The DTC Insider

What’s Blocking Your Q3 Growth (and How to Fix It)

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:16:00 +0000

Welcome back!

As I always say, the best growth opportunities usually aren't hiding in your Ads Manager.

Sometimes they're hiding in the way you think about your business.

So today, I wanted to share two things I think are worth your attention.

Also, our podcast is back with new episodes! You can check out the latest one below.

Let's dive in.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 What’s Blocking Your Q3 Growth (and How to Fix It)
💠 TikTok Just Launched Agentic Hub
💠 The Biggest Lessons From a 3x Founder PODCAST
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

What’s Blocking Your Q3 Growth (and How to Fix It)

We’re halfway through the year, and some brands are ramping up. Others? Still stuck.

And it’s not because they don’t have good products, ads, or emails.

More often than not, it’s because those things are misaligned with the customer journey.

We just dropped a Notion guide breaking down real examples from 7 and 8 figure brands, including:

✅ What they thought was working (but was actually hurting growth)
✅ The key areas that were killing performance behind the scenes
✅ A simple framework to help you diagnose this in your own business

👉 Read the guide here

If you’re feeling stuck going into Q3, or just want a smarter way to plan your next 90 days, this will help.

--
Feel like your growth marketing strategies aren’t working?

Let’s talk, and we'll help you identify the key reasons and the three most important actions to turn things around.

Q3 is Here! Is Your Brand Ready?

Over the past few months, we've audited more than 50 7- and 8-figure brands.

Most weren't struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn't.

And the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Acquisition and retention operating independently
Teams focused on tactics instead of priorities

The problem?

Many brands enter Q3 thinking they need more traffic, more campaigns, or more creative.

What they actually need is a stronger foundation.

Because once Q4 arrives, there's very little time to fix what's broken.

The brands that perform best during the second half of the year typically start preparing months before BFCM.

They identify the bottlenecks.

They fix the leaks.

And they build a clear plan for growth.

At BSR, we help brands uncover where revenue and profit are leaking across ads, email, offers, and the customer journey, then build a practical roadmap for the next 90 days.

If you're planning to make a strong push in Q3 and Q4, now is the time to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

TikTok Just Launched Agentic Hub

Every major ad platform seems to have an AI announcement lately.

This week's came from TikTok.

They just launched Agentic Hub, a marketplace where advertisers can discover AI Skills, built by both TikTok and third-party partners, that help automate common advertising tasks.

Some of the AI Skills available today can already help you:

Launch and manage campaigns.
Generate ad creatives.
Analyze campaign performance.
Surface audience insights.
Manage product catalogs.
Recommend campaign optimizations.
Turn insights into actions, instead of just reports.

What's interesting is that TikTok isn't trying to build every AI capability themselves.

Instead, they're creating an ecosystem where companies like HubSpot, Wix, Adobe, Triple Whale, Smartly, and others can publish specialized AI Skills for advertisers. As that ecosystem grows, marketers will have access to more AI-powered workflows without leaving TikTok Ads Manager.

To me, this isn't about replacing marketers.

It's about giving marketers leverage.

Less time building campaigns, exporting reports, or digging through dashboards.

More time thinking about strategy, creative, offers, and growth.

And judging by what we've seen recently from ChatGPT, Google, Shopify, and now TikTok, this is clearly where the industry is heading.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

The Biggest Lessons From a 3x Founder

This founder has built brands in 2012, 2019, and 2025.

His verdict?

Building a DTC brand has never been harder.

Not because founders are worse.
Because the rules keep changing.

Organic reach disappeared.
CAC kept climbing.
Attribution got messier.
Amazon became even more dominant.

So what still works?

In this episode of The DTC Insider, I sat down with Josh Sprague, founder of Orange Mud, Seven Clay, and Anvil & Acre.

One thing I really liked is that he doesn't talk in theory.

He's spent millions on his own ad accounts.
Made plenty of mistakes.
And still keeps testing.

Lots of practical lessons in this one.

Tune in. 👇

🎙 Tune in

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 OpenAI Started Rolling Out Conversion Ad Campaigns [read more]
📰 Meta Reveals Best Practices for AI Ads [read more]
📰 Image & Video Ads Coming To ChatGPT? [read more]

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

About The Writer

Brian Roisentul is the founder & CEO of BSR, a growth marketing agency he started in 2013 to help e-commerce brands unlock hidden revenue by identifying misalignments between their marketing and customer behavior. He is also the host of The DTC Insider podcast, where he interviews thought leaders, founders, and directors in the e-commerce space.

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

Promote your Business to 11,000+ People in the DTC Space
The DTC Insider (newsletter + podcast) reaches a highly qualified audience of DTC founders, directors, and marketers. Learn more about the sponsorship opportunities we offer for your business. If you’d like to become a sponsor, apply here.

The Best Q4s Don't Start in Q4

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 11:16:00 +0000

Welcome back!

Q3 officially starts today, and with it comes a fresh opportunity to build momentum before the busiest months of the year.

In today's edition, I'm covering one new Meta feature we've been waiting years for, and one lesson from a past podcast guest that completely changed how I think about preparing for Q4.

Let's dive in.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 The Best Q4s Don't Start in Q4
💠 Meta Finally Fixed One of the Biggest Problems With Lead Ads
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

The Best Q4s Don't Start in Q4

Welcome to Q3. 👋

If you're like most brands, your team is probably already talking about BFCM.

The promotions. The inventory. The ad budgets. The email calendar.

And yes, all of that matters.

But after interviewing more than 200 founders and operators on my podcast, I've noticed something.

The brands that have the strongest Q4s usually don't spend all of Q3 waiting for Black Friday.

They create their own shopping moments.

One of my favorite examples came from my conversation with Bear Handlon, founder of Born Primitive.

Last year, instead of running a standard Veterans Day sale, they pledged 100% of their profits over Veterans Day weekend to help eliminate veteran medical debt.

Their original goal was to erase $5 million in debt.

Customers got behind the mission in a way they never expected, and the campaign ended up eliminating more than $11 million in veteran medical debt.

But here's what really stood out to me.

Just two weeks later came Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 😉

Instead of having to build excitement from scratch, Born Primitive entered the biggest shopping event of the year with incredible momentum. Their brand was top of mind, customers were already talking about them, and they had just given thousands of people a reason to support the brand beyond another discount.

That's a much stronger position than showing up on Black Friday with the same promotion everyone else is running.

As Q3 kicks off, I'd encourage you to think about it the same way.

Don't just ask yourself what sale you're going to run.

Ask yourself what moment you're going to create.

Maybe it's a long-awaited product launch.
A collaboration your customers have been asking for.
A charitable initiative that's genuinely aligned with your mission.
Your brand's anniversary.

Or something completely different.

The goal isn't just to drive more revenue in Q3.

It's to build enough momentum that when Q4 arrives, you're amplifying demand that's already there instead of trying to create it from scratch.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Q3 is Here! Is Your Brand Ready?

Over the past few months, we've audited more than 50 7- and 8-figure brands.

Most weren't struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn't.

And the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Acquisition and retention operating independently
Teams focused on tactics instead of priorities

The problem?

Many brands enter Q3 thinking they need more traffic, more campaigns, or more creative.

What they actually need is a stronger foundation.

Because once Q4 arrives, there's very little time to fix what's broken.

The brands that perform best during the second half of the year typically start preparing months before BFCM.

They identify the bottlenecks.

They fix the leaks.

And they build a clear plan for growth.

At BSR, we help brands uncover where revenue and profit are leaking across ads, email, offers, and the customer journey, then build a practical roadmap for the next 90 days.

If you're planning to make a strong push in Q3 and Q4, now is the time to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Meta Finally Fixed One of the Biggest Problems With Lead Ads

If you generate leads for demos, consultations, estimates, or any other appointment-based business, this removes one of the biggest drop-off points in the funnel.

I honestly don't know what took Meta so long.

Lead Ads have been around for years. They've always been great for reducing friction and generating leads at a lower cost.

But they also had one huge flaw.

Someone would submit the form...and then nothing.

You'd have to email them, call them, send a text, or redirect them to another page to book an appointment. Every extra step meant fewer people actually showed up.

Now Meta is finally fixing that.

Businesses can now let people book an appointment immediately after submitting a Lead Ad, without leaving Facebook. The scheduling widget appears right after the form is completed, and the lead's contact information is already pre-filled. At launch, it supports Calendly and HighLevel, with HubSpot coming soon.

Instead of hoping your sales team reaches the lead before they lose interest, you capture the booking while intent is still at its highest.

It's one of those features that feels incredibly obvious.

Which is exactly why I'm surprised it took Meta this many years to ship it.

Any other feature you can't believe Meta still hasn't shipped?

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 YouTube releases updated ad metrics tools [read more]
📰 TikTok adds new AI creation tools for marketers [read more]
📰 Amazon launches conversational display ads across the Internet [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

3 Growth Levers $10M Brands Should Explore in Q3

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:16:00 +0000

Shopify just released its Spring '26 Edition.

As usual, it came packed with new features, AI announcements, and enough updates to make every e-commerce operator rethink their roadmap for the rest of the year.

At the same time, I've been having a lot of conversations with founders asking the same question:

"Where can we find the next few million dollars of growth?"

This week, we're breaking down some of Shopify's biggest announcements and exploring three growth levers I believe more brands should be paying attention to before Q3.

Let's get into it.

But first, I’m curious:

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Shopify's Spring '26 Edition: Everything You Need to Know
💠 3 Growth Levers $10M Brands Should Explore in Q3
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

3 Growth Levers $10M Brands Should Explore in Q3

Over the last few weeks, I've had multiple conversations with founders asking essentially the same question:

"How do we add another $2M, $3M, or even $5M before the end of the year?"

It's a fair question.

Q3 is around the corner, and if you're sitting around the $10M mark, you're probably not looking for incremental improvements anymore.

You're looking for meaningful growth.

What's interesting is that most founders immediately start looking inside their ad accounts.

Can we improve ROAS?
Can we launch new creatives?
Can we find another audience?

Those things matter.

But if you're trying to unlock millions in additional revenue, the answer is often somewhere else.

Here are three growth levers I'd be looking at.

1. Explore A New Channel Before Everyone Else Does

Most acquisition channels eventually become crowded.

The brands that benefit the most are usually the ones that arrive early.

That's why I believe TikTok Shop deserves serious attention this year.

Many established brands still dismiss it because they think it's only relevant for impulse purchases, low-ticket products, or Gen Z audiences.

Meanwhile, some brands are quietly building entirely new revenue streams through creators, affiliates, and live shopping.

The biggest opportunity isn't necessarily the platform itself.

It's the fact that consumer behavior is changing.

People are discovering products, consuming content, and purchasing in the same environment.

That shortens the customer journey dramatically.

Will TikTok Shop work for every brand?

No.

But if you're a $10M brand and haven't seriously evaluated it yet, I'd argue you're making a strategic mistake.

Because once everyone decides it's important, the easy growth will already be gone.

We've spent the last few months helping brands understand whether TikTok Shop deserves a place in their growth strategy. If it's on your radar for Q3 or Q4, feel free to reach out. Happy to share what we're seeing work.

2. Launch Products Like They're Events

Some of the most successful brands I know generate meaningful spikes in revenue not because they launch more products, but because they launch products better.

However, one of the biggest mistakes I see brands make is treating product launches like inventory updates.

→ A product arrives.
→ It gets added to the website.
→ An email gets sent.

And that's about it.

The best operators do the opposite.

They build anticipation.
They create waitlists.
They educate customers.
They tease the launch across multiple channels.
They create urgency.

They make the launch feel like an event!

A strategic product drop gives existing customers a reason to buy again.

In fact, product launches are one of the few moments when customers actually want to hear from you.

3. Redesign Your Offer Structure

This is probably the most overlooked growth lever of all.

Everyone talks about creative diversity.
Very few people talk about offer diversity.

The reality is that customers buy for different reasons.

Some respond to discounts.
Others respond to bundles.
Others respond to gifting opportunities.
Others care about convenience.
Others care about value.

Yet many brands spend years presenting essentially the same offer to everyone.

The result is predictable.

The business eventually plateaus.

One exercise I recommend is mapping the entire customer journey and documenting every offer customers see from first click to repeat purchase.

