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The $1.2B Funnel Strategy Every Brand Should Steal in 2026

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Start with the signal

9 min read

Summary

At-a-Glance

  • Verdict: Skim
  • Core thesis: Fast-growing subscription brands use persona-specific ads, congruent advertorial or quiz funnels, aggressive introductory offers, and habit-building retention to accept weak first-order economics and scale on lifetime value.
  • Why it matters: The video provides a reusable D2C acquisition architecture illustrated by four brands reportedly reaching $100 million in annual revenue unusually quickly, while showing why funnel continuity and subscription economics matter more than one-day ROAS.
  • Best use: Use it as a pattern library for designing persona-based GTM funnels and retention economics; skip the repeated ending and Motion sponsorship.

Executive Summary

The speaker argues that Grüns, IM8, Mars Men, and Create Wellness all used essentially the same growth system: an identity-matched creator ad leads to a listicle, advertorial, or quiz that continues the exact promise, then into a steeply discounted subscription offer. The central principle is funnel congruency—the identity, problem, message, evidence, and offer should remain coherent from impression through checkout.

These brands do not optimize primarily for immediate profitability. High gross margins, subscriptions, multi-month welcome packages, gifts, and habit-forming routines let them tolerate low first-order ROAS and recover acquisition costs over the customer lifetime. The speaker presents Grüns as the flagship case: roughly $300 million in annual revenue, a reported 3x LTV-to-CAC relationship, and a $1.2 billion Unilever exit after approximately three years.

Each company adapts the architecture to a different persona. Grüns uses playful gummies and many narrow health identities; IM8 uses scientific positioning, athletes, and premium red branding; Mars Men uses an emotionally charged 30-question quiz and an approachable male voice; Create Wellness uses creators, coaches, doctors, and accessible creatine positioning. The offer mechanics remain similar even as the form factor, authority source, and creative tone change.

The analysis is useful but repetitive, partly promotional, and not a product-efficacy assessment. Several performance figures, conversion estimates, and causal claims are asserted without underlying data, while TikTok virality, celebrity endorsements, market timing, distribution, and capital may also explain part of the outcomes.

Key Takeaways

  • Claim: Funnel congruency is the common acquisition mechanism: every stage should preserve the same persona, pain point, promise, and offer while adding evidence and detail. | Evidence: Across all four examples, selfie-style partnership ads lead to dedicated listicles, advertorials, or quizzes rather than a generic homepage. The speaker contrasts this with brands that attract a click using one message and then send the visitor to an unrelated landing page. | Implication: Ken should treat message continuity as a system requirement: creative variants need corresponding landing-page variants rather than one universal destination.
  • Claim: Aggressive introductory offers work because subscription lifetime value, not first-order ROAS, funds acquisition. | Evidence: Grüns reportedly offers 52% off plus free shipping and makes subscription $14 cheaper than a one-time order before charging the full $79.99 roughly 30 days later. IM8 and Mars Men add discounts and gifts positioned as approximately $80 in value, while IM8 displays a monthly equivalent even when the welcome purchase is paid quarterly. | Implication: Evaluate funnel tests on cohort payback, contribution margin, churn, and LTV-to-CAC—not solely same-day or one-day click ROAS. | Caveat: The model requires strong retention, sufficient cash to fund the payback period, transparent offer terms, and margins high enough to absorb the initial subsidy.
  • Claim: High creative volume becomes scalable when a broad product is decomposed into many narrow persona and problem narratives. | Evidence: The speaker estimates Grüns was running 30 to 40 concurrent personas, including GLP-1 users, people focused on gut health, and men taking control of their health at 40. IM8 reportedly runs about 1,200 ads at a time against concerns such as travel disruption, bloating, brain fog, afternoon energy crashes, and inconsistent gut health. | Implication: Creative operations should be structured as a matrix of persona, problem, creator archetype, proof source, hook, and landing page so variants can be generated and measured systematically. | Caveat: The persona count and active-ad figure are speaker-reported and not independently substantiated in the transcript; high volume does not itself establish incrementality or profitability.
  • Claim: A longer conversion journey can increase intent and retention when it makes customers feel understood rather than merely adding friction. | Evidence: Mars Men's quiz is described as at least 30 questions, using prompts such as 'When you look in the mirror, who do you see?' and questions about irritability or waking to urinate. The speaker speculates that quiz completers may convert at 70% to 80% because completion signals unusually high intent. | Implication: Optimize for qualified progression and eventual cohort value, not simply minimum clicks; diagnostic experiences are worth testing where personalization itself strengthens commitment. | Caveat: The 70% to 80% conversion estimate is conjecture, and long quizzes can also cause severe abandonment; completion rate and downstream retention are necessary to assess net value.
  • Claim: Brand differentiation can come from repackaging a proven demand stack through a distinct form factor, visual code, authority model, and tone rather than inventing a wholly new category. | Evidence: The speaker characterizes Grüns as comprehensive nutrition converted into a playful green gummy, while IM8 uses a red powder, clinical positioning, premium typography, and endorsements from David Beckham, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Aryna Sabalenka. Mars Men instead adopts cartoons, emojis, and a casual friend-like voice for men aged roughly 30 to 50. | Implication: When evaluating a crowded market, look for under-owned combinations of format, identity, trust source, tone, and visual territory—not only novel product functionality. | Caveat: This framing understates potential differences in formulation, product quality, celebrity reach, funding, operations, and distribution.
  • Claim: Retention is deliberately engineered through routine formation, multi-month commitment, and post-purchase guidance. | Evidence: Grüns turns daily gummy consumption into an enjoyable morning ritual; IM8's quarterly welcome package establishes a three-month routine; Create emphasizes a three-month supply; and the speaker recommends emails that remind customers how and when to use the product or adjust usage. | Implication: Retention design should begin before checkout and connect packaging, supply duration, onboarding, usage education, replenishment, and cancellation behavior into one operating model. | Caveat: Habit formation cannot compensate indefinitely for weak efficacy or poor customer experience, and the speaker explicitly says the video does not assess whether most products work.
  • Claim: A repeat-purchase D2C engine can become a bridge to retail and wholesale scale. | Evidence: Create Wellness reportedly used paid acquisition and subscription revenue to support major retail distribution and a large funding round. The speaker argues that demonstrated traffic generation and product stickiness make a brand attractive to retailers and can add predictable wholesale sales. | Implication: Treat D2C as both a revenue channel and an evidence layer for retail readiness, but model retail economics separately rather than assuming the subscription funnel transfers directly. | Caveat: Retail introduces different margins, inventory requirements, channel conflict, merchandising dependencies, and attribution challenges that the video does not analyze.

