He 7X'd Shopify Revenue WITHOUT Killing Profit 🤯 w/ Cody Wittick - Founder @ Kynship

Jay Myers: Cody, so good to have you on the show. Thank you for coming.

Cody Wittick: Thanks for having me.

Jay Myers: I don't know if you've listened to some of our recent episodes, but I like to break the ice by asking guests, what were you doing exactly 15 minutes before you got on this call?

Cody Wittick: I like

Jay Myers: could be awkward. I

Cody Wittick: I might steal that.

Jay Myers: you are. Welcome to

Cody Wittick: 15 minutes. I was probably making sure that I was set up in this room and responding to a few emails,

Jay Myers: Sneaking in a few.

Cody Wittick: Yeah,

Jay Myers: Nice. The hustle's real.

Cody Wittick: the

Jay Myers: It's, I've heard everything from getting my kid out the door, making the bed, doing my hair, you know, closing the deal. So says a lot.

Cody Wittick: Going number two, I don't know. Hopefully not that.

Jay Myers: Quick, quickly go into the bathroom. Well, that's a, that's a real thing. We're gonna be sit, we're gonna be sitting here for a little bit.

So,

Cody Wittick: yeah.

Jay Myers: Well, thank you so much for joining you. I know we chatted. A couple years ago, maybe, maybe close to three years ago now, I think it was like during the pandemic. And I caught up with you briefly at SubSummit last year, but a lot has changed, I think, in your world since then. And that's, why I wanted to have you talk to you again.

I mean, the last time we chatted, you were really focused on product seeding for influencers and helping brands. I think you were very narrowly focused on

Cody Wittick: I mean, it was pretty much our whole business model,

Jay Myers: Right. Well, you've got an app for it. You've got tools for it, and now you, you would kind of describe yourself as a, as a growth agency.

Cody Wittick: Yeah.

Jay Myers: explain to me what's happened the last couple years.

Cody Wittick: Yeah. I mean we've, yeah, I, I like to say we've gone through probably nine lives as an agency . So when I was on the podcast and when we were first introduced, we called ourselves the Influencer marketing agency. And we were, that's how we kind of got quote unquote famous on Twitter, which was putting out content around our product seeding methodology and.

I was leading to a bunch of content for ads and we were always doing paid media behind the scenes. We just weren't requiring it. So it was all very much focused on this is a content pipeline for ads primarily. But there was also other things that we were really pushing to as like the organic distribution, the relationship capital that you're building.

It came from my experience at a brand previously and how I was building relationships with big macro talent, celebrity talent through just product gifting.

Jay Myers: Yep.

Cody Wittick: So that was kind of our business model at the beginning, but it wasn't, it wasn't a very good business model in terms of keeping clients long term.

Part of that is influencer marketing just in general, still to this day, is I think a channel that people tend to try and see if they can do this thing, and we're kind of the new sexy thing on the market. So lots of churn as an agency. But all of our case studies had to do with ad account, and it usually was when we were actually in control of that account in terms of like.

Running the performance. So we got tired of being blamed for things we weren't in control over. So we started requiring it probably in 2022. That was like a first big change. It was like, in order for you to work with Kynship, like we need to run your ad account, which was scary, you know? It was like turning off a lot of things.

That was a pipeline for getting, you know, people on the door and helping feed our people and stuff like that. But it was one of the best things that we ever did. And then soon after that another thing we got tired of was, you know, founders, they're coming in with, you know, knowledge of their competitor or the industry and hey.

Kynship, you need to hit a four row As and Okay Jay, like, where's this number come from? And we weren't confident in those answers a lot of the time. And so we actually started down this exercise of, well, we want to be in control of setting the target, or at least in partnership with the brand to help set the target.

And once you go down that route, you really can't do that unless you actually have full access and like, feel like you're a part of the business with them. And so. That's when we started introducing our financial forecasting methodology and modeling.

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Cody Wittick: And you can't just, like when I say forecast, usually agencies or even brands sometimes, it's kind of, okay, we want to hit X top line revenue next year, and we kind of just put in a spreadsheet and we kind of build up to that.

So it's more of a top down.

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Cody Wittick: Our process was. Okay, we actually need to know all the cost centers of your business. We need to know like your repeat rates. 'cause everything affects profitability. Like, right? Like it's kind of no, duh. So it wasn't like we could just. You know, dip our toes into this. We actually had to do like customer cohort based analysis and we had to know your fixed expenses.

We had to know your repeat rates. We had to know all these different things. And so, that's, that's the evolution. The most recent evolution, I would say in the past year and a half, two years. We just hit seven years as an, well, this is our

Jay Myers: is crazy.

Cody Wittick: so we're entering year seven. So, yeah, the last couple years has been, yeah.

Appreciate it. So we've, that's kind of been the evolution so that you're exactly right. We've, we call ourselves an e-commerce growth agency and ultimately that we're focused on scaling new customer revenue. That's where we really impact primarily through, through meta. So yeah, that's, that's the long story.

Long I guess you could say.

Jay Myers: You said primarily through meta. That was gonna be one of my questions. When you said you, you, you take over ad accounts every, every platform or like, is, is meta your main focus but you still do the others as well too? Or are you just focused on meta?

Cody Wittick: Yeah. So good question. So as far as like, the execution primarily is meta. We also do Google. I. Of course with meta comes TikTok forever long. That that seems story seems to be changing every day here in the

Jay Myers: back now, so I guess we're,

Cody Wittick: It's back, but who knows? And is Mr. Beast gonna buy it? But yeah, so we managed paid social.

