9 easy ways to save money & maximize revenue

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If you’re reading this, I hope you’re sitting down, you’re hydrated, your room is at a comfortable temperature, and you’re ready for an actionable email to maximize efficiency.

When your margin becomes a target, the first thought is always, “How can we maximize efficiency everywhere?” Even just 1% more efficient in 20 places is better than not doing anything.

SALES

9 tips to be more efficient

Whitelisted Ads — reduce CPC/CPA overnight

There’s a good chance you’re running paid advertising right now, and it’s a meaningful contribution to net-new customer acquisition. On top of ensuring that you are rotating in new ad creative (more on that below), running an efficiently set-up account structure, having good data feedback into Meta, etc., you should also make sure you are whitelisting some accounts to run ads from.

It doesn’t have to be from well-known influencers... it could be a founder’s or employee’s account, a publisher to pay to whitelist from, a meme account, your dog’s IG account — really anything except your brand name is worth trying out.

Whitelisted ads outperform branded content because they fit the context of the feed better — no one wants to see brand content. Lower CPMs, higher CTRs, and still it’s only ever ~20% of spend in most Meta accounts. Whitelist more!

Bundling & new-customer merchandising

If you spend dollars on performance marketing to drive single-SKU sales, you’re irresponsible to your wallet. Unless you’ve proven these drive high AOV or orders with more than just the single product, everything should be focused on bundles. Bundles are where the money is made—more products, at a good margin, in one shipment (fixed fee).

As a result of driving people to bundle (offers), you’ll still see several single-SKU, even Amazon purchases. Still, those are all gravy on top of pushing something merchandised to maximize a customer’s return probability.

Use landing pages to teach

Landing pages are one of the easiest ways to boost customer education, improve AOV, and also drive a better conversion rate for paid traffic. For a haircare brand I worked with, a bundle product page vs the same bundle on a landing page had a difference of 2.2% CVR for the PDP and 11.1% on the landing page.

This page should answer five questions over and over again with multiple sections:

• What is the product?

• Why does it exist?

• How will it benefit me as the buyer?

• Why is this the best option on the market?

• If I order it today, when does it arrive, and what if I hate it?

You can merchandise and launch new themed bundles with landing pages, especially driving traffic from your CRM list. A Valentine’s Day Bundle, Boyfriend Bundle, Mom’s Favorites, or even go local like the California Favorites. If they succeed, put them on your main site.

Use Collab Posts on Instagram

As efficient as your paid ads can be, you need to always be building brand image, extending brand awareness, and reaching new eyeballs. One easy way to do that is to do more collaboration posts on Instagram.

Whether they’re publisher/media accounts you partner on content with, influencers you’re seeing product to or paying, or partnerships you do with other brands, this allows you to reach a very targeted audience with an authentic approach.

Spend 2 Hours on Finance Hacking

There may be some more things you can do given the intricacies of your business, but at a minimum:

• Ask for extended payment terms with vendors, agencies, SaaS companies, etc. You may (or may not) get it, but it’s worth asking.

• Put your idle cash into a high-yield savings account.

• Use credit cards that fit your needs:

  • Need 30/60 day float? Use a card for that.

  • Don’t need a float? Use a cash back card to get 3%, tax-free.

Maximize your influencer and creator engagements

When you partner with a creator, influencer, “contenter”, etc., don’t just create 1 video as your deliverable. Instead, write a brief that includes multiple hooks, multiple talking points you can mix and match, multiple calls to action, and a wide variety of b-roll footage. Now, instead of creating 1 video for the cost of working with a creator, you can make 15.

The catch is that you have to handle the editing on your side, but you can do that with an agency (like Sharma Brands), a freelance editor, or an editor tool yourself.

Recalibrate media channels

Focus your performance media on channels you know are driving impact, not just programmatic pre-roll, display ads, etc. If you feel confident that a channel like Criteo is driving meaningful revenue because its dashboards say so, run an incrementality test with a hold-out group.

It goes both ways... a channel like YouTube may not report significant numbers in-platform, but with an incrementality study, it will show that over 8 weeks, it drove many new customers.

Refresh your email & SMS flows 

Your email campaigns shouldn’t be set-and-forget. It’s essential to audit and optimize your flows regularly. Look at where you can improve the copy, design layouts, offers, merchandising of your products, CTA placements, etc.

As your performance marketing scales, you should set up a learnings transfer every month, or at the very least every quarter. The best ad copy, headlines, and hooks for videos can be meaningful inspiration for email flows.

Rapid-fire static Ad testing 

On a shoestring budget, rapid static ad creation and iteration are the best ways to test and learn. Once you find winning ad copy, apply it to different layouts (you can even get ChatGPT to help you with design inspiration). Once you find a winning layout, use that layout with a variety of different copy.

Today, the creative itself is the targeting engine. A headline like “Wake up with more energy” naturally attracts users, and Facebook algorithmically identifies them as morning-focused or health-oriented.

I hope today’s newsletter inspires you to test one tactic or make one change that leads to at least $100k in savings or $100k in new revenue. With the tariff news changing daily, it’s unclear what can/will happen, but it’s always a reminder to seek efficiency across the board.

Special thanks to Nik Sharma from WorkWeek for sharing these gems.

HEADLINES

Hot picks from the web

→ LinkedIn Expands its top-of-feed news banner to more regions

→ Your guide to getting started with YouTube Shorts

→ Google quality raters now assess whether content is AI-generated

SOFTWARE

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