Most brands are surprised by what they find.

The same product.
The same promotion.
The same message.

Repeated over and over again.

When you start building a proper value ladder, introducing different offer structures, and aligning messaging to different buying motivations, you create entirely new growth opportunities without acquiring a single additional customer.

And that often becomes the foundation for better ads, better emails, and better conversion rates across the board.

Where I'd Start

If I were running a $10M brand today and trying to add another few million in revenue, I wouldn't start by looking for another ad hack.

I'd ask three questions:

What channel are we underinvesting in?
What products should we launch next?
And are we giving customers enough reasons to buy?

The answers are usually more valuable than any campaign optimization you'll make this quarter.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Q3 is Around the Corner. Is Your Brand Ready?

Over the past few months, we've audited more than 50 7- and 8-figure brands.

Most weren't struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn't.

And the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Acquisition and retention operating independently
Teams focused on tactics instead of priorities

The problem?

Many brands enter Q3 thinking they need more traffic, more campaigns, or more creative.

What they actually need is a stronger foundation.

Because once Q4 arrives, there's very little time to fix what's broken.

The brands that perform best during the second half of the year typically start preparing months before BFCM.

They identify the bottlenecks.

They fix the leaks.

And they build a clear plan for growth.

At BSR, we help brands uncover where revenue and profit are leaking across ads, email, offers, and the customer journey, then build a practical roadmap for the next 90 days.

If you're planning to make a strong push in Q3 and Q4, now is the time to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Shopify's Spring '26 Edition: Everything You Need to Know

Shopify just released its Spring '26 Edition.

As usual, there are hundreds of updates.

But unlike previous Editions, this one has a very clear theme:

Shopify is no longer trying to be just an e-commerce platform.

It's positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for AI-powered commerce.

And if you've been reading this newsletter over the last few months, many of these announcements won't come as a surprise.

We've already talked about AI shopping assistants, product feeds becoming more important than websites, and large language models becoming new discovery channels.

Now Shopify is putting all those pieces together.

AI Shopping Is No Longer Experimental

The biggest announcement is that Shopify's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is now open to all developers.

In simple terms, this allows AI assistants and third-party applications to search products, add items to cart, apply discounts, and complete purchases using Shopify's checkout infrastructure.

The implications are massive.

For years, brands optimized for Google.

Then they optimized for Meta.

Now they're starting to optimize for AI discovery.

And Shopify wants every AI assistant to use its infrastructure when that transaction happens.

The company is also expanding Shopify Catalog, its structured product database that's already feeding information into ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Mode, Shop, and other AI experiences.

New capabilities include image search, richer product attributes, personalized recommendations, and better product matching.

In other words, Shopify is making it easier for AI systems to understand, recommend, and sell products.

Shopify Wants To Become Your Marketing Team

Another announcement that caught my attention is Campaign Autopilot.

Shopify describes it as an AI agent capable of planning, launching, and optimizing marketing campaigns across Meta, Instagram, Shop, email, and additional channels coming soon.

If it delivers on that promise, this could become one of the most disruptive updates for agencies and in-house marketing teams.

We're still early.

And human strategy isn't going anywhere.

But we're clearly moving toward a future where campaign execution becomes increasingly automated and marketers spend more time on positioning, offers, customer journeys, and creative direction.

The same trend appears across other updates announced this week.

Shop Campaigns now expands into channels like ChatGPT, Pinterest, and the open web.

Sidekick continues evolving into a central operating system for merchants.

And Shopify Inbox now includes an AI sales assistant that can answer questions, recommend products, and assist shoppers directly on the storefront.

What Should Brands Do Next?

The takeaway isn't that AI is replacing e-commerce teams.

It's that AI is becoming another discovery and buying environment your brand needs to be present in.

Just like brands had to learn SEO for Google and content for social platforms, they'll now need to learn how products get discovered, understood, and recommended by AI systems.

The brands that start preparing their product data, catalog structure, merchandising, and customer experience today will have a significant advantage as AI commerce becomes more mainstream.

Because increasingly, the question won't be whether customers can find your products.

It'll be whether AI can.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 TikTok's New AI Feature to Create Whole Videos from Text Prompts [read more]
📰 Meta Updates its Livestream Shopping Tools [read more]
📰 Meta introduced AI Mode [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

3 Things Every DTC Brand Can Steal From TikTok Shop Winners

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:16:00 +0000

Over the last few months, two topics keep showing up in conversations with founders:

TikTok Shop and ChatGPT.

One is forcing brands to rethink how they build communities.

The other is quietly laying the foundations of a new advertising platform.

Let's break both down.

But first, I’m curious:

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 3 Things Every DTC Brand Can Steal From TikTok Shop Winners
💠 What's New In ChatGPT Ads
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

3 Things Every DTC Brand Can Steal From TikTok Shop Winners

Over the last few months, we've been spending a lot more time inside TikTok Shop with our clients at BSR.

And the deeper we go, the more we realize that the biggest lessons have very little to do with the platform itself.

Some of the fastest-growing brands on TikTok Shop are doing things that most DTC brands aren't doing at all!!!

Most people look at TikTok Shop and see a sales channel.

I'm starting to think that's the least interesting part.

Over the last few months, we've been studying how some of the top TikTok Shop brands operate.

Listening to founders.
Watching how they structure their teams.
Understanding how they work with creators.

And I kept coming back to the same realization:

The brands winning on TikTok Shop aren't just building revenue.

They're building capabilities.

Capabilities that will likely outlast TikTok Shop itself.

Here are three things that stood out.

1. They're Building Communities, Not Just Sales Channels

Every founder wants a moat.

Something competitors can't easily replicate.

Yet most brands spend their time doing things that are surprisingly easy to copy.

Running promotions.
Increasing ad spend.
Creating content.

Then I started looking at the brands dominating TikTok Shop.

What's interesting is that many of them aren't just building another acquisition channel.

They're building creator communities.
Real ones!

Groups.
Events.
Shared goals.
Ongoing communication.

Hundreds of creators who genuinely care about helping the brand grow.

That's where the moat starts to appear.

Because you can't wake up tomorrow and copy a community.

You have to build it.
Relationship by relationship.
Creator by creator.

And that's exactly why it's valuable.

2. They Obsess Over Creator Retention

Most brands think the hard part is finding creators.

I'm starting to think that's the easy part.

Recently, I listened to an 8-figure founder explain how they manage their creator ecosystem.

They have a Facebook group with more than 100,000 members.

They host weekly calls with over 100 of their top creators!

And what surprised me most wasn't the scale.

It was the purpose.

They're not reviewing KPIs.
They're not discussing commission percentages.

They're keeping creators engaged:

→ Sharing wins
→ Revealing upcoming launches
→ Showing products months before release
→ Aligning everyone around future opportunities

If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

Creators need nurturing too.

A creator can promote hundreds of brands.

Every week there's a new offer.
A higher commission.
A free product.

Someone else trying to get their attention.

Which means the real challenge isn't creator acquisition.
It's creator retention.

Most brands treat creators like a distribution channel.

The best brands seem to treat them like a community.

And that difference compounds over time.

3. They're Playing A Much Bigger Game

One comment from that same founder really stretched my thinking.

While many brands are debating whether to increase Meta budgets by 10%, they're building a 24/7 TikTok Shop live operation. 🤯

Not a few livestreams per week.
Not a couple of hours per day.
Twenty-four hours a day.
Seven days a week. (!!!)

Whether that specific strategy makes sense for your business isn't really the point.

The point is the level of thinking behind it.

The best operators often aren't optimizing the same variables as everyone else.

They're building systems.

Capabilities.
Infrastructure.
They're asking bigger questions.

And that's usually where the biggest opportunities live.

The Bigger Lesson

The lesson here isn't that every brand needs TikTok Shop.

It's that every brand needs to keep expanding its growth engine.

For some brands, TikTok Shop is proving to be one of the most effective ways to do that right now.

Not only because of the incremental revenue it can generate, but because of the capabilities it forces brands to develop along the way.

Community building.
Creator management.
Relationship building at scale.

And those capabilities don't disappear if a platform changes.

If TikTok Shop is on your roadmap for the second half of the year, my team at BSR can help you launch, optimize, or scale it as part of your broader growth strategy.

Just reply to this email or book a call with me here.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Q3 is Around the Corner. Is Your Brand Ready?

Over the past few months, we've audited more than 50 7- and 8-figure brands.

Most weren't struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn't.

And the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Acquisition and retention operating independently
Teams focused on tactics instead of priorities

The problem?

Many brands enter Q3 thinking they need more traffic, more campaigns, or more creative.

What they actually need is a stronger foundation.

Because once Q4 arrives, there's very little time to fix what's broken.

The brands that perform best during the second half of the year typically start preparing months before BFCM.

They identify the bottlenecks.

They fix the leaks.

And they build a clear plan for growth.

At BSR, we help brands uncover where revenue and profit are leaking across ads, email, offers, and the customer journey, then build a practical roadmap for the next 90 days.

If you're planning to make a strong push in Q3 and Q4, now is the time to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

What's New In ChatGPT Ads

This week, OpenAI released several updates to Ads Manager.

The biggest update?

Product feeds. 🙌

Brands can now upload their product catalogs and create ads directly from those feeds.

If you've spent years running Meta or Google campaigns, that should sound familiar.

Product feeds are one of the building blocks of modern advertising platforms. They're what allow platforms to match products with users based on intent and relevance.

That said, the current implementation is still far from what most advertisers are used to on Meta or Google. 😕

At least for now, product feeds require a much more technical setup process, including feed validation and SFTP uploads.

It's not yet the plug-and-play experience most e-commerce marketers expect.

But that's not what I find interesting.

The interesting part is that OpenAI is building the infrastructure in the first place.

And that's exactly what makes this update worth paying attention to.

I know it's very early. And many brands wait until a channel is mature before paying attention to it.

But, by that point, competition is higher, costs are higher, and the easiest opportunities have already been captured.

We're spending a lot of time studying where ChatGPT Ads and conversational commerce are headed because we believe they could become a meaningful acquisition channel for e-commerce brands over the next few years.

To help you get ahead of the curve, I put together a short guide covering how to set up a product feed for ChatGPT Ads, including the technical requirements, feed specifications, and the exact steps required to get your catalog uploaded.

Read it now.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Meta improves AI options on Facebook [read more]
📰 Anthropic Shuts Down Claude Fable 5 [read more]
📰 Visa teams up with OpenAI to let AI agents make payments inside ChatGPT [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

5 Lessons From A Founder Playing The Long Game

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:16:00 +0000

One of the reasons I enjoy hosting the podcast is that every now and then, a conversation forces me to stop and think.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with a founder who has been building his business for more than a decade. What I expected was a conversation about growth, acquisition, and scaling.

What I got instead was a completely different perspective on what actually matters when building a brand.

In today's newsletter, I share five lessons that stood out from our conversation (watch the episode here).

Plus, a look at Instagram's latest Reels ad update and why advertisers should be paying attention.

Let's dive in.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 5 Lessons From A Founder Playing The Long Game
💠 Instagram Just Created A New Ad Placement
💠 The Profit-First Approach to E-Commerce Growth
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

5 Lessons From A Founder Playing The Long Game

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Arshad Bahl, founder of Amrita Foods.

What I expected was a conversation about growth, acquisition, and scaling a CPG brand.

What I got instead was a masterclass in fundamentals.

While many founders spend their time chasing the latest tactics, channels, and AI tools, Arshad has spent more than a decade building his business around something much less exciting, but far more durable:

Great products.
Happy customers.
Strong margins.

Here are five lessons from our conversation that every brand owner should hear.

1. Stop Optimizing For The First Order

One of the most interesting ideas Arshad shared is that he spends far more time thinking about the journey from the first purchase to the third than about acquiring new customers.

Why?

Because he found that once a customer purchases three times, the likelihood they'll continue buying increases dramatically.

Most brands obsess over CAC, creative testing, and scaling budgets, but very few have a clear plan for helping customers build trust after that first order.

If retention is one of your goals this year, it might be worth asking a simple question:

What are we doing today to get customers to purchase #2?

2. Your Best Customers Should Help You Acquire New Ones

Instead of relying exclusively on Meta and Google, Arshad actively encourages existing customers to introduce friends to the brand.

