Today in Digital Marketing - SPECIAL: Preparing for Q4 and Black Friday

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Today, we are bringing you a special sample episode of the Founders Forum podcast — a fantastic show for senior marketers and DTC media buyers, discussing what’s working in the e-commerce and digital ad space.✅ Learn more about the Foxwell Founders Community [affiliate link]It's hosted by Edwin Hermawan, Owner of Snappic and Tristram Dyer, CEO of Webtopia. Together they meet with entrepreneurs and innovators from with-in the Foxwell Founders Membership to share on trending topics and ideas that are moving the e-commerce and media buying community forward.In this episode, Andrew Foxwell sits down post-Founders meet-up with Edwin and Tris to talk through his thoughts about Q4/BFCM along with a few trends he's seeing in the media buying community.The guys share some of their favorite learnings from the Founders meet-up held in Amsterdam on August 29, 2024. They move on to discussing BFCM offers and the value of having the right offer for success. (IE 20% off might not cut it this year).They round out the episode with a few hot takes and while Andrew doesn't quite call them "X (Twitter) beefs" he shares on what might be truly holding the community back when it comes to learning and growing in the DTC space.📰 Get our free daily newsletter📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers🌍 Follow us on social media or contact us.GO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Premium tools: Update Credit Card • Cancel.MORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital🌟 Rate and Review Us🤝 Our Slack.UPGRADE YOUR SKILLSGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesInside Google Ads: Advanced with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Slack Group and Courses.Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada. Associate producer: Steph Gunn.Some links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Friday, November 15th. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, while I'm still out of the country, I wanted to bring you an episode from another outstanding podcast in our space. It's called The Founders Forum. It's hosted by Edward Hermawan, owner of Snappik, and Tristam Dyer, the CEO of Webtopia. Together, they meet with senior marketers and DTC media buyers to talk about what's been working in the last month or two in the e-commerce and digital ad space. In this episode, Andrew Foxwell, who runs the Foxwell Founders community, sits down with Edwin and Tris to talk through their thoughts about Q4, Black Friday coming up, along with a few trends that they are seeing in the media buying

community. I have been a member of the Foxwell Founders Group since its inception. It's full of really solid practitioners. You can learn more about it at our affiliate link that's todayindigital.com slash founders. I will be back with you Monday for a marketing science deep dive episode on the role of schadenfreude in marketing. Until then, enjoy this special episode. Welcome to the Founders Forum podcast brought to you by the Foxwell Founders, where we interview some of the hottest minds in D2C right now and deep dive on their area of expertise. Everyone that we interview here is a cherished member of our Foxwell Founders community of over 550 advertisers worldwide and are at the cutting edge of what is working right now. I hope you enjoy this. And if you have any questions, feel free to let me know. Andrew at Foxwell Digital. And now let's get stuck into this week's episode. Here are Edwin and Tris, our hosts. Hi, guys. Welcome back to the Foxwell

Founders Forum. I'm Tris. This is Edwin. And here we're here with Andrew, the host, the owner of Foxwell Founders Group. We're here today in Amsterdam the day after the Foxwell Founders meetup. What a day and a night. My voice is not going too hot right now, but listen, we're going to roll. We're going to talk a lot today. A couple of hot takes, a couple of pieces of advice for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and just, you know, generally chill out and find out what Andrew's got on his mind. So strap in. Let's go.

What's going to happen in q4 yeah i mean you know i think there's a lot of different things that can happen uh i think it's definitely going to be going to continue the record of being the biggest you know that we've ever had in terms of e-commerce online i don't think there's going to be any change there i've sent that same email every year this year's going to be the biggest yeah it's the best simply the biggest i think i mean i be the best. Simply the biggest. I think if you think about it from a meta-advertiser perspective, the thing that's going to happen in Q4 is going to be the continuation of not having separate assets, number one.

You're going to basically be utilizing, I think, mostly your existing assets that are your best-performing creatives throughout the year. Yes. And making changes through on the site. yes yeah which is going to be huge we saw a lot last year that we kind of after the end of october we didn't really produce many more new creatives yeah we just don't need them maybe you've got the stuff that's working on the data behind it social proof why would you you can put in some black friday stuff it's never it's never going to be performing as well as anything you know know, that you have already been using. Yeah.

And I think you'll continue to see the difference of, you know, it used to be that so many of the sales, like the majority of the sales came on the Thursday, the Friday,

Saturday, Sunday with a little bit of a lull. Yeah. And then there'd be the Monday would hit again. I think you'll still see spikes. You'll still see that, but I do think that

the overall event is going to be spread out. Yeah. So if you are going to say, say hey i'm going to launch this in like earlier or the month of november or what like i don't think there's anything wrong with that you're going to like consumers are ready to buy and the consideration process is such that you know they're going to be okay with uh thinking about it and coming back and maybe they will buy to see if the deal gets better on black friday back and maybe they will buy to see if the deal gets better on black friday cyber monday time frame exactly yeah but if the deal is like this

is the deal and you say that and you honor that and you don't change it because it can really tick people off then i think probably that's a good method and that's something we'll continue to see one thing that we've seen uh the trends of this year is we've been seeing people waiting and waiting waiting until the sales so we've actually in the trends of this year is we've been seeing people waiting and waiting and waiting until the sales. So we've actually seen a bigger anticipation for these. Yeah, oh, definitely. It's been more consolidated, though, this year. In previous years gone by, back in COVID years, it was kind of like a grey week rather than a black Friday.

Right. Now, this year, you know, Labor Day, I was very fourth of July, anything like that. They've all been very heavy hitting days. Yeah. And then the last days of those sales have just been 3x. Yeah. Like jumped. I think that's big.

