Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re feeling relaxed, rejuvenated, and excited for today’s newsletter. While celebrating the 4th, I got to see ALTA SOUNDS perform and, to my surprise, one of the two DJs is Jerel, the head of growth at Tushy, a newsletter reader, and we had a blast! He mentioned how easy it is to forward these newsletters within teams and share actionable, tactical insights. So with that theme, I wanted to take today’s newsletter (a more relaxed Sunday newsletter) to reiterate what to do right after you launch a brand.

This email is a summary of approximately 75% of the MentorPass or Intro consulting calls I have conducted. I’m not able to take as many as I used to, but I hope putting out today’s email will help a ton of people get unstuck. But, before we get into that…

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After your parents told you for years growing up that you’re going to be an amazing doctor or lawyer, you pursued that path, and then one day decided to launch a dog food brand or a new makeup line. You just quit your cushy salaried job, where your car and mortgage payments are automatically paid once your paycheck clears into your personal checking account. You leave because you have “the next big idea” and want to take the leap.

You conduct your R&D, speak with friends, order samples, find the one sample that works, and refine it into the perfect V1 of your product. Then, contract some freelancers or an agency to help you with branding, website design, packaging design, and get your Shopify store and warehouse/shipping all set up.

You've ordered your first 10,000 units of inventory, and now you feel like you're ready to bring your new innovation to the world. You start small... You text and email everyone that you know, getting them all hyped. You start posting on social media, and you even try “boosting” a few of your posts to spread the word.

You launch, and day 1 is a huge success! Your family, friends, former colleagues, etc. all buy from your store. You are feeling euphoric. This is it! People KNOW YOU EXIST!

Everyone congratulates you on social media, and your ex-BF/GF reaches out “just to say hello,” but really, they’re just incredibly proud of you for finally taking that leap. You’re on top of the world. You know that you are going to be “the next big thing in Target.”

Then… Day 2 rolls around, and your sales drop off a cliff. Your site visits are down 50%, and your website conversion rate has dropped from 7% to 2%. On day 3, your sales drop by another 50% from day 2, and your conversion rate now stands at 1%.

The buzz dies down and your “launch” is officially over. People start to move on. Even though you had all this buzz on day 1, you come to realize that you are now just another brand on the market that needs to compete.

As the founder, you start to panic. Now what? You are looking at the 100 to 200 people visiting your site everyday, and wondering why they’re not converting. “What don’t they see in the product that I know makes it so powerful,” you think to yourself.

Frankly, I’ve seen this exact thing happen more times than I’d like to admit, which is why I wanted to eliminate those post-launch-day scaries by writing a quick guide for new CPG founders who are trying to go from zero to 1, and especially through using DTC as your primary channel to launch. I just also went through this again with a client recently. 

Remember, in business, “Hope” is not a strategy and you need a plan if you want to succeed. So with that in mind, here’s the exact playbook that I’ve used to help launch tons of brands going from 0-1. 

Although it’s not guaranteed that every brand will succeed (did I mention that launching and building a lasting brand is really hard?) I can say that if you follow these steps you won’t waste time or your hard-earned capital pursuing the wrong things. You will know that you gave it the good old fashioned Sharma Red Carpet try and you can rest easy knowing that you pulled the levers that were in your control to try to make things work. Of course, I must add the disclaimer that this may not work for your brand… but I can say this has worked every single time I’ve done it.

This is something that Justin Mares and Nick Mares did beautifully for Kettle & Fire, a 9-figure bone-broth company. You can see Justin’s breakdown of the full process on his website. But in essence, here’s what they did:

• Made a landing page with a fake brand, pushing the value props, benefits and outcomes a customer could expect from being a customer of this brand.
• Spent some money behind ads (they did it with Bing, I recommend doing it with Meta) to get traffic on the page.
• Have a conversion event on the landing page — they used an “Order Now” button and processed paid orders. You can also do this with email capture, as long as you adjust your expectations of what numbers to expect. 30% conversion on a landing page to checkout is a great metric for checkout, but for email collection, it should be at least double to feel validated.
• They refunded customers who ordered the product and told them it was coming soon.

Throughout this process, they validated demand, ensured there is “juice” to be squeezed with this angle and story, and it gave them the confidence to stand the brand up.

If you’re able to do this, you’re one step ahead of making sure you don’t waste any money on the further steps, if the idea doesn’t convert. The paid media test should be somewhere between $5 to $10k in my opinion.

I hate to break it to you, but launch days basically have no impact on your brand’s long-term success. Yes, launch days are always fun, and you should try to maximize the buzz that you get from your launch, but you need to have a plan in place for day 2, week 2, month 2, etc., that’s going to help you sustain growth, customer acquisition, and drive sell-through of your products. As soon as you launch, there is now a ticking time bomb on the inventory, as the fees that accrue from it just sitting and not moving, and the rest of the money being spent to “keep the lights on” for the business.

