Brand awareness is the foundation of every marketing funnel. Before a prospect can evaluate your product, request a demo, or make a purchase, they need to know you exist. Social media remains one of the most effective and cost-efficient channels for building that initial awareness, particularly for DTC brands and growth-stage companies operating with limited budgets.
But posting content and hoping for the best is not a strategy. Building brand awareness through social media requires deliberate choices about platforms, content formats, community management, and measurement. Below is a framework for doing it well.
Many growth teams focus exclusively on bottom-of-funnel metrics: cost per acquisition, ROAS, and conversion rates. These metrics matter, but they measure the output of a system that depends on a healthy top of funnel. Without sustained brand awareness efforts, your bottom-of-funnel campaigns gradually lose efficiency as audiences fatigue and acquisition costs climb.
Brand awareness creates three compounding advantages:
Understanding where awareness sits in the marketing funnel helps you allocate budget and creative resources appropriately across the customer journey.
Not every social platform serves every brand equally. The right platform depends on where your target audience spends time, what content format suits your product, and how much creative capacity your team can sustain.
The biggest mistake brands make is spreading themselves across every platform simultaneously. Start with one or two platforms where your audience is most concentrated, build a sustainable publishing cadence, then expand once you have validated your content approach.
Awareness content is not sales content. The goal at the top of the funnel is to deliver value, entertain, or educate, not to push a product. Brands that lead with value earn attention. Brands that lead with sales pitches get ignored.
Allocate roughly 80 percent of your social content to value-driven posts (education, entertainment, community engagement) and 20 percent to direct promotion (product launches, sales, offers). This ratio builds trust and keeps your audience engaged rather than fatigued by constant selling.
Educational Content. Teach your audience something useful that connects to your product category. A skincare brand might explain how to read ingredient labels. A marketing agency might share a framework for ad creative testing. Educational content positions your brand as an authority and creates shareability.
Behind-the-Scenes Content. Show how your product is made, introduce team members, or document the building of a new feature. This type of content humanizes your brand and creates emotional connection. People buy from brands they feel they know.
User-Generated Content (UGC). Customers sharing their experience with your product is the most credible form of social proof. Encourage UGC through branded hashtags, post-purchase emails requesting reviews, and re-sharing customer content with credit. UGC also performs exceptionally well as paid ad creative.
Trend Participation. Engaging with trending audio, challenges, and formats on TikTok and Reels puts your brand in front of audiences who are not yet following you. The key is relevance -- participate in trends that connect naturally to your brand rather than forcing a fit.
Community and Engagement Posts. Polls, questions, this-or-that comparisons, and reply-bait posts generate comments and shares, which signal engagement to algorithms and extend organic reach.
There is a critical difference between an audience and a community. An audience watches. A community participates. Brands that build community around their product create a self-sustaining awareness engine where members introduce new people to the brand organically.
Community building is a long game. It does not produce overnight spikes in follower count. But the brands with the strongest communities have the lowest acquisition costs and the highest lifetime customer values.
Influencer marketing, when done correctly, is one of the fastest ways to generate brand awareness with a target audience you have not yet reached. The key phrase is "when done correctly." Poorly aligned partnerships waste budget and can damage brand perception.
Organic reach on most social platforms has declined significantly over the past several years. Brands that rely exclusively on organic posting limit their awareness ceiling. A smart paid amplification strategy extends the reach of your best-performing organic content to new, targeted audiences.
The combination of strong organic content and strategic paid amplification creates a growth marketing channel that scales efficiently. Organic builds the content engine. Paid extends its reach.
Brand awareness is harder to measure than direct response, but it is not unmeasurable. The key is identifying the right leading indicators and tracking them consistently over time.
Avoid vanity metrics in isolation. A million impressions mean nothing if those impressions do not reach your target audience. Align your awareness metrics with business outcomes by tracking the correlation between awareness activity and downstream conversion rates.
Social media brand awareness is not built overnight. It is built through consistent, value-driven content published on the right platforms, supported by community engagement and strategic paid amplification. The brands that invest in awareness today build the audience that sustains growth tomorrow.
Choose one or two platforms, commit to a sustainable content cadence, engage authentically with your community, and measure what matters. Brand awareness is not a vanity exercise. It is the foundation of a marketing engine that compounds over time.
To carve pumpkins, of course. š
It also means weāre all gearing up for a busy Q4 selling season and taking stock of whatās really scary this time of year: costly marketing mistakes that affect the bottom line.
This post is part cautionary tale and part kick-in-the-gourd for eCommerce businesses still trying to hide from the holiday season just around the corner. Letās break down some marketing mistakes many eCommerce businesses are making right now, and how you can escape their same fate.
š± Waiting too long to prepare for Black Friday.
We've been talking about Black Friday 2020 since this August, and for good reason. Itās not only because we wanted to will the hot Summer days away, but because all projections estimate that holiday shopping will begin earlier than ever this year. If you havenāt nailed down your Cyber Month sales plan yet, thereās still time...but not much. Some big name stores are going to kick off their sales as soon as November 1 breaks.
š± Not testing paid ads early enough.
You donāt want the paid ads youāre running for holiday sales to be test campaigns. They should be tested, re-tested, and optimized to reach tried and true status by the time the critical sales dates come around. Give yourself a few weeks to test creative, audiences, and retargeting strategies. By the time Black Friday comes around, your ads should be lean, mean, revenue-earning machines.
š± Havenāt optimized their website for mobile.
In 2019, 39.6% of holiday season eCommerce spending can be attributed to smartphone and online shoppers. Shopify reported that a whopping 69% of sales over BFCM 2019 weekend were made on phones or tablets. Thatās a big (and growing) share of eCommerce spending, and itās not something you want to miss out on because your website just doesnāt work on a mobile device. Right? Right.
š± Confusing, inaccurate, or just plain crappy product descriptions.
Remove friction for shoppers by providing thorough, relevant information in product descriptions. This information should answer common questions, speak to your target audience, and maybe even bust a few objections from the get-go.
š± Not defining your target market.
