Jake Abrams

Odyssey

The lean DTC growth marketing partner that I wish existed when I was an in-house marketing lead. 

At Odyssey, we help 7-9 figure DTC brands increase revenue & ROAS by finding the right combination of:

- Messaging
- Audience targeting
- Media channel allocation
- Creative

https://www.odysseyagency.com/

Founder

Embr Labs

- Took a pre-revenue product named Wristify and renamed it within 4 weeks of start date. 
- Launched a Kickstarter 1 month later.
- Raised $630k in funding. 
- Kept growing. 
- Got featured on Most Expensivest with 2Chainz and Good Morning America in the same year. 
- Succeeded. 
- Failed. 
- Sold over 50,000 units with a team of contractors. 
- Learned so much about selling things online that I had the privilege to launch a DTC agency. 
- Now helping other brands navigate their growth journey.

VP Marketing

Head Of Marketing

Firehose Project

Firehose is an Immersive Online Coding Bootcamp designed to help people become professional developers or launch their own ideas. 

Accomplishments:

- Grew monthly site traffic 2.5x
- Grew monthly leads 8.5x
- Grew monthly organic leads 4.1x
- Grew Facebook audience 7.3x
- Scaled Quora to largest source of traffic
- Built paid acquisition engine from scratch across FB, Adwords, Quora, and coding platforms
- Led RFP and integration of Kissmetrics to solve attribution problem
- Grew prep course engagement 3x
- Generated 37 media mentions / syndicated pieces in publications like Forbes, Quartz, and Inc

Head of Marketing & Growth

Arnold Worldwide

- Led cross-functional team responsible for New Balance's Global Baseball business
- Oversaw end to end execution of launch campaign for New Balance's signature 2015 baseball product, exceeding sales goals by 30%
- Pitched for and won New Balance's Global Men's Training business
- Played key role in launch of New Balance's $5MM+ Always in Beta global rebrand
- Wrote winning 2016 Effie case in the David vs Goliath category for launch of New Balance's 4040v3 baseball cleat

Marketing Manager

Associate Marketing Producer

Streetwise Media

- Worked with channel partners to develop relevant, site-worthy content
- Offered full-time position in DC office upon completion of internship

Marketing Intern

Boston College

- Turned 1 year of high school tennis experience into the best paying job on campus

Tennis Instructor

SnapApp

My first experience in the startup world.

Learned a lot about the Internet, product development, and making sure the fridge was stocked with soda.

Marketing & Sales Intern

FunnyAthleteTweets.com

In college, I started a website detailing the absurdities of "athlete twitter" years before it was part of the mainstream sports conversation. 

Generated enough AdSense revenue to pay for a few college textbooks.

- Refereed high-level intramural basketball games
- Gave out technical fouls as necessary, even to football players
- Successfully learned and enforced the notoriously complicated over-and-back rule
- Selected as Intramural Basketball Supervisor based on high performance

Intramural Referee

I help 7-9 figure DTC brands with revenue & CAC | I write The Process, a newsletter about modern growth marketing | Sold 100K+ personal cooling devices

Consumer Marketing & Growth Leader.  

Grew a DTC from 0 to 100,000+ units sold, then started a new kind of agency to help more brands grow.

---

Odyssey is the lean DTC growth marketing partner that I wish existed when I was an in-house marketing lead.

We help 7 & 8-figure DTC brands grow sustainably through media buying, creative, conversion rate optimization, and email/SMS.

Need to scale revenue, improve CAC, or just talk DTC strategy? DM me to chat about things like:

Paid Media Management
- TikTok
- CTV
- Youtube
- FB & IG
- Google

Creative
- UGC ads
- Iterative video edits

Conversion Rate Optimization
- A/B testing
- Shopify website development
- Human insights & messaging iteration

Email & SMS
- Klaviyo email growth
- Attentive SMS growth

The lean DTC growth marketing partner that I wish existed when I was an in-house marketing lead. 

At Odyssey, we help 7 & 8-figure DTC brands increase revenue & ROAS by finding the right combination of:

- Messaging
- Audience targeting
- Media channel allocation
- Creative

https://www.growodyssey.com/

I might get torched for this, but I’m sick of “media buying is dead" content.

During BFCM, your media buyer is the pilot of your plane. 

I only want the most talented person in control. 

