Conversation Starting In Past Tense

39 minutes until the end here at TradeMutt... What've I learned?

Brand marketing is short term AND long.

Every single time I’ve been stuck with what to do with our ad account because of limited edition inventory selling out, our next release being a few weeks away, a new release being soft, getting caught in that dead zone after a sales period where we’re still fulfilling a backlog of orders —?whatever the reason — every time we’ve been stuck we’ve gotten ourselves out of that rut with new top of funnel brand advertising creative. Every time.

TradeMutt is of course fortunate that Dan and Ed have built a brand marketing machine whose product literally advertises itself but I reckon there would be few and far between brands for whom this wouldn’t hold true.

Easy applications for DTC founders are just getting on camera with their products with subtitles, fast cuts, and trending music, and demonstrating how their product solves a consumer’s key problem. That’s not selling the product —?it’s selling the benefit, which is pretty old school as far as positioning advice goes.

Less is more.

This one’s a pithy quote for a reason but it’s also true. The more I’ve tried to knee-jerk react to the dopamine hit of wanting more revenue, the more I’ve tried to be a needlessly hands-on manager, the more we’ve overthought and underexecuted, the less we’ve been able to do. When we can take the chance to sit back, think long term, and not need to fuck with the tools more than necessary — especially ad accounts —?we’ve had our biggest successes.

More is more.

On the flipside: TradeMutt is the rare business whose success is limited only by the inventory in the warehouse. Not one single person reckons that conversation starting work shirts are a bad idea. And they sell like hot cakes, keeping our CPAs in Meta steady for two years running with the business doubling in revenue and our CPMs constantly creeping up. We can grow and increase email frequency and ad spend and creative output and continue to push the boundaries — like swearing in our best-performing ads —?because pushing the envelope is part of the identity.

Traffic arbitrage.

It’s given me this idea of ‘traffic arbitrage’ where I basically see our conversion rate holding steady over 2% and then deciding, instead of optimising that further, to just drive as much traffic to the website at that conversion rate as we can afford. The thinking is basically that if you know you can turn X% of your traffic into revenue then you just need to arbitrage as much traffic through that conversion rate as possible. It almost doesn’t matter where the traffic is from — you’re just paying for X% of your impressions to turn into clicks that turn into traffic which turns into orders at the percentage of your conversion rate. If you can hold your conversion rate steady then it’s just a scale question. More traffic, more money, and maybe more problems if you’re not careful.

Simplicity, over and over.

Not just at TradeMutt but in all things — life is easier, better, and much improved when I do the simple basics over and over and over and execute on them extremely well. I find when I try to chase the glossy, shiny, complex things it’s a) a hard sell to others, and b) hard to keep consistent about. Simple basics like: running a streamlined ad account and focusing energy on creative; a 2:1 split between brand:product emails when we’re outside release periods; writing in a Google Doc and tracking it in a spreadsheet; running three times a week; lifting three times a week; sleeping well and eating well; going to bed with my girlfriend at a reasonable hour.

Transformation.

Like I said to Dan in my exit interview yesterday, I started at TradeMutt at a tumultuous period of my life. Everything was new and half of what was new was crumbling: an engagement, a house I was paying the mortgage on without living in, the sharehouse I found so I was back in Brisbane, the housemates I had, the job, the life. It took like six months minimum to get settled I reckon. The Ecommerce Equation trip to Newcastle where I stayed for the weekend afterwards — which I didn’t completely rate at the time —?seems to be the part of it where I feel like I turned it around. Scale risks in the ad account, revenue out of the back of it, and something like proof that I could do it after all.?

Limits.

But I can’t, of course, do it all. There are only so many hours in the day and there are only so many things at which I’m really good. It is no surprise that I’m not really at all who I was when I was hired. I mean that in a lot of ways. I still have small moments where once upon a time all I would have been was frustrated, furious that it was all out of control, but I catch them now with a simple peace; it is not a big deal.?

So it’s not a big deal really that I’ll step away at 5pm today from my desk in the marketing clump and step back out into the world of freelancing with Inka Arthouse as a foundation client and my key focus for the next quarter. If you’re keen on Meta ads, Google ads, email, or SEO support, slide into my DMs.

Thanks for everything Daniel Allen , Edward Ross , Jessica Russ , Shannen Cooper , Sasha Tilley , Tamarah Vos , Annika Pol , Candice Barkey , Quinn Murphy , and the rest of the team. Remember: when in doubt, scale Brand.