I deconstruct world-class brands to help build your brand. ✈️ Chief Brander @ eBrandBuilders | 📘 Amazon Best Seller | 🎙️  Host @ eBrandCast

Here’s why 90% of consumer brands fail in their first two years.

You're grinding non-stop, but your marketing feels like hitting a brick wall. You launch products, optimize funnels, run ads... and then some competitor undercuts your price by 10%. Game over.

This happens when you sell products without building a brand. Period.

Here's the question: Do you know your brand's core identity? Or do you hope people will buy your stuff because it's "better"?

I'm Neil, and I've cracked the code for building consumer brands that last.

After my MBA, I spent a decade managing $100M+ brands for Citibank, BMO, and Desjardins. I was the guy in the Brooks Brothers suit with the Herman Miller chair, climbing that corporate ladder in easy mode.

But I had an itch to build something from scratch.

So I resigned and jumped headfirst into eCommerce. And promptly failed. Twice.

I went from "Real Kobe Beef" to "Ramen" in 12 months. I was that entrepreneur batting at every shiny object - new Facebook ad techniques, conversion-optimized Shopify themes.

My daily mantra? Three simple letters: "W...T...F?"

But I'm no quitter. I dusted off my stretchy-waist tracksuit and went back to basics. From this failure, I distilled the 7Cs of branding, a process that helped me launch 3 DTC brands to a bona fide exit.

My biggest breakthrough came from studying 200+ DTC brands and asking: "What makes customers choose one brand over another when the products are virtually identical?"

The answer? Psychology. Not features. Not benefits. Pure psychological positioning.

In recent years, I've:
* Analyzed 200+ DTC brands
* Created 70+ brand breakdowns
* Developed the 7C Framework
* Published the Amazon bestseller "Checkout"
* Worked with Amazon, Starbucks, and Porsche

Here's what happens when you have a brand that sells itself:
* Your entire brand strategy fits on a single page, guiding all decisions
* Your marketing feels effortless because it speaks to your audience's core desires
* You wake up knowing exactly what to do to grow your brand

Here's how you can start building your distinctive brand today:

* If you have 3 minutes daily: Subscribe to my FREE Newsletter oneliner.io - One line, One visual, One lesson from top consumer brands.
* If you have a weekend: Get the One Pager BrandBuilder and follow my 7C framework to document your brand strategy on a single page.
* If you're ready for transformation: Join BrandBuilder X and let me guide you through building a brand that stands out, scales up, and eventually sells for a premium.

Let's talk: https://call.ebrandbuilders.com/strategy

Neil Verma

Jessie Healy

eCommerce Growth & Facebook Ads Marketing Consultant

Building DTC brands to 7 & 8 figures. Co-Founder of Webtopia. Founder of Ecomm Rockets. Podcast host - Ecommerce Impact. $50M spent on Meta & Google Ads. Ex-Etsy. 1X Exit.

My mission is to help you build a profitable, successful DTC brand through better advertising strategies.  Different stages of DTC growth need different types of support: Hitting your first 100k month is the first milestone. Putting in place the systems to get to $10M is a different kind of hard. For each stage in your eCommerce path, I have a solution for you. 

*Not Quite At 7 Figures - But Ambitious to Grow? Ecomm Rockets is my accelerator for early-stage eComm brands that provides growth marketing to get you to your first $100k months, for the next generation of iconic brands. A combination of mentorship, consultancy and teaching, this programme is perfect if you are ready to learn how to get the most out of your Meta and Google Ads. We can also include done-for-you ads management. 

*Established brand - keen to scale up? I have a range of consulting options and a network of partners, as well as very limited slots for full ads management - let me help you find the right fit for your brand's growth and Advertising challenges. 

Agency and Consulting: www.ecommgrowthcollective.com
Personal Website: www.jessiehealy.com

Accelerator: www.ecommrockets.com

Book a free strategy call: https://calendly.com/d/4dk-87x-f84T
The agency I founded and sold in 2023: www.webtopia.co

About Me: The $50 million I have spent on digital advertising for brands like Etsy, RealPlayer, Farfetch, Totter &amp; Tumble, ilabb, Baukjen and Candy Kittens has helped me crack the code to creating profitable ads and growth marketing strategies that convert.After a career spent working for consumer brands like Etsy - I struck out on my own as a freelancer in 2017, and then launched an agency which I grew over 5 years to 7 figures then sold it in 2023. I now work hands-on with brands again.