Not only is targeting everyone, everywhere extremely expensive, itās also ineffective. Before you can rake in the big sales, you need to understand your customers. Go beyond a one-size-fits all approach and deep dive into demographics, behavioral data, personalization, and testing to define and refine your target market.
š± Slow page load speed.
How long do you think a visitor is going to sit around waiting for your site to load? Unfortunately, itās about 3 seconds. In 2018, a Google study found that page load speeds between 1s to 3s saw the probability of bounce increase 32%. 1s to 5s load time bumps that number up to 90% bounce probability. The answer definitely varies by person and perhaps your chances are better if they are a return customer, but why take chances?
š± Confusing checkout process.
So your customer has added an item (or 5, 10, 15, 20) to their cart and they initiate the purchase process. Youāre this close š to making a sale. Why would a customer exit now? It turns out, thereās a lot of reasons. Your checkout process should be easy to complete. Donāt force visitors to create an account, provide unnecessary information, or take them through needlessly long and confusing forms. Online shoppers can be fickle, and your conversions are only as good as sales completed.
š± No email marketing plan.
Emails arenāt all about making sales in eCommerce. Since your customers donāt get a chance to interact with your store space, salespeople, or product in person, you need to think about how you can build a relationship with customers. Make sure youāre keeping your store at the top of their mind and getting them excited about upcoming sales.
š± Surprise fees.
$12 shipping?! No, thank you. Weāve probably all added an item to our cart, initiated a checkout, and even entered our address only to find out that shipping is just...not worth it. Be up front with shipping costs or additional fees. Donāt catch customers by surprise with fees they didnāt anticipate. Include copy on your website that gives clear and concise information about shipping fees. Offer estimates if possible. And if you can swing it, offer free shipping to push shoppers over the edge from browser to purchaser.
š± Not taking enough time to nurture customers.
There are definitely upsides and downsides to the long 2020 holiday shopping season. One upside is that people who would typically do their shopping in stores will be more likely to make eCommerce purchases, and they will be more deliberate about their purchases because they canāt interact with them ahead of time. That means you have more time to reach that customer with the right kind of ads, emails, social media, etc. that will push them to convert. Take advantage of the Cyber Month timeline to catch audiences, nurture your funnel, and make the sale...and invite them to make another purchase before the season ends.
Phew, thatās a lot of scary mistakes. The good news is youāve still got time to prepare for huge Q4 sales and avoid these mishaps.
Youāve been warned!
This post is part of a blog series, "Here Be Metrics," breaking down the primary aspects of the so-called pirate metrics for growth marketing. Keep up with this series and others by subscribing to our blog!
Seeing a skull and bones on the high seas sent people fleeing in fear of imminent attack, for pirates wasted little time once their presence was known.
Although they should not attack customers, corporations today should likewise waste little time taking action once a target sees their brand. The move from awareness to acquisition is a critical process in the customer lifecycle, and the businesses that master it build the foundation for sustainable, profitable growth.
In the pirate metrics framework (AAARRR: Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention, Referral), acquisition sits at a pivotal point. It is the moment when an anonymous audience member becomes a known contact, a lead, or a customer. Everything that follows in the growth engine depends on how effectively you execute this transition.
The goal of acquisition is to move people from undefined groups to individual leads or customers. It is the conversion from passive observer to active participant in your brand's ecosystem.
While cannons and swords were effective when pillaging ships and towns along the high seas, today's civilized markets call for a more nuanced approach. Corporations must entice, rather than force, customers to join their tribe.
Image Credit: 500 Hats
Acquisition can be defined as the moment of the very first transaction with a customer, or simply the act of bringing new customers and clients into your business. This transaction often is not a monetary payment for goods or services. Instead, it is normally an exchange of information and permission. The target audience volunteers their personal information with the understanding that the company will contact them in the future.
To entice customers to make this exchange, many companies offer immediate value in return. Coupons, PDF downloads, ebooks, free trials, and membership deals are all common offerings that serve as the catalyst for converting an interested visitor into an identifiable lead.
Image Credit: 500 Hats
With regard to metrics, acquisition focuses on data related to lead capture and the efficiency of your conversion process. Understanding these numbers is fundamental to optimizing your sales funnel and improving growth over time.
These metrics tell you how many potential customers you are bringing into your pipeline:
Volume alone tells an incomplete story. These metrics reveal how efficiently your acquisition engine operates:
The relationship between these metrics matters as much as the individual numbers. A low CPL is meaningless if those leads never convert to customers. A high CAC is acceptable if lifetime value is proportionally higher. Growth marketers obsess over the ratios and unit economics, not vanity metrics in isolation. This approach to understanding what truly matters beyond surface-level ROAS separates effective acquisition strategies from wasteful ones.
For online marketing campaigns, the volume of acquisition data available makes this metric category particularly powerful. In addition to the core metrics listed above, digital marketers can access highly granular data points including:
With such detailed information, the moment of acquisition can be fine-tuned to maximize the conversion rate and minimize the cost of acquisition. This data-driven approach is what separates modern growth marketing from traditional advertising.
Tracking metrics is necessary but not sufficient. You need a deliberate strategy for generating leads and converting them efficiently. Here is a framework for building acquisition systems that scale.
Relying on a single channel for customer acquisition is fragile. Algorithm changes, cost increases, or market shifts can devastate your pipeline overnight. The most resilient acquisition strategies spread effort across multiple growth marketing channels:
The gap between a visitor arriving at your site and that visitor becoming a lead is where acquisition happens. Every element of the lead capture experience affects your conversion rate:
Landing pages. Dedicated landing pages with a single CTA consistently outperform general website pages for lead capture. Remove navigation, minimize distractions, and focus every element on the conversion goal.
Forms. Ask for only the information you need at the point of capture. Every additional field reduces completion rates. You can always collect more data later in the relationship.
Lead magnets. The value exchange must feel fair to the prospect. A generic "subscribe to our newsletter" CTA underperforms a specific, high-value offer like "Download our 2026 DTC Growth Playbook" or "Get a free audit of your ad account."
