James Bennett 💛

👉🏻 DTC spending just hit all-time lows for 2025. Your ecommerce brand isn't competing with other brands but with mortgage payments and grocery bills now. Both current and planned future spending are down across the board. 🎯 The hard truth about scaling in tough times: → CPAs don't get cheaper as you grow; they get more expensive. → More competition always means higher acquisition costs. → "Once we're established, ads will be easier" is fantasy thinking. I've run Facebook ads for over a decade, and let me tell you, it's never gotten cheaper. 🔗 What works when budgets tighten: → Net promoter scores that matter. → Lifetime value optimization over new customer acquisition. → Products so good that customers become unpaid sales teams. → Building genuine fans, not just one-time buyers. The difference between surviving and thriving: Average brands chase cheaper acquisition tactics. Beloved brands focus on retention and word of mouth. When money gets tight, people still buy from brands they love. They recommend products that changed their lives. They defend companies that earned their loyalty. Stop playing the acquisition game and start playing the loyalty game. When the economy contracts, beloved brands don't just survive, but they steal market share from everyone else.

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Over the last 6 years of building a 7-figure agency, these are 21 rules I live and die by. 1. Make the winners win more (try to avoid distressed businesses) 2. Don't charge under $4k per month if you want to scale with a team 3. Go upmarket slowly and don't go back once you're there 4. Incentivise your team to perform 5. Focus on your Zone of Genius & delegate the rest 6. Invest in your personal brand every single day 7. Train your team relentlessly (and consistently) 8. Build a methodology moat to differentiate against your competition 9. Make offers every day to your ICP 10. Don't rely exclusively on referrals - take control of your own destiny 11. Ask for case studies at peak happiness (not when the client is leaving) 12. Never stop selling, even when at capacity 13. The right person for the job is more important than SOPs 14. Innovate on your service or lose to other agencies with better ideas 15. Invest in operational efficiency before hiring another person to increase capacity 16. Don't bend the rules for maverick staff - agency life is a team sport 17. Build partnerships with complimentary agencies and help them win 18. Develop relationships with emerging tech, not established giants if you want to generate leads 19. Don't abandon an offline presence entirely, even if you hate it 20. Have at least 5 long-form content assets that explain your methodology to use in sales collateral 21. Remove toxic clients but don't avoid hard work and resilience-building ________ What would you add to this list? #emailmarketing #ecommerce #shopify

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Making ads in 2025 is harder than ever. Every day: costs rise, people scroll faster, trust drops lower. They've seen every trick. They know what you're trying to do. We make 1,000+ ads monthly for 7, 8, and 9-figure DTC brands. 10 formats still working right now: 1. UGC VIDEO The format everyone runs. Works because it feels personal and organic. Problem: Oversaturated now. The UGC that performs best is raw and authentic. The more polish, the worse the performance. 2. FOUNDER ADS Tell your story. Separate yourself from competitors selling the same product. Your founding story is what makes you unique. A 30-second founder video can be a top performer for months. Practically free to create. Record yourself or use voice notes over B-roll. 3. EGC (EMPLOYEE GENERATED CONTENT) Your team are massive brand advocates. We filmed Humantra's founder calling top customers. Pure reactions. Top performer. Years ahead, we'll see more brands employing content creators specifically for EGC. 4. PODCAST ADS Cooled down after the early 2025 rush. Don't always perform as claimed. What works: Expert and guest angle. Not fake banter between people with no chemistry. Expensive to produce properly. Must look and sound like real podcasts. 5. STREET INTERVIEWS Incredibly cheap. The key is real reactions. Fast-paced editing. Give people an incentive to watch. Oversized authentic reactions. Note: Many are fake (actors paid $200 for 5 minutes). Format still works. 6. STATIC ADS Incredibly powerful and cheap. Glanceable information retention even when people scroll. We're in the golden age of statics with AI tools. Just don't create AI slop. Good copy plus good imagery pays dividends. 7. HYBRID MASHUP Reuse archive footage. Pair with AI voiceover. Script in Claude or ChatGPT. Nearly automated workflow. Easy to test different hooks and messaging. Basically free with existing footage. Build your content archive. You need material to repurpose. 8. MINI VSL (VIDEO SALES LETTER) Sell hard. Problem, solution, agitate, educate, close. Top of funnel performer across health and wellness brands. All about storytelling and showing your product in the best light. 9. MONTAGE VIDEOS Ludicrously simple. Mash footage with music. 16-second montage with customer quote became the top performer for Bible speaker client. Super cheap. Another reason to collect footage constantly. 10. TASTE TEST (CPG) Get creators to taste the product and react live. Visceral reactions drive performance. People live vicariously through reactions. We always film these with UGC creators. Usually find 1-2 winners.

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The most profitable brands aren't creative geniuses. They're disciplined executors. While everyone is obsessing over viral TikTok concepts and "breakthrough" creative strategies, the brands making real money have figured out one thing that works...and they milk it dry. Same ad format. Same messaging angle. Same targeting approach. For months. It's not sexy. But it scales. I've worked with brands that found their winning formula (a simple before/after testimonial or a straightforward product demo) and they'll run variations of that same creative for six months straight. No creative fatigue anxiety. No chasing shiny objects. Just disciplined execution of what converts. Think about the brands dominating your feed: They're not reinventing the wheel every week. They found their lane and stayed in it until the wheels fell off. Then they found another lane and did it again. The creative genius myth is seductive because it makes marketing feel like art. But profitable marketing is more like manufacturing; find a process that works and scale the hell out of it. This goes beyond creative too. Profitable brands pick one acquisition channel and master it before moving to the next. They focus on one product line until it's optimized. They fight the urge to diversify until they've squeezed every dollar out of their core strategy. All while their "creative" competitors are split-testing seventeen different ad concepts across four platforms then freaking out when nothing scales. When it comes to profit, discipline beats creativity. Find what works. Then work it until it doesn't.

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If you’re sending the same email to everyone on your list… you’re not doing email marketing. You’re just sending noise. At TheWireMonster, we work with DTC brands across 12+ countries. And one thing I see way too often is that People send the same email to everyone Whether it’s a first-time visitor or your most loyal customer, same message, same tone, same offer. And then they wonder: “Why aren’t my emails converting?” “Why’s my open rate tanking?” Let me tell you what we did for one of our DTC clients (and how we increased revenue by 40% in 30 days). We didn’t run more ads. We didn’t design flashier emails. We just segmented their list. We created 4 ridiculously simple groups: 1) New Subscribers They just hopped on board. So instead of jumping into sales mode, we said: “Hey, welcome! Here’s who we are, what we stand for, and what you can expect.” ✅  Click Rate doubled just by being real and friendly. 2) Past Buyers They bought once, then why not again? We sent them personalised “You might also like this…” emails, based on what they actually ordered. ✅ Repeat orders up by 32%. 3) High-Value Customers Our VIPs. The loyal ones. We treated them like gold, early access, secret deals, and surprise goodies. ✅  Their lifetime value is off the charts. 4) Inactive Users They ghosted us. So we kept it simple: “Hey, we miss you.” With one solid reason to come back. ✅ 18% came back. Just like that. At Wire Monster, we’ve helped generate $15M+ in sales for 85+ brands using strategies like this. From startups to Fortune 500s, we make every email count. Want to stop leaving money on the table? Drop a "SEGMENT" in the comments or DM me. I’ll show you how we do it, step-by-step. Let’s turn your email list into a money machine. #EmailMarketing #WireMonster #RetentionMarketing #DTCBrands #CustomerJourney #SalesGrowth #JitanKaundal #MarketingThatConverts

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