Not ready to chat just yet - why not sign up to my newsletter? https://ecommercecoach.beehiiv.com/

eCommerce Agency Founder & CEO | eComm Coach | Paid Social & Google Ads & Klaviyo Specialist

My Agency, Webtopia specialises in providing eCommerce businesses with highly optimised digital advertising on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok & Google, as well as Email Marketing with Klaviyo. Our team of 20 eCommerce experts focus on real results driving betweeen 3X and 15X return on investment for  our clients.
We make magic happen like: 

🌟15X ROAS for TWO YEARS (and counting) for an interior brand consistently
🌟Scaling a new brand to £150k a month spend and driving £600k in monthly revenue
🌟3 of our clients turning their side hustle into a million-pound-a-year business.

Jessie Healy 🎨

There is a big shift happening in social media and most brands have no idea it's happening. 

Gen Z understand this - in fact they are the reason it is happening. 
 
This shift at least in part explains why the average time spent on TikTok globally is 58 minutes vs 28 minutes on Instagram. 
 
Bear with me while I try to explain. This could be the most important thing you read today about social media. 
 
The reason TikTok has been so popular has been because of the way it makes people feel. The culture of TikTok from the start has been about, raw, real and authentic content. The warts-and-all, shot-from-your-messy-bedroom content doesn't make people feel bad about themselves the way curated, edited and filtered content on instagram does. 
 
From the start Instagram was about 'filtering' your reality, creating a better, and less realistic version of yourself, that has been linked to rising anxiety among young people and directly linked to people using the app. People turned to TikTok because it present a more attainable and fun way to look at the world. A place where you can learn, be entertained and connect with people that are 'like you'. 
 
Why should brands care about this? 
 
Because brands that truly understand this vibe shift will be better about to connect with Gen Z and Millennials who are now consuming this authentic and raw content on the daily. Add this to the fact that they are the generation that is most cynical about advertising and being marketed to, and the big risk to brands is getting this wrong. 
 
I've been seeing brands lately see a huge uptick in performance when they start using diverse creators - people who look like normal people, represent different races, ages, sizes and income levels, and don't live in perfect houses with perfected curated lives. 
 
Brands that do this - both on their organic and paid channels will be the ones that win in the next year. Brands remain slaves to their elevated brand aesthetic  will be left behind. 
 
Do you agree? Have you noticed this shift? 

How have you changed your content strategy as a result?

Growing DTC brands to 7 & 8 figures. $50M spent on Meta & Google Ads. Ecommerce Marketing Coach & Consultant. Webtopia Founder (now acquired). 1X Exit. Podcast host - Ecommerce Impact Podcast. Ex-Etsy.

Too many founders over-complicate their marketing.

I just spoke to an eComm founder who has scaled his biz to 8 figures WITHOUT Facebook/Meta ads and very little social media presence.

He has focussed on one core paid advertising channel (Google Ads), leaned into it hard and made it work.

Why is this a good strategy?

1. His data is clean - he doesn't have to worry about attribution as he knows all his paid traffic starts with Google Ads. He can use simple correlation to measure success.

2. His team is lean - he has one agency running Google ads, he run email marketing in-house so he can focus on product development, logistics and supply chain.

3. He can concentrate his efforts on making that one channel really successful - rather than being pulled in multiple directions by different marketing channels.

4. His budget is consolidated. The algorithms require a lot of data to work, and data required marketing spend. If he had split his launch budget across two channels, it would have taken much longer for either one to optimise.

Of course he will launch Meta ads eventually as he has big ambitions to scale even further. But he will do it from a position where he has the budget and resource to commit to making it work, because he has already built and scaled the Google Ad machine.

Who's with me?

Apparently I grew my followers on here 25% last year!!

This is wild to me since I have been on this platform for cough almost 20 years 🤓 

But since so many of you are new here, I thought I’d better re-introduce myself with a festive pic for the algo.

I’m Jessie.

Kiwi with a partially British soul (15 years in London will do that).

These days I live by a lake in the mountains of New Zealand with my partner and our boy.

In winter: snowboarding.

In summer: hiking / mountain biking / lake swims.

Work-wise, I help eComm brands grow profitably.

Not “platform ROAS” growth.

Real growth:
- better creative
- better funnels

Deeper customer psychology

More profit margin (contribution margin > vibes)

If you’re building a DTC brand and you feel like you’ve hit a ceiling, that’s basically my Roman Empire.