Social proof. Testimonials, client logos, case study results, and review scores near your lead capture points reduce friction and increase trust. Showing real results, like the outcomes from proven case studies, gives prospects confidence to take the next step.
Acquisition does not exist in a vacuum. It is one step in a larger journey that begins with awareness and extends through activation, revenue, retention, and referral. The most effective acquisition strategies consider what happens before and after the lead capture moment.
Before acquisition: Invest in awareness-stage content and advertising that warms your target audience before asking for anything in return. Cold audiences who have had zero prior exposure to your brand convert at significantly lower rates than those who have engaged with your content.
After acquisition: Plan your activation sequence before you generate leads. A lead that sits in your database without a follow-up plan is a wasted acquisition. Automated email sequences, personalized outreach, and timely follow-up calls ensure that new leads move toward the next stage of the funnel rather than going cold.
Even experienced marketers make acquisition errors that limit growth. Watch for these common pitfalls:
Optimizing for the wrong metric. Maximizing lead volume while ignoring lead quality fills your pipeline with contacts who will never buy. Focus on qualified leads and downstream conversion rates, not raw numbers.
Ignoring channel attribution. If you cannot attribute leads to specific channels and campaigns, you cannot optimize your spend. Invest in proper tracking and attribution before scaling your budget. Understanding which audiences to target for lead generation requires solid attribution data.
Neglecting the post-capture experience. Acquisition is not the finish line. A lead captured without a clear activation path is money spent with no return. Build your nurture sequences and sales processes before you increase acquisition spend.
Over-investing in one channel. Even if one channel is performing well today, market conditions change. Allocate a portion of your budget to testing new channels continuously.
Do not waste time delaying acquisition. The moment your target demographic becomes aware of your brand, move toward actions that will acquire them as customers. The pirates of the high seas did not dally, and neither should you.
Start by auditing your current acquisition metrics. Calculate your CAC, measure your lead conversion rates by channel, and identify the biggest drop-off points in your funnel. Then prioritize the improvements that will have the highest impact on volume and efficiency.
Acquisition is the engine that powers every subsequent stage of the growth marketing framework. Master it, measure it relentlessly, and optimize it continuously, and you build the foundation for a business that scales predictably and profitably.
If youāre using Facebook ads, the Facebook pixel is a huge asset.
You should be using this key tool to realize the full potential of your social ad budget. With a little learning under your belt, you can use the pixel to gain major advantages for your results.
Facebook Pixel refers to code on a website that measures an advertising campaignās effectiveness by interpreting the actions visitors take on the website.
In other words, the Facebook Pixel is an analytics tool that helps you track the conversion rate generated from Facebook ads and builds the target audience for future ads. Businesses can use it to ensure that their ads go to the right people.
It sounds a little weird, right? We train horses, dogs, sometimes dragonsā¦
But a snippet of code is a whole other animal.
Training your pixel means that you donāt run a campaign with the purpose of getting a huge profit but rather to find the right audience. When you find the right audience, conversions should naturally follow.
The only conversion that you can optimize for without a pixel is link clicks. On the other hand, a pixel makes it possible for you to optimize a variety of conversion types in close alignment with the goals and aims of the business.
The Facebook pixel allows you to gain insight into how people interact with your website and allows you to track customers across the various devices. To put it simply, it can track whether the customers saw your ads on mobile and turned to the desktop before making a purchase, or the other way around.
Itās the real brains of your Facebook advertising operation.
To sum up, training your pixel is essential because it creates a customized audience that will most likely convert and turn into a lead by learning about your audience.
This brings us to the next point.
The Facebook ads delivery system uses machine learning to optimize for results. The delivery system collects more insights about the right target audience each time one of your Facebook ads is displayed (or as ad pros say, āservedā).
Youāll know that your ad is in the learning phase because the Delivery column in your ads manager will indicate the ad set is āLearning.ā
The learning phase is a critical time for Facebookās machine learning to kick in and collect helpful information that will help you optimize your campaign. Thanks to the learning phase, you can get information that can take your ads from running on your assumptions to running on a data-backed hypothesis.
The learning phase is typically defined by 50 conversions that need to occur per ad set within one weekās time. Sometimes this number might be more, sometimes less, depending on your particular niche. We like to say 50 is a good rule of thumb, but not a magic number.
Now this part is important. It might go against your instincts to tweak and optimize, but during the learning phase you should avoid changing any of the following:
You canāt touch these!
Because if you do, Facebook will start the whoooole thing over again. Basically, by trying to tweak with variables during the learning phase youāre not allowing Facebook the chance to properly learn.
It would be like introducing a new topic in math class every day and expecting a student to master the information on the fly. Not fair.
FEATURED RESOURCE: This one-pager walks you through the stages of the Facebook learning phase. Ditch the confusion and master Facebook learning!
At this time, Facebook has had the chance to explore all the best possible options to deliver your ad set.
Each time your ad was shown, the delivery system learned how to optimize your adās performance. This in turn helps you learn what ad strategies are working for your business and which ones you can toss out.
If you donāt get past the learning phase, Facebook will let you know that the ad set came back as āLearning Limitedā ā the ad set is not getting the required number of conversions for optimization or the system predicts that the ad set wonāt be able to garner enough optimization events in the coming future.
Itās not the end of the world, but it does mean youāll have to try again with a different ad set. We really value failure here, so even though Facebook comes back as ālearning limited,ā itās definitely possible for you, the advertiser, to make educated adjustments to your ad creative to improve on future ads.
š If youāre not getting to that 50 conversion benchmark for purchases, try moving up the funnel and adjusting your ads for things like link click, page views, etc. That way youāre more likely to get the ad set through the learning phase and youāre getting more eyes on your ads (always a good thing). Once youāre optimized for top of funnel conversions, youāll be better set up for bottom of funnel conversions.
š Run fewer ad sets in the beginning of your process. Remember: quality over quantity! If you have a limited budget, focus on a few key ad sets early on that you can really get through the learning phase as quickly as possible with a solid basis for scaling your ads for conversions.