Things 10x media buyers did this weekend:

- Launched lifetime budget 1DC campaigns
- Knew which Meta rep suggestions to pay attention to or ignore
- Properly allocated budget to promo ads vs. evergreen
- Ensured at least 25% of ads ran through whitelisted pages
- Made sure influencer ads were written in the influencer’s voice
- Tightly organized naming conventions to make analysis easier
- Strategically turned off low performing ads
- Analyzed if ASC spend was actually hitting warm audiences
- Ensured RT campaigns were live for warm audience coverage, budget dependent
- Understood the difference b/w 1DV and 1DC conversions

Media buyers are not worthless, extinct dinosaurs.

They are actually the MVP’s of BFCM weekend.

28 hook templates for predictably driving 40% thumbstop rates on Meta.

(organized into 4 categories)

🚩 Problem Hooks 🚩
1. Did you know that your [root cause] could be the cause of your [problem]?
2. I knew something was wrong when I started noticing [problem]
3. This is how fast I [problem / solution]
4. POV: you cut your [problem] in half
5. I used to hate [problem], but these [product] have been a gamechanger for me
6. Drowning in [problem]? Keep watching
7. POV: I honestly didn’t believe I could [outcome] until I [solution]

😈 Enemy Hooks 😈
8. Everyone wants to know why you ditched [failed solution], can you tell them?
9. Don’t buy [enemy], buy this instead
10. Please please please do not [failed solution] until you’ve tried this first
11. You’ll stop using your [enemy] after seeing this
12. I spent 6 months trying every [product category]
13. Why I ditched [enemy] for this [product]
14. The #1 trick to fixing [problem] without [enemy]

🙋‍♂️ Audience Hooks 🙋‍♂️
15. POV: you’re [audience] and found the best [product]
16. This [product] is like a [equivalent] for my [audience]
17. [Audience] is saying that [product] is solving [problem]
18. I saw every [audience] using this [product category] and i had to try it
19. Hey [audience] you need to see this
20. I got these for my [end buyer] and now [desired outcome]
21. Where are my [audience] at? I have a little hack that I need to share with you guys

🔮 Outcome Hooks 🔮
22. POV: You’re in your [outcome] era
23. I got the [category] that makes you [outcome]
24. When I put on this [product] I feel like I’m [exaggerated desired outcome]
25. You don’t need to wait until [event] to get [outcome] anymore
26. You haven’t felt what [benefit] is until you’ve tried [product]
27. How I [dream outcome] in [x] days with no [objection]
28. What if [desired outcome] was as easy as [how it works]

---

Pick a few from each category.

Make ads w/ existing footage + Elevenlabs.

See what happens.

The math behind why 7-figure brands should go narrow for massive growth.

Let’s say you’ve got $3000 / day of Facebook budget.

If you were to spread that budget across 3 different products:
→ You only have $1000 / day per product.

And if you’re testing 3 different audiences under each product:
→ That’s only ~$333 / day per audience.

And if you’re testing 3 different messages under each audience:
→ That’s only ~$111 / day per message.

Not enough $$ to learn anything in a reasonable amount of time.

That’s why you need to start narrow for massive growth:

1. Actually research your audience outside of Facebook ads manager.
2. Pick the best product for the audience with the most painful problem.
3. Brainstorm 3 wildly different messages.

Now, with that $3000 / day Facebook budget...

You can test 3 different messages:
→ For $1,000 / day.

You can test 10 different creatives under each message:
→ For $100 / day

You’ll accelerate your learnings and get to each inflection point much faster.

Most DTC brands can hit $5M year using this level of focus.

Then to scale further, layer in another product and repeat the process.

Don’t try to sell everything to everyone.

Instead, go narrow for massive growth.

Writing has died 5 times since 2000. 

Some memorable deaths include: 

- The internet
- Social media
- Smartphones
- Media’s pivot to video
- AI & ChatGPT

Here’s the reality:

Creator Briefs = Writing 
Scripts = Writing 
Shot Lists = Writing 
Creative Feedback = Writing 
Influencer Outreach = Writing 
 
Captions / Overlays = Writing 
Static Ads = Writing 
Ad Copy = Writing 
Landing Pages = Writing 
Advertorials = Writing 
 
Offer Testing = Writing 
Conversion Tests = Writing 
Email Marketing = Writing 
SMS Marketing = Writing 
Community Management = Writing 
 
Negotiating With Contractors = Writing 
Managing Your Team = Writing 
Client Management = Writing 
Project Management = Writing 
Selling Your Vision = Writing 
 
Writing is the foundation for everything you do in marketing.  