Detailed Brief

How the four brands localize the shared architecture

  • Claims: Grüns relies heavily on first-person creator stories and narrow identities because generic fiber, gut-health, and comprehensive-nutrition claims operate in a saturated market.; IM8 reframes broad wellness problems as external or previously misunderstood causes, often telling the customer that feeling off is not their fault.; Mars Men constructs an explicit enemy, such as cortisol or declining testosterone, and positions the brand as a supportive peer rather than a condescending medical authority.; Create Wellness combines trend timing around creatine with a more accessible format and uses coaches, doctors, and science communicators as its authority layer.
  • Evidence: Example Grüns listicle concepts include benefits for GLP-1 users and reasons customers are 'obsessed' with the product, supported by reviews, doctor recommendations, and units sold.; IM8 translates price into dollars per day and bundles items such as a frother, mixer, bottle, or longevity pack to make the welcome offer feel more valuable.; Mars Men's language includes 'your grandpa had more testosterone at 60 than you do at 35' and uses a sweepstakes chance to win an Apple Watch.; Create uses short-form iPhone-style partnership ads, GLP-1-adjacent benefits, limited-time messaging, and copy encouraging customers to remain on a three-month supply.
  • Caveats: The video focuses on observable marketing surfaces and does not separate the effects of funnel design from formulation, timing, celebrity reach, organic virality, retail access, or financing.; Health claims, externalized blame, urgency, recurring billing, and price anchoring can create regulatory, platform-policy, and consumer-trust exposure if substantiation or disclosure is weak.
  • Implications: The transferable unit is not a particular ad template but a coherent combination of persona, emotional tension, authority source, mechanism, format, and offer.; Authority should match the audience: doctors and elite athletes for scientific optimizers, relatable peers for skeptical mainstream consumers, and coaches or specialist creators where practical credibility matters.

Economic prerequisites hidden beneath the creative playbook

  • Claims: The model depends on accepting an acquisition loss or weak early return while using future subscription payments to recover CAC.; Multi-month packages raise initial AOV and increase the time available for the product to become part of the customer's routine.; The speaker estimates that brands need roughly 80% to 90% gross margins to support steep acquisition subsidies.
  • Evidence: Grüns founder Chad is said to have reported a 3x LTV-to-CAC relationship, which the speaker interprets as enabling aggressive scaling.; TikTok Shop virality reportedly generated substantial initial trial for Grüns, while other named brands such as MaryRuth's, Comfort, and NeuroGum also use social-commerce momentum.; The speaker's broader operating chain is paid or viral trial, subscription retention, demonstrated repeat demand, retailer interest, and then predictable wholesale volume.
  • Caveats: A 3x LTV-to-CAC ratio does not automatically mean three dollars of profit per acquisition dollar because cost of goods, fulfillment, refunds, overhead, discounting, and the timing of cash flows still matter.; The transcript provides no churn curves, contribution margins, cohort tables, refund rates, cancellation friction, or payback periods for validating the claimed economics.
  • Implications: The apparent simplicity of the funnel masks a demanding finance and data problem: cohort quality, cash conversion, retention durability, and channel incrementality determine whether creative scale compounds or destroys capital.; Competitive funnel observation can generate hypotheses, but it cannot reveal whether a visible campaign is profitable.