š If you're not getting whatever the objective is that youāre going after, it could be that your ad creative just isn't hitting right with your target audience. So try testing new ad creative. Try out creating multiple ads, changing up the headline, making other bold changes to the ads before you enter the learning phase and see if any of these succeed.
Just like training a dog, training your Facebook pixel takes a lot of time, flexibility, and patience. But if you stick with it and make it through that learning phase to start optimizing, your pixel will be able to fetch you better results.
We all love the idea of having our own Pinterest board, right? It shows off our taste to the world, allowing them a glimpse into just how unique and interesting we are.
Here are some other Pinterest tips to keep in mind:
š Make sure to include branding in your content, but keep it subtle enough so that it doesnāt stick out like a sore thumb. If itās too in your face, your audience may not want to pin it and you lose traction from the start.
š Another Pinterest best practice to keep in mind is to focus on keywords that your audience is likely to search. If you use targeted keywords, you will come up in usersā searches and your brand will gain increased visibility. Take some time to compile relevant keywords and come up with appropriate board names.
š Pinterest, like Instagram, is a very visual platform and not just any old images will do. Plan your Pinterest imagery to catch the attention of a scroller.
š Donāt just post and pin to create content. Be deliberate with your content strategyāthis is a good time to curate your board. Entire boards can draw users and turn them into followers, so that they know where to keep going for more content. For example, if youāre a menās clothing eCommerce shop, donāt just pin a shirt or slacks here and there, create boards with outfit ideas for different occasions and seasons.
š Remember, a pin can be linked back to a description for more context. This means Pinterest can always play a part in a larger advertising campaign for your business. Just pop your store URL, or even better, a landing page URL, into the pin to lead traffic to your website.
š When in doubt, research what other companies are doing with their organic content on Pinterest, and emulate the strategies you like.
Any avid Pinterest user won't think twice before answering a firm āNoā!
But thatās probably because they use real life to influence their Pinterest boards and not because they're marketing mavens.
The truth is, Pinterest does not rely entirely on fresh content to overtake older content on its feed. Pinterest has stated that all content across board browsing, search browsing, home feed, and category feed is viewed equally. š¤Æ
Pinterest decides what should make it to a personās feed according to the quality of each post as opposed to how recently it was uploaded. As a brand, quality over quantity will definitely serve you well.
Admit it, marketer or not we have all talked about algorithms being (scarily) artificially intelligent, real-life Skynet, and a sinister machine that monitors all our actions and knows us better than we know ourselves.
But do we even know what algorithms are?
We assume there is this one algorithm in a top-secret file at Google Headquarters thatās prized for listening in on our conversations and reading our minds.
But there isnāt just one algorithm, there are many algorithmsāeach one personalized to produce a result we care about.
For example, putting a pan of water on the stove at a certain temperature for a certain time is a way to reach the result of boiling hot water. This is one equation, or rule, or sequence. Adding eggs to the boiling water and letting them stay in for a certain period of time leads to hard-boiled eggs. This is another sequence that leads to a result.
Continuing with that metaphor, when you type a query into the Google search bar, it doesnāt just fire one sequence to get your result, it fires up an entire kitchen of line cooks. š³
Algorithms are excellent tools for optimizing your marketing campaign because they provide what we love best: data. They can help you pick apart your audiencesā complex decisions. Here are a few examples of how you can use algorithms as a marketer.
Algorithms help monitor the behavior of your demographic and suggest the likely hours during the day when your leads are browsing online.
Having a pool of valuable behavioral data can help you remarket to the right people at the right time. If you share that information with your broader marketing team you can even use it to design a unique campaign that incorporates highly targeted information about your audience.
Algorithms can help you personalize the way you show an ad to your consumer or a lead. Remember that song that played on Spotify shuffle? Wasnāt it exactly the kind of tune you were looking for? Now how did that happen? Or that ad about artisanal potato chips made from handpicked Idaho potatoes...how did they know thatās just what you were craving?
Google uses algorithms to show you information that you are likely going to be interested in, such as targeted news articles and tutorials. That means youāre not just being delivered the answer to your query, but information about your query targeted for you based on your search habits.
Targeting is what allows the internet to predict what you may feel like eating the next day. It has consumed so much of your behavioral pattern that you start panicking Google is reading your mind. Itās notā¦
Or is it?
No seriously, that's just how proactive algorithms are. They make use of something that we hear a lot: Machine learning, aka another way of saying artificial intelligence.
Machine learning helps figure out what your customer is thinking. Are they browsing? Are they going to spend soon? Are they looking to spend now? Basically, it helps you determine the stage of your buyerās journey so you can address it.
š ļø Find out how you can build a better funnel with retargeting. ā
Sounds great right? By now you feel ready to drive your entire digital marketing campaign based on algorithms. Weāve said a lot of great things about them so far, but are algorithms really the beeās knees?
The answer to that is yes and no. Google algorithm and machine learning is great at monitoring behavior and 7 times out of 10 it does strike true, but the times it does not is because algorithms cannot grasp context. AI can predict a customerās response to likely be a certain way, but what if the routine context is changed (as it is in life), rendering the data ineffective?
That being said, algorithms remain the foremost tools to learn about humans and their actions. They have brought us far in the way marketers engage with audiences and it has proven effective. For that reason, we have to raise our glass to algorithms that make our lives as marketers just a little easier and more data-driven.
Advertising on Facebook is not for the weak-willed. Thereās a lot to know and a lot to learn about Facebook ads to master Facebook marketing skills. Thatās one of the reasons there are so many educational resources about Facebook advertisingāthereās so much to know!
Luckily, the overlords folks at Facebook have produced tons of learning materials for us lowly marketers.
The Facebook Blueprint certification exams are targeted to digital marketers looking to demonstrate advanced proficiency using Facebook advertising services across platforms. There are 8 total certification levels:
One of our own EmberTribers, Joe, set out to test what a Facebook Blueprint Certification Exam is like and determine if itās worth the hassle. He took the 100 level āDigital Marketing Associateā course as his test. After finishing his exam (passed with flying colors!), he reported back to us about his experience.