Ok your turn - who are you, what are you building, and what’s the one thing you’re stuck on right now?

If you are having trouble scaling your Meta Ad Account - check whether you have this (common) problem - which is often the symptom of a lazy agency, but can also be just a lack of understanding of how the algorithm now works. 

The problem is a lack of ad creative diversity or differentiation. Relying on testing very small changes to ads rather than taking 'big swings' at new creative concepts. New creative is now essential to ad account performance. 

The reason it is important is not just because it connects you with new audiences and convince new people to buy - Meta has now told us that ad accounts that have more 'creative diversity' are performing better. 

It is pretty clear that the algorithm now actually understands that an ad iteration is not the same as a net-new concept, and it is prioritising the net-new over the iterations. 

So if your agency or media-buyers are not actively coming up with totally new concepts, angles and ways to communicate your message, you can can get stuck in a cycle of 'iteration' that doesn't allow you to scale. 
 
If you have a Meta rep, ask them to provide you with a 'Creative Differentiation Report' - this report can tell you whether your account is using enough new concepts or whether there is room for improvement. 

Be honest - are you taking enough 'big swings' or are you relying on iteration of tried-and-true?

Here is a nice little tactic for ad copywriting: 
 
✅ Read negative online reviews about your competitors

✅ List common issues and problems

✅ Use the specific keywords and phrases used along with phrases like

""Are you sick of?""
""Don't you hate it when?""
""I thought I was doomed to...""
 
✅ List how your product is different

✅ Add a guarantee

The key to scaling your eCommerce brand? Obsessing over the right numbers.

These metrics tell you everything about the health of your business.

Know them. Track them. Fix them. Live and die by them.

1. Daily Contribution Margin (revenue minus cost of goods minus shipping minus ad costs)
2. Blended Customer Acquistion Cost (Marketing spend divided by new customers) 
3. Blended ROAS 
4. Conversion Rate 
5. Average Order Value 

Which one are you focusing on improving right now?

Growing a business and a family at the same time feels like a massive, insurmountable  feat sometimes. 

Here are some hacks and lessons learned over the years that have really helped me.

1. If it takes less than 5 minutes - do it now. Holding something in my head requires way more brainpower than just ticking it off my to-do list.

2. Out-source personal tasks as well as work ones. You won't see me wandering the isles of a supermarket that often - I get groceries and pre-made food deliveries and have zero guilt about not cooking very often.

3. Spend your time on the things that no-one else in your business can do, and outsource the rest. Sometimes even things you are good at can be done just as well by someone else, leaving you more time for the highest leveraged tasks.

4. Make your commute your exercise - I cycle whenever I need to be somewhere, meaning I clock 30-60 mins of exercise whether it's meeting someone for a coffee or running an errand.

5. Watch courses in the gym - I love online courses, I am actually addicted to them - but I don't get much time to watch them, so now I watch them while I am on the treadmill, killing two birds and combining something I love with something that is a bit of a chore.

6. Say no to meetings without a clear purpose - and beware of people who want to pick your brain for free. I love sharing my knowledge but I only generally only share it with charities or paying students and clients, because my free time is for my family and friends, and its so damn precious.

What hacks or tricks have you developed to be more productive with your time?

If you only create ads for people ready to buy now...

You're not going to be able to scale your ecomm business.

When Facebook reduced attribution to a 7 day window - many advertisers freaked out and pulled back advertising, thinking that if they couldn't see a sale tracked, the ads weren't working.

But this short term thinking is killing brands that could be growing. Why?

How often do you buy something within 7 days of discovering it? Not that often right?

The job of your ads is not just to drive immediate conversions, but to build awareness, and then nurture people through email, social and more ads. You can now create ads for every stage of the funnel and put them all in one Ad Set. Andromeda will sequence them for you. But it can't do that if you only include ads for the bottom of the funnel. 

Because people don't usually stumble across you ready to buy on impulse.

You funnel should be created to nurture them at every step of their journey, regardless of whether you can track every step.

And that is why it is important to look at not just the sales that were tracked directly to your campaigns - but to see whether there is a correlation between the marketing you are doing and your overall revenue.

If you are growing your marketing spend and revenue is growing at the same time, then your marketing is working- even if not every sale is being tracked in that tiny 7-day window that tracking allows us to look at.

Also - check the Meta 30 day attribution from time to time - it will give you more clues!