Sometimes that means sending a free box of products with a handwritten note and a personal message.

The tactic itself isn't what stood out to me.

It's the reminder that word-of-mouth is still one of the most powerful acquisition channels available.

Most brands are trying to buy more customers.

Very few are creating systems that encourage customers to bring the next one.

3. Customers Don't Experience Channels

Founders tend to think in channels:

Meta.
Email.
SMS.

Customers don't.

They experience one journey.

The ad they clicked.
The product page they visited.
The package they received.
The email that followed.

To them, it's all one experience.

That's why many growth problems don't live inside a channel. They live in the gaps between them.

4. Sometimes Growth Means Removing Things

At one point, Arshad explained how he intentionally removed products that customers genuinely liked because they distracted the business from higher-margin opportunities.

That's a lesson many founders struggle with.

Growth doesn't always come from adding another product, another channel, or another initiative.

Sometimes the biggest unlock comes from focusing harder on what is already working.

5. Growth Isn't The Goal. Profit Is.

If there was one theme that kept showing up throughout the interview, it was this one.

Arshad believes too many founders have been conditioned to chase growth without asking whether that growth is actually improving the business.

His perspective is simple:

If you can improve margins, retention, and efficiency, you may not need to double revenue to create significantly more value.

In an industry obsessed with top-line growth, that's a useful reminder.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

The Second Half Of The Year Starts Now. Is Your Brand Ready?

Over the past few months, we've audited more than 50 7- and 8-figure brands.

Most weren't struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn't.

And the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Acquisition and retention operating independently
Teams focused on tactics instead of priorities

The problem?

Many brands enter Q3 thinking they need more traffic, more campaigns, or more creative.

What they actually need is a stronger foundation.

Because once Q4 arrives, there's very little time to fix what's broken.

The brands that perform best during the second half of the year typically start preparing months before BFCM.

They identify the bottlenecks.

They fix the leaks.

And they build a clear plan for growth.

At BSR, we help brands uncover where revenue and profit are leaking across ads, email, offers, and the customer journey, then build a practical roadmap for the next 90 days.

If you're planning to make a strong push in Q3 and Q4, now is the time to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Instagram Just Created A New Ad Placement

Instagram recently expanded Reels Post-Loop Ads to all advertisers.

How does it work?

When someone finishes watching a Reel, Instagram can insert a short ad before the Reel starts playing again.

Users see a countdown timer and can skip the ad after a few seconds, creating an experience that feels somewhat similar to YouTube.

Not every Reel is eligible, though.

According to Meta, Post-Loop Ads will only appear on Reels that are longer than 60 seconds. The placement is designed to monetize longer-form content, giving Meta another opportunity to serve ads once a viewer has completed a video.

This placement was first tested with a limited group of advertisers last year. Meta is now making it broadly available through Ads Manager.

Should brands care?

I think so.

Not because this is a revolutionary new format, but because it gives advertisers access to more inventory inside one of Instagram's most important surfaces.

According to Meta, users share more than 4.5 billion Reels every day across Instagram and Facebook, and Reels already account for more than half of the time people spend on Instagram.

That's a massive amount of attention!

This new placement gives Meta another opportunity to monetize that attention, while giving advertisers another way to reach users who are actively consuming video content.

For now, I wouldn't rush to restructure campaigns around it.

I'd simply make sure your video creative is built for Reels and let Meta's algorithm decide when this placement makes sense.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

The Profit-First Approach to E-Commerce Growth

Growth at all costs.

It became the mantra of an entire generation of startups.

But what if it's the wrong goal?

According to Arshad Bahl, the influx of venture capital into CPG fundamentally changed the incentives for many founders.

Instead of focusing on building great products and sustainable businesses, the focus shifted toward rapid growth and eventual exits.

His view is simple:

Profitability should come first.

In this episode of The DTC Insider, Brian Roisentul talks with Arshad Bahl about how venture funding reshaped the consumer products industry.

🎙 Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Google tests Search profiles [read more]
📰 Why so much SEO work no longer drives growth [read more]
📰 How To See If Competitors Are Advertising In Your Customers’ ChatGPT Answers [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

The Simpler Way To Structure Your Meta Ad Account

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:16:00 +0000

A founder recently told me they were testing more than 50 ad variations every month.

My first question wasn't about the ads.

It was about the strategy behind them.

That same principle applies to Meta account structure.

In today's newsletter, we'll cover both: how we structure Meta ad accounts today, and why better results often come from better business decisions, not more creative tests.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 The Simpler Way To Structure Your Meta Ad Account
💠 Before You Test Another Ad, Read This
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

The Simpler Way To Structure Your Meta Ad Account

I've been discussing this a lot lately with prospects, clients, and podcast guests.

As brands prepare for June and Q3, I keep hearing the same questions:

How should we structure our Meta ad account?
Should we run a remarketing campaign?
Should we create more campaigns?
How many ads should we run?

Let's answer them once and for all.

After managing more than $100M in ad spend over the last 12 years, we've found that simpler account structures tend to outperform complex ones.

Before we talk about campaigns, ad sets, and ads, it's important to understand one thing:

Your account structure should exist to help Meta spend money efficiently while helping your business communicate what matters most.

Most brands optimize for account organization.

We optimize for business priorities.

How We Structure Meta Ad Accounts

Long gone are the days when most accounts needed separate TOF (Top of the funnel), MOF, and BOF campaigns.

What has worked best for us is creating campaigns that support specific business goals.

Think products and offers.

For example, if your budget is relatively small, you can start with a single campaign promoting your hero products and offers, supported by a variety of creative angles.

As your budget grows, a first iteration could look like this:

Campaign 1: Product/Offer A
Campaign 2: Product/Offer B
Campaign 3: Catch-All

The first two campaigns are product/offer-specific.

The third promotes everything else you'd like to communicate.

How Many Ad Sets Per Campaign?

One.
Broad.
No need to complicate it.

How Many Ads Per Campaign?

There's no magic number.

What matters is having enough creative variety to give Meta different ways to reach different customer motivations.

Different hooks.
Different angles.
Different formats.
Different creators.

The goal isn't to hit a specific number of ads.

The goal is to create enough variation to allow Meta to find the right message for the right person.

Remember: what triggers you into action won't trigger everyone else.

What Happens As The Account Scales?

As budgets increase, we often separate campaigns by a product/offer-angle combination, because each angle is effectively a different sales argument.

At that point, the account could look something like this:

Campaign 1: Product/Offer A - Gifting Angle
Campaign 2: Product/Offer A - Problem/Solution Angle
Campaign 3: Product/Offer A - Partnership Ads

And so on.

You can also create campaigns for:

Seasonal promotions (BFCM, Father's Day, etc.)
Flash sales
New product launches
Limited-time offers

The structure should evolve as the business evolves.

When Should You Create Another Campaign?

The easiest way to answer this question is to ask yourself:

"Is there something important we want to communicate that Meta isn't spending money on?"

If the answer is yes, you may need another campaign.

For example, let's say you've launched Product E.

Meta keeps allocating budget to Products A, B, and C because they're performing well.

That's not necessarily a problem.

But if Product E is strategically important and isn't receiving enough spend, creating a dedicated campaign may make sense.

Not because Meta is wrong.

Because the business has priorities beyond short-term performance.

Should You Still Run Remarketing Campaigns?

In most cases, no.

If you've configured your Audience Segments properly, go to:

Breakdowns → Audience Segments

There you'll see how Meta is distributing spend across:

New audiences
Engaged audiences
Existing customers

In many cases, Meta is already doing the job for you.

Before creating a dedicated remarketing campaign, check where your budget is already going.

You may discover that Meta is allocating spend to those audiences without needing a separate structure.

Final Thoughts

If there's one thing I'd like you to remember, it's this:

The goal isn't to build the most sophisticated Meta account.

The goal is to build the simplest structure possible while giving Meta enough budget, enough creative variety, and enough clarity around your business priorities.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

The Second Half Of The Year Starts Now. Is Your Brand Ready?

Over the past few months, we've audited more than 50 7- and 8-figure brands.

Most weren't struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn't.

And the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Acquisition and retention operating independently
Teams focused on tactics instead of priorities

The problem?

Many brands enter Q3 thinking they need more traffic, more campaigns, or more creative.

What they actually need is a stronger foundation.

Because once Q4 arrives, there's very little time to fix what's broken.

The brands that perform best during the second half of the year typically start preparing months before BFCM.

They identify the bottlenecks.

They fix the leaks.

And they build a clear plan for growth.

At BSR, we help brands uncover where revenue and profit are leaking across ads, email, offers, and the customer journey, then build a practical roadmap for the next 90 days.

If you're planning to make a strong push in Q3 and Q4, now is the time to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Before You Test Another Ad, Read This

Last week, a founder told me: "Brian, we're testing 50+ ad variations every month."

I asked: "Great...variations based on what?"

Silence.

And honestly, I see this all the time.

Brands spend hours debating:

Should this hook be shorter?
Should we use a UGC video?
Should the CTA be stronger?

Meanwhile, nobody is asking the bigger question:

What does the business need right now???

Which products should we be promoting?
How do we improve our margins?
Is this the right offer for our customers?
Should we create different offers for different customer types?

Because here's the thing.

A lot of brands are treating growth like a creative problem.

It's not.
It's a BUSINESS problem.

I've seen brands spend months testing hooks, angles, thumbnails, creators, headlines, landing page layouts...

Without ever questioning:

The offer
The positioning
The value ladder
The retention experience

And what makes it worse is that they're usually guessing.

Your customers already told you what they want.

You just didn't listen.

It's sitting right there in:

Post-purchase surveys.
Reviews.
CX tickets.
Refund requests.
Live chat conversations.
The founder inbox.

Yet most brands ignore all of that and launch another creative test.

That's why I don't think growth starts in Ads Manager.

It starts with understanding customers.
Then improving the business.
Then improving the message.
And only then worrying about the ad.

Because sometimes the problem isn't your creative.

Sometimes you're trying to optimize a mediocre offer.

And no amount of A/B testing is going to fix that.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 TikTok Now Integrates With Salesforce [read more]
📰 Google Ads Launches Built-in Lead Management Dashboard [read more]
📰 Reddit x Shopify: What You Need to Know [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

How Google Is Rebuilding Shopping Around AI

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 27 May 2026 11:16:00 +0000

Google just made dozens of AI announcements at I/O this year.

From Universal Cart, to AI-generated search ads, to Merchant Center becoming an AI visibility layer, Google is quietly reshaping how products get discovered, compared, and purchased online.

And I think most brands are underestimating what this means for the next few years.

Let’s break it down.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Google Just Introduced Universal Cart
💠 Big Google I/O Announcements
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Google Just Introduced Universal Cart

A multi-merchant cart that follows shoppers across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail.

A shopper can discover products while searching on Google, chatting with Gemini, watching a YouTube review, or browsing Gmail.

As products get added to the cart, Google starts layering information around the purchase.

Price tracking.
Back-in-stock alerts.
Price history.
Product compatibility checks.
Alternative recommendations.
Payment suggestions tied to rewards and cashback offers inside Google Wallet.

Then comes the important part.

When shoppers are ready to buy, they can either check out through Google Pay or continue the purchase on the retailer’s website.

The retailer still owns the transaction and customer relationship.

That’s a meaningful distinction.

One of the reasons OpenAI’s Instant Checkout struggled was because it inserted itself too deeply into the transaction layer.

Google seems to be approaching this differently.

Instead of replacing existing commerce infrastructure, they’re building on top of systems merchants already use, like Merchant Center, Google Pay, and product feeds.

Which probably makes adoption easier for large retailers.

And if you zoom out, this says something bigger about where commerce is moving.

Shopping journeys are becoming more distributed.
Discovery happens in one place.
Research happens somewhere else.
Comparison, cart-building, and checkout may happen across multiple interfaces.

Google is trying to connect those steps into one continuous experience.

That has implications for brands.
Product feeds become more important.
Product data quality becomes more important.
Reviews, pricing consistency, inventory accuracy, and merchandising logic become more important.

Because AI-assisted shopping systems rely on structured information.

The brands that communicate products more clearly across platforms will likely have an advantage as these systems evolve.