Google has been a new channel over the past year. But we're not doing everything. So we're not touching Amazon ads, but we're overseeing it all. So that's kind of like where the growth strategy comes in. So. To back up a little bit, I like to say that we, we we're offering a system, not a set of services.

So it's not as a most like probably what people hear when they hear e-commerce growth agency. It's kinda like cool, like you offer a full suite of off of services, pretty much the full gamut. I would just wanna pick and choose like what I need. Whereas with us, it's like, here's a proven system that's proven to scale brands, and this system includes financial forecasting, creative, and then the actual like conversion optimization of the go execute on these particular channels, which the channels of what I just said.

So we're not like piecemealing out any of these services or it's more so like here's the system. One includes, and obviously I can break down what I already touched on with like forecasting, paid social, and we can get into the creative side of things, which still includes the influencer side. So it's kind of like one of those buckets in terms of

Jay Myers: Yeah.

Cody Wittick: being able to tap on stuff.

Jay Myers: Yeah. Well, I think probably something that would be beneficial for listeners right off the hop is who should use a growth agency?

Cody Wittick: Yeah. Good

Jay Myers: like, sh should, should, like, why shouldn't every single store use one? Or would that be your,

Cody Wittick: Yeah, it kind of gets into the conversation, right, with like, what's the different, like why shouldn't, why should I use an agency just in general or build an in-house team? I mean. My general sense on that, there's not too much that can be done in-house, that can be done outsourced as well. Like there's not many differences, right?

It's just kind of like, pick your poison, which do you want to build long term? Like do you want to overinvest and be slower on the front end, but ultimately have more control? Or do you want those, you know. Diversity of and depth of knowledge and speed right away. So I think once you start getting like 90 figures and above, and even some of our brands that are hitting that mid eight figures and starting to grow, like they're starting to really build out those in in-house capabilities.

But the sweet spot and where we find a lot of market share is between that five to 50 million annual revenue where agencies can be very, very effective because you're. You're not in the early stages where you're, you're trying to establish product market fit. What is your tam like, what all answering all these bigger questions, but you've, you've established, you have an audience, you have an email list, you have a customer file size, and that's where an e-commerce growth agency can really help scale you.

And I like to say too, like we can be that transitionary team, and I think that's one of the values of an agency as well. And most agencies do themselves a disservice by saying. They get scared of that prospect of like, well, we're about to get replaced. I view it as we're, we're gonna help educate your person way faster than you.

Have them sit under us for six months to a year, you know, and learn. Or maybe eventually you find out that this person's just freed up to do other things and you can keep us on board. And it's kind of like a win-win in my mind. And I think people appreciate that.

Jay Myers: It's interesting. I was talking to Ron with Avi, you know, ob and he is got elsewhere podcast Chew on this. And, and we were just, we were just chatting and they're a massive brand. They're in like Target and all over, like you would think they have a lot of employees. I think he said they have six.

He said they use agencies for absolutely everything. And that's been a big part of their strategy is they, you know, you could call it, and he joked about this too. He, for better or for worse, you can, you can demand a little bit more from an agency like you. You, you kind of, he said it on, on, we were chatting too.

He is like, you wouldn't necessarily treat an employee the same way you treat an agency

Cody Wittick: Yeah, well.

Jay Myers: like, and.

But in the, in the sense that like if an agency just doesn't perform, they can, they can say, I'm, I'm like, move on to the next one, right? Like, there is a, there is something to be, and I know you wanna work obviously long term and, and solve problems together.

I'm not suggesting you just, but there is, there's a performance that has to be met and there is with employees as well too, but it's a, it's definitely more of like a. Put it this way, like, you know, when a, when an employee is underperforming, you generally don't just fire them right away. You put them on like a, a, a coaching program, or you work with

Cody Wittick: you're gonna give them way more runway because

Jay Myers: try to get, you try to get them built back up, and that has a cost on your business, but ultimately it's like the right thing to do as well too, right?

With an agency, like if you're not performing. I'm not gonna say to you, Cody, you know, your Kynship is not performing, but let's, let's work with you here for a couple months and get you back on track and you know, so like,

Cody Wittick: For sure.

Jay Myers: that's definitely a benefit

Cody Wittick: No, there's no question that I think agencies are the more cost effective route, which actually I think a lot of the time the perception is I'm paying, I'm overpaying. Because you as a business have margin too. Well, it's like when you actually start doing the math, and I've done this math exercise of what you're getting with Kynship, for example.

Like it starts to be. A 250 to $400,000 investment. That's more than hiring us as an agency. And we're not cheap either. We, like, we charge premium 'cause we think we're offering premium service. So, our retainers are definitely higher than the market rate.

Jay Myers: That.

Cody Wittick: And, but when you're getting like a financial analyst, when you start getting a, you know, a media buyer in and then a creative strategist, like those three roles alone, add in benefits and.

What you're saying with like, if they're underperforming and like the leeway that you're gonna give them because you've invested in this person almost like a sunk college fallacy

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm.

Cody Wittick: the psychology that you don't have with an agency. Which is exactly why we try to structure our contracts the way that is long term.

Just because, hey, we're gonna be forecasting your business out over the next 12 months. We're thinking very long term over the next year for you. We also want you to be thinking long term with us as like, there's gonna be bumps in the road. How can we get this? You know, on the right way if there is bumps in the road.

