Why Most Brands Are Dropping Their Agency

Your weekly dose of best practices for building a successful DTC brand.

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The DTC Insider
July 10, 2024

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Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋

Happy 4th of July everyone 🇺🇸

I hope you enjoyed the holiday.

As always, we strive to deliver the latest growth marketing news and trends in the DTC space straight to your inbox, every Wednesday.

Topics we’ll cover today:

💠 New Meta Attribution Setting
💠 Why Most Brands Are Dropping Their Agency
💠 IQBAR’s Journey to 10,000 Locations And $50 Million

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New Meta Attribution Setting

Last week, Meta announced a new setting that will change things for many advertisers.

Until now, Meta counted every conversion that happened after someone interacted with an ad.

With this update, we can choose to only count the first conversion.

To clarify:

➝ Default option: "All conversions"

➝ New option: "First conversion"

Where can you find this?

At the Ads Manager, once you click on the Columns dropdown you'll see the "Compare attribution settings" at the bottom of the menu.

How should advertisers use it?

It's important to be careful with how we interpret and use data, in general.

For e-commerce brands, it makes sense for customers to buy multiple times after seeing an ad.

If that happens and you're using the "First conversion" attribution setting, you'll only see the first one.

No bueno...right?

However, if you just use it to get an idea of the number of "unique" customers your business gets, then it's fine.

Some people claim this will help bridge the gap between the backend data (ie. Shopify) and what Meta reports, but I don't see how that would be the case.

Yes, this will count fewer conversions, 1 per customer.

But that doesn't mean it makes it more accurate.

The good part is that it doesn't hurt to see both of them and see what happens.

What do you think?

Why Most Brands Are Dropping Their Agency

Hint: it's not performance.

Last month, I asked this question to 10 e-commerce brands, and here's what they all said:

"Bad communication".

Why?

Bad communication ➝ Bad results

Some of their comments were:

❌ The AM has no answer to any of the clients' questions during calls.
❌ Replying to client messages after many hours or days.
❌ No clear road map to achieve your goals.
❌ No (frequent and clear) reporting.
❌ No (bi-)weekly status checks.

Instead, your agency should:

✅ Clear reports with a deep analysis and next steps to improve performance.
✅ Schedule (bi-)weekly calls to go over the results and align the next steps.
✅ Propose fluid and clear communication, and even be proactive with it.
✅ Have an expert on the call to make the most of your time.
✅ Present a road map on how to take you from A to B.

Things are tough for brands already.

They don't need another block in the road.

And for those agencies reading this:

I get it.

Getting great results for clients is not easy, as there are too many moving parts on both ends.

But improving communication is not hard at all.

It's only a matter of having:

➝ The right people
➝ The right systems.

Have you ever experienced this?

IQBAR’s Journey to 10,000 Locations And $50 Million

Costs are going up on Meta and other ad platforms.

Yet this CPG brand is on its way to $50m. Here's how 👇

I had the pleasure of interviewing Will Nitze on The DTC Insider podcast.

And what he shared is in line with what many successful brands are doing:

✅ Channel diversification.

Yes, DTC is very important for them.

However, they're present in many other channels he mentioned in the episode, allowing them to reach 8 figures.

This is one of those episodes you must listen to.

I promise it'll be worth your time.

We discussed:

👉 Current Challenges for DTC Brands
👉 What Brands Can Do About These Challenges
👉 Expanding Into Other Categories: Pros and Cons
👉 Key Actions That Allowed IQBar to Grow
👉 RXBAR Influence
👉 Metrics Obsession and Evolution
👉 Areas of Company Focus
👉 How They Plan to Reach $50M in 2024
👉 Behind the Scenes of an 8-Figure CPG Brand
👉 Roles of Growth Marketing Agencies in 2024
👉 Importance of Short and Long-Form Content Creation
👉 Customer Acquisition And Retention Strategies
👉 What's Next for IQBar

🎧 Tune in to our latest episode: https://thedtcinsider.com/c/podcast

Have you heard these top-listened episodes?

💎 Navigating Growth Beyond Your Niche with Podium Nutrition’s CMO

Also Happening in the DTC space:

Work for a DTC Brand?

Do you own or work for a DTC brand and are feeling a bit stuck in your brand's growth journey?

You’re not alone. It’s 2024 and brands need something different to keep growing.

At BSR Digital, we understand that, and that’s the main reason our clients see anywhere from 36% to 77% increase in revenue and profit within the first 6 months of working with us.

If you're ready to shake things up and turbocharge your growth, let's chat!

Book a discovery call with us, and let's brainstorm some game-changing ideas together.

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