Universal Cart rolls out first across Search and Gemini in the US this summer, with YouTube and Gmail integrations expected later. Early retail partners include Nike, Sephora, Walmart, Target, Ulta Beauty, Wayfair, Fenty, and Steve Madden.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Big Google I/O Announcements

Google made a lot of AI announcements at I/O this year.

Here are the main ones you should pay attention to:

Google Is Quietly Building Shopping Agents

One of the more interesting announcements was Gemini Spark.

A persistent AI agent Google is developing that can monitor information, complete tasks, and eventually authorize purchases within limits set by users.

Still early.

But combined with Universal Cart and AI Search (read below), the direction becomes clearer.

Google is preparing for shopping journeys where AI systems assist customers across discovery, comparison, monitoring, and purchase decisions.

Merchant Center Is Becoming An AI Visibility Tool

Google rolled out new Merchant Center features that let brands track how they appear inside AI-driven search experiences.

This is probably one of the clearest signals yet that AI search visibility is becoming its own category.

Because if shoppers increasingly search through conversational interfaces, product data quality becomes much more important.

Titles.
Attributes.
Reviews.
Pricing consistency.
Inventory accuracy.

All of these help AI systems understand, summarize, compare, and recommend products more accurately.

AI-Generated Ads Are Moving Into Search

Google also confirmed they’re testing AI-generated ads directly inside AI Mode and Search.

Meaning sponsored placements are starting to appear inside conversational shopping experiences.

This changes the environment brands compete in.

Instead of competing only for clicks across traditional search results, brands may increasingly compete for placement inside summarized answers and AI-generated product recommendations.

And honestly, attribution probably gets more complicated from here.

Search Is Becoming More Contextual

Google also redesigned Search to process:

Text
Screenshots
Images
Videos
Files
Browser tabs

Inside the same search flow.

This matters because product discovery becomes less dependent on keywords alone.

Someone might upload a screenshot, ask Gemini to compare products, watch YouTube reviews, and continue shopping from there.

That increases the importance of:

Product imagery
UGC
Metadata
Structured feeds
Review quality

Because AI systems need context to understand and recommend products correctly.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 TikTok launches MCP server to let AI agents run campaigns [read more]
📰 AI skills: The next layer of marketing automation [read more]
📰 ChatGPT Becomes Top AI Shopping Tool in US [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

Everyone Can Now Teach AI Agents How To Shop

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 20 May 2026 11:15:00 +0000

Spent last week in Miami and NYC meeting brand founders, and operators from across the DTC space.

And honestly, one thing became very clear:

The brands that will win in the next few years are thinking very differently already.

In today’s newsletter, I break down:

How to actually build a strategic growth plan for the second half of 2026
Why Shopify’s latest AI move changes how products will be discovered online forever

The shift is already happening.
Most brands just haven’t realized it yet.

Let’s go!

The 7-Step Framework To Scale Your Brand in 2026

A few days ago, I came back from an amazing trip to the US to visit clients and people in the DTC space I had only met virtually.

How cool was it to finally meet them all IRL!

Since we were all under the same roof, most of my conversations revolved around one thing: how to achieve strategic growth for the second half of 2026.

It’s a big, complex challenge.

But over the years, I’ve found a way to break it down into a handful of high-level steps.

Step 1: Seasonality Analysis

If possible, pull an overlapping chart with the monthly revenue from the last 2-3 years.

This should give you a much clearer perspective on your seasonalities.

Good months.
Bad months.
Flat periods.
Unexpected spikes.

You can’t plan growth without understanding the natural rhythm of your business first.

Step 2: Add Context

Revenue alone means nothing without context.

Try to remember the key actions you executed during each month and year.

What offers were running?
What ads were scaling?
Did you launch new products?
Were discount codes active?
Did a creator post go viral?
Did inventory issues affect performance?

List those actions for each period.

This is where numbers start turning into insights.

Step 3: Analyze the Patterns

Once you have the data and context ready, analyze it to find patterns.

The goal is simple: identify the actions you should keep doing, and the ones you should stop repeating.

Most brands look at revenue charts.

Very few stop to understand why those numbers happened in the first place.

Step 4: What Now?

Honestly, most brands never even go through Steps 2 and 3.

But even when they do, this is where they usually get stuck.

It’s the classic:

“Last year we did $1M. This year we want to do $2M.”

While planning to do almost exactly the same things they did the previous year. 🤯

That might work for a handful of brands.
But most brands need to do better. Way better.

In the previous step, we identified what actions we should keep or stop doing.

The next steps are about something else entirely:

What new actions can help us unlock the next level of growth?

That’s the real question.

Step 5: Find Your Leverage

In the chart from Step 1, you’ll identify both strong and weak months.

In an ideal world, you’d maximize the good ones and improve the bad ones.

But as we all know, that’s not how it works in practice.

Not every brand can afford to do everything.

There’s always a constraint:

Time.
Money.
Connections.
Operational bandwidth.

So the question becomes:

Among all the possible growth initiatives available to your brand, which ones are actually attainable right now or in the near future?

That’s your leverage.

And finding it matters a lot more than chasing every opportunity you see online.

Step 6: Create Your Own Sales Peaks

Aside from Black Friday, Mother’s Day, and a handful of major e-commerce events, you need to create your own reasons for customers to buy.

A few examples:

Brand anniversaries
Product drops
Limited-time collections
Brand collaborations
Influencer-led campaigns

As mentioned in Step 5, the key is leveraging what’s realistic for your current stage of growth.

For some brands, working with 1,000 creators per month is normal.
Others struggle to partner with just one.

That’s fine.

The goal isn’t to copy another brand’s playbook. It’s to build your own around the resources you actually have.

Step 7: Identify Your “Empty Buckets”

I love this exercise because it’s so simple, yet most brands have never done it.

This applies to almost every area of business, but let me illustrate it with two examples.

Example #1

If I asked you how you acquire customers, you might answer:

“Paid ads.”

But in reality, maybe that means:

80% Meta
20% Google

That immediately opens new questions:

Is there room to scale those channels further?
Are you running TikTok Ads?
Do you have a TikTok Shop?
Are you selling on Amazon?
Are you doing SEO/GEO/AEO?
Are you maximizing your presence across the channels you already use?

Most brands think they’re diversified.

Until they map things out and realize they’re heavily dependent on one acquisition source.

Example #2

Now let’s talk about Meta ads.

If I asked:

“Are you running Meta ads?”

You’d probably answer yes or no.

But if I asked:

“What type of Meta ads are you running?”

Things change completely.

If you mapped every ad into a matrix like this one, you’d probably find entire buckets that are either empty or barely explored.

And that’s usually where the opportunities are hiding.

Step 8: Put Everything Together

At this point, you’ve:

Identified your seasonalities
Added context to the data
Found patterns
Identified your leverage
Created potential sales peaks
Found your empty buckets

Now it’s time to prioritize and execute.

If done properly, this exercise should give you a list of strategic actions capable of moving the business forward.

Some books call these “lead measures.”

I just call them the actions that actually create growth.

And yes, if this sounds like a ton of work, it’s because it is.

That’s exactly why many brands stay stuck between $1M-$3M for years, while others go from zero to 8+ figures in a relatively short period of time.

--
If this feels too overwhelming for you and your team, the right move might be finding a growth partner who has gone through this process hundreds of times before.

If you think that could be us at BSR, let’s chat.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Everyone Can Now Teach AI Agents How To Shop

On my podcast, we’ve been talking about Agentic Commerce for years.

Now, it’s becoming reality.

This week, Shopify released its new “Agentic Commerce” infrastructure, allowing developers, brands, and AI systems to interact directly with Shopify stores through natural language.

Here’s what it actually means 👇️

AI agents can now:

Search products
Compare options
Build carts
Ask questions
Complete purchases
Track orders

Without the customer ever browsing your website traditionally.

And this is the important part:

The winners won’t necessarily be the brands with the prettiest websites anymore.

They’ll be the brands that are easiest for agents to understand, recommend, and buy from.

That’s a completely different game.

For years, brands optimized for:

Humans scrolling
Humans clicking
Humans browsing

Now they’ll also need to optimize for:

AI discovery
Structured product data
Conversational recommendations
Agent-friendly shopping experiences

This is why I keep saying that commerce is decentralizing faster than most people realize.

The storefront is no longer the only storefront.

Shopping is starting to happen:

Inside ChatGPT
Inside Gemini
Inside Copilot
Inside AI assistants we haven’t even heard about yet

And Shopify clearly sees where things are going.

Their new infrastructure, developed in partnership with Google, is built around something called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which basically creates a standardized way for AI agents to communicate with stores.

In simpler words:

Instead of every AI company building custom integrations with millions of stores, everyone speaks the same language.

That changes everything.

Because once shopping becomes standardized for AI agents, distribution changes completely.

The future customer journey might look something like this:

“Find me the best minimalist carry-on luggage under $300 with great reviews and fast shipping.”

And the AI agent handles the rest.

No homepage.
No navigation menu.
No category browsing.

Just intent.

This doesn’t mean websites disappear tomorrow!

But it does mean that the way products get discovered is starting to change right now.

And most brands are still optimizing for a world that’s already evolving underneath them.

So the question is no longer:

“How do we get more traffic?”

It’s slowly becoming:

“How do we become the product AI agents want to recommend?”

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

Brands Can Now Advertise on ChatGPT

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 13 May 2026 10:41:00 +0000

This is a shorter-than-usual newsletter because it’s my last day in the US, and I honestly didn’t have time to catch up on all the news, as I usually do.

But I did something more meaningful: I caught up with people I work with in real life after a long time.

Last week, I flew from my home country, Argentina, to visit clients, partners, and people I know from my podcast or LinkedIn.

I thought it was going to be great. That’s an understatement.

We’ve normalized, and even glorified, remote work, but meeting people in person goes a long way. I didn’t log into a virtual meeting for 30 minutes to go over an agenda. Instead, I enjoyed unique moments with each of them. And that’s something you can’t replicate online.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Brands Can Now Advertise on ChatGPT
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Brands Can Now Advertise on ChatGPT

Brands can now advertise on ChatGPT.

Here's how it works:

For years, Meta has been the dominant acquisition channel for most brands I know.

Many tried finding a second channel with the same scale and efficiency.

Most failed.

But ChatGPT is something different:

Intent + context + decision-making.

People don’t just browse here.

They ask:
→ What should I buy?
→ Where should I travel?
→ Which software should I use?
→ How do I solve this problem?

And the amount of context these platforms have on users is unprecedented.

ChatGPT is becoming:
→ A search engine
→ A shopping assistant
→ A business advisor
→ A travel planner
→ A daily operating system for millions

That changes advertising completely.

What’s even more interesting is how the campaigns reportedly work.

Right now there are only two campaign types:
→ Reach Campaigns (CPM)
→ Click Campaigns (CPC)

But the setup process is very different from traditional ad platforms.

Advertisers don’t target keywords.

They provide:
→ Context hints
→ Conversation categories
→ User situations
→ Intent signals

Meaning you’re not targeting searches.

You’re targeting moments.

Things like:
→ “Help me choose a CRM”
→ “Best supplements for marathon training”
→ “I need a gift for my wife”
→ “How do I improve retention?”

That’s a very different layer of intent.

My personal take?

I’m usually not a fan of Reach or Click objectives.

On most platforms, they tend to optimize toward a subset of users who are more likely to click…not necessarily buy.

But ChatGPT could be different.

Or maybe the real unlock comes once Conversion objectives are enabled.

Either way…

There’s no harm in testing it.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Meta is preparing to launch AI agents to undertake tasks for users [read more]
📰 Amazon opens its global logistics network to all businesses [read more]
📰 Google announces AI updates [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

The Beginning of the Post-Dashboard Era

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 06 May 2026 11:47:00 +0000

This week, two things became clear:

→ You won’t need dashboards to run your business.
→ And you won’t need Ads Manager to run your ads.

Shopify is turning prompts into your new backend.
And Meta is turning ChatGPT and Claude into your new media buying interface.

The question isn’t whether this changes things.
It’s whether you’re building an edge, or just following the default.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Shopify Just Changed the Game (Again)
💠 Meta Just Plugged ChatGPT and Claude Into Your Ad Account
💠 From Shopify Startup to Walmart Shelves: Building a Category Leader
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Shopify Just Changed the Game (Again)

What.a.week for Shopify!