Hereās what he had to say:
Some other questions that our team had for Joe about the process:
Do you think the 100 certification is necessary for Facebook competency?
No, this level is not too difficult and covers a lot of the basics that any seasoned Facebook advertiser would already have under their belt. Taking the certification exam for the 100 level is more of a resume builder than a knowledge builder for those already familiar with Facebook digital marketing.
Was there a fee attached?
Yes, the fee for each exam is $99.
Is it a lifetime or time-limited certification?
The certification is good for 1 year.
Facebook's Blueprint course is a great foundational tool for advertisers. But what about the spaces "in-between" where many marketers find themselves wondering how to address using ads for growth?
Since our agency's inception, we've profitably spent more than $100 million on Facebook runnings ads for ourselves and our clients. We wanted to put all of this practical knowledge to work by creating a free Facebook ads training course for founders who are serious about growing their business with paid ads.
If you're not familiar with Facebook ads yet, you will want to start with the Facebook Blueprint course. Once you're done, we recommend bookmarking our free Facebook ads course or signing up for lessons sent directly to your email inbox.
In these training modules, we outline strategies and tactics that you won't find in the Facebook help section. Take time reviewing these training videos to learn from our deep knowledge of Facebook ads.
Digital marketers seeking a higher level of proficiency in Facebook ads should consider studying up on the 200 and up level certification to get the most bang for their buck. The certification itself, while nice to have, isnāt necessary to become a competent Facebook advertiser, but the lessons can help you boost your skill level.
And if youāre not comfortable learning the ins and outs of Facebook, it might be a good idea to bring in someone steeped in Facebook ad success. Hey, we know some people š.
Earlier this year, Facebook announced a new user interface that would overtake so-called āclassic Facebookā in September. This means bye-bye š to the old look and hello to a refreshed, updated interface. One of the main motivations for switching to a new Facebook interface (or FB5 as they call it) is a company-wide pivot toward privacy-focused communications.
Another big motivation is simply that Facebookās desktop UI has remained essentially unchanged for years, and what worked in 2012 doesnāt really translate to a great 2020 user experience. Oh, how time passes...
What the new design addresses:
Among the changes in the new interface:
Unfortunately for Facebook, the UI change has been received with very mixed reviews, and despite the months-long lead time on changes, it seems likely that people will continue to have to grapple with getting used to ānew Facebookā for a while.
The new Facebook design has triggered quite a few (negative) emotions from users. The change was made permanent on September 1, 2020, so users and Facebook engineers will have to adapt and make the best of a new situation.
A quick search for āFacebook interfaceā on Twitter shows that a lot of people arenāt loving the updates, and some are even reporting issues with the desktop interface loading. Well, anyone who has ever done anything knows that itās impossible to please everyone, so these mixed reviews are far from shocking.
Some common criticisms (so far):
Well, truth be told, our team feels pretty lukewarm toward these changes. However, since weāre in the business of paid social, a big interface change like this could have unexpected influence over Facebook advertising strategies. To put it plainly: the success of Facebook ads is intrinsically tied to the functionality and popularity of Facebook itself.
With web browsing increasingly trending toward mobile usage, this change seems like a warranted update to accommodate evolving preferences.
Itās hard to say right now if these changes will turn out to be positive for the overall user experience or anger frequent Facebook users to the point of no return. But from a personal point of view, if users havenāt been deterred by previous Facebook updates, scandals, and complaints, this remodeled UI seems unlikely to push users away.
For now, Facebook advertising is safe (and we love to see it!). If you're ready to run Facebook ads that get results, let's talk.
Amazon has become the default launchpad for many small to medium-sized ecommerce brands looking to get products in front of buyers quickly. The marketplace's massive reach, built-in logistics infrastructure, and consumer trust make it an attractive starting point. But that convenience comes with trade-offs that many sellers do not fully appreciate until they are deep into the platform.
Selling directly to consumers (D2C or DTC) offers a fundamentally different model. One where you own the customer relationship, control the brand experience, and retain the data that drives long-term growth. Understanding the real differences between these two approaches is essential for building a sustainable ecommerce business.
Amazon offers two seller plans: Professional and Individual. Both carry subscription fees plus per-item selling fees on every transaction. Sellers can handle their own fulfillment or opt into Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which adds another layer of fees for picking, packing, shipping, and returns handling.
FBA does solve real operational headaches. Returns processing, customer service for shipping issues, and Prime badge eligibility are genuine advantages. For brands without established logistics capabilities, these services can be the difference between scaling and stalling.
But the costs extend far beyond fees. Here is what many Amazon sellers do not account for:
Most ecommerce brands frame this as an either-or decision, but the real question is about strategic emphasis and resource allocation. Understanding the strengths and limitations of each model helps you make informed decisions about where to invest.
Amazon's strengths are undeniable for certain use cases:
The limitations become more significant as your brand matures:
Direct-to-consumer selling provides advantages that compound over time:
The D2C model is not without its challenges:
The most sophisticated ecommerce brands do not choose one channel exclusively. They use Amazon strategically while building their D2C business as the primary growth engine.
Here is how a hybrid strategy works in practice:
Amazon can serve as a product discovery and validation channel. New products can be tested on the marketplace to gauge demand, collect reviews, and generate initial revenue while your D2C infrastructure scales.
Once a customer discovers your brand, the goal is to move that relationship to your owned channels. This is where packaging inserts, brand registry content, and post-purchase strategies become critical. Every Amazon sale should be viewed as an opportunity to earn a future D2C customer.
Early-stage brands might allocate 70% of resources to Amazon for immediate revenue and 30% to building D2C infrastructure. As the D2C channel matures, that ratio should shift. Mature brands often target an 80/20 split favoring D2C, using Amazon primarily for incremental reach.
Track profitability by channel, not just revenue. Many brands discover that their Amazon revenue looks impressive on the top line but delivers minimal profit after accounting for all fees, advertising costs, and operational overhead. That analysis often accelerates the shift toward D2C investment.