So yeah,

Jay Myers: You've seen some incredible success with some of the brands you've worked with. I know you shared, you shared some with me. I, I would love to to highlight some of them and actually pick your brain a little bit on like what you, what you've seen. I know that we probably can't share everything, but like, just on a high level some things that work.

So like I've got, I've got four listed here, if it's okay with you. These numbers are wild. So, so purdy and fig. You increased new customer revenue 772% and reduced while reducing customer acquisition costs by 61%. Like that is insane.

Cody Wittick: Sometimes.

Jay Myers: increased at 10%, that would be good. But So what were some of the things you did, like, what were some of the strategies when you came in and you looked at their business and. What did you do?

Cody Wittick: Yeah, some of, so I, I'm just laughing while you're giving those percentages. 'cause sometimes those percentages are just like, what does that even mean? Like, is that starting from zero and then you just,

Jay Myers: they almost going outta business or what? No,

Cody Wittick: yeah. No, no, no. But I think some of the other things that would be more of a brag would be like, you know, they've gone from mid, like 450.

Thousand dollars to eight figures over the past four years. And we've been partnering with them that whole time. And even in 2024, they were named the number one fastest growing brand in the uk, number nine on the London Times fastest growing brand in the uk. So those are probably better metrics for people to see, like just the, the growth that they've been on.

And we've probably updated the case study on our website probably three or four times just because of how long we've been working with them. But yeah, I mean, essentially they have, they have one product, one offer. It's really a free bottle with the company is essential oil cleaning, very natural cleaning disrupting the cleaning space and smells amazing.

Very obviously natural with essential oils, but they, it's a subscription model of getting, you know, once you run out, you're just on subscription with new cleaning supplies of the essential oils. It smells awesome. You get that free bottle, so just it's on subscription, so. Very, very low a OV, but incredible retention.

So one of the things that has been, was effective from the beginning with them was our influencer seating process. So, like I said, I mean, since they've been with us four years, they saw like our evolution, evolution as an agency. And we actually didn't require paid media when we first started working with them.

So we actually didn't have the ad account at the very beginning, but we actually quickly, that was one of the ones that we, you know, I use this word loosely, stole from the founder Jack. And he admittedly would say that he was one, he was like the first agency that proved ourselves that they were, he was worth handing it over. So we're able to win it over is probably a better way. And yeah, they've just seen crazy success. I mean, today they're spending over seven figures a month on ads. And we're

Jay Myers: Wow.

Cody Wittick: thousands of ads a month. And this is also too, and, and a great example of what we were talking about earlier with.

They've built out their in-house team as we've grown alongside them. So like they've built out their creative department. I could say I could be threatened by that or I could say, well done. That's awesome. We'll continue to cheer you on. So like, probably 90% of their ad account at one point was coming from us in terms of, and it was all like influencer seeding content today.

It's probably,

Jay Myers: Explain, explain influencer seating real quick. Just

Cody Wittick: yeah, yeah.

Jay Myers: With the term.

Cody Wittick: It's essentially sending out free product, no strings attached to, to influencers, people with social media following. In our process, there's, it's lots of labor involved, lots of process involved. But we're reaching out to influencers, cold offering them the product.

What, and we have expectations of this, but. Conservatively, for every 10 people that we send out product to, three people will end up posting completely for free. And then we reach back out for usage rights of that content, capture that content through social listening tools, and then we get that into that account.

So that's like the

Jay Myers: And you're managing this, oh, sorry, say that again.

Cody Wittick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's,

Jay Myers: foot view. Yeah. And you're managing this for brands. You're, you're DMing them and following up after and messaging like

Cody Wittick: Yeah, it

Jay Myers: you.

Cody Wittick: go ahead.

Jay Myers: S Right, so you do it, it's a no strings attached. So you, you send it and then do you wait and see if they post and then reach out or,

Cody Wittick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just because we're, we're saying, Hey Jay, like we think you're a great brand fit. We'd love to send you our product, no strings attached. We literally use that phrase, lemme know your address, we'll get it right out to you. You say, yes, we send out the product because of our, you know, our tracking.

We're able to know when they get it, and then. Usually they post right away. If they are, we have process built around this if they haven't yet to like reach back out. But then we, they post, we see it through social listening, and then we capture that content and get usage rights to it, or we're obviously requesting it and they say yes, and then we get it into that account.

So. What I was saying with Jack was like 90% of the ad library was all of that. It was coming from that process and they were seeing crazy post rates. Just I mean it's on the case study, our website, just like the amount of impressions that they were getting way

Jay Myers: you're creating these thousands of, when you're creating these thousands of ads a month for, is a lot of that U user generated content from.

Cody Wittick: It's a mix of both. So what I was saying was like, you know. Three or four years ago, 90% of their ad library was influencer sheeting content. Today it's probably. 20%, 30%. And a lot of it is also coming from like, as they've built out their creative team, they have in-house UGC creators, they have creative strategists that are producing this content.

They have beautiful static imagery and stuff like that. We don't have a horse in the race. It's not like, you know, our ego is shot in that. It is just, we just want to. See success ultimately, like we're not judged, you know, talk about the evolution of us. We're not judged on this influence of sheeting process anymore.