Notable Concepts & Terms

  • Funnel congruency: The same identity, problem, promise, proof, and offer are maintained from ad through landing experience and checkout; this is the video's primary principle.
  • Persona-based funnel: A dedicated creative and landing path built for a narrowly defined customer identity or use case rather than a broad category audience.
  • Partnership ad: Creator-style content distributed through a creator or partner identity to combine relatable storytelling with paid-media reach.
  • Advertorial/listicle: An intermediate educational sales page that expands the ad's argument, introduces proof, and prepares the visitor before the product offer.
  • Quiz funnel: A diagnostic sequence that gathers information, deepens emotional investment, and makes the eventual recommendation appear personalized.
  • Steep intro offer: A large first-purchase discount, free shipping, bonus gifts, or other subsidy designed to maximize trial and move buyers into subscription.
  • LTV-to-CAC ratio: The relationship between expected customer lifetime value and acquisition cost; the brands use it to justify spending beyond immediate first-order returns.
  • Price anchoring: Presenting slash-through prices, daily cost equivalents, free-gift values, or monthly equivalents to make an expensive or multi-month purchase feel comparatively inexpensive.

Operator Notes / Why Ken Should Care

  • Instrument cohorts by persona, hook, creator, landing-page version, offer, and acquisition channel so retention can be traced back to the promise that generated the customer.
  • Create a pre-launch economics gate covering contribution margin, realistic churn, refund rate, payback period, working-capital needs, and downside sensitivity before subsidizing trial.
  • Run matched-path experiments in which each high-volume ad concept receives its own message-aligned page; compare against generic-homepage traffic on conversion, CAC, and 90-day value.
  • Test quiz depth incrementally and measure starts, completion, purchase rate, and retained value per visitor rather than celebrating a high conversion rate among completers.
  • Review subscription disclosures, health-claim substantiation, urgency language, gift valuation, and recurring-price presentation for regulatory and platform-policy risk.
  • Separate competitive intelligence from proof: use visible ad volume and longevity to prioritize tests, but do not infer profitability from Meta Ads Library activity.
  • Remove duplicated and sponsorship-heavy portions if sharing the source internally; the final Create Wellness section appears twice in the supplied transcript.

Source/Metadata

  • Title: The $1.2B Funnel Strategy Every Brand Should Steal in 2026
  • Transcript words: 5732
  • Duration seconds: 1133
  • Timestamp note: No timestamps or chapters were present in the supplied transcript; the closing Create Wellness section and conclusion were duplicated.
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Full transcript 4299 words · 25 min read
0:00

SPEAKER_00

Most people think it takes a decade to get a brand to $100 million in annual revenue. Yet, these four brands have done it in under three years, all with the same playbook. The secret isn't a unicorn idea, a crazy product, or a celebrity founder. It's all in the funnel. And there are two new trends that have allowed this to happen. Number one, the health and wellness space is absolutely booming. People are more likely to try a supplement than ever before because biohacking, optimization, and the media surrounding the space has reached all-time highs. Consumer appetite for subscription has also strengthened.

0:24

SPEAKER_00

People have been conditioned to want routines and subscriptions reduce friction for their favorite products. As a result, you've seen a demand boom for supplements with new market conditions to support the financial model. Brands can pay huge amounts to acquire a customer as long as they stay subscribed for a significant amount of time, which is exactly what these four brands we're going to dissect have done. I'm going to outline this model for you because it's a clear playbook to get to $100 million in revenue in under 30 months. And it's shockingly simple once you break it down.

0:44

SPEAKER_00

Everything comes down to persona-based funnels, a gamified conversion process, and steep intro offers. Let's examine each brand's funnel so you know what I mean. And we're going to start with the hottest name in CPG and recently acquired for $1.2 billion, Groons. And by the way, before we get into it, the tool I use to study these competitor funnels, analyze ads, and take inspiration is called Motion.

1:03

SPEAKER_00

It's literally the easiest way to identify winners, bookmark them, and analyze your own paid ads. I use it to scale Yuka Health, my last telehealth brand, to $20 million in revenue in just six months, so I could not recommend this thing more. We'll be using it throughout the video, so you're probably going to see it a bunch, but if you're interested in checking it out, we'll link it in the description for you. All right, let's get into it. So Groons leads heavily into two components in their funnels. Number one is listicles, and two is partnership ads.

1:25

SPEAKER_00

It's because they know that fiber and gut health and all these benefits they promote are highly saturated, so they hyper-personalize the angles. It starts with the ad creative. A creator will tell a story shot on iPhone selfie cam style talking about the impact Groons has made specifically in their life. In every script, they call out an identity for the girls who can't poop or for the GLP-1 patients needing nutrients. That identity is mirrored by the creator. Either they are the target audience or they're someone that the target audience would trust. Next, the ad sends the click to a landing page, almost never the Groons' actual homepage.

