DTC Midas

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@KhanHamdoo my brain

@DTCMidas Good advice. Where do you find that information ?

Ugly ads and landing pages often perform better, but not because they're ugly. They perform better because the person who made them wasn't spending his time on designing the most beautiful ad or page, but on research so that he’s writing copy and making content that resonates with his audience. In the beginning you should spend most of your time understanding your customer. How they think, what lingo they use to describe their problems and symptoms, what they've already tried that didn't work, what makes them skeptical, how they describe the dream outcome. That's the only way to resonate with them, so don't waste your time on making things look "beautiful", it won't move the needle. Good copy, an easy to read font (make it bigger than you think) on a contrasting background, and 1 accent color is more than enough to build creatives and pages that convert. Your design should be purely optimized for ease of digestion of copy and content, and leading them to the next stage in your funnel (eg. where to click). In later stages you can blend the two, great design that also converts. But until you do at least $10M/year, don't focus on design. Just keep it simple, and spend your time on things that actually drive conversion.

@coreyhainesco it’s not that hard in ecom base ltv on cm2, so rev - cogs- direct variable costs (like shipping, packing, payment fees etc…) similar for saas, revenue - hosting, api, ai tokens etc….

@DTCMidas Even if that were true, how are you defining profit? There so many ways to define profit.

I just witnessed a popular YouTuber explain that a 3:1 LTV:CAC means that a company makes $3 in PROFIT for every $1 it spends in marketing 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ Since when does lifetime value = profit 🤣 Bros really be making videos about things they have no idea what they’re talking about… I can’t wait to start making videos 👀

@coreyhainesco value ≠ revenue

@DTCMidas Because that’s literally the definition of lifetime value = cumulative revenue. You can break that down into gross or net LTV but LTV = top line

@ecom_cork Okay very fair, I can imagine if you’d use good looking young dudes to sell to older woman they’d probably perform better than older woman selling to older woman 😂

@DTCMidas Good chance they would yes. And we need to do that, but also have had so much success with yappers from young dudes selling to older women that I had to make this point.

This is not true. You don’t need to look like your audience to make video ads that crush. Is it harder? Maybe, but if you can whip out your phone make winning ads in 20 minutes that’s easier than sourcing creators, briefing, editing etc. I’d say do both. But don’t blindly follow takes on Twitter test stuff yourself.

@BasedTorek @ecom_cork I’m not disagreeing that founder ads don’t work, they indeed work very well. Just saying that probably the performance will go up if you use a creator that looks like the audience. He makes a very fair point that indeed you need to run both and test for yourself

@DTCMidas @ecom_cork That’s not what he said. He said that it can still work, and founder ads are in fact more likely to work when done properly You are thinking too much in specific rules or methods, but creative is very broad and there are no general rules to do things

@kr0der thats not high😭, ecom bro’s would kill for those cpms next to that cpms dont matter that much, just focus on your north star kpi’s

@DTCMidas thank you, and sorry last question - i tried static image ads but my CPMs were ultra high (i.e. like $30), what does that usually indicate the problem is?

I’ve been scrolling a bit through the app/saas building community here on X, but it’s mostly just broke indie hackers, trying to sell indie hacking tools to other broke indie hackers I think if they just learnt how to properly run ads they all would be way richer

@kr0der you need to run all

@DTCMidas i'm mostly curious about the creatives part - should you only run videos? do static image ads work? it probably varies per niche but i'm curious if there's any consensus on the creative format

@kr0der i just run ecom, but playbook should be the same, just some technical differences mostly. Focus on good creative, good landingpage & funnel, good offer

@DTCMidas do you have a guide on meta ads (specifically mobile apps)? i'm trying really hard to study how to run them properly 🫡

@LukasL001 nah, but maybe would be a fun project just to outscale them all

@DTCMidas Are you working on an app?

@andrewxroas most of the time growing competition is cope, you’re probably not close to reaching your full tam so your current creative is just not able to reach enough net new people

how can I diagnose if growing CPA is just creatives not being good enough or growing competition and thus CAC rising naturally

@testdumbass depends on font ofz, on mobile I’m right now on 26px for headings and 18 for body idc too much about desktop

@DTCMidas to what sizes on mobile/desktop?

trust me, just increase your font size 🤝🤝

If the new paywall performs better it’s because the font is bigger not because it looks better

@htbburner it helps, but it’s not necessary, it also limits wat you can sell

@DTCMidas In my opinion you should be selling things you would use yourself

Only if you’re selling to an audience that looks like you. Same holds for ecom. If you’re a 23 year old founder selling a lifestyle change product to boomer women, it makes no sense to film ads yourself. A good creator that actually looks like your audience will almost always outperform you, and that easily makes up for the “extra cost” of not filming yourself. Always try to match the creator to the audience your selling to.

@levelsio sir victor

Any Barcelona hotels you know with actual functioning AC that goes down to 16'C? Thank you