That's like, so long ago. And that's just one of the creative buckets that we offer, which I'm sure we can get into that. But yeah, so being in partnership with a brand that long, it's obviously been like there's lots of evolutions and different challenges that you come across. But yeah.

Jay Myers: It's crazy. It's insane. The, the numbers. Are you how much are you leveraging AI for some of the ad creation? Has that become a big part of it?

Cody Wittick: Actually no. I mean, so all of the, the major portions of creation of content, it's coming through human beings. So I have a lot of qualms around ai. UGC,

Jay Myers: well I'd love to hear that because it seems like everything I listen to now or see is all around AI influencers. Like, I don't know. I just saw, I. Clearly just saw a post this morning and it was an an influencer holding. She was wearing, it was shoes or something, and, and she said something like, my name is Sophie and I'm, I'm your lowest maintenance influencer ever.

I don't demand high paybacks. I show up on time. I'm not moody or something. I'm also AI or something. But actually I, it, it seemed very real and I just, I know it seems like there's a new platform for this almost on a weekly basis to some type of. AI influencer tool.

Cody Wittick: Look, I, I think ai, if you're kind of, I even just tweeted this the other day, was just like. There almost, there's a, there's this perception of like, using AI as like a shortcut. Like you're from a, even from a creative perspective, like it's almost like frowned upon, or it's like everyone's using it, but no one, everyone's afraid to like come out and say like, I'm I'm, yeah.

Like,

Jay Myers: ai. Yeah.

Cody Wittick: yeah, it's like this weird thing. Where I view it as like, if you're not using it, I don't like, it's like not using email and you'd rather send handwritten letters type thing. So, I definitely think it's a great tool and it can get you started. And specifically for things like static imagery or like DPA ads and things like that, I think it's just kind of a no brainer.

But when it comes and involves human beings, I just think we're the pendulum swing is gonna swing back. It's like going so far into now, we just have fake people. That I, I just think. We might face repercussions as a society where it's gonna hopefully pendulum swing back into some, like, real, like authentic things.

And that's what you're trying to tap into with, with human beings. At the end of the day, I, I just don't, I'll, I'll end with this. I just don't think that's ever gonna go away. Like, we're always gonna be, have humans, I think, I mean. Listen to Joe Rogan, how his, his thoughts on Will we ever have a reality where like you cannot tell the difference between what's fake and what's real, which is kind of scary.

And I'm sure we're kind of on that trajectory.

Jay Myers: Yeah.

Cody Wittick: but I don't know if we're ever gonna get rid of, I mean, we saw this with Covid, right? Where it was like. You know, in office is dumb. It's full remote. That's the future. And now what are we seeing four years later, which five years later, like people are, that are like

Jay Myers: They miss the office

Cody Wittick: they miss the human interaction.

And when it comes for, when it comes to advertising, I just don't think you're ever gonna have, get around that.

Jay Myers: Yeah, there might be a, a short kind of period where you can see some arbitrage and and win, but it's like when product reviews kind of first became popular and then they became all fake

Cody Wittick: Yeah.

Jay Myers: and. Now then there became ways to verify verif, like that they were a verified purchaser. And I almost feel like something like that will happen.

There'll be a period of time where it's, it, it can get exposed or used, but there needs to be like a verified human stamp of some sort, because I agree. Like it won't, it won't, I would say like, you know, anyone listening right now, if you are. Leveraging AI for some type of influencer ads, like go ahead and do it, but it's like, don't build, don't build a long term strategy on it.

You might win for a short period, but the rug could get pulled out very quick and. It's like we saw what could potentially happen with TikTok, and I don't know when this episode will air exactly, but it's like you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. If

Cody Wittick: For sure.

Jay Myers: went away and you don't have a business, that's not tiktoks fault.

That's your fault for having them all in one basket. And I would say the same thing, like with with if you went all in with AI influencers, for example.

Cody Wittick: Yeah, for sure. I just think people can, people can tell it. It's just we're we're made with

Jay Myers: For now. Right. It's getting, I mean, just

Cody Wittick: Right, right. Totally.

Jay Myers: how far it's come in the last year. It's

Cody Wittick: Yeah. No, it is.

Jay Myers: where will we be 12 months from now? Like,

Cody Wittick: Yeah. Yeah. So Good rabbit hole.

Jay Myers: in a, in, in two years, I might say, Hey Cody, I'd love to have you back on the show. Do you wanna personally come or send your AI representative who's trained on everything that

Cody Wittick: that's actually happening right now. Jay, you don't, you actually didn't know. So this is my ai.

Jay Myers: oh my goodness. That's it. I'm outta here.

Cody Wittick: Oh

Jay Myers: No, it will happen one day. I I, I would like to dig into some of these other ones here too. Actually, super gut, I didn't know you worked with them. They're, I'm a huge fan of, of them and what they do, and I, yeah. Love them. You increased new customer revenue, so.

Eight,

Cody Wittick: crazy percentages.

Jay Myers: 799%, and also reduced cac. Anything, any fun learnings from from them or was it similar to Pretty and Fig or,

Cody Wittick: I think, I think on Super Gut specifically, this is where I even, I mean I keep mentioning Twitter and LinkedIn, but like, I mean, we get into this conversation right now, NFL playoffs, I know that's not as big in Canada maybe.

Jay Myers: oh, we're.

Cody Wittick: okay. Okay. Yeah. Didn't want to be I don't know what you call it, biased towards America.

But.

Jay Myers: We have our football league, but it's.