So with that said, here is the ingredient list, and then I’ll get into the recipe:

• A landing page that you can modify, edit, update, swap imagery/copy on.
• A static Meta ad template you can edit/modify based on learnings (I recommend doing this in Figma).
• $15k to $20k in advertising budget that you’re OK with losing.
• A video editor to help iterate on ideas (if you have no money, then look overseas!)
• Content creators - you want a small group of 4-7 people you can rely on to create good content for you, at a price you can afford, that tells the story of your brand in the right way.

Now, the recipe.

Landing page and offer

As mentioned, the first thing to do is start with a landing page with good positining/angles, a clear offer, some compelling copy, some product photos, and a way to buy it.

Just your product, at full price, won’t convert unless you’re an anomaly like Jolie (shower head), where your product-market fit is off the charts. Think about what kinds of offers you can run that work in your favor and in the prospective customer’s favor, too. Here are some ideas:

• 10% off your order (try 20-30% off if it’s a high-consumption product)
• Gift with purchase (free candle, free case, something that’s high-margin, high-perceived value, and contributes to the product experience)
• Spend $X, Get $Y off your order
• Buy X, Get 1 free

Those four are the easiest to start with and most applicable. If you have a subscription business, you can incentivize future subscription orders by offering discounts or making them free.

For landing pages, you want to build something functional; it doesn’t need to look like it came from a premier agency like Sharma Brands, but it needs to look like your mom can come to the page knowing nothing, and leave with the understanding of:

• What is the product
• Why does this brand exist
• Why is this product going to better my life
• Why is this company the best option on the market
• How fast do I get it if I order today
• Why should I trust this brand or product

 I explicitly mention that because, as founders, you’re drinking your own Kool-Aid… you have zero clue about the questions that people have. It’s always those 6. Just answer those repeatedly on the landing page, and, honestly, wherever you’re selling. It’ll work.

As you start generating sales, make sure you go above and beyond with your customer experience. These are your first customers, of what could be a $100M/year business soon. They will remember being the first customer. You should remember them too. When someone makes a purchase, send them an email thanking them for their purchase, letting them know that you appreciate their support, and that you’re there if you can be of any help.

If you don’t know how to write this email, just put this prompt into Chat GPT: 

I need to write an email for an e-commerce business. We are a new startup with a mission to [insert mission here as you would say it to a 3rd grader]. Our first product is a [insert product here — not like “Hint Water” but rather “still, sugar-free, flavored water with light fruit essence flavorings]. I want to write a simple thank you note that will be sent as a plain text email to customers after buying. This email will come from Lauren, who is our head of customer experience. The company name is “[insert company name here]” and we just launched a couple months ago. This shouldn’t be too long, and should be written at a 5th grade reading level. Give me 10 options please.

You’ll get 10 options full of gold. Modify that to your liking, add a CTA to get some sort of reply, and set it up post-purchase. Why is this so important? It leads me to the next critical step: collecting reviews.

PS - replies are huge for you as a business. If the invisible email gods see that people reply to your inbox, it won’t be considered spam in the future. That’s why, even for my newsletter, I encourage you to share your favorite cuisine (even though I do love reading through the replies). 

Now that influencers can be bought, media companies can be bought, and everyone is extra wary of what’s real and what’s not, one of your best levers for social proof is customer reviews. This means customers who bought your product are filling out the review submission form on your website.

When you see that someone’s product has been delivered, you should have a plain-text email that goes out a few days after delivery, asking them to leave a review. Emphasize the fact that you’re a new business, and their contribution would mean the world to you (it will, and it’s ok to be honest about that). 

In my opinion, until you’re processing around 100 orders per day, you should focus on sending these out one by one, from a real email account, not through an automated email. You want the highest potential deliverability rate, and you want this to appear in the Important tab of their inbox.

Obtain a review, ideally with attached imagery, and express your gratitude in some way. It can be a $10 gift card to your store, or it can be something more personal, like buying them a slice of pizza (a $5 Venmo payment). Up to you, and how you want to do it, coming from your brand.

Emailing and texting all of your friends about your new product and your launch date is definitely the right strategy, but you can’t stop there! You’ll need some compelling ads to scale. 

That said, organic social is a great way to test and learn before you start running ads. Especially with the ways that social platform feeds are set up today, you can put anything out in the world, and all of a sudden get discovered by 2 million people overnight.

One of the reasons for having content creators in arm's reach is so you can test what does well on places like TikTok, Reels, Shorts, and Twitter. As soon as you find a video that works, you double down. Until you do find something that works, keep posting and trying new concepts.

Separately on the ads side, you can get rolling with some tests. Before you proceed, ensure that your landing page is ready to go. You can “test” the LP by even directing your organic social traffic and attention to the landing page. Here is how to get ads set up:

1. Put together a list of angles that you think make sense. The best way to do this is to ask yourself, “Why should someone buy my product?” and answer it in as many ways as possible. They can be short and brief. Just list them.

2. Take those ideas and try to combine those that are very similar. If you’re unable to generate any ideas, try using Chat GPT and ask it for its recommended angles. Remember to be very specific about who your customer is, what your brand is, and why you exist. Otherwise, you’ll get a very generic answer that won’t work.