1:43

SPEAKER_00

That landing page is either an advertorial or a listicle. A listicle is something like the seven benefits that GLP-1 users love about Groons, parentheses, besides the poop. Or six reasons everyone's obsessed with Groons and feeling their best. On that landing page, Groons leverages strong benefit-driven copywriting with social proof. Like how many five-star reviews they've had, doctor recommendations, and the amount of units sold to drive home the conversion. But what's most powerful is the intro offer. Language like limited-time sale and get 52% off plus free shipping lines the page like a flashing billboard.

2:10

SPEAKER_00

And the subscribe and save option is a full $14 cheaper than a one-time purchase, despite being cancelable at any time. This creates an irresistible offer for the consumer. Not only is this product going to directly solve a problem they experience, but it's a great opportunity to try, and if they don't like it, they can cancel. Groons then dings the customer the full $79.99 price tag 30 days later, and the product becomes such a part of their routine they never leave. This is the exact funnel that another comprehensive nutrition brand studied and brought to life. Another thing Groons has done an amazing job of is making their product very habit-forming.

2:30

SPEAKER_00

It's a really nice routine to peel up the gummies and eat them every morning. It's an enjoyable experience. And so that part of it as well, coupled with all of these benefits, means that you really don't want to break your routine just because it's $80 a month. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel comfortable with what's going on. All of these doctors are saying they're using it. All of these influencers are saying this is the secret to them feeling good all the time. But the biggest piece is these mechanisms. That's what I want to call out. It's the funnel. It's the partnership ad to the listicle, to the offer, to the retention, right?

3:18

SPEAKER_00

That is what allowed them to scale so aggressively. They probably had a very bad one-day ROAS. However, Chad, the founder has been on the record saying that they scaled at a 3x CAC to LTV. What does that mean? That means they had $3 of profit for every dollar of CAC that they spent on a customer. He was able to take that, those unit economics, and scale into the moon. The guy just exited this company for $1.2 billion to Unilever in just three years. It's one of the most incredible success stories in supplements history. But more importantly, it shows the underlying execution was there. This is a product that AG1 has been making for a decade.

3:43

SPEAKER_00

And they just turned it into a gummy. Now, I'm not going to say that's all they did. But generally speaking, that's what happened. They turned it into a gummy. And because they were so good at executing, which was the components that we just outlined in everything we just talked about, they were able to exit this company for $1.2 billion. They're doing around $300 million of annual revenue. They're the number one selling supplement across every single vertical because they speak directly to personas. It wasn't just oh, if you're on a GLP-1, you need to cover your nutrients. It was, this is the best thing for your gut health.

4:10

SPEAKER_00

It was, this is how men are taking control of their health at 40. The amount of personas they're running did not stop at the two I listed above. There was probably 30 to 40 concurrent personas they're running with the creator looking like the person that they're speaking to. The landing page having extremely specific copy about that person, about the challenges that they're facing. And then again, paired with this irresistible offer. How do we get you in, form the habit, and then you never want to leave? So that's what Groons did to scale this business so fast. This is the best thing for your gut health. This is how men are taking control of their health at 40.

4:33

SPEAKER_00

The amount of personas they're running did not just stop at the two I listed above. There was probably 30 to 40 concurrent personas they're running with the creator looking like the person that they're speaking to. The landing page having extremely specific copy about that person, about the challenges that they're facing. And then again, paired with this irresistible offer. How do we get you in, form the habit, and then you never want to leave? So that's what Gruenst did to scale this business so fast and reach an incredible outcome in three years. And here's the crazy part. This is the exact funnel that another comprehensive nutrition brand studied

5:05

SPEAKER_00

and brought to life just in a different color. Let's talk about IM8. So Danny Young launched IM8 in 2025, and in just one year has reached $100 million in revenue. There are a lot of similarities to Gruenst, but one key difference. Their use of high performers and celebrities. IM8 went with more science-backed positioning. A formulation they tested and ran clinical trials on, and as a result is trusted by people who would only put the best in their body. However, their funnel architecture is very much the same. Partnership ads whitelisted through their ThoughtLater creators into an advertorial that matches the benefits that are being pitched.

5:34

SPEAKER_00

Here's something super notable about their copy. It tells the consumer it's not your fault. It's not your fault you feel off when you're traveling. You need a consistent component to your daily routine that you have at home. It's not your fault you feel bloated at 2 p.m. It's a little-known cause that we can help solve for. And because the IM8 formula has both scientific backing and a broad set of nutrients, they can essentially market to any challenge. Brain fog, 3 p.m. energy crash, inconsistent gut health. They solve for all of it. And now it's not just their paid traffic that's excellent. IM8 also introduces a steep discount to push subscription.