Cody Wittick: Well, it gets in this conversation that's quite annoying for me, where I hear, and on sports talk, it's just like all over the place. People, 'cause they need talking points. But who's more important? Brady or Belichick, who's more crucial to the success? Andy Reed or Patrick Mahomes or, oh, he's only good because he has a, he has the great talent around him for a quarterback, right?

Like if he had no talent, he wouldn't be as good

Jay Myers: Well, if you're talking about Mahomes, it's who's more valuable? Mahomes or the refs. Right.

Cody Wittick: Yeah. There we go.

Jay Myers: A whole nother kind of

Cody Wittick: yeah, the conspiracy theories behind all these different things yeah, it's, it doesn't understand like the full picture, like the, the answer is both, right? Like it takes everyone. And so I actually, I related that to an agency client relationship.

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Cody Wittick: Like who's more valuable? Who's taking more? Is Kynship the cause for growth for Prote and Fig? Or is Prote and Fig's product the cause for growth? Well, the answer is both play a crucial part in the growth of the, of the company. So for tying this back to, to Super Gut, you know, this was tied around where we start to see a lot of scale was tied around with Ozempic and GLP one and a lot of the rise and nuance to that.

And so, we saw ads really, really crush with that. Were speaking to that specific audience that might be interested in getting some of the benefits of that without having to take ozempic. And now it's kind of caught on where you see a lot of companies that are kind of speaking to that audience or talking points.

So this gets into the, you know, one of the major things that can impact. Acquisition is creative. Like it'll always be that. So 60, 70% of the reason people buy on ads is the creative. It's, I mean, Facebook and Meta talk about this is the reason, the most important thing in the auction dynamics. But the second thing is the offer.

And so tied in with Super Gut, specifically that offer that specific thing and that offer like, can just be the angle. But it also, you know, obviously could be 20% off by bogo, all those sorts of things around peak buying periods. And tied in with the landing page that goes hand in hand with offer.

So those are some of the things that we look at in addition to creative that we really impact offer. And then also three like copy. Four. Do we have the right target? Like when we're kind of, problem solving with within looking at the whole business, like why aren't we seeing scale? What are we, what are, what are the different levers that we can pull on? Just looking at the data as it comes in. Do we have the right target? Are we, you know, is your category, is this the right, is this a too high of a target for your category? For example. You know, a a, we had a brand come in and people on their board, so the health and wellness brand very low, like subscription heavy close with someone on his board that also worked with Bombas so Sox subscription.

And he was telling him a different metric and. And target that he should have for his company that was coming from a perspective of clothing,

Jay Myers: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cody Wittick: versus, you know, health and wellness. Well, if this clothing guy is coming in and seeing you need to hit a four, but your market. And the market that you're competing with, especially in the auction, is hitting a 1.5, for example, and you're trying to go after a four.

There's gonna be no people left throughout and find conversion. So those are some of the auction dynamics that you have to also consider when it comes to like, you're also your market, right? Who else are you competing with and what are they willing to pay? And most of the time like. You know, probably conservatively 50% of our brands are focused on subscription, on getting, getting their brands being willing to lose money on the front end because they, the repeat revenue is really carrying their business and most predictable part of their business.

Well, if you start having super aggressive. New customer goals and start saying, well, I, I just wanna make as much money as possible in the first order. You're just not gonna find any scale, any spend any customers left over to actually scoop up because all your competitors are finding people those same people at much cheaper.

So that's, that's where I think thinking about it as an auction is really helpful because if you actually went to an auction. You bid much lower or you bid much higher, like those dynamics really affect your acquisition.

Jay Myers: Yeah, I've seen, I agree with you. You have to know your metrics intimately. I've seen some brands really screw it up trying to over discount on their first order when they don't properly understand their lifetime value and, and retention. And, and some people, right, say like, no, you have to have first order profitability no matter what.

Like, no, no ifs, ands, or buts. Where I don't think that's. If you're a subscription brand, but you do have to know like your numbers and really watch it because that is an advantage you have and it's a card you can, you can play. Right?

Cody Wittick: No, definitely. I mean, you can, if you bet the house on LTV, I mean there's a lot of brands that did that and then died.

Jay Myers: Yep. A hundred percent.

Cody Wittick: but like Purdy and Fig, for example, if they tried to be first order or profitable on a 20 pound product, like there's just gonna be nobody to find conversions. So like our targets within the ad account are nowhere near first order profitable.

Their LTB is like one of the best we've ever seen. So, and it's very predictable at this point, you know, being five years into their company.

Jay Myers: Right, right. Couple questions. I came up your last. Answer there. Where are you sending customers to? Have you found anything that works? Are you sending them to the product pages? Are you building custom landing pages? Any, anything that works better as far as that?

Cody Wittick: both like PD, p and landing pages. Right now we. We are big fans of Vermont and we've been utilizing them and we've been one of their first like beta agencies testing out like a different model where we've really kind gotten premium service for some of our clients. Testing different landing pages.

I mean, their whole thesis, if you guys haven't heard of them, is testing landing pages, like testing creative. And we've seen a ton of success. And these landing pages, guys are nothing fancy. It is like same, same creative from the ad ends up on the landing page. And then there's one thing to do and like, you can't go to anywhere else.

Obviously, you, you, the, the cool thing about Vermont is like you can design it any which way. But the ways that we're designing it is very, very basic. It's just like. The ad that I click on, I see it on the same landing page, and then it's just clear offer buy. And we've seen it really like sometimes almost double conversion rate,

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Cody Wittick: On some of our clients.