Use AI as a tool, not a crutch. 
 
The more you write, the stronger you become.  
 
Get writing.

Harsh DTC growth truth:

Optimizing your 7DC Meta CPA is only half the job. 

- You need to build the ecosystem of people who know you
- You need to get tastemakers to hype you
- You need to seriously grow 1 organic channel
- You need answer every objection on your site
- You need to delight customers & get them to come back

STOP treating growth like a transactional sales funnel.

START building a brand that your audience knows, trusts, and loves.

21 steps to creating ads with 50% hook rates and 3X ROAS.
 
(without paying $397 for a Meta ads course) 
 
1. Accept that people don’t care what you have to say
2. Write for 1 specific target audience
3. And write for where they’re at in the buying process
4. Find the single most compelling insight from research
5. Leverage 1 of the 7 human desires
6. Write in the audience’s words
7. Use 1 hero reference to accelerate the creation process
8. Respect the attention of your audience
9. If there is a hint of boredom, cut it
10. Use a storytelling framework, like PAS / Enemy / QUEST
11. Provide entertainment or offer value
12. Use the inverted storytelling technique
13. Shot undeniable proof of the outcome
14. Feature macro shots that allow the viewer to “shop”
15. Show the single most important thing first
16. Clarity > cleverness
17. Write your 1st draft as fast as possible
18. Cut 20% of the content 
19. Inject social proof
20. Drive 1 specific call-to-action
21. Ensure there is urgency for taking the action

---
 
Be hard on yourself.  
Respect your audience.  
Don’t waste their time.

That’s the path to 50% hook rates and 3X ROAS.

How you think you should grow a DTC agency to $400k / month:

- Send 1000 outbound emails / week
- Hard selling in LinkedIn DM’s
- Run aggressive paid ads

How you actually grow an agency to $400k / month:

- Insanely actionable content for DTC operators
- Show value, your ICP will come to you
- Deliver results for your brands, then show your work

Outbound is a waste of time.

Become someone who DTC brands actually want to work with.

Last month, I woke up at 5:00am to write a script. 

That same script generated:

- $342,587 in spend
- $1,238,256 in conversion value
- 3.61X ROAS
- 1 very happy client

Motivation is easy because I know my input will drive a measurable output. 

Because we’ve figured out a predictable way to make winning ads. 

5-step process I used:

- Started with a top performer for another brand
- Deeply analyzed what made it effective
- Lifted the structure and hook
- Picked a high-performing angle for this brand
- Adjusted the USP’s to make it relevant

The best part? I didn’t have to spend hours concepting from scratch. 

My only limitations: 

- My time
- My ability to teach this method to the entire team

It’s not a perfect system, but it gives us a massive advantage. 

I find that advantage incredibly motivating.

Beat 99% of agencies by understanding 3 things about client management. 
 
I could have saved myself thousands of dollars if I learned these sooner.  
 
1. Ownership is everything
 
Care more about solving the problem than the client does.  
 
When the barrier to solving the problem falls outside your responsibilities, keep chasing the solution.  
 
Don’t make excuses or blame third parties. Take the feedback and improve.  
 
2. Honesty over "selling"
 
If you say you’ll do something, actually do it.  
 
If you messed up, proactively say it.  
 
If things are not going well, state it and explain what you’ll do about it. 
 
3. Action over stalling
 
Operate with a constant sense of urgency.  
 
Always think about the action you can take today to start fixing a problem. 
 
Understand that the worst thing you can do is nothing at all.  
 
--- 
 
You’re ahead of 99% of agencies if you practice these 3 things daily.

People overcomplicate hiring. 

Listen, if you’re new to hiring people (like me):

Avoid:

- Putting too much weight on credentials
- Hiring just because they submitted a LinkedIn application
- Verbal-only interviews
- Settling for B players
- Making your mind up before the interview

Instead:

- Make decisions based on actions people take
- Tap into your network for recommendations
- Give them a well-defined 1-hour project
- Set a high bar, only hire A players
- Be ok with changing your mind

Focus on this for your next 3 months of hiring. 

See what happens to the quality of your team.

$10M+ brands should run > 25% of their ads through whitelisted pages. 

Because page diversity matters just as much as creative diversity. 

Let’s break down the 5 ways your DTC can get into whitelisting. 

1. Post Boosting

Influencer posts organically and tags you as a brand partner. You run the existing post as an ad in your Facebook account.