6:04

SPEAKER_00

But even more so, they offer free gifts. They price anchor these gifts as $80 of value. It's a little frother. They include a drink mixer, a water bottle, they have a little longevity pack, whatever it is. And they include these things and they price anchor them as $80 of free value. They articulate the cost of their product in dollars per day. This price anchoring makes you feel like you're actually getting a steal, even though the product might be a little expensive for just a packet of powder. Another interesting hack they do is they show a monthly price despite needing to pay quarterly for their welcome offer.

6:32

SPEAKER_00

It's a bit of smoke and mirrors, but ultimately it drives huge AOV boosts, which allows them to absorb higher acquisition costs. Once you have someone's routine for three months, it's very likely they never cancel. So not only do they name your problem, build trust, and create urgency on the offer, but it's all engineered to boost retention and higher customer lifetime value. Notice how similar these two models are. Personalized funnel into an irresistible offer, and then they hack the retention. But what's staggering about IM8 is that they are running 1,200 ads at a given time. This is truly an insane amount of volume to be running ad creative towards, and it's only

7:00

SPEAKER_00

doable if you are able to scale on a very, very, very low ROAS. Again, that's why these brands are pushing high AOVs, steep intro offers, so they have a massive subscription bank to recover a lot of that revenue. Now what IM8 has done, which is a lot different than Gruenst, is the use of celebrities. They've got Giannis Antetokounmpo. They've got Sabalenka, the tennis player. Obviously, the David Beckham cosign is huge. And that's because they went with more of a scientific-based product. This is interesting because Gruenst obviously had success as a, hey, we're just AG1 and a gummy. IM8 wanted to go a completely new route in terms of the form factor.

7:36

SPEAKER_00

They wanted to say, we developed the most comprehensive, most scientifically backed formulation of a powder that we could. Now, why is that different? It's because they saw the white space that happened when AG1 was bad tasting greens powder. Gruenst then took in the comprehensive nutrition and turned it into a gummy. But what's really fascinating is how powerful it is to simply own a color. IM8 is red, very, very red. They own the color red. Gruenst owns the color green. They literally took all of Gruenst's benefits stack and then flipped it to be, instead of it was a playful bear, now it's a doctor recommendation.

8:04

SPEAKER_00

Instead of a blurry playful font, now it's a very high-end serif, right? They basically just twisted Gruenst to be very, very trustworthy, threw a bunch of athletes into it and threw it in a powder. And they're running the exact same playbook. Why is that important? Because this is the playbook. This is what everyone is doing, right? If you can just take your form factor, twist it, find a little bit of white space with some color, and find a unique positioning that the other brand didn't do, there's immense opportunity in running these type of funnels. Partnership ads, the landing pages, the steep intro offer, the high subscription revenue. This is the model.

8:38

SPEAKER_00

And you also obviously have to have around an 80 to 90% gross margin to support the initial loss leader on the acquisition and then recuperate through lifetime value. You'll see something very similar, but with a new twist in our next brand, Mars Men. See, Mars still leans into the clear identity-based type of funnel creative. Stuff like your grandpa had more testosterone at 60 than you do at 35. And they also portray a clear enemy. Pointing the finger at cortisol is the thing making you gain stubborn belly fat. It's not your bad diet, right? They send all their traffic to listicles, quiz funnels, and advertorials. And the copy is incredible.

9:09

SPEAKER_00

They ask you questions like, when you look in the mirror, who do you see? One of the answers is your dad. Think about how emotionally tying that is. A man at 35 doesn't want to look in the mirror and see his dad. Stuff like your grandpa had more testosterone at 60 than you do at 35. And they also portray a clear enemy. Pointing the finger at cortisol is the thing making you gain stubborn belly fat. It's not your bad diet, right? They send all their traffic to listicles, quiz funnels, and advertorials. And the copy is incredible. They ask you questions like, when you look in the mirror, who do you see? One of the answers is your dad.

9:34

SPEAKER_00

Think about how emotionally tying that is. A man at 35 doesn't want to look in the mirror and see his dad. He wants to see himself. He wants to have self-actualization. He wants to feel his best. He should be in his prime. He doesn't want to see a 60-year-old man or the similarities or the future path that he's going to reach as that 60-year-old man. He wants to feel like he's in his prime. And that's essentially what Mars is saying. They're saying, look, you slipped. You're not in your prime anymore, but we're going to help you get there, right? This is the path to help you get there. The quiz is shockingly long. I think it's at least 30 questions.

10:06

SPEAKER_00

And every single question is directly tied to highly specific problems that most men face. Are you feeling irritable at 2 p.m. in the afternoon? Do you wake up to pee too much? It's all stuff that every single dude is probably going to experience, right? And the copy really hits in that way. I also think what's fascinating about these guys is the tone. They are very casual. They know that they're talking to strictly men, particularly probably a Barstool type, bro-y, anywhere from 30 to 50-year-old guy who listens to podcasts, right? And honestly, they use cartoons. They use animations. They use all these different very casual approaches. They use emojis in their stuff.