So this is something that we're actually like offering at scale now through partnership with Vermont. So yeah, that's been, that's been super helpful resource just 'cause we didn't have like, in-house designers or, you know, web dev people that were building these landing pages. So that's something specific to us that's been really exciting.

And it's, it's been a, it's been a awesome partnership.

Jay Myers: Yeah, I, I know Vermont well. I know Aaron Orndorff quite well. From there they there

Cody Wittick: is the one who introduced us actually. I

Jay Myers: actually he was, that's

Cody Wittick: yeah, like way back in the day. Yeah,

Jay Myers: Wait, that small world and now you're using their page builder. I just had Nick from Shogun on, and actually the episode hasn't, hasn't aired yet, but similar, similar solution to Vermont.

But

Cody Wittick: sure.

Jay Myers: he was saying that they, like, they've seen most brands when they switch from sending people to traffic to a product page, to a dedicated landing page, they see 30 to 40% better conversion, assuming you test it like. Sometimes it's the short ones that work well, and sometimes it's these really long form with videos and more copy, and then testimonials, and then another video and then, and then five lifestyle photos and then more copy.

And it's like, it really depends on, on, on the product. But bottom line is, is. Testing, like AB testing and,

Cody Wittick: For sure.

Jay Myers: continually like, and then when you get a winner ab test again, and then you get a winner AB test again. Like you just, you keep narrowing and narrowing down till you get the ultimate, ultimate solution.

So, because I think that's a, I, I see so many brands waste so much money sending their ad traffic to the product page, which I think the product page we always have to remember. Is kind of more near the end of the funnel. Like someone has generally landed on your homepage and read, watched some video, learned a little bit about you and your brand and your messaging and your, your, your value, everything about who you are.

They maybe went through a collection page. They maybe went to four or five other pages on your site and then they're on the product page. And so to send new fresh traffic there I think is a big miss. So that's why I was curious. So it make, makes sense. What are some of the KPIs you track, like I that are really important?

Like if I'm a brand and I wanna know you like, I, I saw you listed like new customer acquisition. You have aimer, which is acquisition, marketing, efficiency rating, contribution margin. Like what are, what are your key metrics that you report with brands or go over every

Cody Wittick: Yeah. It's.

Jay Myers: down and look?

Cody Wittick: It's total new customer revenue and

Jay Myers: So

Cody Wittick: a MER. Yeah,

Jay Myers: removing anyone that was, has previously purchased, that's new customer revenue, right?

Cody Wittick: I think this is, I mean, it kind of goes into our business model and philosophy. I mean, we just released a podcast today around,

Jay Myers: Let's give it a plug.

Cody Wittick: what. WTF do our media buyers do all day. Which is, it is because it's the, this perception of around running cost controls, which we can get into. But like, do you just upload creative and adjust cost caps up and down?

Like what it, what our media buyers as if, like, the other way to do it is like the media buyers are in the ad account and they're constantly making changes, which there's also a whole a, a whole other host of problems with that. But also, a lot of times other agencies or even just an internal media buyer, all they're doing is they're trying to affect the ad account within the ad account.

Whereas our philosophy is probably 80% of your job is actually outside of the ad account to affect. The results in that account. And what do I mean? Well, it's working with creative pipelines. It's what I, what we've talked about with looking at the whole business. So being involved financially and actually seeing like where are we at from these other channels and how is meta affecting other channels?

Which is another problem of. If I'm just running Facebook ads in a silo, I'm just trying to make my Facebook dashboard look as sexy as possible because I'm an agency and I'm trying to keep the client, or I'm an internal media buyer and I'm trying to look important, et cetera. Like, it just creates really bad execution.

I'm looking at offers. I'm working with our creative strategist. I'm working with our landing page team. I'm looking at I'm working with just our, my CMO, just in general. What offers can we look to leverage? Do we have the right target? I'm working with our CFO, like these are the ways that our media buyers are working.

But in terms of KPIs, we're judged on growing total new customer revenue at an A MER that makes sense for the, the brand goals that they have. So when we financially forecast, when we come on board, it's what is the profit percentage goal that you guys have over the next 12 months? And we build the forecast bottom up meaning like, if. Regardless of your goal, here's the current trajectory of your brand, if nothing changed based on repeat revenue, based on new customer trends and by channel now you're paying us to impact total new customer revenue. So of course we're gonna like, forecast that out and what we think we can achieve based on seasonality and what is realistic based on actual data.

But ultimately it's tying, okay, we want to hit 10% bottom line over the next 12 months or at the end of the, these next 12 months. Okay, how do we actually impact that? So we're just looking at, you know, new cust, A MER guys is another word for saying new customer return on ad spend. It's the same thing.

So, so we're just looking at blended

Jay Myers: it's your acqui acquisition, marketing efficiency rating.

Cody Wittick: Or ratio, same thing. So again, like we're holding each channel tied to our new customer return on Aspen goal. And for, so for example, like we're executing on meta, we're executing on meta. We're tying our A MER goal to an in out account CPA and making sure that those are synonymous. But a lot of times your in out account, CPA is gonna look maybe poor, but your total new customer, A MER, or your new customer return on a spend is really good.