I think if you think about it through the lens of cost controls, you know, I think you're going to have it. Cost controls. Let's not talk about cost controls. Oh my. I think you're going to have a certain selection of people that are going to keep the cost control similar or a little bit higher. Yeah then that'll they'll just ride it out and raise budgets like if it does if the inventory is there and they're gonna hit it then it's okay

i think that majority of folks will have some campaigns or a large percentage of campaigns probably more like existing customer style campaigns that are going to be utilizing like a one-day click um and i think that's good you know, we used to mess with bidding all the time, right? We used to do, but bid overrides and everything. Many years ago, we would do like a $10 click bid to make sure we won. I learned it from you. Yeah. Yeah. And it was great. Right. And we did that. And then I think we kind of went off of that because we, it just wasn't working anymore. You didn't need it and you didn't need it um the system was a lot smarter so i think you know in terms of how you're planning

it for q4 like how you're thinking about it making sure that you are covering your bases when it comes to bid cost like kind of cost controls i think is smart i don't think you want to have it all on cost controls i don't think you want to have it all on auto i don't think you want to have it all on one day click like i think it's going to be it's going to be a mixture of those things would be my guess i don't know what do you guys think i mean the one of the biggest things we're seeing this year is actually our ase campaigns are really taking off but one of the kind of the when you're talking about cost controls and kind of the different types of campaigns, we're finding ASC working super, super well just for scaling. We've done a lot of testing in ABO, getting our creatives built out like that, and just moving that winning creative into the ASCs.

Yeah, I mean, my big thing with ASC and my big thing with generally like the AI that Meta continues to put forward is I like, I mean, I think it's great. I think that when an ASC works, it works really well, but the issue is it's just not consistent. And I think what, when you add the advantage plus umbrella and blanket across like a whole bunch of things, it's horrible. It's, it's so challenging. It's like, it's, it's not reliable. Yeah. And it also, there's, there's a certain percentage of it. Let's say 20% that just like gives you headaches and makes your job as an advertiser way harder. And even if you're in-house, that makes your job to tell the boss is sending you a screenshot on Christmas or, you know, on Thanksgiving. Hey, why is this ad look like this?

You know, like that's insane. And so I think Meta's, right, like Meta's job is always to make your job easier. That should be there. And that's really the premise that they've been pushing. But I think it's just like, it's just like anything else. I think that there are accounts when you can go all in and spend,

if you're spending a million dollars a month and go all in on cost controls with ASC and that can work. But for the large majority of people that sit in the 20,000 US a month to 100,000 US a month in spend, there's more nuance to how you have to build an account and it can't be just all in one yeah in my opinion yeah i did because because i honestly

i just don't trust it and it had meta hasn't it's just like a relationship you don't trust you know where you're like you're like you've told me before that you were going to be here at eight but you've been late like before okay you know what i mean it's like you you told me you were going to be here at eight, but you've been late, like before. You know what I mean? Okay. You know, it's like, you told me you were going to go to the store before you came, but then you didn't. Why did you hurt me? Yeah, like, why did you hurt me? And so, like, that. I take it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like, I think that's the kind of thing. It's like, you know, Zuckerberg's going out, what did he say in last earnings call? He's like, we would love, or he's like, it'll be a situation where you'll be able to put in the creative assets and press play. And honestly, I would love that to be the case. It doesn't work. Because I would love that to be a marketer's case that we would be able to say, yes, we can trust this process and it can move us into being general marketers continuing to work on the total funnel, client financials, and really helping in being a CMO or that kind of relationship.

But we still have to maintain that advertiser side because I just don't think it's trustworthy at this moment in time. A test we're starting to do now is we're breaking out and this is old school. We're breaking out different placements.

So we now instead of having... You're breaking out different placements? Yes. What are we in 2021? What is this? You're doing real stuff. Yes, we are. Real stuff is big.

But reals only. So what we're doing is... Reals only. Because look, our Facebook rep said to us, hey, you know, auto placement, baby. And we're like reels. Yes, we are. Reels is big. But reels only. So what we're doing is auto, because look, our Facebook rep said to us, hey, auto placement, baby. And we're like, nope. We're seeing terrible results here. I'm surprised you even picked up the call from your Facebook rep. We're forced to.

But what we're doing now is we're putting on a reels only and we're going testing reels only. What we're finding is it works really really well in that size when you're spending kind of 20 grand but if you're going upwards from that if you're starting to spend even more it doesn't have enough people to serve it to so it then starts to scrape the barrel and the performance really starts to dip yeah but if you're spending that lower bit and you're looking for a bit more incremental incrementality then you're sorted that's going to work pretty well. Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, I think Reels is an example. Look, I was talking about this to a bank that I consult with about Meta's company, about

the stock. And they were asking about Reels, you know, where it was, where it is. You know, it's like three or four years ago, it was just garbage. I mean, it wasn't anything. Even two years ago. And it was like showing pictures of like women in bikinis on lamborg on lamborghinis right and you're like okay this isn't like my con this isn't this isn't like my my type of content but it would show me either yeah it would like show me all this stuff that just wasn't relevant to me um i remember once i went on reels and showed me like videos of a

monster truck rally i was like do you know me like this isn't me anyway and so and like now it's like true yeah it's like women in bikinis. Monster trucks. Yeah, it's a lot like. You guys are finding out a lot. And it's a lot like, it just wasn't the right thing. And now it seems to be really relevant. And so now it's interesting in terms of like,

continue to be bullish on meta in terms of the profitability, you know, look at threads. Now we're all, it's something we joke about. We just do the same thing with reels. And I think that threads is going to be a more, an opportunity for us to continue to do that. And I do think that creating creative, which is, I mean, this isn't my idea. This is something that I learned from Dave Herman talking about it, like just doing reels centered creative and having that be what you're making in a four by five. And then having that be the way that you're putting all the creative out there yeah i think we've done things similarly to that

but that's one of those things that you're like that's kind of what we've been doing so the validity yeah i'm saying that makes me feel good of like trust and i think that's been really useful so i would do that more in key four honestly too but so so give me give us actionable like like quick tips like let's do a top five. Let's do a top five. Let's say we're spending 20 to 100K. And then let's say we were big spenders. In Q4, Tom.

