Reducing Dependence on Paid Advertising: A Long-Form Superpost

Addressing this problem is hard. It requires nuance, context, and a cohesive narrative arc, which you can't get from a 3000 character Linkedin post. So, here is a long-form superpost that consolidates the key mistakes, lessons, and ideas on this topic into a single post that aims to do all of those things, while providing links to other posts for deep dives.

Ideally, when you have a single document, it's easier to find and refer back to when it becomes relevant in the midst of the crazy, mind-bogglingly difficult process of building a consumer brand.

Hope this is useful.

After becoming increasingly dependent on the short-term revenue driven from paid ads leading up to our "midlife" crisis on the classic 10-year journey to the exit, we learned six big things that helped us reduce dependence on paid advertising and start using paid in a more balanced way.

The reality is, however, while I was operating (may be different now), we never fully got rid of any dependence on paid, which is why the content that follows also includes a healthy dose of "here’s how I’d do it differently if I could do it over."

With that, here is a long-form deep-dive superpost that aims to consolidate years of mistakes, lessons, and ideas into a single post, structured around six shifts you can consider as you navigate these questions.

Let's dive in.

The Six Shifts

1. Redefine Success: Reducing dependence starts with updating how you measure success, largely by adding a definition of long term success so you can find the balanced approach that works for you - enabling increasing, not decreasing, profits over time.
2. Understand Why You Got Dependent in the First Place: Recognize why you got here so you can know what to do next
3. Build the Right Machine for Growth that Gets More Profitable Over Time: Organic Content: Building an organic content machine (people, process, KPI-driven feedback loop) internally is going to be the highest leverage change to make
4. Content Needs to Drive Actions: Engagement and Purchase: The type of content matters. We can fall into the trap of chasing virality, which might lead to getting tons of views with no incremental profit. The content needs to drive both of the following actions: engage and buy (when the customer is ready). Each one without the other is problematic.
5. Resilient Growth Becomes Goal #1: As you become fluent in executing shifts 1-4, resilient growth becomes a primary goal and a key output.
6. With Steps 1-5 Complete, You Can Use Paid Your Way: Paid is a phenomenal tool long term if used in the right way to strengthen the resilient baseline of your revenue AND drive short term conversion. Each fuels the other, and it's the only way to have any chance of increasing revenue at an increasing profit margin.

Shift 1: Redefine Success

Ultimately, paid is one of many tools we have in the profitable growth toolbox. Like any tool, it should serve your goals, not dictate them.

Rethink how you measure success.

Overall, it’s less about reducing dependence on paid channels and more about rethinking how you measure marketing ROI.

Most brands assess every dollar spent (money, people, time, focus, etc.) based on how it drives revenue within a 1- or 7-day period. We did this in the early days at Chubbies, where we were heavily dependent on short-term metrics.

You don’t need to abandon short-term metrics, but reducing the hyper-focus on them prevents creating short-lived tactics that undermine long-term profitability.

Example: Early on at Chubbies, 95% of our spend was judged by short-term revenue. The rest went to "brand building" with no clear metrics—and it was the first to get cut when revenue dipped.

A Balanced Approach

A better way to think about it is how to spend to drive both short-term conversion and:

1. Long-term growth in 180 day contribution LTV
2. Increased revenue even when everything else is turned off
3. Raising prices beyond the rate of inflation without losing customers
4. Growth in revenue dollars--AND the % of total revenue--coming from organic branded search traffic

Tactical Application:

Pick one KPI that best represents long term value at increasing margin, then define a leading indicator that you can impact in a tight feedback loop.

A few posts on metrics representing a strengthening brand can be found here (thinking about Brand ROAS and the long term ROI of your efforts),

here (the shortcomings of ROAS, and the long term metrics to balance it with),

here (Warren Buffett talking about the importance of pricing power as the real manifestation of a strong brand), and

here (how to think about pricing power from the opposite perspective - how to avoid the Discount Doom Loop).

For example: Growth in revenue dollars--AND the % of total revenue--coming from organic branded search traffic could be the KPI, and the leading indicator metric could be something like the 14-day moving average of branded search volume.

Note:

Any time you're using organic branded search volume and traffic, make best efforts to strip out spikes (from running a sale, promo, or launching a killer product), and, to the extent possible, the impact of your short-term spend.

Why?

It helps you understand the true resilient baseline you've built, which ensures that the feedback loop doesn't tell you to run more sales and spend more on short term paid.

Obviously this will be your judgment call, and the specific methodology doesn't matter.

What matters is that you define it and stick to it over a long period of time. "Moving the goal posts" could negate progress.

A few posts on this to dive deeper: Post 1 link here | Post 2 link here | Post 3 link here

Shift 2: Understand Why You Got Dependent in the First Place

The likely answer is some version of: "I wanted to grow faster than I could without paid advertising."

The Problem with This Logic

This statement rests on two assumed truths—neither of which are entirely true:

Flawed Assumption 1: Paid = faster scaling. While paid can fuel quick growth, it rarely leads to better outcomes long term.

