Welcome back!

Q3 officially starts today, and with it comes a fresh opportunity to build momentum before the busiest months of the year.

In today's edition, I'm covering one new Meta feature we've been waiting years for, and one lesson from a past podcast guest that completely changed how I think about preparing for Q4.

Let's dive in.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 The Best Q4s Don't Start in Q4
💠 Meta Finally Fixed One of the Biggest Problems With Lead Ads
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Welcome to Q3. 👋

If you're like most brands, your team is probably already talking about BFCM.

The promotions. The inventory. The ad budgets. The email calendar.

And yes, all of that matters.

But after interviewing more than 200 founders and operators on my podcast, I've noticed something.

The brands that have the strongest Q4s usually don't spend all of Q3 waiting for Black Friday.

They create their own shopping moments.

One of my favorite examples came from my conversation with Bear Handlon, founder of Born Primitive.

Last year, instead of running a standard Veterans Day sale, they pledged 100% of their profits over Veterans Day weekend to help eliminate veteran medical debt.

Their original goal was to erase $5 million in debt.

Customers got behind the mission in a way they never expected, and the campaign ended up eliminating more than $11 million in veteran medical debt.

But here's what really stood out to me.

Just two weeks later came Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 😉

Instead of having to build excitement from scratch, Born Primitive entered the biggest shopping event of the year with incredible momentum. Their brand was top of mind, customers were already talking about them, and they had just given thousands of people a reason to support the brand beyond another discount.

That's a much stronger position than showing up on Black Friday with the same promotion everyone else is running.

As Q3 kicks off, I'd encourage you to think about it the same way.

Don't just ask yourself what sale you're going to run.

Ask yourself what moment you're going to create.

Maybe it's a long-awaited product launch.
A collaboration your customers have been asking for.
A charitable initiative that's genuinely aligned with your mission.
Your brand's anniversary.

Or something completely different.

The goal isn't just to drive more revenue in Q3.

It's to build enough momentum that when Q4 arrives, you're amplifying demand that's already there instead of trying to create it from scratch.

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Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Over the past few months, we've audited more than 50 7- and 8-figure brands.

Most weren't struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn't.

And the same patterns kept showing up:

The problem?

Many brands enter Q3 thinking they need more traffic, more campaigns, or more creative.

What they actually need is a stronger foundation.

Because once Q4 arrives, there's very little time to fix what's broken.

The brands that perform best during the second half of the year typically start preparing months before BFCM.

They identify the bottlenecks.

They fix the leaks.

And they build a clear plan for growth.

At BSR, we help brands uncover where revenue and profit are leaking across ads, email, offers, and the customer journey, then build a practical roadmap for the next 90 days.

If you're planning to make a strong push in Q3 and Q4, now is the time to get the foundation right.

If you generate leads for demos, consultations, estimates, or any other appointment-based business, this removes one of the biggest drop-off points in the funnel.

I honestly don't know what took Meta so long.

Lead Ads have been around for years. They've always been great for reducing friction and generating leads at a lower cost.

But they also had one huge flaw.

Someone would submit the form...and then nothing.

You'd have to email them, call them, send a text, or redirect them to another page to book an appointment. Every extra step meant fewer people actually showed up.

Now Meta is finally fixing that.

Businesses can now let people book an appointment immediately after submitting a Lead Ad, without leaving Facebook. The scheduling widget appears right after the form is completed, and the lead's contact information is already pre-filled. At launch, it supports Calendly and HighLevel, with HubSpot coming soon.

Instead of hoping your sales team reaches the lead before they lose interest, you capture the booking while intent is still at its highest.

It's one of those features that feels incredibly obvious.

Which is exactly why I'm surprised it took Meta this many years to ship it.

Any other feature you can't believe Meta still hasn't shipped?

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Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

📰 YouTube releases updated ad metrics tools [read more]
📰 TikTok adds new AI creation tools for marketers [read more]
📰 Amazon launches conversational display ads across the Internet [read more]

Brian Roisentul is the founder & CEO of BSR, a growth marketing agency he started in 2013 to help e-commerce brands unlock hidden revenue by identifying misalignments between their marketing and customer behavior. He is also the host of The DTC Insider podcast, where he interviews thought leaders, founders, and directors in the e-commerce space.

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