Spicy debate topic alert!

Is anyone using the traffic objective to drive top of funnel awareness to feed ASC and other conversion campaigns on Meta? 

An account I'm auditing is doing this - with 0 conversions coming from traffic campaigns but very high ROAS in the ASC. 

Some would say turn off the traffic objective, it's driving garbage traffic that is of no value - and that is certainly what I would have said this until very recently. 

But as Meta no longer lets us limit our conversion campaigns to truly cold audiences, I am seeing more people using traffic or other higher funnel objectives to build out a full funnel and have more cold traffic for the ASC and conversion campaigns to convert. 

So you then need define a really tight test to see whether the traffic campaigns are helping your funnel - either using Meta's Conversion Uplift testing tools or manually by keeping all other variables the same, and monitoring for 30-60 days to see if your overall funnel performance declines without the upper funnel spend.

Has anyone done some really solid tests on this recently? Are traffic campaigns now a valuable part of a DTC funnel? If so, how do we track their efficacy?

This post hit hard. I agree with it on so many levels. 
In 2023 I was so over being an agency CEO, I sold my agency. Swore I was done. So why am I building another one in 2026?
Because this time, I know exactly what I’m doing and more importantly, what I’m NOT doing.
So much of what Collin Slattery says is dead on. It's a tough business. It can chew you up if you go in blind.
But here's what changes when you’ve already walked through the fire, like I have:
1. I’m building this agency with a cofounder, not solo. That alone is a multiplier.
2. I’ve learned who to say no to, the red flags, the time-wasters, the "we just need a growth hacker" crowd.
3. I have over a decade of experience in this niche, I am not learning on my clients' dime, I have so much niche expertise I'd be crazy not to use it. 
And maybe most importantly: I see the gap.
 A huge one.
 It’s there because so many agencies are still making the same mistakes I made in my first year. They're overstretching. Overpromising. Hiring reactively. Trying to do everything for everyone, doing nothing well.
And that creates a very real opportunity for those of us who know better.
I didn’t come back to prove something. I came back because I can see a smarter, more focused way to build an agency. 
One that grows without sacrificing my life, my sanity, or the quality of our work.
So yeah, don’t start an agency if you're chasing quick wins.
But if you’ve got experience, a clear lane, and a plan to fix the mess others are creating?
There’s never been a better time.

Founder @ Taikun | Scaling Google & Facebook Ads Before It Was Cool | Turning Ads into $500M+ Revenue for Clients

It's bitter pill time.

My recommendation for someone looking to start or scale an agency in 2026 is: Don't. Running an agency is not for the faint of heart. At scale, the cashflow is great. Getting there is an absolutely miserable slog. 

I started with $300/mo clients, and unless you have a reputation or a couple of plum clients due to your connections, you're going to start at the bottom too. 

You're going to work with clients with bad businesses that don't work. You're going to eat endless amounts of shit. The plum clients, the ones that already have product market fit figured out and great operations? They won't work with you. Not until you prove yourself. 

There's very little loyalty to agencies. It's a what have you done for me lately business. You can crush it for a client for years, but all of a sudden you have a month where things don't go well, you're done. Loyalty exists, but it is the exception and not the rule. 

You scale them up and they bring in a new person to manage you? You're probably getting replaced by that new person's preferred agency even if you're still killing it. 

If performance is bad whether it is your fault or not, you're fired. If performance is great and they're scaling, they start balking at your invoices and want to renegotiate or fire you. 

Everybody is posting on twitter about how great their work is, how much better their clients performance is, and other agencies are always sniffing around your clients saying they can do a better job than you're doing. 

Hiring talent is brutal and costly. The median salary for people who manage accounts on my team is $130,000. 

You're always in danger of losing 20% or more of your revenue in any given month. Doesn't matter how good you are. Doesn't matter if every client is killing it. We were doing our best work ever in Q2 of last year, and we still lost 40% of topline which required me to write a six figure check to keep the business running.

I'm happy that I've made escape velocity with my agency, and I make great money with a great team. We're 18 right now. We'll be 30+ before the end of 2026. But if you told me what it would take to get here 7 years ago, I would have done something else. There are much less stressful paths to making lots of money. 

And I bet there a bunch of people reading this right now who will read all of this and say, "I don't care, I'm going to do it anyway." That's the kind of psychotic confidence and IDGAF attitude that you'll need to make it.