Flawed Assumption 2: Organic takes 5-10x longer. In reality, building a solid organic foundation might only take a year longer, but the lessons learned will yield better long-term profitability.

It comes down to whether or not you can make decisions with a longer time horizon than you’re currently using.

Our Lesson: Change How We View the Role of Digital

The primary role of digital is to house your brand, not to drive digital DTC revenue.

If you make your brand famous enough (which is what a strong brand is), you can put your product in more places, expanding your total addressable market and creating more cashflow streams that allow you to weather unknown but inevitable storms.

Tactical Application:

Get into a reflective state and do the quick walk down memory lane to get a feel for the decisions you made, but more importantly, the why behind those decisions.

Since core beliefs define the worldview we use to make all decisions, understanding what's under the hood for you, and your team, will be important so you can start the reframing of why you're here, and what you're trying to do with your brand.

One of the better ways to structure this "walk" is by checking in on where you are in the Brand Lifecycle (post on that here), and the Growth Lifecycle (post on that here).

Shift 3: Build the Right Machine for Growth that Gets More Profitable Over Time: Organic Content:

The Key Skill Modern Brands Need:

The key skill early on is creating content that resonates. In order for this to be something that actually drives growth of your business over time, building a machine internally is the key.

Specific Action Steps

1. Build a dedicated in-house content team that can produce short and long-form video content end-to-end. The team should consist of creators who can handle concept ideation, shooting, and editing with minimal dependencies.
2. Prioritize high-quality, conceptually varied content. Aim to produce content that spans a wide range of ideas, tones, and formats. Speed is key, but so is variety—this is what keeps your brand fresh and prevents creative burnout.
3. Focus on lightweight, low-cost production methods that don’t require big budgets but still deliver high engagement. The more agile your production, the faster you can iterate based on what resonates.

Tactical Application:

Study your favorite content machines and learn as much as you can about the who (the people), what (the process), when (timelines and deadlines), where (how the people work together), and why (why they've chosen to build their content machine like this).

Two influences for us: South Park and Pixar.

South Park is one of the most successful in history. There's an awesome documentary that goes behind the scenes on their machine called 6 Days to Air (YouTube link here).

Pixar: Ed Catmull, their co-founder wrote a book called Creativity, Inc. It goes super deep into the Pixar process, and mistakes made along the way to get to the process that works for them (YouTube link to interview here, and book link here - get hard copy and keep on desk w/ you).

A post on how we implemented it is here.

Shift 4: Content Needs to Drive Actions: Engagement AND Purchase:

You want content that people view, engage with, share, and most importantly—buy from. Engagement (1) is crucial before you can achieve conversion (2). Many brands fail here.

In the early days, the most important thing you can learn is how to create content that resonates so much that:

1. People view, engage, share, follow, AND
2. Most importantly, buy—not in that moment, but when they’re ready.

You have to nail the first part (engagement) before you can figure out the second (conversion). Getting 1 without 2 is where most organic brands fall short. This is where we were for a period of time.

Getting both is where all the profits lie.

Our Experience

For a period, we got really good at 1, but because our only goal was views, we became a meme account, getting all these views without making any money. We learned that in some ways, virality conflicts with content that sells, and it’s about finding the balance (there’s that word again).

But the important thing is we learned how to get people to engage with the content.

Conversely, 2 without 1 works on paid, but not on organic. That’s the big difference.

With paid as the primary growth channel, brands don’t have their backs against the wall to either learn how to do it or die.

Generally, that leads to creative laziness where everything is bland.

The greatest cost in your P&L is the cost of being bland.

Ultimately, the only way to build and monetize the audience you build effectively is by having the capability to quickly, cheaply, and repeatably generate content that satisfies the 2 requirements above, which again, can only REALLY be learned when your business is fully exposed to your ability to build your audience and earn their focused attention. This only happens when you're trained to be able to resist the dependence on paid.

Tactical Application:

The type of content matters.

We can fall into the trap of chasing virality, which might lead to getting tons of views with no incremental profit.

The content needs to drive both of the following actions: engage and buy (when the customer is ready). Each one without the other is problematic.

Chubbies co-founder Tom Montgomery has a great post on this here. One of my posts on this topic is here.

Shift 5: Resilient growth becomes goal #1:

As you evolve how you view your fundamental business, you'll see the increasing importance of resilience.

And, as you build the capabilities to generate content that drives engagement and high quality long term revenue, you'll start to see increasing resilience in the business.

The focus shifts to allocating as much of it to increasing contribution dollars on your worst days as maximizing revenue on your best days.

Resilience increases consistency and provides a buffer.

a) Consistency reduces volatility and enables predictability. Predictability makes forecasting, and the resulting inventory buys, much easier.

Buying too much inventory is the top brand killer, so limiting that risk is existential.

b) Buffer comes from managing your fixed and variable costs so you don't require immediate revenue payback. This does NOT mean you allocate capital with no requirement for a return. It just means you can extend your window more and more over time. This does not apply only to bigger brands. This applies even more to small brands because the operating rhythms around cash cycles are still in their formative days and are malleable.

