Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re feeling hydrated, excited, and ready to dive into today’s newsletter. Because many people took Thursday off and lived a true “Summer Friday,” I wanted to do something fun for today’s newsletter.

Over the last few weeks on panels, I get asked a common question, “What are the fastest growing brands doing that we should focus on?” Or, “What else can we do that we’re not doing?” Today’s email is a list of things I’ve noted down in my iPhone Notes app. If there’s something you’d add here, reply to this email with it and I’ll tweet out a master thread and tag you!

Vendor of the Week

Paramount Ads Manager — Put your ads on the fastest-growing premium streaming service.

Did you know over 100,000,000 people watch full-length episodes per month on Paramount+? It’s the fastest-growing streaming platform, allowing for unstoppable 30-second ads.

Their easy-to-use ad platform enables you, a marketer, to quickly create a TV-ready ad using existing brand assets. And if you feel like it’s not up-to-par, you can leverage their managed creative services once you hit $10k in ad spend.

You can start with as little as $500 (you can even get $750 in ad credits on this link), choose your targeting, upload the creative, and go live.

Click here to figure out how to put YOUR business in show business. Plus, for a limited time, the first 75 brands to redeem will get $750 in ad credits. Just sign up for Paramount Ads Manager and use code 750OFFNIK at checkout.

If nothing else, check out the screenshot of their ads manager here.

Ad credits expire 09/30/25, campaign must be started by 08/08/25. Additional terms & conditions apply.

Limited Supply

This past week on Limited Supply, I sat down with Sam, the Sr Director of Content at Bark. Bark is a company that helps parents with parental controls on their kid’s devices.

With Sam, I wanted to know how she managed a high output of content with such a lean team. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Nik’s “Don’t forget to…” Tips

Okay, now let’s get into today’s newsletter. If anything speaks to you, DM me on X or reply here with it, and I’ll go deeper. Otherwise, reply with anything else you’d add. List of hacks/tips I give to brands: 