In case you missed it, here's what happened in the last few days:

Shopify x ChatGPT & Claude

On Monday, Shopify President - Harley Finkelstein - announced Shopify's integration with ChatGPT and Claude.

What does this mean?

Now, Merchants can:

1) Analytics, on demand

Query your entire business like an analyst, without dashboards.
Sales, AOV, LTV, conversion, traffic, returns, discounts, all of it.
Slice by product, channel, country, device, time period.
Compare performance across periods when ShopifyQL allows it.

2) Product management

Create, edit, and manage products end-to-end.
Variants, SKUs, pricing, descriptions, images.
Bulk actions included.
You can literally run your catalog from a prompt.

3) Inventory control

Check stock by product, variant, or location.
Update inventory safely with real-time awareness of current levels.

4) Collections

Build and manage collections, manual or automated.
Add products, tweak rules, update merchandising.

5) Discounts

Spin up discount codes with targeting built in.
Set rules like minimum spend, quantity, customer segments, and time windows.

6) Orders and customers

Pull recent orders or deep-dive into a single one.
Segment customers by behavior, spend, geography, or tags.

7) Store admin + advanced ops

Access store-level data instantly.
Switch between stores.
Even run custom GraphQL queries when native actions fall short.

Shopify's AI Readiness Tool

Shopify just dropped a free tool to answer one question:

Can AI agents actually shop your site?

Paste any store URL, no login needed, and it runs 31 checks across:

AI discoverability
Product schema
Transaction readiness
Trust signals
Operational maturity

It flags what most brands miss:

Missing structured data, invisible policies, no LLM.txt, weak signals for agents.
Then it prioritizes fixes using an impact vs effort framework.

Spoiler: If your store is on Shopify, then it's "AI ready". 😉

Whatnot Integration

Whatnot, the live shopping platform, just plugged directly into Shopify.

Translation: Any Shopify brand can now sell via livestreams without breaking their backend.

Products, inventory, and orders sync automatically.

No more duplicate catalogs. No manual reconciliation.

Live shows happen on Whatnot.

Everything else stays inside Shopify.

--
If you need an experienced growth partner to help your brand grow in Q2, let’s chat.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Meta Just Plugged ChatGPT and Claude Into Your Ad Account

Right after the Meta x Manus deal fell apart, they moved fast.

They launched Ads AI Connectors (open beta).

What changed:

You can now run Meta ads from the AI tools you already use.

ChatGPT, Claude, or anything in your workflow.

No APIs.
No dev work.
No setup friction. (Well, only a little bit, for now)

What you can actually do:

Pull real campaign data and performance reports
Create and edit campaigns using plain English
Manage product catalogs and fix feed issues
Diagnose signal quality and tracking gaps

Two layers now:

Meta AI assistant = guidance inside Ads Manager
AI connectors = execution outside of it

You can use both, depending on workflow.

My take:

This doesn’t make media buyers better. It exposes them.

Most people will do the same thing:

“Audit this account.”
“Fix performance.”
“Improve ROAS.”

And then…they’ll follow whatever the AI says.

That’s the trap.

Because now your “strategy” is just Meta’s default playbook, delivered through a different interface.

Same recommendations.
Same structure.
Same outcomes.

Just faster.

This will make average media buyers lazier, not better.

They’ll outsource thinking.
They’ll accept outputs without pressure-testing them.
They’ll stop building conviction.

And when everyone uses the same prompts…everyone gets the same answers.

So where’s the edge?

Not in prompting.

In training the system to think like you.

The best operators will:

Feed the model their own frameworks
Define what “good” looks like beyond Meta’s defaults
Build constraints around budget allocation, testing logic, and scaling rules
Override generic recommendations with context the model doesn’t have

Instead of asking: “What should I do?”

They’ll tell the model: “Operate like this.”

That’s the shift:

From using AI as a consultant

→ to using AI as an operator trained on your playbook

Because, after all, here’s the truth:

The tool is the same for everyone.
The advantage comes from the system you bring into it.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

From Shopify Startup to Walmart Shelves: Building a Category Leader

Getting into Walmart wasn’t a straight line.

It took years of outreach.

No responses.

And a long wait.

Until one opportunity opened the door.

Today, they’re selling in Walmart stores.

In this episode of The DTC Insider, Brian Roisentul sits down with Samuel Goodman - co-founder of Cheeky - to break down what it really takes to break into big-box retail.

We talk about:

Starting with no experience and validating through customer calls.
Building and scaling a Shopify-first brand to thousands of customers.
Expanding into new product lines based on customer demand.

🎙 Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Agentic Commerce on Shopify: How It Works [read more]
📰 China Blocks Meta-Manus Deal: What Now? [read more]
📰 Instagram updates algorithm to benefit original creators [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

The “Know-It-All” Era

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:16:00 +0000

AI didn’t just get better.

It got connected to your data.

And that’s changing how decisions get made, faster than most teams can process.

The question is…are those decisions actually accurate?

Let’s break it down.

Topics we'll cover today:

💠 The “Don’t Know-It-All” Era
💠 Meta’s CAPI Just Got Easier
💠 This brand turned GLP-1 into a Listerine Strip
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

The “Don’t Know-It-All” Era

Something has changed in the last few months.

Clients are showing up with answers.

Not questions.

“Sales dropped. Here’s what ChatGPT says we should do. Thoughts?”

And it’s not just marketing.

I’ve heard the same from doctors.
From architects.
Even from lawyers.

People walk in with AI-generated analysis, recommendations, even full plans.

And then ask the expert to validate it.

This is the new dynamic.

I call it the “Don’t Know-It-All” era.

Because on the surface, it looks like people are more informed.

But in reality, they’re often more confident than they should be.

And that’s where things start to break.

What changed?

It’s not just that people got better at using AI.
It’s that AI got connected.

Shopify.
Meta.
Google.

Now it’s not a blank prompt anymore.

It’s your actual data.

Plugged in.
Processed.
Turned into a “strategy” in seconds.

That’s the turning point.

Because now, getting a report is effortless.

And when something is effortless, people use (abuse) it, trusting it more than they should.

To be clear, I’m bullish on AI.

We use it every day.

But there’s a gap most people don’t see yet:

AI is good at sounding right.
Not always at being right.

Especially in growth marketing.

Most of the recommendations we see are generic, disconnected from the actual business context, or simply wrong.

And yet…they come with conviction.

That’s the dangerous part.

Because now, instead of spending time solving the problem, we spend time explaining why the proposed solution doesn’t make sense.

One client even told us:

“Every week, we’ll send you Claude’s report so you can analyze its recommendations.”

That’s far from efficient.

Because it shifts the work from strategy…to correction.

From thinking…to defending.

And that’s not where growth happens.

But here’s the reality:

This isn’t going away.

If anything, it’s just getting started.

So the question isn’t whether clients will use AI.

They will.

The question is how you integrate it without getting in your own way.

Because for now, the “human in the loop” still matters.

Context still matters.
Judgment still matters.

And most importantly:

Trust still matters.

If you’ve chosen the right partner, the goal isn’t to second-guess every decision with an AI report.

It’s to let them do what they do best.

The same way you do what you do best.

PS: Is this happening to you to? Tell me more by replying to this email.

--
If you need an experienced growth partner to help your brand grow in Q2, let’s chat.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Meta’s CAPI Just Got Easier

Meta just made Conversions API a lot easier to implement. 🙌

They’ve rolled out a “no-cost, one-click” version.

Here’s the breakdown:

But if you’re still relying only on the Meta Pixel, especially without strong dev support, this is worth a look.

You can now enable a basic CAPI setup directly inside Events Manager. No complex implementation needed.

It creates a server-side connection that sends your web data to Meta, alongside the Pixel.

Setup is straightforward:

Go to Events Manager → Connect Data → Web → choose or create a dataset → select “Set up with Meta.”

Once it’s live, all your Pixel events are automatically shared through CAPI as well, with built-in deduplication.

In short, it’s Meta lowering the barrier to better tracking.

PS: it’s not available to all accounts yet, but I’m sure it’ll soon be.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

This brand turned GLP-1 into a Listerine Strip

GLP-1 is everywhere right now.

But what if there was a different way?

A plant-based alternative.
No injections.
No pills.

Just a strip that dissolves in your mouth.

That’s exactly what this brand is building.

In this episode of The DTC Insider, Brian Roisentul sat down with with Lekha Vyas about SynQ Wellness bringing a vegan alternative to GLP-1 in a Listerine-style strip.

We talk about:

The idea behind “GLP-1 in a strip”.
Why delivery format changes everything.
How this could disrupt the category.

Tune in. 👇️

🎙 Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 ChatGPT Ads Now Offer CPC Bidding Between $3 And $5 [read more]
📰 Google says its AI-powered ads boosts sales by 80% [read more]
📰 Tiktok Just Announced New Features for Brands [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

The Brand With Big Goals, and No Plan

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:16:00 +0000

In May, I’ll be in Miami and NYC. 🙌

(First time back in a few years.)

I’ve been working with US brands for many years now...from Argentina.

Different time zones.
No in-person meetings.
No events.
No “being there”.

Just calls, Slack, and a lot of relationships built remotely.

It works. But it’s not the same.

This trip is about finally meeting in person a lot of people I’ve interacted with over the years.

Clients.
Podcast guests.
People from this network.

Turning all of that into some great IRL moments. 💪

If you’re in those cities and there’s something you think I should see while I’m there, let me know.

Topics we'll cover today:

💠 The Brand With Big Goals, and No Plan
💠 Stop Blaming Meta
💠 Why most brands don't connect with their customers (and how to fix it)
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

The Brand With Big Goals, and No Plan

We recently audited a luxury brand.

Less than a year old. Strong positioning. Solid product.

The kind of brand that should scale.

We started with the basics:

Full audit across ads, website, offer, and messaging, then moved into building a 90-day forecast and growth roadmap.

That’s where things started to break.

No Plan, But Clear Expectations

When we asked about their plans for the next 90 days, there wasn’t a clear answer.

No defined initiatives. No campaigns. No resource allocation.

But when we asked about revenue goals, those were very clear. And very ambitious.

This gap shows up more often than you’d expect.

There’s a tendency to treat goals as targets to hit, rather than outcomes of specific actions.

But growth doesn’t work that way.

If the actions aren’t defined, the outcome isn’t predictable.

No Levers to Pull

So we tried to identify potential growth levers:

Creators or influencers? Not a priority.
New product launches? None planned.
Promotions or key dates? Not considered.
Differentiation to highlight? Unclear.

At that point, the issue isn’t channel execution.

It’s a lack of direction.

And without direction, there’s nothing to optimize.

The Hidden Conversion Leak

But here’s where it gets more interesting.

Because even in the absence of new initiatives, there are almost always existing leaks in the system.

In this case, we found one immediately on the website.

A product on the collections page displayed a price range, with no explanation.

Once inside the PDP, it became clear why.

The “Select size” dropdown wasn’t selecting sizes.

It was switching between entirely different products and bundle configurations.

Some options represented 2 units. Others 4. Different combinations, all grouped under one product.

The displayed price? Based on a minimum quantity, not a single unit.

From a user perspective, this creates friction at the worst possible moment.

You don’t understand what you’re buying. You don’t trust the pricing. You hesitate.

And hesitation kills conversion.

So we flagged this as a top-priority fix.

No new creatives. No extra spend. Just removing confusion.

Why This Matters

These two issues are connected.

On one side, there’s no clear plan for growth.
On the other, the existing experience is leaking demand.

Most brands focus on adding more traffic.

But growth is a system.

It starts with direction, identifying which levers to pull.

Then it moves to execution, making sure the current journey actually converts.

If either side breaks, performance stalls.

A Simple Framework to Apply

Before asking “How do we grow?”, ask:

What are we actually trying to do in the next 90 days?
What levers are we willing to pull to get there?
Where are we currently losing conversions?

If those three aren’t clear, scaling becomes guesswork.

And guesswork doesn’t compound.

Growth does.

--
If you need an experienced growth partner to help your brand grow in Q2, let’s chat.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Stop Blaming Meta

Customer acquisition is more expensive.

CPMs are up. CAC is up. Competition is everywhere.

Yet…some brands are still growing.

Not because they cracked a new ad hack.

But because they changed how they think about growth.

Let me explain.