Ultimately, predictability comes from limiting the volatility of the cost to reach your audience, and the best way to do that is by implementing shifts 1-5.

Tactical Application:

Learn that the most important thing for determining equity value is resilient revenue (an epic post from the CEO of the most successful brand holding company on what makes for a valuable brand here).

Shift the mindset around growth. Post on that here.

Look at whether your worst days are getting closer to your 'normal' day with a quick analysis. Check in on it quarterly to see if it's improving. Post on this process here.

Shift 6: Use Paid Your Way

Not denying the reality that paid will become a key growth driver at some point in any consumer brand’s journey.

Once you know how to create effective brand content that ultimately sells (e.g., isn’t the best at driving 1-day click revenue but generates the largest total contribution LTV dollars over 180 days—which probably means it’s driving an ever-increasing share of revenue from unpaid branded organic searches), your paid becomes far more effective with these capabilities.

This gives you the option to scale down your paid spend as a percentage of revenue if you want, or increase investment at accumulating or stable margins.

It's great to have options, and you only have options when you're reducing dependence on any single thing.

Tactical Application:

You can do things like knowingly accept a lower ROAS and "Brandify" your DR (Post on how we approached and acted on that here), even gasp boost posts.

I'd do even more of that if I were to do it over again (Post on the playbook I'd implement if doing it over again here).

You can redefine what direct response means in the first place (Post on that here).

Summary: The Six Actions You Can Take Today

...with link to some of my posts to dive deeper on each topic.

1. Redefine Success: Pick one KPI that best represents long term value at increasing margin, then define a leading indicator that you can impact in a tight feedback loop. A few posts on metrics representing a strengthening brand can be found here (thinking about Brand ROAS and the long term ROI of your efforts), here (the shortcomings of ROAS, and the long term metrics to balance it with), here (Warren Buffett talking about the importance of pricing power as the real manifestation of a strong brand), and here (how to think about pricing power from the opposite perspective - how to avoid the Discount Doom Loop). For example: Growth in revenue dollars--AND the % of total revenue--coming from organic branded search traffic could be the KPI, and the leading indicator metric could be something like the 14-day moving average of branded search volume. (See the note above re: stripping noise)
2. Understand Why You Got Dependent in the First Place: Get into a reflective state and do the quick walk down memory lane to get a feel for the decisions you made, but more importantly, the why behind those decisions. Since core beliefs define the worldview we use to make all decisions, understanding what's under the hood for you, and your team, will be important so you can start the reframing of why you're here, and what you're trying to do with your brand. One of the better ways to structure this "walk" is by checking in on where you are in the Brand Lifecycle (post on that here), and the Growth Lifecycle (post on that here).
3. Build the Right Machine for Growth that Gets More Profitable Over Time: Organic Content: Study the your favorite content machines and learn as much as you can about the who (the people), what (the process), when (timelines and deadlines), where (how the people work together), and why (why they've chosen to build their content machine like this). Two influences for us: South Park and Pixar. South Park is one of the most successful in history. There's an awesome documentary that goes behind the scenes on their machine called 6 Days to Air (YouTube link here). Pixar: Ed Catmull, their co-founder wrote a book called Creativity, Inc. It goes super deep into the Pixar process, and mistakes made along the way to get to the process that works for them (YouTube link to interview here, and book link here - get hard copy and keep on desk w/ you). A post on how we thought about it is here.
4. Content Needs to Drive Actions: Engagement and Purchase: The type of content matters. We can fall into the trap of chasing virality, which might lead to getting tons of views with no incremental profit. The content needs to drive both of the following actions: engage and buy (when the customer is ready). Each one without the other is problematic. Chubbies co-founder Tom Montgomery has a great post on this here. One of my posts on this topic is here.
5. Resilient Growth Becomes Goal #1: Learn that the most important thing for determining equity value is resilient revenue (an epic post from the CEO of the most successful brand holding company on what makes for a valuable brand here). Shift the mindset around growth. Post on that here. Look at whether your worst days are getting closer to your 'normal' day with a quick analysis. Check in on it quarterly to see if it's improving. Post on this process here.
6. With Steps 1-5 Complete, You Can Use Paid Your Way: You can do things like knowingly accept a lower ROAS and "Brandify" your DR (Post on how we approached and acted on that here), even *gasp* boost posts. I'd do even more of that if I were to do it over again (Post on the playbook I'd implement if doing it over again here). You can redefine what direct response means in the first place (Post on that here).

Final Thought

These six shifts really helped us evolve in the early days. It certainly wasn't just a marketing effort. There were tons of other shifts and improvements happening across the rest of the business as well (product, operations, finance, merchandising, and the list goes on).

Hopefully, these 6 shifts can help you as you navigate the current challenging environment for consumer brands, setting a foundation for long term, profitable growth.

Hope this is useful.

If someone else might get some value out of it, show 'em some love and send it to them.

People helping people. It's powerful stuff.