Happy Sunday!

As I’m writing this email, I’m sitting in the lobby of a beautiful hotel in Lisbon and I’m clearing the to-do list that’s slowly been tackled as I’ve been on vacation. Going through my to-do list, my email inbox, my X DMs, and seeing what clients are talking about on Slack is how I try to figure out what would resonate for the upcoming week’s email, and this week is no different!

For today, I want to create a diagnostics checklist for the age old problem, “My customer acquisition cost is way too high!” Now, because every brand is so unique and different, you’ll have to think how to apply my advice to yours in the right way, but this should be a good starting point. For majority of the brands we work with, this is what it starts with — their CPA (Cost per Acquisition / acquisition cost) is too high and unsustainable to drive consistent growth at its current metrics. Using our abilities around paid media, creative, retention marketing, subscription optimization, and more, we’re able to fix this.

You can see some of the brands we do this with, and how it’s worked out for them, on our brand new website — SharmaBrands.com! We built it on Shopify (cause, why not), and it’s gorgeous. If you want to chat about working together, book a call and I’ll reach out to schedule time.

As always, if you have questions, just DM me on X or email me (n@sharma.com). But, before we get into that...

Vendor of the Week

Roku — The easiest-to-use self-service platform now allows anyone to run TV ads.

Black Friday starts now (if you're smart).

Black Friday weekend is the Super Bowl of streaming, with Roku’s internal data showing it’s the single busiest streaming weekend of the year. Consumers now spend 3.5 hours a day streaming (versus 2.8 hours on social media), and Roku owns nearly half (47%) of all U.S. streaming hours, reaching 125 million households daily.

The playbook is simple: launch your campaign early using Roku Ads Manager, the self-serve platform combining the simplicity of digital ads with the massive reach of TV. Forget old-school TV logistics… Roku Ads Manager lets you:

  • Quickly set up campaigns with flexible scheduling
  • Segment and target precise audiences
  • Choose exactly which optimization events matter most
  • Access real-time insights (no waiting weeks for results)
  • Leverage shoppable and interactive formats (Action Ads, Shopify integration) to boost engagement and conversions

I even created a quick video to show you how simple it is to launch a new campaign with Roku Ads Manager. It literally takes 10 minutes.

Plus, here's an easy win: Spend $1,000, and Roku matches it with another $1,000 in ad credits. Use code NIK1000 to claim the offer by 8/31/25 and kickstart your Black Friday strategy today. Terms apply.

👉 Sign up to get your Roku ad credits here

Limited Supply

This week’s Limited Supply episode went deep with Shopify on DTC101. Everything from brand building, to who to hire, how to think about agencies, and more. Listen wherever you get podcasts, by searching “Limited Supply”.

Shout-out to AppLovin for sponsoring this season of Limited Supply. There’s nothing better than the vendors I work with and recommend daily, becoming my season sponsor.

State of DTC Report

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned I am putting together a State of DTC report for everyone. In order to get early access to it, please take the survey yourself (it only takes 60 seconds) — click here to submit + get the report!

Diagnosing “Bad” Customer Acquisition Costs

Before we delve deeper, I wrote down a few thoughts and came up with a few categories to put everything under. Let’s dive into:

  • The Brand Problem
  • The Creative, Messaging & Offer
  • Social Proof-ing
  • Tracking/Measurement
  • Follow Up Comms

The Brand Problem

The first thing I want to start with is your brand. I’m not talking about your company, the entity... I’m talking about the perception of it (the “brand”) people have when they hear your brand name, see your logo, see your product, etc. Brand is a feeling. When you think of companies, large and small, like Apple or Nike, you can picture the Apple Hotel or the Nike Hotel, envision their vibe, and understand what they stand for. It’s a culmination of repetition and consistency, and it’s not something that can just be built overnight.

Take a smaller challenger brand like Caraway (cookware), Touchland (hand sanitizer), or even Black Rifle Coffee (coffee). Whether or not you use their products, it’s easy to understand the brand. When you (yes, you or anyone seeing the ads) see that logo/product/brand, it makes you lean in to see what they’re offering. 

Here’s another way to see it... If Dwayne Johnson, “The Rock,” stopped you on the side of the street to try tequila, you 100% would. Why? Because it’s Dwayne Johnson!! If a random person did, you’d probably ignore it and think they’re crazy. The Rock has BRAND. The random person may have a good product, but without the brand interest, it’s harder to make someone try that tequila. This is how your consumers react when scrolling Instagram. It doesn’t mean you need a celebrity or public figure, but you need to know how to make your brand name well-known by those who are in your demographic.