In Q4. Like, what are you going to do? Yeah. Actionable tips. Yeah. I mean, I think, one, like, you definitely never want to forget about the people that have purchased from you before and your email list and utilizing that. I think that's big i think that there's been a movement and a lot of us away from utilizing retargeting in any sort of sense necessarily and just like

there's either you don't do it as much and you know met is naturally doing it or um you know you're generally not advertising those people as this is not part of the the campaign like you're doing no retargeting. Is the marketing mind just starting to say, well, I can get that in SMS and email. Yeah. Yeah. Or like Meta is doing enough of it and I don't need to do it separately. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that this is. I can through retargeting. I think this is something that like, you know, engaged, at least engaged audiences, email list, right? Like, I think that that is useful in Q4. Okay. I mean, for a lot of reasons, but I think it's useful because you just want to get in front of those people. I'm not saying that necessarily it might be the most, it might be that they're

going to see it convert on Facebook, but being visible to them in another place other than just the inbox is going to be useful. Sure. And you've been, you know, working to build out those people for a long time. Like even if you're talking about like a 95% view on some sort of a video, that's i think worthwhile to get in front of how much are you spending like how much how much of your budget are you spending on that oh i'd say that's probably like in the 20 range okay like 10 to 20 range i would say but i think but it's big like his sombrero on his it's an ice cream cone 20 it's a chocolate ice cream cone but i mean how do you justify that

when they say that when like how do you kind of get the checks and balances when it comes to the email marketing and the sms and they're like well we're gonna gonna buy it that way yeah i mean i think it's i again i this is like anything else with meta or like our world in general is like it depends and i think it's those words yeah it's like it's like if it's if it's something it has if you know that if you know that you've been running videos for all year long yeah and you have these videos that have like that are good storytelling or they're an us versus them or their founder story and you can do a 95 view off of them yeah you know that makes a lot of sense or even a total through play that makes a lot of sense to hit those people and depending on the audience size like if you haven't really talked

to them and it hasn't been part of the strategy before this then i think spending yeah i mean maybe not 20 but maybe 10 to 20 i mean like i think i could be as high as this because you really just haven't touched them before so i think that's that's why i say that number why it could be as high um i i tend to think that we all think prospecting is a little bit easier than it actually is in especially the black friday cyber monday time frame so you to sort of hedge your bets as an advertiser overall i think it's smart to have at least some of that that's considered um to talk to those previous people so you're not having all of your chips on the we're going to prospect during the most competitive time of the year and it's going to do great like yeah yeah that's but and

you have to remember it's election year so cpms are going to be naturally high anyway because it's uh election year yeah so right up into the i know it's a week before you have to stop is it a week before they have to stop advertising yeah so up until just the end of october cpms are going to be super high compared to what we would normally see October being super low CPMs. So you're going to see that and you're going to have to work it out. One thing that you mentioned there, it kind of brings back to a testing thing that we've seen as well. People previously, when they're excluding from their top of funnel campaigns, they exclude existing customers and sometimes even engagers. But now we just turn that part off the engagers and just target uh just uh uh exclude purchasers

really you're not showing to people who just let me just ask a question did you say that they have to stop advertising because i don't think they have to stop advertising in america before the election is that a thing that can be became true i well i i cut it they have to have their ads like four weeks before they can't launch launch new ads four weeks before the election. Oh. The political ads. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Okay, I don't know why I didn't know this. Stop. They can't run them on the 5th. You can't run them on Election Day? What? That's un-American. I'd have to go back. Yeah, it seems...

It seems very un-American. Any ads that you're going to run for election have to be launched four weeks before. They will not allow any ads to be launched in that four-week window. Oh, wow. Interesting. Okay.

Interesting, yeah. I guess I never knew that. Even though I used to be in the political world, I never knew that. Interesting. Yeah, but anyway. Not on Twitter, though. No. Are you going to be launching ads on the 4th?

On X. Yeah, on X. Yeah, I would say, I mean, so I would say that's one is like, don't forget about those folks. I would say another one is generally having a mix of campaign and audience type,

I think it's going to be useful. Okay, what's the mix? And I mean, I'm not, if I was doing it, I would obviously want to make sure that there's some kind of an ASC involved in what we're doing. And that's predominantly like what I would obviously want to make sure that there's some kind of an ASC involved in what we're doing. And that's predominantly like what I would, if the ASC has worked previously in that account,

that's what I would just keep on rolling. And I really wouldn't change much. Like if I have top performing things, I would just keep that going. In the ASC, and I honestly wouldn't touch it. Like really, that would be one. And I was going to ask, is there plenty of people out there that will get the question was like well it's kind of off off season or anything else like well it's working it's still working in late october don't turn it off yeah late off season i i wouldn't

yeah um i think that's part of it um i would in terms of like this setup itself i would think that you generally moving away from broad during this period of time I think is a good thing. And the reason I would say that is because the competition is so high that really what you're looking for in adding other audiences or any other spend to your campaign, if Broad has previously worked in your account, I think there's a validity to running it yeah but if but if it hasn't if it's been like we've launched it and it kind of went like up and down yeah i think really what you're looking for across the campaign mix is you're trying to find something that's going to be incremental to add to the campaign and that would be things like an interest stack yeah or high relevance lookalikes because it's they're going to be sort of short run bursts i'm not saying these are going to be things that you're going to depend on long term but they're going to be sort of short run bursts. I'm not saying these are going to be things that you're going to depend on long-term, but they're going to be things that in a two-week period

around Black Friday, Cyber Monday, that's going to be like, yeah, they're going to be little 10% incremental wins, right? That's really what I think with top performers that you would want to be looking for. I would think you're probably mostly operating in an ABO format too. I don't think you're necessarily operating in CBO format.