10:39

SPEAKER_00

It is not a scientific IM8 style brand. It's very approachable. It's like your boy that's kind of funny is almost like the tone they're trying to strike. I think that's actually super effective because guys don't want to listen to doctors. They don't want to listen to a lot of thought leaders. The average bro, right? I'm not talking about the optimizer, the biohacker, but the average guy who may feel his test is slipping, may feel he's making some mistakes with his diet and nutrition and he's getting some belly fat. That guy probably wants to just have someone point him in the right direction, but not tell him he's an idiot, not be condescending.

11:04

SPEAKER_00

And so that's what's so striking about Mars—they've really nailed that tone with their copy and their overall branding and positioning. And then the other thing that I think is fascinating is men are told to suck it up and never complain. So when Mars comes to them as a friend, not a doctor, it's a friend. It does feel like they're being seen for the first time. That's why this quiz being so long is actually not that surprising, even though it's counterintuitive to not rush someone through a funnel. Once they complete it, the amount of intent is incredible, right? If you go through that quiz, Mars probably converts you anywhere from 70 to 80%. I would not be surprised.

11:25

SPEAKER_00

It's 30 questions. So if you complete it, you're going to buy. Once they get to that checkout step, they do the same thing that we've seen before—IM made style. Here's free gifts. It's added value. It's $80 of value and 50% off your first one to just go with it, right? How many times do we have to see this before we understand? This is the tactic that allows brands to scale to a hundred million dollars in just 18, 24 months, right? The slash-through pricing creates the illusion of a deal. And they even take it a step further with a sweepstakes style. This is your chance to win an Apple Watch. The playbook is remarkably simple, right?

11:51

SPEAKER_00

Feature and benefit driven, highly specific persona-based marketing, going to listicles, going to quiz funnels, going to advertorials where most brands massively falter. And I literally can't tell you guys how much I see this every single week, every single day. If I click an ad and I click it for a certain reason, and you send me to a landing page that is not about what that ad did, what that ad said to me, what do you think that does to the customer experience?

12:00

SPEAKER_00

Now on the flip side, if you have an ad that is very curiosity provoking, speaks directly to my identity and a problem that I'm experiencing, delivers some sort of trust, tells me that I failed before and now this is the unique mechanism that's going to solve my problem this time around. Well, I'm going to click it. And when I click it, you have an opportunity now to present this listicle, to take me through the quiz. And that's a congruent experience. You see how much more powerful that is? You have to keep it congruent. And then they send you to the product page, right? They don't just rush you through this thing.

12:32

SPEAKER_00

We're all so optimized these days to just grab the conversion. I saw it. When we were doing TikTok Shop, that's the whole point. It's eliminate friction in the buying process. However, I actually think we're starting to reverse that. And you're seeing all of these heavy subscription brands do so much of the upfront selling, so much of the buy-in before the conversion that psychologically they're boosting your long-term loyalty. You're going to stick with these people because you believe in what they said. You believe the reason you got sold this product. And so you're going to give it six months.

12:49

SPEAKER_00

You're going to lean in and actually listen to some of the marketing instructions that they're going to give you. Now, this is not a commentary on if any of these products are effective. I have no opinion on that. I've only tried Grooms. I like it. Much of the buy-in before the conversion is that psychologically they're boosting your long-term loyalty. You're going to stick with these people because you believe in what they said. You believe the reason you got sold this product. And so you're going to give it six months. You're going to lean in and actually listen to some of the marketing instructions that they're going to give you.

13:03

SPEAKER_00

Now, this is not a commentary on if any of these products are effective. I have no opinion on that. I've only tried Grooms. I like it. I don't really know if it's working. I don't care. I'm just talking about the effectiveness and the ability to reach these levels of revenue very quickly.

13:08

SPEAKER_00

Before we move on to this final brand, I did just want to say again, the reason I'm able to find this information and dissect it so effectively is because I'm a power user of Motion. Motion is by far my favorite creative analytics tool on the planet. I've used these guys for five years. So when they reached out to partner about the podcast, I was over the moon. It's like I've never had more synergy with somebody because you have to understand hook rate. You have to understand what the average watch time is of a video. All these metrics that you'll spend hours creating custom in Meta, they just have built into the platform. Not only that, you can do competitive research. Not only that, it's going to take a look at all of your different ads and tell you what worked, what didn't, opportunities to test, new hooks to test. It's literally having a built-in creative strategist who's 120k a year just as software. Their new AI agent rips. I can't say enough about these guys. It's the only reason I was able to run this analysis in a reasonable amount of time. I went through Meta Ads Library over and over again. I would have probably lost my mind. So that's my shameless plug. I love Motion. They're fantastic. Again, going to be in the description. You should check them out. It's a fantastic tool. Also very reasonably priced. No brainer if you're someone spending real money on Meta.