It’s not about channels anymore

Most brands are still asking:

“Should we focus on Meta, TikTok, or Google?”

This brand isn’t.

Yes, they run paid ads.

But they’re also:

Selling through retail partners
Working with larger online distributors
Building organic content that actually connects

Different approach.

Instead of asking:

“How do we scale spend?”

They’re asking:

“How do we create connection at every touchpoint?”

That’s a completely different game.

Their best-performing content isn’t polished

One of their top-performing pieces of content?

A raw video from a factory.

No lighting. No script. Not “on brand.”

Just real.

And it outperformed everything else.

Why?

Because it didn’t feel like marketing.

It felt like proximity.

That’s what most brands are missing.

They optimize for aesthetics.

Customers optimize for trust.

Retention isn’t a channel. It’s a system

This is where things get interesting.

Like most brands, they “talk” about retention.

Unlike most brands, they actually built for it.

Here’s what that looks like:

Live chat to remove friction in real time
A rewards program that drives repeat purchases
A second-order incentive built into the journey
Premium packaging with handwritten notes

Individually, none of this is groundbreaking.

Together?

It creates a completely different experience.

And that’s the point.

Retention isn’t email.

It’s how the customer feels after buying.

The real lever: appreciation

There’s a subtle shift here most brands overlook.

Customers don’t just want a good product.

They want to feel valued.

That’s why:

Rewards programs work
Notes work
Better packaging works

Not because of the tactic.

Because of what it signals.

“We care about you.”

Most brands try to extract value.

The best ones signal appreciation.

Small brands are playing the wrong game

There’s also a structural advantage most brands ignore.

If you’re a small team, you can:

Move faster
Test faster
Ship faster

No approvals. No layers.

But instead, many brands try to act like big companies.

Polished. Slow. Overthought.

That’s a mistake.

Speed is your advantage.

Use it.

The shift most brands still haven’t made

For years, growth = acquisition.

Now?

Growth = acquisition + retention + experience.

The brands that are still growing understand this.

They’re not relying on one channel.

They’re building systems.

And those systems compound.

If your growth has stalled, it’s probably not your ads.

It’s everything around them.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Why most brands don't connect with their customers (and how to fix it)

"We want to build a sustainable brand."

It’s something many founders say.

But often, it’s treated as an add-on, instead of a core decision.

Real sustainability goes beyond materials.

It’s about thinking through every step:

→ Where things come from
→ How they’re made
→ How long they last for the customer

That’s where real differentiation happens.

New episode with Lauren DeCarli, founder of Paneros Clothing on The DTC Insider is out now.

🎙 Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 How advertisers are thinking about Meta’s affiliate tool rollout [read more]
📰 OpenAI builds tool to track whether ChatGPT ads convert [read more]
📰 TikTok's Guide to Create TikTok ads in Canva [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

Shopify Just Opened the Door to AI-Driven Execution

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:25:00 +0000

What a week for the e-commerce ecosystem!

Two big shifts happened this week:

One on the backend.
One on the frontend.

→ Shopify is moving toward faster, AI-driven execution.
→ Instagram is doubling down on creators as a performance channel.

Things are getting faster. And more integrated.

Here’s what you need to understand before everyone else catches up.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Shopify Just Opened the Door to AI-Driven Execution
💠 Instagram is Catching Up to TikTok Shop
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Shopify Just Opened the Door to AI-Driven Execution

Shopify just released its AI Toolkit.

And for the first time, they’re natively integrating with tools like:

Claude
Cursor
Codex
Gemini

What does this mean for brands?

Instead of developers jumping between:

Docs
APIs
Shopify admin
Trial and error

These tools can now plug directly into Shopify’s system, understand how it works, and help execute changes with much more context.

Here are a few practical examples of what this unlocks:

Updating hundreds of product descriptions based on a new positioning
Cleaning up collections and merchandising logic across the catalog
Tagging products dynamically based on margin, inventory, or performance
Running bulk SEO optimizations across PDPs
Generating custom reports by pulling specific store data
Supporting faster theme or landing page changes for new campaigns

Not by replacing developers.
But by giving them leverage.

It’s also important to understand how this is different from what Shopify already has.

You might be thinking about Sidekick.

Sidekick lives inside Shopify.
You ask it for help, it suggests changes, and you approve them.

It’s built for merchants.

The AI Toolkit is different.

It's built for developers, and lives outside Shopify.

It connects external AI tools directly to Shopify’s system and helps execute work faster at the development level.

Shopify is laying the groundwork for a world where execution is no longer the limiting factor.

And when that happens, growth becomes a function of how well you decide what to execute, not how long it takes to do it.

--
If you need an experienced growth partner to help your brand grow in Q2, let’s chat.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Instagram is Catching Up to TikTok Shop

This was inevitable.

(And I'm still not sure why it didn't happen earlier.)

Instagram just rolled out native affiliate commissions for Reels.

Creators can now add affiliate links directly to their content and earn a commission on sales, without leaving the platform.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this before.

TikTok built this exact model with TikTok Shop back in 2023.

Creators promote products.
They earn commissions.
Content drives sales natively inside the platform.

It worked.

And now Instagram is following the same playbook.

But there are important differences. ⚠️

TikTok Shop is a full commerce ecosystem.

It handles:

Checkout inside the app
Payments
Logistics integrations
Creator marketplaces

It’s designed to close the entire transaction loop natively.

Instagram is not there yet.

With Reels affiliate links:

Checkout still often happens on your website
You’re still responsible for fulfillment and backend operations
It’s more of a native distribution + monetization layer, not full-stack commerce

Here’s what changed.

Before, if you wanted to run influencer or affiliate campaigns on Instagram:

You had to manage everything externally.
Track links manually.
Handle payments off-platform.

Now:

→ Discovery, content, and conversion happen in one place.
→ Creators are directly incentivized to sell.
→ The platform closes the loop.

This is already live in:

US
Brazil
India
Indonesia
Thailand

What this means for brands is simple:

The creator as a sales channel is no longer a TikTok-only opportunity.

It’s becoming a standard model across platforms.

And here’s where most brands will get it wrong.

They’ll treat this like influencer marketing or paid partnerships.

Instead of what it actually is:
A performance channel.

Because the playbook is already proven:

→ Recruit a high volume of micro creators.
→ Give them real economic upside, commissions, not flat fees.
→ Let content do the selling.

The brands that already figured this out on TikTok are ahead.

Because they don’t need to learn a new strategy.

They just need to deploy it on another platform.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Meta simplifies Pixel setup with official Google Tag Manager template [read more]
📰 YouTube tests 90-second unskippable ads on CTV [read more]
📰 Meta Superintelligence launches Muse Spark AI model [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

The 3 Mistakes That Will Kill Your Growth in Q2

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 11:16:00 +0000

Shopify just made a quiet move that most brands are going to overlook.

At the same time…

We’re already in Q2, and the same mistakes keep showing up.

Plans built on guesses.
Teams optimizing ads instead of the business.
And brands focusing on the first purchase while ignoring everything that happens after.

This week’s newsletter is about that disconnect.

What’s quietly changing in the ecosystem…

And what you should actually be focusing on right now.

Check it out. 👇️

(No podcast episode this week, will be back this Friday!)

Topics we'll cover today:

💠 The 3 Mistakes That Will Kill Your Growth in Q2
💠 Shopify Just Made a Quiet but Very Important Move
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

The 3 Mistakes That Will Kill Your Growth in Q2

Q2 is where most brands either scale efficiently or burn cash.

And after working with hundreds of brands, I keep seeing the same pattern.

It’s not tactical mistakes.
It’s strategic ones.

Let’s break them down.

1. You’re Setting Goals Without Context

Most brands don’t have a planning problem.
They have a context problem.

“I want to grow 20% this quarter.”
Okay…based on what?

What happened last Q2?
What actually drove revenue?
Which actions moved the needle?

If you don’t have that context, your plan is just a guess.

And guesses don’t scale.

The brands that actually grow don’t just set targets.

They reverse-engineer them.

2. You Think Customer Acquisition = Ads

This one is everywhere.

Revenue drops → change ads.
Performance dips → launch new creatives.

But not every business problem is an ad problem.

Ads are just one piece.

The real levers are:
→ Offer
→ Messaging
→ Value ladder

That’s what actually drives performance.

If those are off, your ads won’t fix it.

You’re optimizing the wrong thing.

3. You’re Ignoring the Customer Journey

Most brands are obsessed with the first purchase.

Very few think about what happens after.

But that’s where the real leverage is.

You can map:
→ What people buy first
→ What they buy next
→ How long it takes between purchases

And once you see that, everything changes.

Your offers improve.
Your email flows make more sense.
Your timing gets sharper.

You stop guessing.
You start building systems.

The Bottom Line

In the end, there are only 3 ways to grow:

→ Acquire more customers
→ Increase AOV
→ Maximize LTV

That’s it.

The brands that win in Q2 aren’t doing more.
They’re just doing the right things better.

--
If you need an experienced growth partner to help your brand grow in Q2, let’s chat.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Shopify Just Made a Quiet but Very Important Move

Shopify just made a quiet but very important move.

They brought B2B to every plan.

For the first time, you can run wholesale and DTC in the same backend, without apps, without workarounds.

And most brands are going to miss what this actually means.

This is not a “feature update”.
This is a shift in how brands should think about growth.

Why This Matters

B2B is not new.
But it’s been inaccessible.

Too complex.
Too fragmented.
Too dependent on patches and manual processes.

So most brands just ignored it.

But here’s the reality:

The global B2B e-commerce market is MASSIVE.

And more importantly…it’s one of the fastest ways to increase LTV.

Some brands see significantly higher reorder frequency from B2B vs DTC.

This is not about adding a new channel.
This is about unlocking repeat revenue at scale.

What Shopify Actually Unlocked

With this rollout, you can now:

→ Set up wholesale customers (companies)
→ Create custom pricing (catalogs)
→ Offer volume discounts and payment terms
→ Let buyers self-serve and reorder

All natively inside Shopify.

No more spreadsheets.
No more email orders.
No more patchwork systems.

One backend.
One source of truth.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 How Meta’s AI push is changing ad creation [read more]
📰 What OpenAI’s TBPN deal reveals about branded entertainment’s limits [read more]
📰 Google says its AI-powered ads help some brands lift online sales by 80% [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

Shopify Brands Are Now Shoppable Inside ChatGPT

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 11:16:00 +0000

Two platforms.

Two very different bets on how people will shop next.

Shopify is turning AI into a discovery engine, plugging your catalog into ChatGPT and beyond.

Meta is turning AI into a conversion engine, collapsing the path from click to purchase inside its apps.

Same direction.
Completely different layers of the funnel.

And if you zoom out, this is what’s actually happening:

The traditional journey, search, click, browse, decide, is getting rebuilt by AI.

In this newsletter, I break down what each move means, and where brands should actually pay attention.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Shopify Brands Are Now Shoppable Inside ChatGPT
💠 Meta’s Second Shot at Commerce
💠 Avoid These 5 Costly Mistakes in Q2 Scaling
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Shopify Brands Are Now Shoppable Inside ChatGPT

Shopify just made its entire merchant ecosystem discoverable inside ChatGPT.

You're reading well:

Not checkout.
Discovery.

Here’s how it actually works:

→ A user asks ChatGPT for a product
→ ChatGPT pulls relevant options from Shopify’s catalog
→ The user clicks
→ The purchase happens on the brand’s own storefront (inside an in-app browser)

So yes, it feels native.

But the control stays with the merchant.

That means:

Your bundles still apply
Your subscriptions still work
Your checkout experience stays intact
Your customer relationship is still yours

That last one is the key.

This is not “agentic commerce.”

It’s agentic discovery + embedded checkout.

And that’s a much better model.

Because the moment you remove brands from the transaction, you commoditize them.
Shopify avoided that.

Now zoom out.

This isn’t just about ChatGPT.

With Shopify’s Agentic plan now fully rolled out, your products can show up across:

ChatGPT
Microsoft Copilot
Google AI Mode
Gemini

In other words:

Your next top-of-funnel channel might not be Meta, Google, or TikTok.

It might be AI.

And here’s the uncomfortable implication:

If your product positioning isn’t clear…
If your offer isn’t differentiated…
If your catalog isn’t structured properly…

You won’t show up.
Or worse, you’ll show up and lose.