I think that yesterday, we're here the day after the founders learning sessions yesterday at the meetup. And Freddie from Germany mentioned, Frederick wrote that they're utilizing CBO a lot. I think that a lot of the advice... It was like an inhale at that time. Yeah. I mean, and I think you always have to put that in context. In context, this is a German advertiser that they're advertising for in Germany. And I think that when you look at countries, if you're looking at, you know, advertising only in a certain area,

and it's tight geographic area, specifically like only the UK or whatever, I think there's validity in doing a CBO likely, because it'll operate differently than it would in the United States. A lot of the advice that I have is because of the accounts we run and because of always being a US-centric advertiser. But I think there's nuance to that. So I think if you're in a smaller country where you're targeting a smaller set of geographic places, maybe not the US, certainly a CBO could be part of that. But most likely, what we're going to be doing is it's going to be more more of an abo format i'd say that's big i think you're going to be wanting to not necessarily create brand new stuff like you talked about you're going to

keep running the best creative that you've had maybe you're going to have a couple new things that are four to five real style that are going to be to those previous customers or those people on the engaged lists or on your email list or whatever that you've gone through one thing I'll just say about the email list is that Klaviyo integration freaking breaks all the time yeah so just make sure before you do this yeah you check that the Klaviyo integrations actually working yeah I'm gonna keep checking it check it again because it's like that shit bus all the time yeah and then so that's that's another one I would think that you're trying to you would want to go for.

And I think, yeah, if you've been running cost controls before, you'd keep that. But I think that's kind of the setup that I would be looking at. I think that you're making generally less changes than you would. I think really what you, from an overall standpoint that you want to be looking at is how quickly can we bring these people to a purchase? And what are the things we can do on the site? And really auditing the customer journey before you go forward on it. These are things like the cart drawer, right? Or like, how does that look on mobile? How quickly are you going to, are they going to see an incentive? You know, because so many times, you know, you walk through your client site and you've seen it and it makes sense to you,

or they've seen it, but having reviews or having other people look at it is just so critical to actually making that time successful which even advice to go as far as put hot jar or something like that on it to have a look i mean i hit people do it i mean i think you certainly could during the period of time that you're testing right i mean especially you know you get it out in october you could get some learnings on it i don't think there's anything wrong with that even if it's only though to five people and you're asking them to go through of all different of your main customer base that are frenzy years or something else. What's confusing about this or whatever? I think that's that's work that we didn't necessarily used to talk about because we were in the spoiled days of like, let's launch an ad. And then we'll run it to a PDP and it's going to be great.

Yeah. And I don't think that's necessarily the case anymore. I just want to give you a correction okay so on the political ads it's one week before okay as can launch okay before okay day of it's historically that political apps do not run because campaigns choose not to but they can yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. I knew it was a thing they don't generally, I think they almost, almost like a parlay when they say like,

we're not doing that. So they just, for the US, they made the restriction of one week plus or more, no one can add it to my watch. Interesting. There you go.

Okay. So we got two so far. we need a third and a fourth and a fifth advice oh third and fourth advice i mean i think you know um generally let's just get into uh the the third one uh that's not necessarily like setup related but i think it's in terms of like your setup related which is how are you going to my mind and my body correct your mind and your body like get your mind right you know like how are you meditating yeah i mean well like i mean i do think that during that during this period of time when things are really intense one of the things that you have is sunk cost bias right you're gonna you keep working on the same thing

and you think that it makes it more productive. And really, I think you want to be aware of that, that continuing to work on a client problem, if it's an issue or there's some sort of thing, actually stepping away for an hour will give you clarity. I think it's really easy to give you, because it'd be glued during that period of time because everybody else is talking about how they're glued to it and showing Shopify screenshots and shit like that. But my point is, is like, I do think that it's necessary today because there inevitably will be things that go wrong to have a plan for like, what am I going to do to keep myself sane during this period of time? They go fucking walk. Yeah. Right. a walk. I think that is really important.

And I think that a lot of it in the last couple of years, I think, has been focusing on the planning beforehand so that during the actual event of BFCM, it's like you're in a more relaxed state. Yeah. So I think that is something you want to just have like a Q4 self-care plan. I think that's important. Yeah, that's absolutely key. And I would say as well, just on that, it's like, even if you're like, oh, I'm fine. I can get through it. You'll tell yourself you're fine.

Put it in, schedule it into your diary to go for a walk. Look at yourself in advance because it's so easy to give yourself that bias of like, I feel fine. But then you're in the middle of something. It's like, okay. Yeah. And I mean, the landing page thing, that can't be the fourth one no oh yeah so that's one of them yeah but i mean the the the offer one that jenny lynn was talking about yes it's pretty big so like yeah yeah let's talk about it yeah so i mean it was it was it was pretty big and it's number four number five

this is number five this is number five yeah part of the day yesterday was obviously the the one from from jenny lynn where she, we can't scale products, we can scale offers. And that's obviously really hit home for me, because there's so many people trying to get out there, being like, got a product here, and getting the landing page to perfection within an inch of its life, but actually no one's buying it, because there's no reason to buy. There's no one, there's no, it doesn't have to be an offer,

like a two for one or something like that. It just has to be a reason for somebody to actually buy without Facebook ads so so many people look at facebook ads and go oh that's the magic bullet but realistically if people aren't buying anyway you're wasting your money you're just going to send it to more people yeah yeah yeah that's so true you know i think i i really appreciate you bringing that up because it's one of the journeys that i have had to be on i think over the last few years as a Facebook marketer. I mean, generally a meta marketer. I've been doing this since they've been invented.

I got spoiled focusing, like a lot of us did, only on meta ads. And I think so much of it, obviously the offer is a massive part of it. CRO, landing pages is a whole other part of it. And so looking at the offer, it's like, it is, it's, it's almost should be number one. You know what I mean? Like, but I mentioned it last because in my head, I'm always like thinking about the tactical side of it. But I think that, um, the offer itself is, is massive. It's huge. I mean, what's, what are you going to put out there? It's meaningful. You know, I mean, in our Q4 course that we sold before, we, we don't have it anymore, but, um,

we talked about in there doing like a meaningful offer. People are always like, do you think 10% is meaningful? I'm like, no. And also like, and also like, if you never do,

if you never do a sale, maybe 10% is interesting, but still like, even from the favorite brand, if you offer me 10%, I'd be like, it's kind of rizzle-dizzle. Yeah.