13:09

SPEAKER_00

All right, let's get into the last brand. So the fourth brand I want to talk about, and remember the playbook is going to be remarkably simple here, is Create Wellness. So they are the fourth brand that reached $100 million in annual revenue with those exact same frameworks I just discussed. And like our other three brands, Create leans heavily into partnership ads, shot on iPhone TikTok style content, GLP One adjacent benefits, steep intro offers, and limited time discount messaging. They also emphasize the three-month supply while utilizing copy that pushes a customer to stick with it. And they leverage their paid success and subscription revenue to land massive retail distribution and a huge funding round.

13:12

SPEAKER_00

Great has done this for years. They capitalized on the creatine trend well, but they also adjusted the form factor to mirror something super accessible. Strategy-wise, they've done pretty much the exact same style as all these other brands we've covered. They lean into thought leaders like coaches. They lean into different doctors. They lean into all of this different science about creatine. And they package it into a short-form ad, partnership ad with that creator. Voila. There you go. You get sent to a landing page or a listicle or an advertorial where the copy is going to match up with the benefits and the promise that you were given in that ad.

13:14

SPEAKER_00

This congruence is the point of this video. I want that to be the number one takeaway you have if you watch to this point. Or if you're listening on audio, shout out to our Spotify and Apple podcast listeners. Please leave a review. Subscribe if you're not. Please. Sweat Equity Podcast. We do this for free for you all every week. So we just need that's our only gentleman's agreement. We just need a little bit of support on the reviews, comments, etc.

13:16

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Anyways. Congruency. Funnel congruency. It should be the same message, the same identity, and the same offer throughout your entire funnel. If you can achieve that, if you can get a steep intro offer, if you can get them in, make a habit-forming product, right? A lot of this is done in your email marketing. That's another video entirely. But generally speaking, you're just going to ping them every now and then and be like, hey, don't forget to take your stuff. This is how to take it well. This is how to take it properly. If you're experiencing this, do this. Email marketing is a little less black magic. But the acquisition piece, congruent funnel, right? You have identity-based, persona-based funnel. You have a landing page or a listicle that mirrors exactly what you said in the ad, but goes a little bit deeper. Emphasizes social proof, trusted by doctors, trusted by celebrities. If this is apparel, you can still do this, right? You could be like, this is why dads across America are hiding their tommies with true classic tees. It doesn't have to be a supplement, to be very clear. Social proof is not something that is limited to doctors or thought leaders. That's influencers or anyone that you would listen to. It's more so take these principles and throw them in your funnel. If it doesn't work, comment and tell me I'm an idiot. I would love to be proven wrong. But we have never seen this level of success from brands at this scale. I mean, seriously, we've never seen so many brands going to $100 million in revenue in such a short amount of time. And most of these are Meta ads funnels. I mean, I'm not even going to talk about Mary Ruth's, Comfort, NeuroGum. These brands that are also using TikTok Shop virality to be able to juice their stuff. Groom's had a very viral moment on TikTok Shop originally.

13:19

SPEAKER_00

If it doesn't work, comment and tell me I'm an idiot. I would love to be proven wrong. But we have never seen this level of success from brands at this scale. Seriously, we've never seen so many brands going to $100 million in revenue in such a short amount of time. And most of these are meta ads funnels. I'm not even going to talk about Mary Ruth's, Comfort, NeuroGum. These brands that are also using TikTok shop virality to juice their stuff. Groon's had a very viral moment on TikTok shop originally. That obviously catapulted them and helped them quite a bit. Drove a tremendous amount of trial.

13:36

SPEAKER_00

The biggest thing that all of these brands believe in is trial will lead to retention. Everyone is so obsessed with one-day click ROAS and being able to profitably acquire a customer in that singular moment. That's obviously not the move. You have to have a customer payback period. You have to have a lifetime value. You have to know your numbers. You have to know your CAC to LTV ratio. And if you can achieve that, you can monitor the TikTok shop Amazon situation. You will become extremely appetizing to a retailer. They know that you can drive traffic. They know that your product is sticky and that people will come back and get more.

14:04

SPEAKER_00

So if you can get that, you can get into retail, have predictable wholesale sales. All of a sudden, you're looking at a massive business. So that might have sounded simple. I don't know if it's that simple. I'm about to try it myself. I'm launching a new product here soon. I'll tell you more about it on the next episode. But to me, there seems to be a clear playbook here. So if this was valuable to you, please leave a comment, like, subscribe, support the podcast. The boys are trying to do as much value for you guys as possible. I know Alex is obviously doing his work on the creative side, the creative production side, the brand marketing side.