  • Use renders when you can, it’s not necessary/required to spend a ton of money on photography and shoots. Renders do a good enough job and allow you to make easily-responsive banners, motion-graphics videos, or add overlays to backgrounds.
  • When running any view-through advertising channels (any channel where a consumer can’t directly click), such as influencer, TV, podcast, radio, billboards, programmatic banner ads (c’mon the CTR is so bad), pop-ups, sampling booths/tables, partnerships, etc... always use a vanity URL, coupon code, and post-purchase survey. This gives you the best chance of triangulating attribution.
  • As you write copy, think about a conveyer belt where you start with the value propositions of what you are selling, think about what it does for the consumer, extract the benefits felt, and focus your copywriting on that. You’re not selling rice cakes, you’re selling a pre-workout snack or an after-school snack that mom’s love.
  • Your homepage, especially on mobile, should include the full hero section (a headline that explains your punchline, social proof, photo/video of product in use, and demonstrates the benefits), social proof, and tease the next section. The bounce rate of a website that doesn’t tease the next section is high, because people believe that’s the entire site. It’s on you show them there is more.
  • If you’re not running spark ads on TikTok, you should be. CPCs with verified creator accounts are half. You’re throwing money in the garbage if you’re not running spark ads on TikTok.
  • When you are running a landing page, direct-response funnel, or traffic from a more upper-funnel source, add an arrow in the CTAs. For example, instead of “Pick my Color”, write it as “Pick my Color →”. The CTR is always higher.
  • Remember, most of the conversion lift from a new page design or rebrand is actually from positioning, so if you’re not having luck, ensure that you have a smart angle for why people should try the product.
  • The goal of your ad isn’t to convert someone, you just need someone to click it and get to the next page. It’s on your homepage, collections page, PDP or landing page (whichever you drive traffic to — I would recommend a LP) to convert the user.
  • Your pop-up should be a smart pop-up. Don’t use the standard Klaviyo pop-up, use Alia to maximize what you can capture. 3% is Klaviyo’s standard. Our clients see 15% — that’s because of Alia.
  • If you run catalog ads as a part of your media buying strategy, you should be running better creative than just the product image on a white background. Check these enriched catalog examples for inspiration. You can see a State of Catalog Ads report Sharma Brands and Marpipe put together on this link.
  • As new AI vendors continue to come out, or your existing software stack introduces more AI features, spend 30 minutes and take demos to learn how they’re incorporating AI. Even if you don’t enable it right away, it’s good practice to stay learning, given the rapid pace of iteration and innovation.
  • It’s much cheaper to spend $500/hour on consulting calls with seasoned executives or founders, than to waste $45,000 on something that doesn’t work. First@Companydomain.com will get you to 95% of those people.
  • The first 2 seconds of your video ads should EARN you the attention for the next 5 seconds. It’s on you to earn that from someone, you can’t expect people to watch your videos.
  • When running top-of-funnel with small budgets, focus on TOF channels that can be run like performance channels (TV, advertorials) before expanding to those that can’t be measured as easily (OOH, taxi-tops, sponsoring events, etc.).
  • If you’re selling a food/beverage/supplement product and have a field marketing team attending events, make sure they are collecting first-party data (emails, phone numbers, flavor preferences, etc.), and relaying that information back to the team running email/CRM. Customers found at IRL events should see a different onboarding flow than those who submit their email/number through the on-site pop-up.
  • If you’re a brand selling in retail stores, you should turn ads on with Instacart. You only show up when you’re sold in the region the consumer is shopping in, and you’re in stock. And you only pay when someone clicks on your product/ad, not for showing up. Learn more about Instacart Ads on their blog. 
  • “PR” as it has been historically is most likely a waste of money if you’re just paying an agency a 5-figure retainer to “pitch” articles. The point of those articles is the logos to put on your website/landing pages, and for when someone searches about you, to see that Refinery29 recommends your product. Once you get those, the only thing worth pursuing is listicles where publishers earn affiliate commission.
  • You can take “PR” a step further and do what I call Performance PR. You can run your own advertorials on your brand’s website or on a publisher site you create. If you want a quick lesson on advertorials, listen to this episode starting at 24:33.
  • When it comes to organic search and AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc., Reddit is one of the highest ranked sources for finding trusted information. Make sure you are thinking about what is being said on Reddit about you, and if nothing, then you should make a plan to get on there.
  • All the profiles of your social media accounts should have vanity URLs so you can understand how much traffic you get from each channel’s profile page and what that traffic does. For example, having brand(.)com/tiktok redirect to brand(.)com/discount/tiktok20?redirect=/products/filtered-showerhead?utm_source=TikTok&utm_medium=organic&utm_content=profile allows you to track the TikTok traffic, direct them to the PDP, and automatically apply “TikTok20” as a discount code during checkout. Yes, that is the format to steal if you want to include the discount code, go to a webpage (vs checkout) and add the UTM.
  • Even today, if I wanted to share a 5.5 hour house music mix I recorded at the Crane Club Members Lounge last week, I would share nik.co/crane, not the full SoundCloud link.
  • When you have variant selectors on your PDP, make them obvious buttons to click, and their design should be as intuitive as possible. Jolie and David Protein both have amazing examples of this.
  • Focus on an introductory offer that has the ability to scale, especially into prospecting channels with a ton of reach (TV, Meta, YouTube, etc.). Examples of this include Everyday Dose’s starter kit, Hint Water’s 36 bottles for $36 offer, and AG1’s starter kit. Once the offer works, then it’s about building funnels that lead to the offer.
  • If you’re layering in new view-through channels like TV, retail marketing initiatives, Amazon ads, etc., leverage incrementality testing to understand a channel’s true incremental impact on your revenue. When you have multiple marketing channels and multiple distribution points, you need to focus on optimizing MER (media-efficiency ratio) or Total Spend:Total Revenue.
  • The fastest-growing brands today focus on three core things (which probably sound obvious, but worth mentioning): performance marketing savagery, ensuring the brand name is being built/staying cool, and product innovation. For anyone who says, “We can’t do that, it’s off brand,” I ask, “Do you like revenue?” 
  • If you’re selling on TikTok Shop, treat the image carousel like landing page modules. Design dense graphics. See NeuroGum’s TikTok Shop setup for inspiration. You can design these yourself in Canva or Figma. The product description is also a place to treat like a landing page as you can insert images within.
  • With email, SMS, website banners, organic social, brand partnerships, planned influencer posting, and IRL events, use one master calendar for everyone to stay abreast of what is going out/happening. It saves a lot of mistakes, though it can be annoying to get everyone onboard to use it.
  • Treat product pages (PDPs) like landing pages, especially if you drive a lot of catalog ads traffic — those people are net-new people going straight to your PDP. Your PDP should answer: 1. What is the product? 2. Why does it exist? 3. How does it benefit me? 4. Why is this the best option on the market? 5. If I order now, how soon do I get it? 6. What happens if I don’t like it? Answer those 6 prompts over-and-over again.
  • In your website’s journey, makes sure you have cross-sells, up-sells, post-purchase upsells, pop-ups prompting one-time purchasers to subscribe, etc. Moiz, the founder of Native, found that selling the same product someone’s buying for 30% off had the best take-rate.
  • If you’re running meaningful ad spend on Meta (over $150k/month), you should have a rigorous creative-testing program, rotating in new creative on a weekly basis. If you just have 1-2 pieces of creative consuming most of your ad budget, you’re in a very risky spot.
  • When UGC ads aren’t working, start using real customer-generated content and messaging that a normal person would say. Don’t sound like a robot. 
  • Influencers are famous because they’re good at making content, so when you work with them, let them bring their own vision for life. They should know your goals/KPIs with the content and will create for that. 
  • Focus on collecting as many reviews as possible, even if it means you have to call customers 1 by 1. If they’re not leaving reviews, those calls will likely help you understand why.
  • Not all of your emails should be focused on selling products... your emails should be content that can be read and then brought up later at a dinner table conversation. 
  • When launching a new product, treat it like a brand launch all over again. Lemme does this the best with their social, email, OOH content, and site every time they have a new launch. 
  • Comb through your software and tech stack to ensure you don’t have redundancies for two reasons. 1. It adds unnecessary code and slows down your site. 2. You are paying twice for the same thing.
  • Do weekly, monthly, and quarterly checks on all your pixels/data tracking. You should conduct daily checks for all channels where you are driving traffic (including ads, email, social, field marketing, etc.).
  • If a flavor doesn’t perform but you think it has potential, rename the flavor and launch it again. Hint first launched “Tropical,” and it flopped. It was rebranded to “Pineapple” and is now a top 5 flavor.
  • Similarly, if a video (you think is good) doesn’t perform on TikTok, IG Reels or YouTube Shorts, change the hook and repost it.
  • Take your best subject lines in email and test them as ad headlines on Meta/Google. Do the opposite, too — take the best headlines from ads and run them as subject lines in emails.

That's all for this week

I hope today’s email was a fun and easy read, and eases you back into the new week. Next Saturday is a huge day — 69 days after 4/20 and also my birthday!

In true Sunday fashion, I hope you get 9 hours of sleep tonight. Stay hydrated, get a nice workout in this week, call a friend you haven’t talked to in a while, and have an amazing upcoming week.

I’ll see you next Sunday!