Some brands, like True Classic, do this through humor and hundreds of pieces of content. Other brands, like Waterboy, find arbitrage on channels like TikTok or YouTube to cut through the noise and drive sales. There are a million ways to build your brand name, and it doesn’t matter which way you use, but the end goal is that your brand name needs to be somewhat well understood in order to want to build interest to browse what you’re selling and see if its right for them.

9 times out of 10, when a brand says, “Our CPA is too high,” it’s because they have zero brand name. They sell a product, and they think that just with decent Meta ads and a Shopify site, they deserve to generate sales. No!! This isn’t that easy. Sure, there are some cases where you start selling with Meta ads and things take off, but it’s rare, and you shouldn’t build your business off the hope of it working. Lock in on building your brand. When you are ready to sell or change ownership, the main thing that matters is how strong your brand is. That’s why companies like Juicy Couture, Aeropostale, Dr. Martens, Kate Spade, J. Crew, and others are frequently acquired by or sold to private equity firms. Enough about brand, I think you get the point.

The Creative, Messaging & Offer

In a previous newsletter or Limited Supply episode, you may have heard me talk about the importance of tracking different metrics within Ads Manager to see where the drop-off is happening and where the leaky pipes are. In Meta, I have a view called “Nik’s Performance View” which, among other metrics, includes:

  • CPM (cost to show 1,000 impressions)
  • CTR (click-through rate of the ad)
  • CPC (cost per click)
  • Content Views (how many people made it to your website)
  • CPCV (cost per content view)
  • Add to Carts (how many people added products to the cart)
  • CPATC (cost per add to cart)
  • Initiate Checkout (how many people started checkout)
  • CPIC (cost per initiated checkout)
  • Purchases (how many people purchased)
  • CPA (cost per acquisition)

Depending on how complex your website, app, or funnel is, you may have other metrics or events you’re tracking, but this list lets you quickly see what isn’t working. Often, it begins with the first four metrics (CPM, CTR, CPC, & Content Views) not being able to get properly started.

  • If CPM is high, the ads you’re uploading do not match the audience you’re targeting, or they’re not friendly to what Meta wants in their feeds. That’s why you’re getting overcharged — you’re putting something that Meta doesn’t want on their platform.
  • If CTR is really low and CPM is normal, it means you are speaking to the right person, but your ads aren’t doing a good job answering the problems you’re solving. You need better messaging to drive the click. Remember, you don’t have to sell the product right here; you just need to earn the click to the next step.
  • CPC is a math function of CPM x CTR — so if that’s high, it’s because CPM or CTR isn’t where it should be.
  • If your Add to Carts are low, but CPM and CTR are strong, it means the problem you’re solving for is real and makes sense in the ad, but that isn’t consistent with the website. You likely need to test landing pages or better site pages to drive traffic to.
  • If your Purchases are low, but everything else is fine, it means you’re doing a bad job closing. You need more middle-funnel content (when people search for your brand on Google, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) and more social proof (reviews, testimonials, press quotes, anything that says “I also bought it and it’s amazing.”)

Once someone arrives on the website, it’s your job to start selling the product in a way that makes sense to them. “Personalized advertising” doesn’t mean the ad needs to say your name; it just means it should be tailored to a problem you’re facing. 

The last piece is ensuring there is a reason for them to make a purchase today. You need an offer — why should someone drop everything they’re doing to buy it right now? That’s what you need to solve for.

Typically, I like to make sure that you check a few boxes in a good offer:

  • An assortment of enough variants to maximize appeal to the whole household.
  • Enough product/units for the entire household to try, sample, and like.
  • Optimized to ship at a lower cost (since you’re also paying Meta), mainly done by bundling and increasing AOV.
  • Aim for an AOV that is equal-ish to your normal AOV for a high AOV/low-repeat purchase product, and an AOV 2-3x your normal AOV for high-consumption products.

Also, remember where else you are selling and how those other retailers are priced/competing against you. I’ll give you an example from Hint — at Sam’s Club, it’s $14.98, and on the website it’s $22.99. Obviously, Sam’s Club sounds like a better deal, but we created the $1/bottle offer with a 3-pack order. So you’d pay $36 for 3 cases. It was a better deal for the customer, gave us the customer information, they got to try 3 flavors, and shipping 3 cases was the most cost-efficient.

I could rant about welcome offers for hours.

Social Proof-ing

As you build your company toward launch and then eventually launch it, you’re instantly obsessed with the details. You see how intricate the brand identity is, you look at the dye-lines over and over again to make sure they’re perfect, and you ensure the product is absolutely perfect. When you talk to friends and family about it, explaining why it’s so revolutionary, you see how captivated they're and they want to try it. 