No. It's not anything. 10% your email. Like you get 10% off for adding your email it's like so it's just like you know kind of thinking about that like what does that really mean you know the companies that really i think have been successful that i've seen and have been really inspired by are those that put an element of surprise into it too

you know mystery boxes that are coming with stuff showing what could be in it making that process fun um and i think is is a huge part of it too in terms of this specific like time frame right of like what else are they getting that's fun and interesting um and maybe yeah two for one i don't know if that's useful but it's like incentivizing them to buy in volume is another piece that i think can be really powerful but i think the offer i think you know it's a good shout to bring that i think the biggest thing that people miss though is they kind of go oh what percent do i need to give off and they talk to 30 yeah well 30 i get it right they talk to cfo cfo's like that's all of our margin cfo yeah don't we all throw them out out the window. Until the IRS comes down.

But no, what we find is the best performing in terms of sales and anything like that in an offer is value added. So if you're adding more value, whatever it is,

keep the same price but add more value. Yes, your margin is going to go down the same. Yeah. They're going to get more so they're used to spending that amount. Yeah. Because you have to remember

you're acquiring a lot of customers there are new customers coming in now you don't want them to be the poor customers that are kind of like you're going to be relying on them to rebuy in february march april okay guys let's be real have you ever had an offer that worked better than a 30 or greater offer like all the time no all the time no bro you're on camera don't lie i'll say right to you no we have and i'll tell you why why it works it works well what is it first tell me what it was uh it would be it would have been value i don't have a number but it would be a value add and so instead so say if somebody's paying 70 bucks for something say a pair of leggings yeah he's buying a pair of leggings okay and it was 70 bucks for the leggings what we did

was we threw the top in and the jumper in to make it a full a full outfit oh in at the same go right oh it would make it that i found you add and the idea here is that obviously that's an insane value if you're buying a pair of leggings and you're getting the top as well okay right but the thing is the people but first of all they have more stuff to wear from your product second of all they're they're looking at, oh, this isn't a discount brand. I'm actually getting more from it. So it feels good. I'm coming back.

I'm going to buy more. Third of all, then they're going to see that they're going to not be used to spending less. So if I go and say I bought from your brand, I paid $30, not $70. And then so I'm the right type of customer to be able to spend that amount anyway. So you've got three good reasons there why 30 if you knock off 30 it's like devaluing your brand by 30 and you launched with this no we didn't launch with it no this product's been out for months and then we added some stuff in but it worked it's very busy airspace around here i will say that no we didn't launch with it but what we did do was we had that maybe from August,

September time. And that was when it was going to become on sale anyway. So that was something that kind of coming into sales season, it was, it was, it was kind of autumn winter. Okay. So we,

we, it had been launched late in the summer, autumn, winter stuff, end of autumn, winter. And we wanted to kind of put it on sale. I had a client once that we actually wanted to fail and they did an 80% off sale.

Holy shit. I'm just holy shit i'm just playing they were shitty people and we wanted them to fail okay they sucked yeah they sucked wouldn't that be terrible there's the biggest one that i've said by the way it's not real no i'm joking put the hand up on that one got that that. But no, we had a guy before do a lifetime offer of hoodies. What? For five grand. You could be paid five grand. I think it was 12 years of hoodies.

Okay. And you could buy for five grand. I think they sold three of them. They sold three of them? Three of them, yeah. So three people paid five grand for a 12-year worth of hoodies. Are they still in business?

I don't know. I haven't talked to them since. Okay. But what I'll say is that's just a point to say that you can put that massive offer in there. the hoodies is are they still in business i don't know i haven't talked to them since okay but what i'll say is that's just a point to say that you you can put that massive offer in there kind of anchoring it up like super high so it's something to have a look at as well but 30 you seem everything going across your whole everything yeah 30 for for i've we've tried so many things and it's always been 30 like plant a tree no bro like go go go kick rocks like 25 no like but this is like i will caveat it yeah these are for brands that they're they're

spending we're spending like 20 to 100k right so it's not like super large brands it's not performance products it's fashion and apparel. I statistically see a difference in performance. The watershed is 30%. You do 25%, kick rocks. 20%, kick rocks. 30%, whoa. Step change? Statistically significant, on my mother wow i was

saying dollar amounts are even more powerful dollar amount and percentage sometimes i dug in and i found out that this dude had not released product for six months i'll do it and like and his top sellers are already sold out and he came for me he came for me and he's like he's like why wasn't my black friday lit and i was like, because you're not lit. It's like, you've been not only lit, it's been lights out. You haven't been doing anything. But I was like, thank you, Jesus. I found out why.

Or else I would have, like, that's the rock that, like, I die on for Black Friday. Andrew, what is your hot take okay i mean honestly my hot take is that people's ego gets in the way uh in our industry way too often for sure there's a hot take that's not a take take yeah well hang on hang on maybe let's dig into it a bit is there something you're specifically i'm talking about is there a Twitter beast that you're hearing? Give us some fight. I mean, I just, I think there's, there's people are too much in a rush to be a person of authority because their ego wants them to be like, you're smart, you're smart, you're smart. And so they go out and they try to say things really declaratively and really definitively

to make other people feel small. And I think that that is uh or confuse them um so there's a whole bunch of like complicating words and obfuscation um i think there's a certain i'm not saying this is bad but i think there's a certain level of person that will turn the video on themselves to record their own thoughts for the audience to hear because they think that they're of a stature that people like really want to hear from them and here we are sitting on a podcast and me saying this but i think i think that i'm a nobody i mean like ego plays a huge role um in actually misguiding and misinforming a lot of people to not make their own decisions. Yeah.

