the future. At Adapt, I'm asking "When did you first hear about us?" "Who supports you on your health journey?" "How do supplements fit into your daily routine?" "What's your favorite way to stay active?" Each of those will affect how we measure our marketing efforts, how we position our brand, what kind of organic content we'll create, which influencers we'll partner with, and what IRL events I'll want us to be a part of. Those insights are way more valuable to me than hearing someone try to remember where they heard about us. - Then, we have some winning results from a brand who just INCREASED their prices - Tweet of the week is really tactical Meta advice - A JUICY Marketer's Anonymous from a guy who's about to quit his job
Influencer? I barely know her
On this episode: - I started an influencer program with $8k that grew into a multi 7-figure channel - A new form of ad iteration made me sell out of my hero SKU way too fast - Ad fatigue is self inflicted? - Headline tests continue to move the needle - Marketers need to understand WHY performance is bad, then they can work on how to improve it
How to Market To Happy & Sad Customers
Most of the time I buy whiskey, I'm happy, celebrating, I'm buying to have a good night with friends or to mark a milestone. But on rare occasions... I buy whiskey when I'm sad, angry, frustrated, stress, I buy it as a coping mechanism... Now that's not good, and it's been a long time since I've done it so don't worry about me, lol... but it exposes a flaw in the way that most of the industry is talking about customer personas. How can one buyer (Me) have two completely opposite mindsets (happy or angry), that lead me to the exact same purchase decision (11 shots of Jack Daniel's)? And if that's possible, why aren't we trying to market to all those different motivators? In this episode, I break down how I use Valence & Intensity zones in my performance copywriting process to reach new areas of our market that some of our top ads just can't resonate with. Watch this episode, then ask Claude to analyze and indentify the valence & intensity zones of your top performing ads, and re-write new variations in the other zones. You'll reach buyers who are in-market for your product, that don't resonate with the tone of your current ads at all.
$75k from one campaign? In this economy?
I've been at a brand where an average SMS campaign would do $8k in revenue. Then we sent one that did $40k in 30 minutes. I've ran an email account that made $6k on a normal daily email campaign. Then we sent one that did $75k in 24 hours. And no, those campaigns weren't sent on black friday, they weren't even sent in Q4. In this episode, I show you how you can take a moment that your customers care about, or can relate to, bring them into your world to experience it with you, and have a day that makes your entire month. I also award a tweet of the week award, share the results of a split test that DID NOT GO MY WAY, and attempt to answer the question, "How do you get away from discounting all the time?" (the first few seconds of audio are a little sketchy then by 10 seconds it's good)
Doubling Ad Spend While Increasing aMER
In this episode I break down how we just: - Doubled ad spend while increasing aMER - How doing less allows you to do more - Testing CTA button text - Resending emails to non openers (the easiest, lowest hanging revenue in all of ecom) - & what to do what your top selling product starts to plateau
Addition by Extraction: w/ Kyle Yeoman From Groove
President of GrooveLife.com joins the show to talk about building lean & efficient marketing teams.
