The old playbook of pouring money into Meta and Google is losing effectiveness. Here’s what’s taking its place.
EXPERT OPINION BY EMILY CODY, BRAND CONSULTANT
For years, the startup growth playbook was fairly straightforward: raise money, pour some of it into Meta and Google, obsess over customer acquisition costs, rinse and repeat.
Now, that formula is getting harder to rely on.
Paid acquisition is more expensive, social platforms are crowded, and consumers have become adept at recognizing when they’re being marketed to. For founders, especially the ones building consumer brands, the ability to earn attention has become a much bigger part of the job.
Spending on Meta and Google and optimizing CAC
“Spending on Meta and Google and optimizing CAC is not enough anymore,” says Tracy Dubb, co-founder of skincare brand Isla Beauty and a former investor. “Or maybe we’ve learned that it never was enough, and the conversation is just catching up to the truth.”
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Dubb is quick to push back on the more romantic version of this idea: that a clever founder with a TikTok account can simply out-content a well-funded competitor. Brands are still competing against each other’s balance sheets. A competitor that can make good content and put significant paid spend behind it has an obvious advantage.
The more useful shift, she says, is thinking about paid media as an amplifier rather than the entire growth engine. At Isla, that means paying close attention to customer retention, organic mentions, creator commerce, and unpaid acquisition before simply putting more dollars into digital advertising. “Without those, you will inevitably see diminishing returns,” Dubb says.
For founders with limited budgets, she currently sees particularly strong potential in creator-driven content and building a genuine base of customers who will talk about the product themselves. PR can amplify those moments, while paid spend can help winning content travel further.
Source: www.inc.com