And it's actually hitting the efficiency that we want. And that's because the way these platforms and channels work, right? Like meta is a demand. Generation platform, especially the way we think about it, is the best top of funnel channel in the world ever invented. Because of the ways that you can go out and acquire new customers.

And so running hard exclusions, making sure that you're not, you know, wasting ad spend on people that are gonna buy anyways, et cetera. But like for example, we see, you know, as we increase and we do these attribution diet tests all the time with our clients we see as we raise meta up and we hold these other channels, ad channels, ad spends steady, we actually see total new customer revenue go up on an Amazon, for example.

Right? Because what you just said about like what you're bringing up about landing pages, this is actually a very related thing. Going to A PDP, you know, usually a normal customer journey. They're gonna go on the homepage and stuff like that. So if I see an ad and I click on it and I go to a PDP and maybe I don't buy right away, what am I doing?

I'm googling the brand. I'm going to their Instagram. I'm searching if they're on Amazon, and if I can get a better deal or if I can just get it if faster. And so, that's why we see that correlation as you spend more on meta you, you're naturally gonna see if you are on Amazon and you're not doing stupid things like offering a a cheaper price point on Amazon you're just naturally gonna see an increase on new customer revenue on Amazon.

So. That was very long-winded of saying like the main KPI of what we're looking at is A MER and making sure that's translating to an ad account and also just total profitability. But we're also looking at top line, right? Like, you know, what people care about most is, is top line growing in a am I getting the profitability that I, that I need?

Jay Myers: One thing I'll just say, I. For a little bit of debate here, is it always a bad strategy to not to sell it for less on Amazon?

Cody Wittick: Well, yeah, I, I generally think, well, obviously it depends on your goals. I mean, there's obviously nuance to this. I just think it's. If you're expecting, like, so this comes from real examples, right? Where we have a client that comes to us and says, man, I really want to grow my.com. And then when we go to their website and their PDP page says.

Add to cart or buy now with Prime, what do you think people are doing? You know what I mean? So those are some of the, the conversations that's just, and if we're, we're, we're never gonna be driving traffic from our, am our, you know, paid ads to Amazon directly because you, the loss attribution, Facebook can't optimize all that stuff.

Let's just, it's just no question Amazon is a better e-commerce experience, but to your point, no, it's not in the sense that if total new customer is growing, I don't care where it's coming from as long as like, so usually what we recommend is that it be equal. Because what's gonna happen most of the time anyways, is that people are gonna want the better e-commerce experience, which is Amazon, like Prime is just a better e-commerce experience.

Jay Myers: The reason I ask is I, one of our brands we work with liquid Death is like, and I think it's probably still on their site, if you go to a product page they would have a case of their water for, 20, like $20 on the site, or 1699 on Amazon. And you would think like, why the heck are they selling it cheaper on Amazon when they have to pay Amazon 15%?

And then they even eventually, like disabled the, the add to cart button for a while. And they've done a lot of different testing, but their goal was to, they wanted to be the top ranked. Mineral water on Amazon. And so they, so for a while they drove all their traffic there. And then they own, they own now, I think first, second, and third place.

'cause now they have flavored water and energy, water. They had different, different things. But but that was the strategy. So I think, I think it's, I think, I think it's important to know, like, what is your strategy? But I, I like, I generally agree like

Cody Wittick: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, it was kind of what I opened with, right? It's like, well, it depends on your goal, like that's a clear goal. Seems like a home run. Do I think it's also some context here, guys, liquid death, one of the fastest growing and huge nine figure brand. Maybe to the normal brand listening to this, I don't know if like nine figure brands are always the, the ones that we actually listen to. So.

Jay Myers: What do you do anything, any around audiences like you, talk to me a little bit about is there any neat things Like I've heard some brands are doing some kind of cool strategic things with like audience swapping sharing pixels with other brands or doing things like to really creatively build audiences.

Are you just doing it through targeting on the site or is there any, any, like, any advice or strategy around how to think about audiences? Go broad and then, and then retarget like I.

Cody Wittick: Yeah. So on meta specifically, I would say vast majority of the time we're going after new customer acquisition. So there's something to be said around if their repeat rates are already really bad, like if you're out just a one time buy, or it's below like 50%, for example, 30% even. You could run some more retargeting campaigns in terms of looking at your email list uploading your emails lists or people that are unsubscribed or people that haven't clicked or opened an email in the past 90 days.

And those things, I'm. Wouldn't it be against? So we're not like completely dogmatic. But when you go into like an a SC campaign for example, and we do audits all the time and I see 20% of their existing budget going to existing customers, that's where I'm like, man, you're just wasting the tool. What the tool is best set up to do is actually open people's eyes and discover you for the first time.

So that doesn't include, you know, like obviously that's gonna be remarketed and especially for like, you know, going back to Purdy and Fig for example. Like they were, at one point they were concerned that their new visitor percentage was going down. But all that means is that we're, as we're increasing ad spend. Hopefully that new visitor percentage becomes zero and new customer percentage goes up, right? Like, like it's actually sometimes can be a very, very misleading metric. What we care about is new customer percentage as long as that's going up. So, yeah. Back to your original question, Jay. Very big fan of broad and leaning into the machine learning system of Facebook.

Jay Myers: Fair.

Cody Wittick: Think when you're trying to manipulate the thing, like that's where you're back in, you know, 2016 Facebook days. And I just

Jay Myers: Let let Facebook do what it's good at.