And, you know, I often think I had a friend that was not, is not in our industry. And one time I was telling him about, you know, some of the Twitter beefs that were going on or something. And he's like, all you need to do is just keep laying bricks. Yeah. It's all you need to do, you know? So my, my hot take is that I think that that really leads people astray.

And I think that that also distracts a lot of people. And ultimately it can be helpful to be on X in our industry, but then I don't think you necessarily have to be. And ultimately I think it might be better if you aren't most of the time for your mental health and for your business wealth. Yeah.

When has it ever been? Bro, I've opened up x one time and yeah we talked about this i opened it up i hadn't opened it up for a while and i looked at tris and i was like bro i feel bad about myself i gotta shut this thing close it get rid of it yeah yeah my other hot take is i think that uh now that i'm thinking now that i'm rolling on hot takes my my another one is that a lot of the advice that you hear is incredibly is like all needs way more context oh yeah oh further like you need you need to actually be like okay what country are you advertising in because you hear stuff from people this is what's working this is what's working and it's like

that's what's working for this brand that's spending this amount in this geography yeah and it does not apply to me in this particular thing so i think that i think that as an industry like my hot take is like add context yeah as much as you can it's going to be helpful can we can we say it for real twitter beefs or twitter not Twitter beefs, but this context, what it is, people that are spending a million bucks a month. Yeah. They can't give advice. They should not give advice. They should only give advice to people that are spending a million dollars a month.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. So different. have my dude that's not spending a million dollars a month come at me with some LinkedIn article or like some tweet that from a dude that I know is he's spending a million dollars a month. It's like, why aren't you doing this in my account? Why don't you give me a million dollars? No, do it in your account. No problem at all. I think that's, I mean, that's huge. And like, you know, it's, it's, it's that, and it's also, um, uh, a misunderstanding a misunderstanding of actually the smaller accounts.

They're just so much more nuanced to it. And I just think it does a huge disservice, honestly, to our industry that that's it. So I think the best thing we can do is continue to try to be kind to one another, not watch your ego, and to try to add context. And I think if we do that this big, the fourth thing I'll say on like this threat, like this idea, uh, is I think as much as you can, and as much as people, anybody that's watching this can, the smart people that you know, smart young people that you know, or people that are looking to move careers in your life, get them involved in our industry. We need more people in our industry that are good people. Um, you know, look at the advent of creative strategy as a job. I mean, there's a lot of people that are coming in from different parts and I think that's been good overall for us. And so the more that you can, especially if they're people of color and women,

I think that's really good because that helps us to actually market better generally as an industry and not be just a bunch of white dudes giving ideas to each other. And so I think that in order to like be marketers for the world and be marketers for marketplaces all around, the more that we think holistically and the more that we bring in people that don't look like us, the better off our businesses will be because the reality is, is like we have to be good at marketing to people that look different than us long term. And that's going to make us more money. And that's going to make our customers more money.

And he's thinking about that and thinking about the inherent bias that you have. So I think that's a big one that I've been certainly ruminating on recently. I think that the diversity in our industry has gotten better, but it needs to get a 10x. Yeah, and I'm saying I think it's on people like us and people in our founders group or people that are watching this you know you're it's on us to be to be the people that are trying to make that change to be like because we've been in a long time right and i think it's on us to be like let's try to figure that out let's try to bring more folks in um because i think that's yeah i just think it's good overall like it's we need more good smart people because ultimately the people some of the people we met at the founders meet up yesterday, right?

They're like 10 years younger than us, right? They're younger. Believe it. Yeah. They're young and they're bringing fresh new ideas because that's great. And we want that innovation and we want those new ideas. That's what's going to really move us forward. That's what's going to help us continue to be ahead.

Because I think, you I think you get in your job, you do the same thing for a long time. There's the blinders you have on to some degree, which is good, but you also need to continue learning from those people. I mean, I'm biased, but obviously the founders membership is a great place to do that. What I've definitely found though yesterday is that curiosity, just that consistently innovation, the new ways of doing that absolutely i'm running this way to do creative testing i'm doing this way iterating on different creative yeah there's no back to something you were saying earlier on about this ego thing the best people in business i've ever

seen can hold two things to be true yeah what they believe and what someone else believes yeah they don't have to tear down the other person's idea yeah and that's where you see a lot of ego-led leaders and ego-led people tearing each other down it's like you don't is it not a zero-sum game well i mean yeah i mean i've really been inspired spending time with you recently over the last like week here together of like your curiosity is a huge part of it and edwin you always have that i mean i've always learned that from you guys i think that when you guys i think that x part yeah we've been meeting behind your back yeah we're looking to take over. But yeah,

I think that's true. I think that the curiosity piece is really, really big and we'll continue the innovation. So yeah, bring new people in. I think that's a good thing

for all of us. Yeah, we actually work with, and this is not a plug on our side, it's literally something that we've made a conscious effort to do

is work with more female founders and female-led companies to the point now where 60 percent of our clients are 50 percent are 60 percent of our clients are female founders nice that's amazing that's good i mean i just think it's good for the industry overall i mean it's male egos i love being around guys i love being guy friends are great but there's like a male ego thing that does come into play especially when it comes to business long term that i think is detrimental um and a lot of it largely actually those of us that

run marketing agencies we're actually trying to market to women a lot of the time yeah like and so it's like we we need to have a more perspective in what we're trying to do yeah and i think the more the i mean not just the way that we're like mirroring what's on TikTok to explain things, but also like just thinking about things from a female-led perspective is gonna be useful. And so that just means we need more women in the industry, and so go talk to your friends, get them in, tell them about creative strategy jobs,

tell them about Dardani's course, tell them about our course, tell them, I mean, I don't care. Watch Raul Lazar's YouTube videos. You know what I'm saying? Upskill is a this is an industry that you can you can go from zero to hero pretty quick and i think that the more people know that the better off that can be because um those of us that are have been in a while i think that we need we need that to keep us going to keep us learning and to keep making our share our industries around for a really long time absolutely who's your favorite founder member he has to say you know yeah cameras