If you are ready to invest in direct-to-consumer growth, these are the foundational elements that drive results:
Your website is your most important asset. It needs to load fast, communicate your value proposition clearly, and guide visitors through a frictionless purchase experience. Platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce provide the infrastructure. Your job is to optimize the experience through testing and iteration.
Paid social advertising is the fastest way to drive qualified traffic to a D2C storefront. Start with the platforms where your target audience spends time, test creative aggressively, and scale what works. Build lookalike audiences from your best customers and use retargeting to capture visitors who did not convert on the first visit.
Every visitor who gives you their email address represents a relationship you own. Unlike Amazon customers, these contacts can be nurtured through email sequences, product launch announcements, and personalized offers that drive repeat purchases and increase lifetime value.
Organic traffic through content marketing and SEO is the long-term play that reduces your dependence on paid channels. Create content that addresses your audience's questions, showcases your products in context, and builds the topical authority that drives sustainable search traffic.
Subscription-based models and loyalty programs create predictable revenue and increase customer lifetime value. For consumable products, subscriptions are an obvious fit. For durable goods, loyalty programs with early access, exclusive products, or referral rewards can drive similar retention outcomes.
You should not abandon Amazon overnight. But you should start building your D2C channel with the same urgency you brought to your marketplace presence. The brands that thrive long-term are the ones that own their customer relationships, control their brand experience, and build the data assets that enable smarter marketing decisions over time.
The path from Amazon-dependent to D2C-primary is not instant, but every step in that direction builds equity in a business you fully control. Start with a solid storefront, invest in acquiring customers directly, and use the data you collect to continuously optimize your cash flow and growth runway.
The question is not whether you should sell on Amazon or go D2C. The question is how quickly you can build a direct channel strong enough that Amazon becomes optional rather than essential.
Facebook's Power 5 is a set of five automated advertising tactics that work together to improve campaign performance. Introduced by Meta as a best-practice framework, the Power 5 represents the platform's recommended approach to running ads that leverage machine learning effectively.
The five components are:
Each element works independently, but their real value emerges when used together. The Power 5 framework essentially asks advertisers to trust the algorithm with more decisions, in exchange for better performance at scale.
For Facebook advertisers who have been manually optimizing every aspect of their campaigns, this can feel counterintuitive. But the data consistently shows that advertisers who adopt these practices outperform those who insist on manual control across every variable.
Auto Advanced Matching (AAM) improves the connection between actions taken on your website and the Facebook users who took them. It works by automatically sending hashed customer information from your website, such as email addresses, phone numbers, names, and location data, to Facebook when a conversion event fires.
Without AAM enabled, Facebook relies solely on the pixel cookie to match website conversions to user profiles. As browser restrictions on third-party cookies tighten and users browse across multiple devices, cookie-based tracking misses a growing share of conversions.
AAM fills those gaps by sending additional identifiers that Facebook can use to match conversions to users. The result is more accurate attribution, larger retargeting audiences, and better optimization signals for the algorithm.
For ecommerce stores using Shopify or WooCommerce, AAM is typically enabled by default through their Facebook integrations. For custom-built sites, work with your development team to ensure the correct data layer variables are being captured.
The impact is significant. Enabling AAM typically increases custom audience match rates by 10-30% and improves attributed conversions by 5-15%.
Campaign Budget Optimization moves budget control from the ad set level to the campaign level. Instead of assigning a fixed daily budget to each ad set, you set one budget for the entire campaign and let Facebook's algorithm distribute spending across ad sets based on performance.
In a traditional setup, an advertiser might run five ad sets at $50/day each, spending $250/day total. If one ad set performs exceptionally well and another performs poorly, each still receives its fixed $50 allocation.
With CBO, the same $250/day budget is allocated dynamically. The high-performing ad set might receive $150 while the underperformer gets $20. The algorithm rebalances in real time based on which audiences are delivering the best results.
CBO is particularly powerful when combined with simplified account structure because fewer campaigns mean each campaign receives more budget, giving the algorithm more data to optimize with.
This is perhaps the most impactful and least intuitive element of the Power 5. Facebook's recommendation is to consolidate your account into fewer campaigns, fewer ad sets, and fewer ads rather than creating highly segmented structures.
Many advertisers instinctively create separate campaigns for every audience, every funnel stage, and every product line. A typical over-segmented account might have 20+ campaigns running simultaneously, each with 3-5 ad sets containing 2-3 ads.
This feels like control, but it actually works against you because:
A well-structured Facebook account for most advertisers needs only 3-5 campaigns:
Within each campaign, consolidate audiences rather than fragmenting them. Let the algorithm decide who within a broader audience set is most likely to convert.
This structure works especially well for ecommerce brands running catalog-based advertising, where dynamic ads can serve the right product to the right user without manual audience segmentation.
When you create an ad set, Facebook lets you choose where your ads appear: Feed, Stories, Reels, Marketplace, Audience Network, Messenger, and more. Automatic placements means letting Facebook decide where to show each ad based on where it is most likely to achieve your objective.
The hesitation is understandable. Advertisers worry about their carefully designed feed ads being stretched awkwardly into Stories format, or about budget being wasted on low-quality Audience Network placements.
These concerns were more valid in the early days. Facebook has significantly improved how creative adapts across placements, and the algorithm has gotten better at identifying which placements deliver actual results for each campaign.
Across our managed accounts, campaigns using automatic placements consistently achieved 10-25% lower cost per result compared to manual placement selection. The algorithm finds inventory pockets that manual selection misses, particularly in less competitive placements where CPMs are significantly lower.
Dynamic ads automatically show the right products to people who have expressed interest on your website, in your app, or elsewhere on the internet. Instead of manually creating individual ads for each product, you connect your product catalog and let Facebook generate ads dynamically.
The system connects three inputs:
When a user views a product on your site but does not purchase, Facebook can show them an ad featuring that exact product (and similar items) the next time they open the platform. This is dynamic retargeting at its most effective.