Cody Wittick: Yeah, it's just, even if a person listening to this, you're probably pretty smart. You probably think you know your customer better than meta, but I promise you meta will do a better job of putting your ads in front of the right people than you.

'Cause it's only upside, right? Let's just think about it. It's only upside if, if you're wrong. You're forcing inefficiency. If you're right, Facebook's gonna spend that money anyways towards those people.

Jay Myers: Yeah.

Cody Wittick: So, I just viewed as upside.

Jay Myers: Yep. Let's, before we run outta time here, I want to, I want you to imagine you're running a store and you've got, I don't know, let's say 10,000 bucks a month. And what I. Like, what would be your growth strategy for, for Cody's vitamins? To, to scale it as fast as you can with, with $10,000 a month.

What are you, what are you doing?

Cody Wittick: I just get $10,000 of house money every month

Jay Myers: You have a budget of 10,000. I'm your boss, Cody, and

Cody Wittick: You are the, you are the bank. Oh yeah.

Jay Myers: Or you're,

Fired. We'll put you on a performance improvement plan.

Cody Wittick: my mind goes to actually building an organic audience before I ever dive into paid, and this is coming from the e-commerce Growth Agency that's. Spending millions on meta. I would, I would actually go to more grassroots type stuff where I'd actually be trying to build as many relationships with people in my target customer.

I mean, this kind of goes into like product seed. I'd probably, depending on that $10,000. If that $10,000 is going towards inventory in month one, then I'm gonna use half of that inventory to get it out to, podcasters, influencers my friends and family. Yeah, I, and I think I would try to, and then I would also invest probably half of that into just building, like maybe trying to get either myself or someone way more talented than me to start just posting content and create organic audience first.

I think that's just. Incredible leverage when you actually have that by default versus having to go out and pay for that awareness. Obviously you're paying it by sending out the product but it's way cheaper when you send out the product and also have to pay for the advertising costs and acquisition costs.

So, yeah, it's, it is definitely not the quick way, but I think it's the, the right way for brands to, to build. I.

Jay Myers: I would agree. Plus you're building relationships where you're gonna get product feedback and learn more.

Cody Wittick: Totally.

Jay Myers: you know, like they might become a true fan that then is also referring maybe not just one, one or two. Like if they're a, a podcast or an influencer, it could be thousands. Right? So, I would agree with that.

What is your app still? Is that, is that a public publicly available thing or do you use it internally for your agency?

Cody Wittick: I mean that's what like in terms we always use it internally for agency, but people,

Jay Myers: But someone can just, like, if I wanted to do product seeding myself and I, I could.

Cody Wittick: It used to be called the influencer seating app. Now I think we just changed it back to the Kynship app. 'cause they outlawed, like the main function cannot be the title of the app.

Jay Myers: yeah. We've got all those emails too.

Cody Wittick: Yeah. So, we were

Jay Myers: You could call it the Kynship seating app, but not the product seating app.

Cody Wittick: Oh, well maybe, maybe we do that too.

Jay Myers: as long as your brand name is first, we had to change a few too as well,

Cody Wittick: so yeah, it, I mean, it, we, it comes in as revenue every month for brands that discover it and use it. And we have brands that won't use it

Jay Myers: So if someone listening wants to, to try product seeding, what this app does is it is a way it creates orders to send the

Cody Wittick: Zero. Zero draft orders at scale for, for influencers. So basically a 1, 2, 3 easy step process. You just upload the influencer. Let's say you have 10 influencers that you wanna send product to. They're not obviously in your Shopify ecosystem. You upload them as customers, you add them all, and then, okay, step two is you add the product.

Step three, make sure their addresses right, and then you just submit and then it goes out through your normal backend.

Jay Myers: Okay. What are your thoughts on using Shopify collabs for some of that, like the, have you played around with that much?

Cody Wittick: Yeah, I'm not even gonna try to pretend that. I mean, when we first started it, there wasn't really much like it, but now it's like a very basic functionality that a lot of, I, I, well Shopify CoLab's probably, I think it does, has this functionality.

Jay Myers: I, I, I don't know for sure. Well, I don't wanna promote it then if it's a, but I know there's, like collabs does, does a lot as, as well.

Cody Wittick: For sure. Yeah. Well, and TikTok shops, I mean, did this, I mean, it was like the seeding integration was kind of like baked in

Jay Myers: but maybe So on a, on a, like if you're looking for a simple way to, to just bulk create orders like you Yeah. You reach out to influencers, you've got 50 people that are like, yeah, sure.

Send me your stuff. You put 'em in a, in a, in a CSV and then upload it into the Kynship app and it will create the orders. So then if you're using a, a logistics company or however they're in your system, right?

Cody Wittick: for sure. Yep. Always in forever. So.

Jay Myers: Okay. I'll put a, I'll put a link to that in the show notes for sure.

Cody Wittick: And Colabs, make sure you do that too.

Jay Myers: Yes. There we go. Keep it fair, keep it legit.

Cody Wittick: Yeah.

Jay Myers: Awesome. Cody, this has been fantastic. Thank you for sharing all your wisdom and insight. Where, where are you most active on social media? Where can I send people? And, and can you share

Cody Wittick: and LinkedIn Both, but yeah, whichever one. Yeah, both

Jay Myers: And is it Kynship.co?

Cody Wittick: correct. K-Y-N-S-H-I p.com.

Jay Myers: Awesome. I'll add that in the show notes. Thank you so much. Really appreciate. Absolutely.