3. Turn those angles into briefs for video editors and content creators. You can also take those angles and develop static ad creative (images in Figma) that you can run on Meta. Why statics? The CPM is about ⅓ of the CPM it takes to show a video ad. 

4. Set a budget of $500 per day and start testing the ads on Meta. Make sure that you focus on specific customer audiences as you build out the campaign. Don’t just go broad, despite what you see on Twitter or in publications. We are talking about $0 in historical spend… going broad works when you have enough ad spend history for Meta to know who to go after. You have to think of the Meta ads engine as a human… if it has no learnings, how will it know what to do?

5. Use Heatmap on your landing page and website to understand what is working, what’s interesting, and what is just fluff to prospective customers. If you have no changes to make, you’re lying to yourself. It’s okay to have a horrible V1 of your site, as long as you’re willing to improve it and know that your first attempt doesn’t need to be perfect.

Keep repeating steps 3 and 4 until you find something that starts to work. You want to look at these metrics improving:

• CPM: Cost per 1,000 impressions (eyeballs… well, 2,000 eyeballs). This tells you how much Meta likes your content and ad setup. If this is high, its not favorable. If it’s low, you’re doing exactly what aligns with their goals: keeping users engaged.
• CPA: Cost per acquisition. This is the cost is takes to acquire 1 new customer to your brand. 
• CTR: Click-through rate. This tells you how good your ad creative is, and it’s helpful to learn where your funnel is broken. High CTR, but low conversion rate? Means your site/landing page needs work. Low CTR? Means your ads need work.
• CPC: Cost per click. This is just a good number to monitor. It’s a function of CTR & CPM, so if you see this going down, it means you’re doing what the platform wants, and whats good for your business.
• CVR: conversion rate. This can be looked at from the ads (i.e. how many people who saw our ads bought) or the website (i.e. how many of the site visitors became customers). 

Why is all this helpful outside of just driving sales? This creates the fastest feedback loop, allowing you to understand and respond to the market more effectively. You can test new messaging angles, new styles of creative, new product opportunities, etc. You’re building the world's most efficient focus group with a customer acquisition funnel.

As you start to find things that work (angles, styles of creative, hooks, messaging, etc), do NOT lose sight of constantly testing and learning. Most people fail with paid ads because they don’t take the time to go through all the steps above. They run ads once, can’t make it work, lose $4k, and then never try again.

Once you start getting customers in the door, don’t forget to focus and invest in the other low-hanging fruit:

• Using the social proof you get in the ads themselves
• Duplicating landing pages and testing new angles
• Optimizing subject lines in your email to test for higher open rates
• Setting up SMS collection and flows, especially abandon cart or abandon checkout flows
• Iterating on the email collection pop-up to get from 4% to 12% with a tool like Alia
• Sending surveys to customers about what they love from your brand, what they hate, and what else they’d like to see.

Remember how I mentioned the gift with purchase (GWP) earlier? Consider how to expand your product lineup with this in mind. What will be your tier-1 products that you want people to buy, what will be your tier-2 products, and what are your add-ons that can become GWPs or upsells?

If you’re a skincare brand and you’re just selling one product for $29, you’ll never make money on the first purchase. But if you sell the one for $29, then there’s a pop up asking if you want a second one or to subscribe, then in the cart it’s pushing an add-on product, and post-purchase it pushes you a tier-2 product at a discount… you’ve now 4x’d your AOV, and can make money on the first order.

As you increase ad spend on Meta, consider turning on Google and TikTok. Although I think you can get to a decent size with just Meta alone. Jumping on TV, OOH, or podcast ads can all wait. The highest-leverage thing you can do as you’re slowly growing between the 5- and 6-figure monthly revenue mark is getting earned media (influencers, creators, and editors to post) about your product.

Again, as you probably know, there are numerous tools of the trade that can help you drive new growth and reach new scale; however, this five-step process is exactly where I would start. 

It’s wild because I still haven’t even talked about retail, wholesale, influencers, partnerships, SMS, using AI agents, OOH, CTV, events, link placements in newsletters, sponsoring podcasts, the literal dozens of other things that you can do to grow to 8 and 9 figures as a DTC brand. 

This email is really for that 0-1 founder who is trying to get their first million “cha-ching” notifications from the Shopify app. These tactics are the foundation, but they are still just the tip of the iceberg of building a multi-8-figure brand. 

I hope this helps and provides a blueprint to follow as you begin your entrepreneurial journey. Starting and growing DTC brands has been one of the most fun and rewarding things that I have done, and it’s been an incredible journey to say the least.

I hope today’s newsletter was a fun read, validated some thoughts you had on your mind, or gave your the solution to become unstuck as you begin to scale your brand. Most of this advice is relevant to getting unstuck if you’re also a growing/scaling brand, but having challenges getting past a certain revenue ceiling.

Not only is tonight Sunday, but it’s also the Sunday after a long weekend, so I hope you’re planning to get at least 9 hours of sleep tonight and start your week off the right way. Have an amazing upcoming week, happy birthday America, and I’ll see you next Sunday where we dive into the secrets of how 3PLs try to get you, and how to make sure you don’t get stuck with a bad one.

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