Dynamic ads are not limited to retargeting. Facebook's Dynamic Ads for Broad Audiences (DABA) uses machine learning to show products from your catalog to prospecting audiences who have never visited your site.
The algorithm analyzes user behavior patterns, product attributes, and conversion signals to predict which products each user is most likely to purchase. For catalogs with hundreds or thousands of products, this is far more efficient than manual ad creation.
The real value of the Power 5 framework is not any single element. It is how they compound when used together.
Consider the combined effect:
Each element reduces manual control in favor of algorithmic optimization. And each element provides better data to the others, creating a virtuous cycle of improving performance.
Here is a practical sequence for implementing the Power 5 in your account:
The Power 5 framework represents Facebook's clearest articulation of how advertisers should work with, rather than against, the platform's machine learning capabilities. Advertisers who embrace algorithmic optimization and feed the system with clean data and strong creative consistently outperform those who cling to manual control.
The platform has changed. The strategies that worked when manual optimization was superior, including hyper-segmented audiences, manual placement selection, and ad-set-level budgets, now actively hinder performance. The Power 5 is not just a recommendation. For serious Facebook advertisers, it is the operating system for modern campaign management.
Are you currently maximizing Pinterest advertising for your eCommerce or online retail business? If not, you might be making a big mistake by snubbing this powerful social media marketing platform.
The user mindset on Pinterest is significantly different than it is on other social media platforms ā users are often on Pinterest specifically to decide what to buy next, or plan a big future purchase. That high shopping intent is key for conversions!
This makes Pinterest a go-to eCommerce advertising platform full of marketing potential for your business. Imagine being able to present users who are actively searching for your products (or similar ones) with ads while also being able to promote to users who are passively browsing through their feed.
That's a clear win-win for catching ToFu and MoFu audiences.
Pinterest can also reveal your target audience's aesthetic preferences and preferred products and services, giving you an upper hand for your ad creative strategy.
What visuals appeal to your buyer persona? The answer in is the boards!
The best and most effective Pinterest ads:
Hereās some best practices and tips we've come across for how to make the most of your ads:
š Pinterest is growing fast and eCommerce advertisers are taking notice. ā
This type of ad works well for health and wellness businesses because everyone loves a great success story. The image and the text overlay used for this ad are easily relatable. Your audience is invited to see themselves getting the same end result from your product.
Who says no to cute outfit ideas? There's a lot to gain from advertising clothing and accessories on Pinterest. Just make sure that your ads represent current stock!
Also, take note of the call to action in this ad. A good call to action will grab the attention of audiences. This one gives browsers an idea of cost without having to click first and entices them with a good deal.
Make sure that your pin is interesting enough to convince your audience to visit your website. This ad featuring Drummond House Plans shows a mock up design and floor plan of a modern house. It's not so vague that the viewer thinks it's just a regular house photo, but it also doesn't overstate the business.
On top of the sleek visual, Drummond House Plans takes into account user intent by including tags popular to Pinterest users planning to purchase or build a home.
We've seen clients get big returns on Pinterest ads. Are you ready to try out this visual social platform for your ad campaigns?
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How Your Digital Content Strategy Can Generate Inexpensive Growth Through Organic Traffic
"Content is king." We have all heard it before, and every marketer understands the gravitational pull that good content exerts on audiences and search engines alike.
If you think that sounds like a dramatic claim, you might be surprised by the data behind it. Brands that invest consistently in content marketing generate roughly three times as many leads per dollar spent compared to paid channels alone, and those leads compound over time instead of disappearing the moment a budget is paused.
An effective digital content strategy serves a dual purpose: it gives your website ranking authority in search results while also appealing to audiences by providing genuinely valuable information. In other words, investing in good content will help draw inexpensive organic traffic through meaningful engagement.
When done right, your content can generate organic traffic with long-term ROI at a fraction of paid traffic costs.
If you are still not sold on the reigning power of content, here is our proclamation to declare that content is, indeed, still king -- and our manifesto for making it work.
Quality content and a healthy organic digital content strategy can increase web traffic at lower costs than running paid ads alone. You can grab the attention of visitors -- future customers -- through informative and engaging content that adds value to your brand.
Your organic content strategy will help inform a cohesive, multi-dimensional digital marketing strategy across all platforms and channels. If you are testing your content on organic first, you will know what performs well before investing more money into paid traffic.
One of the most compelling reasons to invest in content is the compounding nature of organic results. A single well-optimized blog post can generate traffic for months or even years after publication. Compare that to a paid ad, which stops delivering impressions the moment you turn off spending.
Over time, a library of strong content creates a moat around your brand. Each new piece adds to the site's domain authority, which lifts the performance of every other piece alongside it. This is why companies that commit to building brand trust through SEO see accelerating returns rather than diminishing ones.
Content does not exist in isolation. The insights you gain from organic performance -- which headlines resonate, which topics attract engagement, which formats hold attention -- become a playbook for your paid campaigns. Test messaging organically first, then pour budget behind what already works. This approach reduces wasted ad spend and shortens the feedback loop between creative ideation and data-driven optimization.
Who doesn't love a good story?
Content goes beyond selling your product or service to telling your story. What is your brand about? What passions, missions, and motivations drive your business? Your digital content should reflect your business's values and priorities.
Do not create content just to have content. It should have a purpose and a place within your digital content strategy. Overall, the content you produce should support direct response campaigns and build credibility among your audience.
Telling your story differentiates your business from the competition and helps solidify your brand in ways that product pages and transactional copy never will.
A strong brand story follows a pattern: identify the customer's problem, explain why that problem matters, and show how your brand delivers a solution others cannot. Every piece of content you produce should reinforce one of these three elements in some way. Blog posts might address the problem. Case studies prove the solution. Social content reminds audiences why the problem matters in the first place.
When executed well, brand storytelling creates emotional resonance that paid ads struggle to achieve. Customers who feel connected to a brand story are more likely to become repeat buyers and organic advocates.
Think about the content you have already produced. No doubt you have done significant work to create quality content for your audience. You do not have to throw away digital content you have invested in.
