Michael McFadden

"I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things." Mother Teresa

This sentence wastes more marketing budget than anything else: "This will probably work." But probably isn’t a strategy. The brands that compound growth over time aren't better at predicting what will work, they're better at finding out fast. They run tests, analyze results honestly, and move resources toward what the data actually says. That process isn't complicated. It's just uncomfortable because it means being willing to be wrong in front of people. Most of us avoid that. It’s an ego problem. So they keep saying probably, keep guessing, and keep wondering why the results are inconsistent. Test it, read it, do what it says. It’s that simple.

Brands optimize their acquisition strategy around volume. More customers and more revenue, which makes sense on the surface. But when you break down LTV by segment, channel, product category, and by first purchase type, you almost always find the same thing. A small slice of your customer base is responsible for a disproportionate share of your profit. They buy more often, return less, refer people, and they don't churn at the first discount from a competitor. Many brands know this segment exists. Few build their acquisition strategy around attracting more of them. Figure out who your highest LTV customers actually are…not just demographically, but behaviorally. Then reverse-engineer how they found you. That's your acquisition strategy.

Brands spend thousands a day driving cold traffic to their site. Meanwhile, their email list, which is full of people who’ve already bought and are already engaged, gets a promotional blast once a month and nothing else. Why? Email is still the highest ROI channel in ecommerce when leveraged properly. Your list knows you. They don't need to be convinced you exist. They need a reason to come back, and a well-timed, relevant message gives them one. Stop treating email like a megaphone, and you’ll turn your list into the closest thing to a money printer.

There's a version of brand loyalty that's purely transactional. The customer buys because you have the best price, the fastest shipping, or the most convenient option.  The moment a competitor matches any of those things, they're gone. But what I’ve just described above isn’t loyalty. Real loyalty (the kind that survives a price increase, a shipping delay, or a bad review cycle) comes from something harder to replicate. It comes from belonging. The brands that’ve figured this out are actually giving customers something to be part of.  An identity. A community. A shared set of values that makes choosing you feel like more than a transaction. And it’s built through every touchpoint, including the packaging, the post-purchase email, the way you handle a complaint, and the content you put out that has nothing to do with selling anything. Customers who feel like they belong post about you, defend you, and they even bring their friends. No paid channel produces that kind of customer. You have to earn them. → Build something people want to be associated with → Reward belonging, not just purchasing → Show up consistently in ways that have nothing to do with the transaction This won’t create loyalty in the same way a golden retriever unconditionally loves its owner. But it’ll create a sense of belonging that few brands actually have.

I've sat across from smart, experienced marketers who were completely wrong about what their customers wanted. Not because they were bad at their jobs, but because they made an assumption. When you’re good at marketing, you falsely believe you know the customer enough to rely on gut instinct alone. Nope. You really don’t. That’s why the brands that compound growth over time build systems for being wrong quickly and cheaply: small tests, honest reads, fast pivots, that sort of thing. This isn’t to say gut instinct doesn’t matter. Your gut is a starting point. The test is the answer.

There are 3 simple things that turn customers into advocates, and none of them require a referral program. The first is a product experience that exceeds what they paid for, not by much, just enough to be worth mentioning. The second is a post-purchase moment that feels like the brand actually cares what happens after the sale: a useful email, a follow-up that isn't just a cross-sell, something that signals you're invested in the outcome. The third is a brand identity strong enough that customers feel something about being associated with it. Referral programs rent loyalty, but these three things build it. The brands with the most vocal customer base didn't engineer word of mouth. They built something people were proud to have found.

I've never worked with a brand that was initially satisfied with its customer acquisition cost. Everyone thinks it's too high. What most of them are missing is that CAC by itself tells you almost nothing. A $120 CAC from a customer who spends $800 over two years is a different business than a $60 CAC from someone who buys once and never comes back. The number that actually matters is how long it takes to earn back what you spent to acquire them, and what they're worth once you do. Most brands don't track LTV by channel. They track total revenue, total spend, and wonder why the math never seems to get easier. Break it down by where the customer came from. The answer to your acquisition problem is usually already inside that data.

Many organizations are selling something they don't fully understand. Not necessarily the product itself, they typically understand the product. I’m talking about what the product actually means to the person buying it. For example, a filtered showerhead isn't selling filtration. It's selling beauty, confidence, and the quiet vanity of knowing your skin and hair are getting something better than what comes out of the wall. Sure…the function is the vehicle, but the identity is what closes the sale. Until you understand what you're really selling at that level, your marketing will never live up to its full potential. Do the work to find what's actually below the surface. Then build everything around that.

Early in my career, I worked in new products for a frozen food manufacturer. We had an insight from research that grill marks on the tortillas elevated the perceived premiumness of the product. Sounds simple, but the capital investment to implement it was significant. That's not a decision you make on a hunch. You validate it first with qualitative research and by collecting enough data. The investment got approved because the research earned it. Not because someone in a meeting had a strong feeling about grill marks. This is where many brands go wrong. They’ll operate on gut feeling alone instead of doing the homework necessary to know whether or not something is actually worth doing.   Research isn’t something you can cut corners on. It’s the difference between getting it right and expensive opinions. The brands that get this right spend less over time, not more. They just spend on the right things.

There's a frame I keep coming back to when thinking about AI:  Outputs versus outcomes. AI is genuinely impressive at outputs. Reports, creative concepts, campaign structures, content variations. It can produce more, faster, than any team could on their own. But an output doesn’t always equate to an outcome. The outcome is what changes in the business because of what the output tells you and what you did with it. That’s what matters. The bridge between what AI produces and what actually moves the needle is still a human problem. The brands and agencies getting real value from AI right now aren't just generating more. But building the discipline to convert what the machine gives them into decisions and action. The need for someone with real judgment hasn’t gone anywhere.

