Happy Super Bowl Sunday! Since I'm writing to a bunch of marketing dorks like myself, I know you're as excited for the commercials today as the game. I'm definitely excited to see them! As always some quick housekeeping: I lied, kinda. I said last week I only could do 1 more Facebook ad audit this month, but I've been productive so I only have 2 in the backlog that I plan to finish today. That means I can squeeze in 1-2 more this month. If you'd like me to audit your FB ad account, please reply and I can send over details. We just recorded our final Down To Chat podcast of season 2 with Nik Sharma talking about landing pages, which I'm excited to get out. catch up on DTC pod here. Lastly, if you were forwarded this click here to subscribe.

One cool thing I've recently discovered is a neat way to spy on your competitors. Say you want to know how they are doing in revenue, how much of each product they're selling, and a lot more? Let me introduce you to Particl, a really cool new software that tracks 80,000+ e-com stores and can show you their revenue and inventory movements w/ scary accuracy. It's one of those things that feels illegal to know but they showed me how it works on a demo and I had to share it. You can use this data to ideate new product or category launches, inventory purchases, pricing and merchandising, and a whole lot more. Get a free look into Particl at particl.com/cody. Sponsored

Today's main topic is about attribution, specifically for 7 figure brands and below. Things get slightly more complicated at 8 figures and much more complex at 9 figures. But I know there are a lot of smaller brands who read this so wanted to write this to answer a bunch of questions I've been getting lately. One of the questions is "what attribution tool should I be using if I'm below 7 figures?" and my answer always is Shopify/ your bank account/ none. People are often surprised at my answer, so let me explain. I don't really believe in attribution, at least how most people in growth marketing talk about it.

This took me way too long to learn. There is no single source of truth for what made someone buy, and no black and white answer. I used to think I was being "data driven" by needing to know exactly how much revenue I generated from Facebook. I just didn't understand the customer journey and didn't trust my gut or understand blended metrics. There are many different ways to look at how to attribute sales to a particular investment in a channel. You can look at last click, first click, linear, clicks and views, in platform vs HA vs Northbeam, etc. Forget it all for trying to figure out the truth, and only use it directionally. What does that mean?

You need a hierarchy of metrics that you look at. What's most important to your business? #1 is your net profit and contribution margin. As long as all fixed costs remain stable, you'll know that your ads are doing better if they're producing more contribution margin dollars. But which ads? How do I know which channel I should spend more on? The reality is you should likely only be spending paid dollars on Meta and Google until you're solid 8 figures. Meta is just by far the best and most efficient, and it's very rare that another platform performs better at this stage. If that's the case and you're a rare brand that does do better on Youtube or TikTok, you still should only be spending on 1 platform. With a lean team, there's no reason to spread focus in multiple directions. Master one. Oh and Google is mainly brand search, so it just captures the search demand created by Meta. Sean Ecom aka wallet man said it perfectly on an episode of Down to Chat. You know your ads are doing well if you made more money because you're only spending on one platform. Please don't go chasing the new shiny ad platform and instead spend your time mastering 1 first.

You'll obviously need to get more insights into performance than what a P&L can tell you. That's where the next rung up the ladder comes in, which are your blended metrics. You need to have goals for blended metrics like Revenue, Spend, Marketing Efficiency Ratio(MER), Acquired Marketing Efficiency Ratio (aMER), CAC, Rev from new customers, Rev from returning customers, and # of new customers. If nearly all of your ad spend is on Meta and your aMER is good, it is very likely that your ads are doing well. Who cares what Zuck or someone else says? If your bank account is good and your aMER is good, carry on! I like aMER over MER because really strong retention can cover up some acquisition issues for short periods of time, so aMER shows how just your acquisition is performing . Over time, you need to and will develop a model for correlating your paid Facebook ROAS or CPA with your aMER targets. It's going to be a bit different for every brand depending on how much organic traffic you have and what your customer journey looks like.

You can use an attribution tool here, but here's my take: any of the ones that are economical at this size are usually not very good or accurate, and will confuse you more than they will help. And any of the good ones (we use and swear by Northbeam) don't make sense at this stage in your business. You should be using a mix of in platform data, Google Analytics last click utm data, and a post purchase survey (I reccomend Kno). There are ways to build complicated models to help you triangulate the correlation between your needed platform CPA and your aMER. I suggest just keeping it simple. Your aMER where you want it to be? Good, what's your in platform or GA ROAS and CPA? Boom that's your target. aMER not good? What's your in platform CPA? It's not good enough. Remember, you're only spending on one channel so aMER is pretty well correlated with Facebook ROAS at this stage. There's just not much to blend in. Trying to use fancy attribution models when you only spend on one platform is like making a single ingredient smoothie w/ banana, ice, and water, having a negative reaction, and doing a blood test to find out what is wrong. I know what is wrong, it was the only ingredient, the banana. The ice and water didn't do it.

Part of the trick here is to learn to ignore your ROAS in platform. I see so many brands at this stage think Facebook is not working well because in platform looks not so good, and then they turn to an attribution tool to try to fix the issue. Your ads are likely having a much bigger impact than what Facebook is telling you. Use your post purchase survey to understand some of the non-click value your Facebook ads provide. Often you will find people learn about you from Facebook and search from you later, or buy from your email list.

When it comes to attribution, most people are spending too much time trying to answer questions that can't be objectively answered, and spending far too little time answering the objectively true ones which are your blended metrics. I don't know, or even care how much revenue Facebook brought in this month. I don't even know what that means. Are you looking at 1 day click, 7 day click, 7 day click 1 day view? How do you measure and discount interactions with other channels? The truth is, it doesn't matter because it's all a fugazzi. Blended metrics are truth, attribution is subjective. Find which model works for you and use it to measure performance of that channel directionally in context of your blended metrics.

Before we go, I wanted to let you know about an awesome UGC solution that you should know about. Minisocial is trusted by awesome brands like Super Coffee, immi, Plant People, Ceremonia, and more. If you're looking for quality UGC, there's a reason why so many top brands trust Minisocial. Their fully managed solution partners your brand with high-quality micro influencer partners who can create stunning, real UGC. Their influencers will post on their channels, and it will be fully licensed for you to use on your channels as well. So not only do you get the content for you to use, but you get the reach from them posting as well from real influencers, not some new UGC creator. One thing I love about Minisocial is they don't have any long term, locked in contracts. That's how you know they get results. It's also very reasonably priced for the quality, and I managed to snag a 15% discount code. Just mention Cody and you'll get 15% off your first batch of UGC with Minisocial. Sponsored

Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback on this issue! And lmk if you want to snag one of the final audit slots for this month.

Enjoy the big game and commercials!

-Cody