Content does not have to go to waste when it can be recycled and updated for more organic traffic. It is straightforward to keep good content evergreen by updating links, refreshing statistics, and repackaging information for multiple uses.
You can use past content to build better funnels, reinforce retargeting campaigns, and learn more about your own brand and audience.
Here is a repeatable framework for getting more mileage from every piece of content you create:
This approach ensures you are not starting from zero every time you sit down to create. Your search engine positioning will benefit as refreshed content signals relevance to Google's crawlers.
What if you were able to publish content that could predictably provide measurable business value? You can. This is what we call growth content.
Growth content drives measurable business value in the form of new users, leads, or sales.
A growth content framework consists of five key attributes that help you optimize content creation efforts with an eye toward growth:
By adopting a growth content framework, you can use content strategically and measurably to add value to your digital content strategy. The impact extends across every marketing channel you leverage, from organic search to email to paid social.
Despite all of this talk about creating content, you might still be tempted to ignore the long-term organic content strategy for the quick returns of paid ads.
We cannot deny that paid ads are an effective way to drive traffic to your website. However, if you are seeking a long-term digital marketing strategy to increase traffic at a lower cost, good content is going to drive your organic traffic in valuable ways.
Even better, your content can be used to inform paid traffic and organic traffic alike. Brands that build a balanced search marketing plan combining SEO and SEM consistently outperform those that rely on a single channel.
A long-term content strategy needs structure. Here is how to build one:
Most brands give up on content marketing too early. They publish for three months, see modest results, and redirect budget to paid channels. The brands that win are the ones that stay consistent through the inflection point -- the moment when accumulated domain authority and content volume begin generating exponential returns.
The data supports patience. Companies that publish consistently for twelve or more months see organic traffic growth rates that outpace paid acquisition costs by a significant margin.
Content is not a marketing expense -- it is a business asset. Every piece you publish adds to a growing library that works for you around the clock, attracting prospects, educating leads, and building the kind of trust that no ad placement can replicate.
The brands that treat content as a strategic priority rather than a checkbox will be the ones that dominate their categories. Build your content marketing strategy with intention, measure what matters, and commit to the long game.
Long live good content.
Deciding to launch an eCommerce business is a significant milestone. But before you make your first sale, one of the most consequential decisions you will face is selecting the platform that powers your online store. The platform you choose affects everything from site speed and checkout experience to long-term scalability and total cost of ownership.
Three platforms dominate the conversation for direct-to-consumer brands and growth-stage retailers: Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. Each takes a fundamentally different approach to eCommerce, and the right choice depends on your technical resources, growth trajectory, and operational priorities.
Below, we break down the features, limitations, and ideal use cases for each platform so you can make a data-informed decision.
Shopify has become the default recommendation for D2C brands and for good reason. The platform packages hosting, a drag-and-drop site builder, payment processing, and analytics into a single subscription. You do not need to source separate hosting, worry about SSL certificates, or patch security vulnerabilities yourself.
Shopify is the strongest choice for merchants who prioritize speed, simplicity, and a managed infrastructure. If you want to focus on product, marketing, and customer experience rather than server management, Shopify removes the technical overhead that slows teams down.
WooCommerce takes the opposite approach. Rather than a standalone platform, it is a free, open-source plugin that transforms any WordPress site into a fully functional online store. This architecture gives merchants complete control over every line of code, every design element, and every server configuration.
WooCommerce is the right fit for brands with in-house development resources or an agency partner who can manage the technical stack. If your business model demands deep customization, complex integrations, or a content-driven growth strategy, WooCommerce offers a flexibility ceiling that hosted platforms cannot match.
BigCommerce occupies a middle ground between Shopify's simplicity and WooCommerce's flexibility. It is a hosted, SaaS platform like Shopify, but it ships with more built-in features out of the box, reducing the need for paid add-ons.
BigCommerce works well for mid-market and B2B-adjacent brands that need advanced features without the overhead of managing their own infrastructure. If you are scaling past $1 million in annual revenue and want built-in functionality that would require multiple paid apps on Shopify, BigCommerce deserves serious consideration.
| Factor | Shopify | WooCommerce | BigCommerce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Included | Self-managed | Included |
| Transaction Fees | 0.5-2% on third-party gateways | None | None |
| Customization | Moderate (Liquid templates) | Unlimited (open source) | Moderate (Stencil framework) |
| Time to Launch | Fast | Slow to moderate | Fast |
| Best For | D2C brands wanting speed | Developers wanting full control | Mid-market brands wanting built-in features |
Selecting a platform is not purely a feature comparison. Consider these practical factors before committing:
1. Your team's technical capacity. If you have no developers on staff and no agency partner, a hosted solution like Shopify or BigCommerce will save you from the operational burden of managing servers, security patches, and plugin conflicts.
2. Your growth trajectory. Model your costs at current revenue and at two times and five times your current volume. Shopify's transaction fees and app costs scale linearly. BigCommerce's tier-based pricing can jump at revenue thresholds. WooCommerce's costs are more variable but can be optimized with the right hosting setup.
3. Your marketing and advertising stack. Consider how each platform integrates with your paid media, email, and analytics tools. Shopify's native ad integrations and WooCommerce's WordPress-based SEO advantages each serve different acquisition strategies.
4. Your need for customization. If your business model requires a unique checkout flow, complex product configurations, or custom integrations with ERP and inventory systems, the flexibility ceiling of your platform matters.
Shopify gets the EmberTribe seal of approval. Our team of growth experts swear by Shopify's functionality and ease of use. For the majority of D2C brands and growth-stage eCommerce companies, Shopify delivers the best balance of speed, reliability, and ecosystem support.
BigCommerce is a strong alternative for mid-market brands that need built-in B2B features and want to avoid transaction fees. WooCommerce remains the go-to for technically capable teams that require full customization and a content-driven approach to growth.
If you are looking for the simplest path to launching and scaling your eCommerce business, Shopify is the best place to start. But whichever platform you choose, the real differentiator is not the technology itself. It is how effectively you leverage it to acquire customers, optimize conversions, and build a brand that lasts.
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