This is a classic mistake brands make: Trying to be everything to everyone with limited resources. It’s one of the easiest ways to fail. I've seen it play out dozens of times. A brand with a real product and a real audience tries to expand before it's actually won anywhere, and instead of growing two markets, they lose both. The smarter move is to go more narrow than feels comfortable. Win there first. Delight that audience completely. Build the foundation, the revenue, the proof of concept. Then look at what's working, who your best customers actually are, and where it makes sense to expand from a position of strength rather than desperation. Simple in concept, but many brands want to get ahead of themselves before they’ve earned it.

I know of a liquor brand that hired a world-class cinematographer just to pour a drink into a glass. Not a campaign. One video simply pouring a drink. And when someone questioned whether that level of production was necessary, the answer was yes. Because their brand stood for doing everything with excellence, and that standard applied to every decision, not just the ones the customer would notice. That's what it looks like when a brand actually lives its positioning instead of just stating it. At first glance, this might sound like overkill, but bear with me. Many brands have values written somewhere. A deck, a website, or maybe just an internal document. But values only mean something when they show up in the decisions that are inconvenient. The sourcing choice that costs more, the hire that takes longer, the production that nobody pressured you to do right. Every time you cut a corner, you're making a small bet that the customer won't notice or won't care. Sometimes they don't. But customers are smarter than you might be giving them credit for. This is why the brands that stick around are usually the ones that actually live out their values in reality.

One word in your messaging can be the difference between a customer who's delighted and one who's disappointed. Literally just one word. Because the moment you make a promise, you set an expectation. And if the product delivers on that expectation, you've got a satisfied customer.  But if it falls even slightly short, you've got a frustrated customer who now has a story to tell. Brands stretch their messaging too far all the time, chasing a bigger emotional hook than they can actually deliver on. I get the temptation, but the rule is simple. Whatever you're promising, make sure you're promising in delight, not in disappointment. Edit your messaging with that filter and see what doesn't survive.

@TommiPedruzzi Send

Claude + laptop + internet connection = $7,200 per month Usually, I'd charge $199 for this, but today I'm giving it away 100% FREE Like + comment 'Send' & I'll DM my AI eBook Publishing course absolutely for FREE. (Including my personal AI prompts) Must follow me to get DM. ⏳ Taking this down in 24 hours.

Customer acquisition gets all the attention, but returns get ignored. That's a mistake, because how you handle a return tells a customer more about your brand than how you handled the original sale. A painful returns process also ends up costing you the relationship. Not only will that customer never return, but they'll also tell people to never do business with you.  A frictionless return process, on the other hand, does the opposite. It turns a disappointed buyer into someone who gives you another shot, because you made a frustrating moment easy. Any brand with a respectable refund policy knows this. They treat the return as a touchpoint, not a cost center. Make it easy to return. Make it fast. Don't make them fight for it. That's how you convert a bad experience into a loyal customer.

The way people find products is changing rapidly. Conversational search is up, and AI-assisted shopping recommendations are becoming a primary discovery channel.  Customers are increasingly asking questions and getting curated answers instead of scrolling through ten results and deciding for themselves. This changes everything about how your brand gets found. And the brands that show up in those AI-curated results aren't just the ones with the biggest budgets either.  It’s actually the ones with the most complete, accurate, and well-structured product data. Titles that answer how people actually search, attributes that are fully populated, and content that addresses the real questions behind the purchase, not just the product specs. Here's where most brands need to start: → Audit your product feed for missing attributes and outdated titles → Build content around the questions your customers ask before they buy → Treat your data as a distribution asset, not just a back-end necessity Just like how every new marketing strategy has a grace period where you can expect outsized returns in relation to effort, this is no different. So start pivoting now.

I've watched teams spend four hours debating which headline to run. Everyone is confident, everyone has a slightly different take, nobody actually knows what’ll work. You know what would've settled the whole thing in 48 hours? Running both headlines against real traffic and letting the market decide. The customer has the answer, and it doesn't care what you think. Stop debating creative in a meeting and start testing it in front of customers. The concept of “trust your gut” couldn’t be more incorrect in marketing. Trust the data is a much better alternative.

I can tell you almost exactly when a brand cuts its brand budget. I don't need to see their financials. I just look at their CPCs over time. When brand investment drops, paid search gets more expensive. Direct traffic slows. Email open rates soften. Returning customer rate dips. It doesn't happen overnight. It happens over two to three quarters. By the time the CFO notices, the damage is already compounding. Here's why this happens: Brand spend builds familiarity. Familiarity drives direct searches. Direct searches are your cheapest, highest-converting traffic. Cut brand, and you're not just losing awareness, but you’re also making every other channel work harder. Performance captures demand while your brand creates it. Take away the demand creation, and your capture costs go up. Every time. The brands I've seen scale past $100M didn't choose between brand and performance. They figured out how to run them together, and they measured brand investment not as a cost, but as a tax on cheaper future acquisition. Stop thinking about it as either/or. Start asking: what is our brand doing right now to make our next customer cheaper to acquire? Answer that honestly. Then build your budget around it.

The most valuable research isn’t just about market size or demographics… it’s understanding the deeper reason customers choose you. When you uncover that emotional connection, you attract the right people, improve conversion, and stop wasting energy on audiences that were never the right fit.

The brands that grow year over year aren't doing anything sexy. They have a clear offer, a site that loads fast, and a reason compelling enough to make someone buy twice. No secret channel. No viral hack. Just the boring fundamentals executed more consistently than everyone else in their category. The problem isn't that you don't know what the tactics are. The problem is you keep skipping past the basics to get to them, and wonder why nothing sticks. Fix the boring stuff first. The problem is nobody wants to do it.