Because in an AI-driven discovery layer, there’s no scroll-stopping hack.

Only signal.

So while everyone is still debating CAC on paid channels…

A new acquisition layer is quietly forming.

And most brands aren’t optimizing for it yet.

--
If you need an experienced growth partner to help your brand grow in Q2, let’s chat.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

Over the past few months, we’ve audited over 50 7fig+ brands.

Most weren’t struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn’t.

And in many cases, the same patterns kept showing up:

Rising CAC with no structural changes
Leaky customer journeys
Offers that stopped converting at scale
Channels working in silos

That’s what keeps brands stuck in plateaus, even while spending more.

Q2 is where this compounds.

You either fix the system…
Or you pay more to get the same results.

At BSR, we work with 7- and 8-figure brands to identify where profit is leaking across ads, email, and the customer journey, and build a clear roadmap to scale efficiently.

If you’re planning to push growth in Q2, this is the moment to get the foundation right.

Let’s talk

Meta’s Second Shot at Commerce

Meta just announced it’s testing an AI-driven shopping experience on Facebook and Instagram.

And if you only look at the surface, it feels like TikTok Shop all over again.

But it’s not.

Here’s what they’re actually building:

You click on an ad…

Instead of going to a landing page, you get a native pop-up experience with:

Product details
Brand info
AI-summarized reviewsRecommended products
Personalized discounts

Then:

→ One-tap checkout

Why is it different from TikTok Shop?

TikTok Shop built a closed commerce ecosystem.

Meta is building a conversion layer on top of ads.

That means:

TikTok owns the transaction
Meta lets you own it
TikTok requires you to operate inside their system
Meta plugs into your existing stack

And then there’s the second layer:

Creators.

Meta is expanding its affiliate ecosystem across:

Amazon, eBay, Temu (U.S.)
Mercado Libre (LATAM)
Shopee (Asia)

Plus access to product catalogs across 22 countries for Reels creators.

So now you get:

Creator → product → AI-assisted checkout → one tap purchase

All inside Meta.

Shopify is turning AI into a discovery engine.
Meta is turning AI into a conversion engine.

Two different plays.
Same direction.

And if you’re still thinking in terms of:

“Click → Landing page → PDP → Checkout”

You’re already behind how these platforms are evolving.

--
If you own or work for a DTC brand and need help scaling profitably in Q2, feel free to book a discovery call and we'll see how we can help.

Avoid These 5 Costly Mistakes in Q2 Scaling

Q1 is a wrap.

For some brands, it was a success.

For others, they’re already behind on their New Year’s resolutions, and that hurts.

But you have another chance. It’s only April, not October, so you can draw a line in the sand and fix things by properly planning Q2.

If you want to avoid winging it, listen to this episode of The DTC Insider, where I break down the biggest mistakes I see brands make when scaling in Q2.

Check it out!

🎧️ Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Introducing More Ways to Tap into Shopping on Reddit [read more]
📰 Shopify launches Tinker for building brand assets and store visuals [read more]
📰 OpenAI launches a newly redesigned shopping experience [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

Manus is Now Available to All Meta Advertisers

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:16:00 +0000

Most brands are still running Meta like it’s 2022.

Manual setups.
Over-segmentation.
Too much control.

At the same time, Meta is going in the opposite direction.

More AI.
More automation.
Less need for manual inputs.

And now, with tools like Manus, it’s not just optimizing campaigns.
It’s starting to operate them.

This creates a gap between how brands are running ads, and how the platform actually works today.

Let’s fix that.

Topics we'll cover today:

💠 How To Structure Your Meta Ad Account in Q2
💠 Manus is Now Available to All Meta Advertisers
💠 The Most Overlooked Growth Lever in E-commerce (And It’s Not Your Ads)
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

How To Structure Your Meta Ad Account in Q2

There's a new way to structure your Meta ad account.

In the last 2 years, Meta has heavily incorporated AI systems to enhance the overall performance of the ad campaigns:

⤷ GEM (The Super Brain): according to Meta, "Imagine having a super brain that can read an entire library of books in seconds, understand the relationships between all the characters, remember every single detail, and connect the details into an understanding of the sequence of events a person goes through across all types of activities."

⤷ Lattice (The Giant Library): in the past, Meta had many small libraries, each dedicated to a specific subject (ie. art). Now, they've combined all those small libraries into one, which connects information from all subjects, and helps people find better information faster.

⤷ Andromeda (The Personal Concierge): it's responsible for learning your preferences to show you relevant and interesting ads. Think of "a personal concierge who knows your tastes so well that they don't just understand that you covet shoes, but that you like to wear red flip-flops at the beach", according to Meta.

What does this mean?

Advertisers no longer need to try to be smarter than Meta.

We need to provide the algorithm with more options to produce results.

Here's what he recommends doing based on these updates:

Campaign type to use: Sales (Lowest Cost)

⤷ 1 campaign per offer (ie. product category, like T-Shirts).
⤷ Broad audiences
⤷ Inflated budget

Attribution: 7-day click + 1-day view

Even though the "1-day view" part inflates the results, it gives the algorithm more signals to optimize.

Audiences segments:

At the ad account, you can define your existing customers and engaged audiences.

However, most advertisers define the first segment wrong.

Even though we could define existing customers as EVERYONE who has ever bought from you, practically speaking it makes no sense to exclude them from your campaigns.

Instead, you should consider including only your ACTIVE customers. I'm sure that definition varies across verticals, but I'm sure someone who bought 3 or 5 years ago is not someone you'd consider active.

On the other hand, in the Engaged audience, they suggest having your lapsed customers.

Ads:

The key to giving the algorithm more signals is to have ad diversity, both in formats and angles. It will, technically speaking, prioritize you more if you feed it with more options.

It's the reason why AI enhancements exist: to create unique variations for each ad, depending on the user who sees it.

However, most clients (none, really) don't want it on by any means, and it's understandable.

So, that leaves you with one option: uploading more ads.

The other day, our Meta rep suggested we upload 100-150 ads for each new campaign we create. I’m not sure that’s accurate, but it’s where things are going.

What’s certain is that things are changing fast, and we need to adapt.

I hope it was useful!

--
If you need an experienced growth partner to help your brand grow, let’s chat.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

In 2025, we audited over 90 brands, and we found that many of them have been stuck in a revenue plateau for 2, and even 3 years.

So, the question is: will you stay in the same place for yet another year, or will you draw a line in the sand and start a new chapter for your brand?

At BSR, my agency, we’re offering just 1 spot for brands that want to unlock the next level of growth.

Will you be one of them?

Let’s chat

Manus is Now Available to All Meta Advertisers

In a recent newsletter, I mentioned that Meta introduced its integration with Manus: an AI assistant that will help you execute tasks within Meta.

After acquiring Manus for ~$2B, Meta is now integrating it directly into:

Ads Manager
Instagram Creator Marketplace
WhatsApp Business

What can it do for you?

Manus can:

Analyze ad performance automatically
Suggest optimizations based on data
Vet creators for partnerships
Draft responses and manage workflows
Run research and multi-step tasks

In short, it’s moving from “insights” to “execution”.

Why this matters (and most people are missing it)

For years, Meta has been a reporting tool.

You launch ads.
You read dashboards.
You make decisions.

Now it’s shifting toward Doing the work for you.

That’s a big change.

Because, let's face it, the bottleneck in most brands isn’t data. It’s execution speed.

What this means for your team

If this evolves the way it’s heading:

Media buying becomes less manual
Creative testing cycles get faster
“Junior execution work” starts disappearing

The leverage moves up.

From:

→ Button pushing

→ To decision-making and strategy

The risk (and opportunity)

If everyone gets access to the same AI layer…

Execution becomes commoditized.

Which means:

Your edge is no longer how fast you launch campaigns

It’s:

Your strategy
Your positioning
Your customer understanding

Bottom line

Meta is not just adding AI.

They’re trying to close the gap between:

→ Insight

→ Action

The brands that win won’t be the ones using Manus.

They’ll be the ones who know what to tell it to do.

The Most Overlooked Growth Lever in E-commerce (And It’s Not Your Ads)

There’s a massive shift happening in paid media, especially on Meta.

More investment in creative.
More focus on targeting.
More spend overall.

But one thing keeps getting ignored: the on-site experience.

It’s still one of the most neglected parts of the funnel, despite being a core growth lever.

If you’re driving traffic but not optimizing what happens after the click, you’re leaving a lot on the table.

🎙 New episode of The DTC Insider feat. Anthony Morgan, founder and CEO of Enavi is out now.

🎧️ Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Meta rolls out Manus AI assistance tools for marketers [read more]
📰 Ad accounts are getting shut down [read more]
📰 Meta replaces moderation staff with AI [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

How to Forecast Q2 (Without Guessing)

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:16:00 +0000

Q2 is still a couple of weeks away.

And if you haven’t started planning it yet, now is the time.

Many brands wait until the quarter begins to define targets, budgets, and campaigns. By then, most of the important decisions are already late.

In today’s issue, I want to walk you through a simple framework we use when planning upcoming quarters with our clients, so forecasts are grounded in what actually happened and what’s realistically achievable.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 How to Forecast Q2 (Without Guessing)
💠 Crafting Great Offers Using Your Data
💠 Turning a Golf Network Into a Growing E-Commerce Brand
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

How to Forecast Q2 (Without Guessing)

Most brands start forecasting by opening a spreadsheet and guessing what the next quarter should look like.

That’s usually where mistakes begin.

A better approach is to build the forecast from historical context and then layer in what you’re planning to do.

Here’s the process we use when planning a new quarter.

Step 1: Start With the Year-Level View

Before looking at individual months, zoom out.

Review the last 2-3 years of revenue performance and compare quarters.

Look at:

2025
2024
2023

The goal is simple: understand how Q2 historically behaves.

Is it usually stronger than Q1?
Is it a slower quarter before Q4?
Is it one of the biggest revenue periods of the year?

You want to see the forest before looking at the trees.

Step 2: Break the Quarter Into Months

Once you understand the role Q2 plays in the year, break it down.

Look at April, May, and June individually for each of the past years.

You’re trying to identify patterns:

Is May consistently stronger than April?
Does June slow down?
Are there major promotional months?

At this stage you’re building the first layer of your forecast structure.

Step 3: Go One Level Deeper, Analyze Weekly Trends

Monthly data often hides the real story.

That’s why the next step is reviewing each month week by week.

For example:

Week 1 of May
Week 2 of May
Week 3 of May
Week 4 of May

This helps you identify sales concentration.

Many brands see spikes tied to specific events like:

Mother’s Day
Father’s Day
Major sales events or launches

Understanding these spikes is critical for planning ad spend and inventory.

If your biggest week historically happens at the end of the month but you distribute budget evenly, you might run out of fuel before the moment that matters most.

Step 4: Add the Marketing Context (IMPORTANT!)

Now comes the most important part.

Numbers alone are not enough.

You need to understand what caused those results.

Ask the team or check historical notes:

Were there product launches?
Were there influencer collaborations?
Were there aggressive promotions?
Was there a major campaign running?

Growth is often dictated by the marketing calendar.

If Q2 was historically strong because the brand launched four products and ran two major influencer collaborations, that context matters.

Because if none of that is planned this year, the forecast should reflect that.

Step 5: Build the Forecast Based on What’s Actually Planned

Finally, compare the past with the upcoming plan.

Look at the marketing calendar for this year’s Q2:

Launches
Campaigns
Promotions
Influencer activations

Then build the forecast based on the combination of:

Historical performance patterns
The marketing actions planned for the quarter

That’s when a forecast stops being a guess and starts becoming a plan.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

In 2025, we audited over 90 brands, and we found that many of them have been stuck in a revenue plateau for 2, and even 3 years.

So, the question is: will you stay in the same place for yet another year, or will you draw a line in the sand and start a new chapter for your brand?

At BSR, my agency, we’re offering just 1 spot for brands that want to unlock the next level of growth.

Will you be one of them?

Let’s chat

Crafting Great Offers Using Your Data

Crafting a great offer has 2 main components:

What to offer
When to make the offer

Let me explain.

WHAT to offer:

Why guess, when you can actually know what your customers want to buy?

And I'm with you, Shopify doesn't make it easy for brands to find and analyze certain information.