rolling i mean honestly you know the biggest thing for me that's funny is um you know i i the people in the founders group i've become i've just become friends with you guys. Yeah. You know, like it's, it's, it's true. It's true friendship. And, and it, and it's so valuable because you, it's so rare that you have a friend that knows the deep of like the deep side of what you actually do professionally and the nuance and the things that you carry and the things that you like hold in your bones. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And so to me, the fact that we can go around the world and be in amsterdam here and have 50 people get together however many were there 50 or 60 people and chatting and being with them and at the end of it we're all like giving each other hugs goodbye you know that's that to me is is like so insanely beautiful and makes my heart sing like it's just it's great so i mean who i mean the people i look at that are like friends the people that i look at but i like true friends you know coming off of

it like you know i think about somebody honestly i mean like you guys like phil you guys are in this like phil keel is a person right like i learn from phil all the time and it's just because he's thinking differently he's got different ideas i I love from, I love, I love working with him. You know, I look at somebody like Akvila, who is an incredible leader who has made a choice to be her own boss and has made a choice to run things a certain way and knows what she wants to do and knows what she doesn't want to do. And I'm, yeah, like that's the kind of stuff I'm like, man, that's really well. I mean, Jenny Lynn's an example, you know, you watch her talk about your offer and you're like, and she just makes you question, you're like what am i doing with

my life you're like that is a shitty offer we have you know and so that's the kind of thing that i mean it's like the constant bringing in of new ideas from people because i think there's also that idea that if you're going to join a community that's around collective learning you're a person that's intellectually curious by nature. You're not coming in and saying, I've only had one time a guy came in and he goes, I've been in the Founders Membership a month. I know all this, so I'm going to leave.

And I was like, awesome. I will speak to you never. Actually, I'm me, so I was like, good luck. I wish you luck. Best of luck. Yeah, I'm not trying to get any bad blood in the world. But mostly the people that are in there, the regular people, it's like that curiosity that drives us forward. And that's really, what's inspiring to me is that the people that I look to that I'm like, yo, they're so good. And I'm so glad that I'm learning from them.

They're asking questions. Have you seen this? Have you seen that? And that makes me feel more like, Ooh, okay, cool. They're asking it too, because I think we all deal with imposter syndrome all the time in this. It's like, it's natural in doing this work. And so I think that if it's a place that can help you feel more validated, help you feel like you're, you know, learning and that you're able to ask in a vulnerable way, that's a really beautiful thing. Yeah.

That imposter syndrome is massive. I mean, a couple of people I was talking to yesterday even we're talking and they were saying like i just i'm seeing all these amazing talks amazing words being said and strategies given and i have nothing i'm just talking i'm just talking about what's on the yeah and it's it's uh yeah yeah it's amazing the humility that we're seeing in there is it. Can we talk about cost caps? What the fuck? No! But there's this whole movement at the moment to be like, let's do cost caps. Let's do cost caps.

Turn off your notifications. Turn off your Twitter notifications. Is that block button? Not block button. That mute button for certain words? If someone mentions cost caps in their head. Do we have like AI on everything? Block it. Andrew, why? Why are people doing this? Why, if someone mentions cost caps. Do we have like AI on everything? Block it. Why? Andrew, why?

Why are people doing this? Why are people going for cost caps? I mean, I think there's always a validity to keeping, you know, costs reined in and having cost controls on. I think that they, there's more predictability

to them than there was before. I think that it's still not something that i think you want to do 100 at a time personally for sure i think that you we did see a new member that joined um and he's transitioned 100 to uh cost caps with target row as um does he wake up at 5 a.m and take ice baths every day and he and but I learned recently that I think he's spending like north of 500K a month. You know, these are the things that you have to kind of understand about

that there's a volume to it as well, right? Like if you're going to be doing these, you're going to be doing cost caps, you're going to be doing really kind of like limiters on the account. If you're at a certain level, it's okay if it goes from 10K down to, or from, you know,

100K down to 10K to 60K, you know, you kind of have to accept that inherent volatility almost to it. And it's a different way of going about things. And it also obviously works when you have like creative winners. So it's sort of like, you have to be at a certain stage to be thinking about this longer term. Yeah. I'm not, so the thing that I think we get into is there's very little that differentiates us as advertisers sometimes. I think that, you know, you look at it and say, oh, you know, these agencies look largely the same. And I think that cost caps is an example of something that people utilize as like a sales tactic and i i'm not saying this is everyone but i do think this is like a decently common thing

um that people will say like oh well you know we have this secret sauce that you don't know about yeah okay um and i think other i think the people that are real cost cap maxis would say like no like we just know they work and i think that if they haven't worked for you you're doing it wrong okay um and so this is that ego thing though right because yeah it comes and so to me it's always new twitter new to me it's always like uh it's a thing of i'm not saying it's an invalid idea i'm not saying i probably wouldn't switch everything entirely onto it. The reason that Zach is doing is because they're not in a scaling portion of their business because they're holding inventory.

I think you just name dropped it. That's okay. Oh, no. Yeah. He says on Twitter. Yeah. He said that. Zach Suck, who's actually literally one of my best friends, actually, he went on and said, I'm going to try these because it's something I've seen and we are holding inventory for Q4.

And so we don't want to do like a ton, but we want to see if we can control cost to keep margin up in what it's going to do. I think it's a great time to give it a shot, right? I think anybody giving things a try is never a bad idea. I think the cost cap thing is really interesting because it's sort of like this white hot topic discussion. And it seems to bring up a lot of passionate feelings. But what's the context? So, look, you talk about context, right? And so, you're spending 20K and under. Cost cap?