Why it works:

- > The easiest way to get started with whitelisting
- > You get social proof from that OG organic post

The downsides:

- > You don’t have control over the ad copy
- > You can’t iterate b/c you’re limited to boosting that one post

2. Traditional Influencer Whitelisting

Influencer grants you permission to run ads through their Facebook and Instagram pages.

Why it works:

- > You control the ad copy, destination, etc...
- > You can launch iterative creative, since you’re renting out their pages

The downsides:

- > You’ll run into issues with comment moderation
- > Need to ensure your messaging stays on brand for the influencer

3. Branded Content Site Whitelisting

An existing “publisher,” like My Subscription Addiction or The Quality Edit, grants you permission to run ads through their social pages and drive to a piece of sponsored content on their website.

Why it works:

- > Great for advertorial-style funnels
- > Easy to get set up with pixels and tracking

The downsides:

- > Loses credibility if the publisher partners with too many brands
- > Buying process requires one extra step for the customer

4. True Publisher Whitelisting

A real publisher (blog, website, etc…) grants you permission to run ads through their social pages and drive to a piece of sponsored content on their website.

Why it works:

- > The most authentic style of whitelisting
- > Borrow the publisher’s credibility to empower your message

The downsides

- > Many publishers aren’t set up to make this process easy
- > Content needs to be very educational and not selling-focused

5. Brand / Agency Created Publisher Whitelisting

You create your own publisher presence: website, FB & IG pages, etc… and run “whitelisted” ads through that presence.

Why it works:

- > Spend on upfront costs for a domain, but that’s it
- > Still get the benefit of a 3rd party brand

The downsides

- > Not as credible as a real publisher
- > Takes time to set up the pages, website, etc…

—-

Ok, let’s summarize the 5 options:

1. Post Boosting
2. Influencer Whitelisting
3. Branded Content Site Whitelisting
4. True Publisher Whitelisting
5. Brand-Created Publisher Whitelisting

Run > 25% of your ads through whitelisted pages.

65% YoY growth for a tech-focused DTC brand.

(without Cyber Monday in November)

Here are 9 key tactics we used to make it happen (across 3 categories):

Category 1: Paid Media

✅ Balanced account structure with ASC, Prospecting, and RT for coverage
✅ Bid cap campaign with high-performing ads
✅ At least 25% of ads run through whitelisted pages

Category 2: Performance Publishing

✅ Ads running through 3 different publisher brands
✅ Top 5 comparison article with BFCM offer
✅ BOF promo article: “I’ve been eyeing [product] and it’s finally 25% off”

Category 3: Creative

✅ Cross-out pricing on static ads
✅ Percent offer in the first line of Meta primary copy
✅ Undeniable proof visuals within video content

This is modern paid strategy.

graphical user interface, chart, application

The Black Friday hamburger video edit. 

The biggest no-brainer creative format for BFCM & Holiday.

The good news? You can make them using footage you already have. 

I’ll help you write your script. 

Just use this 8-part structure:

1. Hook with BFCM offer

“Psst, Our Black Friday Sale Is Here. Get 20% Off sitewide.”

2 . Problem statement

“Finding the perfect gift for [audience] doesn’t have to be a pain”

3. Solution / Outcome

“With the [product category] she actually wants”

4. Reason To Believe A

“[Product USP 1]”

5. Reason To Believe B

“[Product USP 2]”

6. Reason To Believe C

“[Product USP 3]”

7. Social Proof

“Every [credible figure] is raving about [product]"

8. BFCM offer with CTA + urgency

“Shop the [brand] Black Friday Sale now for 20% off. Ends [deadline].”

---

Lead with offer
Tell the product story
Close with offer

A no-brainer creative format for BFCM.

1,200+ people asked for my Modern Creative Workflow.

I fell behind on comments. DM’s got overwhelming. My bad.

So if you haven't yet received the Notion resource, grab it for free here: https://lnkd.in/eGn642Ki

Some feedback so far:

"The video walkthrough was insanely actionable. I actually know how to implement this system for my brand. It’s not fluff.”

"The Notion task templates were great. Building these for my CS team asap to help their workflow."

Inside you’ll find every step of the process we use to ship 2,000+ creatives / month for brands like Jones Road Beauty, Caraway, and 30+ others:

1. Advanced Motion Reports
2. Shared Concept Library
3. Monthly Creative Roadmaps
4. Notion Creative Task Templates
5. Video Editor Dashboard
6. Automated Performance Analysis

Enjoy 🫡

Taplio

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