14:29

SPEAKER_00

But this was a very deep dive episode on performance marketing, performance marketing funnels. I think every single D2C brand should probably take some of these lessons from these huge outcomes that these brands are driving and apply it to yourself. All right, that's really the whole episode. We'll see you all next week. Peace. All right, let's get into the last brand. So the fourth brand I want to talk about, and remember the playbook is going to be remarkably simple here, is Create Wellness. So they are the fourth brand that reached $100 million in annual revenue with those exact same frameworks I just discussed.

14:50

SPEAKER_00

And like our other three brands, Create leans heavily into partnership ads, shot on iPhone TikTok style content, GLP One adjacent benefits, steep intro offers, and a limited time discount messaging. They also emphasize the three-month supply while utilizing copy that pushes a customer to stick with it. And they leverage their paid success and subscription revenue to land massive retail distribution. And a huge funding round. Great has done this for years. They capitalized on the creatine trend well, but they also adjusted the form factor to mirror something super accessible. Strategy-wise, they've done pretty much the exact same style as all these other brands

15:19

SPEAKER_00

we've covered. They lean into thought leaders like coaches. They lean into different doctors. They lean into all of this different science about creatine. And they package it into a short-form ad, partnership ad with that creator. Voila. There you go. You get sent to a landing page or a listicle or an advertorial where the copy is going to match up with the benefits and the promise that you were given in that ad. This congruence is the point of this video. I want that to be the number one takeaway you have if you watch to this point. Or if you're listening on audio, shout out to our Spotify and Apple podcast listeners. Please leave a review. Leave a review.

15:50

SPEAKER_00

Subscribe if you're not. Please. Sweat Equity Podcast. We do this for free for y'all every week. So we just need... That's our only gentleman's agreement. We just need a little bit of support on the reviews, comments, etc. Okay. Anyways. Congruency. Funnel congruency. It should be the same message, the same identity, and the same offer throughout your entire funnel. If you can achieve that, if you can get a steep intro offer, if you can get them in, make a habit-forming product, right? A lot of this is done in your email marketing. That's another video entirely. But generally speaking, I mean, you're just going to ping them every now and then and be like,

16:23

SPEAKER_00

Hey, don't forget to take your stuff. This is how to take it well. This is how to take it properly. If you're experiencing this, do this. Email marketing is, you know, a little less black magic. But the acquisition piece, congruent funnel, right? You have identity-based, persona-based funnel. You have a landing page or a listicle that mirrors exactly what you said in the ad, but goes a little bit deeper. Emphasizes social proof, trusted by doctors, trusted by celebrities. If this is apparel, you can still do this, right? Like, you know, true classic tees or whoever the hell.

16:48

SPEAKER_00

Like, you could be like, this is why, you know, dads across America are hiding their tommies with true classic tees. Like, it doesn't have to be a supplement, to be very clear. Social proof is not something that is limited to doctors or thought leaders. That's influencers or anyone that you would listen to. It's more so, like, take these principles and throw them in your funnel. If it doesn't work, like, comment and tell me I'm an idiot. I, like, I would love to be proven wrong. But we have never seen this level of success from brands at this scale. I mean, seriously, we've never seen so many brands going to $100 million in revenue in such short amount of time.

17:19

SPEAKER_00

And most of these are meta ads funnels. I mean, I'm not even going to talk about Mary Ruth's, Comfort, NeuroGum. Like, these brands that are also using TikTok shop virality to be able to juice their stuff. Like, Groon's had a very viral moment on TikTok shop originally. That obviously catapulted them and helped them quite a bit. You know, drove a tremendous amount of trial. The biggest thing that all of these brands believe in is trial will lead to retention. Everyone is so obsessed with one-day click ROAS and, you know, being able to profitably acquire a customer in that singular moment. That's, like, obviously not the move.

17:48

SPEAKER_00

Like, you have to have a customer payback period. You have to have a lifetime value. You have to know your numbers. You have to know your cack to LTV ratio. And if you can achieve that, you can monitor the TikTok shop Amazon situation. You will become extremely appetizing to a retailer. They know that you can drive traffic. They know that your product is sticky and that people will come back and come get more. So if you can get that, you can get into retail, have predictable wholesale sales. All of a sudden, you're looking at a massive business. So that might have sounded simple. I don't know if it's that simple. I'm about to try it myself.

18:17

SPEAKER_00

I'm launching a new product here soon. I'll tell you more about it on the next episode. But to me, there seems to be a clear playbook here. So if this was valuable to you, please leave a comment, like, subscribe, support the podcast. The boys are trying to do as much value for you guys as possible. I know Alex is obviously doing his work on the creative side, the creative production side, the brand marketing side. But this was a very deep dive episode on performance marketing, performance marketing funnels. I think every single D2C brand should probably, you know, take some of these lessons from these huge outcomes that these brands are driving and apply it to yourself.

18:45

SPEAKER_00

All right, that's really the whole episode. We'll see you all next week. Peace.

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