No, I wouldn't say so. No, because you're really looking at a volume play. Okay. What's the volume though? Like generally when you're seeing it. I mean, to me, like if you're going to be spending any, if you're going to be spending, if you're spending 50k north of 50k a month, like I think looking at a campaign, maybe one that's cost capped, I think it's like a legitimate idea.

Yeah. I think there's definitely validity in that. Maybe you're going to cost cap the whole campaign or everything, you know, over time, you're going to transition into that. Really what you have to get used to is whole campaign or everything, you know, over time, you're going to transition into that. Really what you have to get used to is you have to get used to, like I said, a day where it doesn't spend anything and then a day where it spends the entire budget.

You also have to be really weary because there are, I mean, at least from what I, like a couple of times when we've seen personally, I've seen it personally on our accounts and then from like the community, like a dozen jakers does and other times where people have been days and last let's just even say like four months where cost caps just facebook just forgot about them for the day yeah so so then there's like so then you know so then you have it because a lot of it is that you're spending it you're spending you're having the campaign budgets that's really high budgets

because if it's really good, you want it to be that, right? And so then they'll just spend through a whole budget of 10K by 9 a.m. or something, and then you're totally screwed. So I think this is one of those things of like we talked about before with Zuck, like you want it to work that way,

but it just doesn't 100% yet, right? And so that's another piece about it. So I guess my feeling is that generally they're on the table because there's a lot of people that are utilizing this as a sales technique to make to make it seem like there's something that they have that you don't yeah i think that there's also people that are pushing it that have seen it work over time and really believe in the meta system and believe that it is the most profitable thing to do and have seen it repeatable in accounts and they're talking about it because they're

evangelizing it because they think it's really a great way to control costs and make businesses more profitable. And I think there's validity in that. And I also think that there's people that have tried it and it hasn't worked and they've tried it again and again and it hasn't worked. And they've tried to raise it up by 10% or by 15% a day or every 72 hours or whatever and it hasn't worked. And so it's like there's all of these things are true. So my point is that if you are having a situation where you're not scaling profitably and you're spending 50K a month or more, is it a valid idea to try them? Sure. Why not? Absolutely. Would I try a cost control for the first time during q4 i probably would not no because i would rather get the lot

of volume through these so please though but like you know is it if if you want to have if you want to control costs during q4 and make margins better and make sure that your CPA doesn't go above a certain amount, that's a valid argument. And that could be something that you'd want to try. But you are, again, largely going to be sacrificing volume for the most part. So it depends on you having creative winners. It depends on you having a lot of factors that go into it. It's not just like an easy fix. So I think it's like yes and no.

I think Jake does a good talk about it in the founders group. I think what he talks about is, again, that making sure you have constant winners. And if you don't have constant winners, it's kind of like you got to, you got to have the right tools

to be able to do that particular job. You can't just compare lowest cost to cost gaps. You have to have the consistent winners gaps you have to have the consistent winners you have to have the consistent testing and everything else like that that will uh allow you to kind of see it allow you to do it you can't just go oh i'm going to turn this on it's going to work you can't expect that you have you have to have testing have done your tests in lowest cost you have to have done your tests in abo yeah making sure that they work there and then bring

that stuff in that's really your kind of is where you're gonna go with it i mean it's just a funny honestly like it's i'm just gonna go gonna go off on this really briefly but like it's just a continuation of in my opinion this kind of stuff these little things that are just driven largely by people talking about complicated shit or talking about things that are actually simple and making them seem complicated to confuse people to make them become dependent upon you and your content to explain it to them and that is just a really that is it's so frustrating to me because it's like i think if you're going to be speaking about stuff like make it easy to read make it public or not just public but like it doesn't have to be so complicated it doesn't have to be that

way you know i don't know but like then again like also i'm we have a membership and i'm like you know if you want the real insights come inside the foxhole founders it's like i guess i'm doing it too i mean it's true it's like in reality but like i i'm trying i try to not be like holding like this is a secret sauce like yeah it's the membership's a secret sauce for you. Well, you know, the membership really gives you like a diverse set of perspectives that you're gonna learn from and like really a safe place that you can come in and ask questions,

not be flame for asking that question on X. And that's a lot of people have said that's the reason that they joined. And so I think there's a difference there. And I think in order to continue to actually evolve and like bring more people in, like I talked about earlier and involve the industry properly, which is, I think some of the duty that we have doing Cycling Club and they didn't include the pedals or a helmet on a bike rental because they're like, well, or shoes. They're sort of like, if you're a

hardcore cyclist, you're going to bring your own pedals. And it's like, this is dumb. This is stupid. Like make it accessible. You know what I mean? Like, you know, which is why a lot of times, like we take the best stuff from the founder's membership and turn them into blogs. Yeah. Because we wanted that to be out there. So, I mean, obviously I'm struggling with that too. We're a little bit in that case,

but I don't, I really try not to be like overly declarative about things. So I think it's a big part of it. So anyway, it's been more transparent than I thought it would be. All right, guys, that is a wrap. We talked with the guy, with the man himself, Mr. Andrew Foxhole, the man with the biggest mic.

We talked about Q4. We had a couple of hot takes, a couple of intro looking inside, what to do to keep yourself sane for Q4. I'm Edwin. I'm Tris. And I'm the big cheese. Thanks, guys. Have an excellent night. I'm Tris. And I'm the big cheese. Thanks, guys.

Have a nice night. So there you go. A sample episode of the fantastic Founders Forum podcast. If you like the kind of depth of information that you get in there, and honestly, I don't think you can get that kind of information really on any other podcast, including ours. Just look for Founders Forum podcast. And if you're interested in Andrea's Foxwell Founders community, go to todayindigital.com slash founders. That's our

affiliate link. We have been in there since the inception of the group. All right, that'll do it for the week. I'll be back on Monday with a special deep dive science episode about how schadenfreude can be used in your marketing. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Snuney McFirst Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is the intrepid Steph Gunn.

Our production coordinator is Sarah Guild. Our director of Crazy is Mark Blevis. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend, and I will see you on Monday.