If you are running paid traffic, or any kind of traffic to your online store, but you don't yet have automations set up to turn those customers into loyal, repeat buyers - you are definitely leaving money on the table! 

Here are 4 flows to go and set up right now in Klaviyo 👉 
 
 1. A welcome series flow to introduce subscribers to your brand and convert them into first-time customers. Great examples here.
 
 2. An abandoned cart flow to convert would-be customers that is customisable based on items in someone's cart and whether they're already a customer.
 
 3. A post-purchase flow to show appreciation for customers and let them know about related products they might be interested in. This is your chance to make them part of your tribe.
 
 4. A replenishment flow that hits them at exactly the right moment to repurchase from you - personised based on their purchase history.

Important reminder: NOW is your chance to convert your newly acquired holiday customers into long-term loyal by getting that all-important second purchase.

How?

Create a reason to buy again soon.

That doesnt have to be a sale. The key is they need to unlock something for purchase #2

Limited window (e.g. 14–30 days)
Reward ≠ % off

Examples
- Free upgrade (faster shipping, premium packaging)
- Bonus item added to next order
- Early access to a drop
- Extended warranty / care kit

You don't have to rely on discounts to get them back - but testing some sort of incentive could be the difference between losing  them for good and making them a die-hard fan.

Running Meta ads is just choosing which headache you want today. 💀

Agency owners: Is the agency technical ad audit dead (as a pitching tool)?

Back in 2019, when I launched my first agency, the technical ad account audit was my entire sales pitch.

Show up with a 40-slide deck, highlight the broken pixels, missing events, messy naming conventions and you’d walk out with the client.

It made sense at the time. Most accounts were under-optimized, and technical setup was a real differentiator.

That approach just doesn’t hit the same now.

Because in today’s environment, technical execution is expected.

It’s not a strategy, it’s a hygiene factor.

At my second agency, we’ve left the audit-first approach behind.

We don’t try to win clients with a forensic teardown of their ad account anymore.

Instead, we walk in with a clear, confident, and original plan for how we’ll help them win.

Not just "we’ll fix your events and launch better creatives."

Clients in 2026 will be asking: “Do you understand where we’re going, do you understand our unique problems - and can you build the strategy to get us there?”

The game has shifted from technical critique to strategic vision.

What do you think? Are you approaching pitches differently?

Stop making these common mistakes in your Google Ad Account! 

It's crazy how often our audits throw up these really obvious issues 
 
☑️ No negative keywords set up in your account or poorly organised. 
☑️ Not testing the incrementality of brand campaigns. These can really help your overall performancebut can also waste budget 
☑️ Tracking set up incorrectly with Google Ad tracking tags and GA - this is often double tracking if using GA as well. 
☑️ Campaigns not optimised for CPA or ROAS goals - optimising for clicks instead. 
☑️ Not setting up data-driven attribution in your account
☑️ Too many frequent changes - leave all campaigns for at least 2-3 weeks without changes.
☑️ Product errors in Merchant Centre
 
 What would you add my Google friends?

If you are looking for a part-time marketing VA with agency experience then let me know in the comments. 
My former VA is looking for something part-time while she studies for her Masters. 
She is based in India and £8 per hour. 
She has experience across email marketing, blog, landing pages, sales support and social media management. 
She has a lovely bubbly personality and is looking for something regular and consistent. 
Comment 'VA' and I will shoot you an intro.

Ecomm founders generally struggle with 1 of 4 challenges:
 
- They don't fully understand customer's problems and motivations
- They try to run too many ad channels at once - rather than doing one or two really well
- They don't focus on social proof early enough - meaning their ads and site don't perform as well 
- They don't outsource soon enough and are run ragged trying to do customer service or edit their own ads or website. 
 
 Which one do you need to fix?

Are you starting the year thinking ‘what new marketing channel should I add to grow in 2026’? Think carefully - One of the most common growth myths I 

Open article: A no-BS way to evaluate new marketing channels by Jessie Healy 🎨 • 3 min read

A no-BS way to evaluate new marketing channels

Brand: 'I don't want to annoy people by emailing them' 
Hallow Socks: 'Let's send 22 emails in the first 10 days of someone joining our list.'
No prizes for guessing which brand has achieved massive scale in a crazy short amount of time. 
Which camp are you in?

Running both Google and Meta too early is slowing you down.

Most brands don’t have a traffic problem - they’re just trying to scale too many channels too soon.

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