Then, when you finally launch the product, the one you think is the best in the world, you can’t understand why others aren’t buying it. The product is amazing, and you were able to get everyone interested before... why not now? 

The truth is, no one cares what you have to say. That’s why brand, like I mentioned above, is so important. Everyone is busy and they just don’t care to hear you pitch them. How many times have you been walking in the mall, someone asks you for 2 minutes of your time, and you just pretend to be on the phone? Too many to count.

However, on the flip side, if someone else told me about how amazing the Jolie shower head is for them and how it has fixed their dry scalp, I’d be 10x more likely to buy. A testimonial from someone other than yourself is what makes people want to make a purchase. That’s why influencers work, partnerships with media companies or other brands do well, and the more social proof you have, the higher your conversion rate goes.

This doesn’t just mean what is on your website, but also when people search on TikTok, Google, or even ask their friends what they think of the product. Some brands pay PR agencies to do this, others, like the Waterboy example above, arbitrage it and figure out how to get in those search queries. Social proof is everything — it’s why Jolie sent out 10,000 shower heads last year to creators with 50 (yes, 50) to 5,000,000 followers.

One of the biggest reasons no one is buying your product is that no one else has said that it works like the way you’re saying it does. Again, no one cares what you have to say. Get someone else to say it.

Tracking & Measurement

There’s a slight chance that the reason you’re seeing numbers you’re not happy with isn’t anything other than a tracking or measurement issue. But this also goes both ways; sometimes the numbers look so good, but they’re also miscalculated.

On the tracking side of things, if you’re not properly firing events on your website, you’re going to be seeing numbers that don’t make sense. It’s even worse with bad event tracking, because all the numbers you see inside Meta Ads Manager, for example, are modeled based on the inputs (such as events). 

You could also be missing the right conversion events, causing platforms like a programmatic partner or TV partner to show misaligned numbers. Generally, you want to have another platform to check numbers with, too — something like an MTA, MMM, or incrementality lift studies. These allow you to make sure what TV or YouTube are reporting is actually accurate. 


If you run programmatic ads (those annoying banner ads across the internet), for example, every vendor will tell you that you have a $15 CPA to generate new customers, and it’s because you’re driving real awareness in the market. It’s all garbage and lies. In reality, they just have a very long attribution window and are taking view-through credit for all the purchases you’re driving from channels like Facebook or Snap. This is the flip side of why you want a measurement partner to work with — most platforms will always say they have the best performance. 

Follow-Up Communication

At my company, Sharma Brands, one of the reasons we run email, SMS, subscription programs, and loyalty programs for brands (all under our retention team) is that they all play a role in maximizing customer acquisition across the board. Here are a few examples of how:

  • Having a high-converting on-site pop-up will let you collect 16% of site traffic’s emails, versus the prior 4% (not with Sharma Brands), and by 4x’ing the opt-in of site traffic, we can now increase efficiency for the new customer CPA. 
  • When you aren’t treating your Post-Purchase Flow or Post-Opt-In Form Flow/Welcome Flow like a performance-oriented customer acquisition funnel, you’re missing out on so much revenue from that initial traffic you generate with paid social. The more customers you can save with welcome flows, the lower your CPA is, and the higher your ROAS (return on ad spend) is.
  • If you can understand that when a customer first buys a Shampoo, they’re likely to buy a Conditioner within the first 40 days of purchasing, and you can act-on and build flows behind that, you’re able to make a higher contribution margin on that customer within the first 60 days.

Examples like this are why we built a retention team at Sharma Brands. If we’re working on your customer acquisition (making your ad creative, media buying, measurement, building landing pages, optimizing the website, launching new offers, etc.), it only makes sense to continue this funnel with email, SMS, and optimizing the subscription business. That’s why we’re really more of a full-service growth partner; we’re not just an “agency.” See more on our new website — SharmaBrands.com (it just launched on Thursday)!

That's all for this week

Ok, I hope this diagnostics rant was helpful and you identified an area in which you can improve. Improving that will better the entire funnel. If you have a product that feels smoother on your skin, you’ll see the effect it has on lowering your CPA within a short period of time. No matter how effective your marketing is, a poor product can only go so far.

It’s Sunday night, so I hope you’re planning to get 9 hours of sleep tonight! I’m writing this email on Friday, but tonight (I say pretending to be present with you), I’m getting 9+ hours to jumpstart this new week.

Have an amazing upcoming week. Stay hydrated. Get good sleep. Go for a nice long walk. I’ll see you next Sunday!