That's why our team at BSR loves using a tool called Lifetimely, as it's able to unlock valuable data for our Shopify clients.

In this case, we're looking at the Product Journey report, in which we can understand what product type customers typically buy in each order.

For this client, the first purchase seems to be mostly pants.

Not only that, they seem to come back to buy more of them.

And, as you can see in the above chart, the same happens for Bras and Long sleeves.

However, those buying Tank tops behave differently: half of them buy another one in the second order, and the other half buy pants.

If you need more details, you can see this chart by product name:

WHEN to make the offer:

The WHEN is as important as the WHAT.

As they say, timing is everything.

In the first chart I presented, only 3% of those who bought a pant came back to buy a tank top.

However, as we can see in the chart below, 20% of "pant orders" contain a tank top. 🤯

This means that offering a tank top in a second purchase isn't as attractive as doing it in the same order, either as a bundle or a one-click upsell.

Now, WHEN should we actually offer customers something to come back?

Great question, which can take forever to answer if you're only using Shopify to get the info.

But not with this tool!

As you can see in the chart below, the avg. time between orders for this brand is 60 days.

With this info, you can work on:

Decreasing the time between purchases with an attractive offer.
Improving the timing (and offer) of your Winback email flow
Defining more offers to increase the number of annual orders

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with this tool. I just love it and thought of sharing it with you all.

If you own or work for a DTC brand and need help boosting profitability, feel free to book an intro call with me and we'll see how we can help.

Turning a Golf Network Into a Growing E-Commerce Brand

Most founders focus on growth.

Very few focus on protecting the brand.

In this episode of The DTC Insider, we talked about why protecting your brand might be one of the most important things founders ignore.

Because when your brand starts working…

Copycats appear.
Competitors move fast.
And suddenly the thing you built is everywhere.

If you're building a DTC brand, this is a conversation you don't want to miss this new episode with Taylor Artman, co-founder of Surf & Turf Golf.

🎧️ Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Meta acquires an AI-driven social network [read more]
📰 Are Purchases Finally Coming "inside ChatGPT"? [read more]
📰 OpenAI is Testing An Ads Manager, As Its New Ads Business Fights Growing Pains [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

The Most Dangerous Marketing Mistake

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 10:43:00 +0000

Every now and then, you look at the numbers and something feels off.

Sales suddenly dip.

Performance looks worse than usual.

And the natural reaction is to start looking for what broke.

This Monday we had one of those moments with a client.

Month-to-date revenue was down 20% vs. last year.

At first glance, it looked like something was seriously wrong. But once we walked through the numbers step by step, the story turned out to be very different.

And it reminded me of something important:

Sometimes, the most expensive mistake in marketing is solving the wrong problem.

In today’s newsletter I’ll walk you through how we analyzed it, what we discovered, and how you can approach situations like this the next time performance suddenly dips.

Let’s go!

Topics we'll cover today:

💠 Why Your Meta ROAS Might Suddenly Look Worse
💠 Before You Fix the Ads, Ask This Question First
💠 How Weekly Product Drops Helped Scale a Niche Brand
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Why Your Meta ROAS Might Suddenly Look Worse

Heads up.

Your Meta ROAS might dip this month.

Not because performance dropped.

Because Meta just fixed one of the most confusing things in Ads Manager.

For years, “click-through attribution” didn’t actually mean clicks.

Meta grouped several interactions under the same umbrella:

Link clicks
Likes
Comments
Shares
Saves

If someone liked your ad, never visited your site, and later converted, it could still appear as a click-through conversion.

Most marketers assumed this metric meant:

“Someone clicked the link and converted.”

But that wasn’t always the case.

And that’s what Meta is now correcting.

What’s Changing

Meta is simplifying how it counts clicks.

Going forward, click-through attribution will only include real link clicks.

Meaning:

If someone clicks your link, goes to your site, and converts, it counts.

If someone only likes, saves, or shares your ad, that conversion will no longer show up under click-through attribution.

This change is designed to align Meta’s reporting with how most third-party tools already work.

Platforms like:

Google Analytics
Triple Whale
Northbeam

Those tools generally only count actual link clicks when attributing conversions.

Which is why many advertisers saw discrepancies between Meta Ads Manager and their analytics tools.

Meta is essentially fixing that gap.

Why This Matters

Your click ROAS will likely look lower.

Especially when comparing month over month or year over year.

But performance didn’t necessarily drop.

The attribution model changed.

What you’ll see now is a much cleaner picture of true traffic-driven conversions.

And the numbers should align more closely with your other reporting platforms.

What Happens to Engagement Conversions?

They’re not disappearing.

Meta is simply moving them into a different bucket.

The platform is renaming “Engaged View Attribution” to:

Engage-through attribution

This new metric will track conversions that come from social engagement actions, such as:

Likes
Shares
Saves
Other non-link interactions

Meta actually encourages advertisers to monitor this metric, because social engagement can still influence conversions even without a direct click.

But now those conversions will be clearly separated from link-click conversions.

Which makes the data easier to interpret.

Another Small Change That Matters

Meta is also adjusting how it defines an engaged video view.

Previously:

An engaged view meant 10 seconds of watch time.

Now it will be 5 seconds.

Why?

Because people convert much faster when consuming short-form video.

Meta shared that 46% of Reels purchase conversions happen within the first 2 seconds of attention.

So shortening the engagement window better reflects how users actually behave on the platform today.

The Real Takeaway

For advertisers, this is actually a good update.

Cleaner attribution.
Less inflated click data.
Better alignment with analytics tools.

But expect some confusion internally.

At some point this month someone will ask: “Why did our Meta ROAS drop?”

And the real answer will be simple.

It didn’t.
The attribution just got more honest.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

In 2025, we audited over 90 brands, and we found that many of them have been stuck in a revenue plateau for 2, and even 3 years.

So, the question is: will you stay in the same place for yet another year, or will you draw a line in the sand and start a new chapter for your brand?

At BSR, my agency, we’re offering just 1 spot for brands that want to unlock the next level of growth.

Will you be one of them?

Let’s chat

Before You Fix the Ads, Ask This Question First

On Monday, we had our weekly call with a jewelry brand we work with.

While reviewing the report, something immediately stood out.

Month-to-date revenue for March was down 20% vs. the same period last year.

Not exactly the kind of thing you want to see on a Monday. 😅

Who hasn’t been there, right?

So we started digging…

First stop was Shopify: orders were down.

At that point the question becomes simple: “where in the funnel is the issue?”

So we moved one step up: conversion rate.

Interestingly, conversion rate was actually up.

Which meant the site wasn’t converting worse. If anything, it was converting better.

So if orders were down while conversion rate was up, the issue had to be happening earlier in the funnel.

That’s when we looked at traffic: it was lower.

Now, this is the moment where most teams immediately jump to ads. ⚠️

But one thing we constantly remind clients, and ourselves, is this:

Not every business problem is an ad problem.

So instead of staring at a single tree, we try to step back and look at the forest first.

Start with the business.
Then the funnel.
Then the channels.

Only after that do we go deeper.

When we reviewed paid media, everything looked stable.

Traffic was consistent.
Conversion rates were healthy.
ROAS was right where we expected it.
So ads clearly weren’t the issue.

At that point we had one key question in mind, which we saved for the call we had with the client a few hours later:

“Was there anything specific that happened last March that could explain the difference?”

And that’s when the missing piece appeared. 💡

Last year they had run a promotion with a large influencer.

That campaign created a big spike in organic traffic.

This year there was no influencer push.

Which meant nothing was broken….

Last March simply had an extra boost.

And this is where analysis can get dangerous. Because if we had assumed the wrong root cause, we might have started “fixing” the ads.

New campaigns.
New creative production.
Budget reallocations.
Landing page tweaks.

All aimed at solving a problem that didn’t actually exist.

That’s how teams end up wasting time, money, and energy, while also disrupting systems that were already working.

Sometimes the most expensive mistake in marketing isn’t poor execution.

It’s solving the wrong problem.

The reminder here is simple.

Data tells you what happened. Context tells you why.

And sometimes the missing context isn’t in a dashboard.

It’s in a conversation.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

The 2026 Meta Reality Check

They’ve been releasing new products every single week for years.

Every Friday.
No hacks.
No viral lottery tickets.

Just consistent drops.

In today’s episode of The DTC Insider podcast, Brian Roisentul sat down with Claire Wolfson, founder of bean goods.

Check it out. 👇

🎧️ Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Retail and grocery brands dominate ChatGPT ads [read more]
📰 OpenAI Scales Back Shopping Plans for ChatGPT [read more]
📰 Meta tests a shopping research feature inside of its chatbot [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

The First Real Way to Advertise in ChatGPT

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 12:41:00 +0000

Two shifts are happening at the same time.

One is external.
One is internal.

Externally, platforms are abstracting distribution away from you. Shopify just plugged its merchants into ChatGPT ads.

Internally, teams are racing to automate everything they can. Agents. Workflows. AI audits. Faster outputs.

But here’s the real question:

Are you automating to replace work…
or automating to stack value?

This week, I’m breaking down both shifts.

Let's go!

Topics we'll cover today:

💠 Automation Won’t Save You (This Will)
💠 The First Real Way to Advertise in ChatGPT
💠 The 2026 Meta Reality Check with Jon Loomer
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Automation Won’t Save You (This Will)

I have a saying:

For years, people have been waiting for technology.
Now, technology is waiting for people.

Think about it: for years, we wanted to build things, but there was no internet. Then there were read-only websites…no YouTube, no social media, no cloud.

Access was the bottleneck.

Today?

Execution is.

These days, the goal seems to be automating things…

Get an agent for this, get an agent for that.

I mean, who isn't trying to leverage AI as much as they can?

In the end, we need to be more efficient.

However, there are 2 ways of approaching it:

Automating to replace.
Automating to stack value.

Both have the first part in common: to automate something.

The difference lies in the second part: what do we do it for?

If we automate something with the only goal of replacing the way it was previously done, the only value we added is that we no longer have to do a certain set of tasks. Quick win, of course… less or no time spent on the task, but after a short period of time, we're really not adding value.

We just compressed time.

On the flip side, if we automate to stack value, we benefit from the automation because we no longer have to manually do that set of tasks, and now we can focus on adding more value on top of it.

That’s where the leverage is.

Here's a real-life example:

A brand asks their team/agency to do an in-depth audit of their customer acquisition strategy.

Not automated: The value in doing it manually is the audit itself. It could take days or even weeks, and eventually we'll get the desired output: the audit.

Automated: the AI workflow/agent will take care of automatically performing the audit in minutes. That way, the team will be able to deliver the audit way faster.

Automated + stacking value:

Once the audit is done, the team can go ahead and:

Identify the structural bottlenecks across the funnel (not just channel performance).
Map acquisition insights to the actual customer journey.
Connect ad performance with landing page friction.
Model contribution margin scenarios before increasing spend.
Build a prioritized 90-day roadmap instead of just a findings doc.

Now the audit isn’t the final product…it’s the starting point.

The automation handled the diagnostic layer.
Humans handle the judgment layer.

Here’s the thing:

If you automate to replace, you become cheaper and faster.
If you automate to stack value, you become sharper and more strategic.

Because AI can run reports, summarize data, and even generate recommendations.

But deciding:

Where to push.
What to ignore.
What tradeoff to make.
What not to do.

That’s still on you.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

In 2025, we audited over 90 brands, and we found that many of them have been stuck in a revenue plateau for 2, and even 3 years.

So, the question is: will you stay in the same place for yet another year, or will you draw a line in the sand and start a new chapter for your brand?

At BSR, my agency, we’re offering just 1 spot for brands that want to unlock the next level of growth.

Will you be one of them?

Let’s chat

The First Real Way to Advertise in ChatGPT

Shopify is now running ads inside ChatGPT…on behalf of its merchants, by plugging ChatGPT into Shop Campaigns.

If you’re not familiar:

Shop Campaigns is Shopify’s pay-per-sale ad channel.

You set:

A target CAC
A daily budget

And Shopify distributes your products across its network (Meta, Google, and more).

Now?

ChatGPT.

Here’s how it works:

Shopify buys the ad inventory inside ChatGPT. Your products surface inside answers. And you only pay when a sale happens: capped at your preset CAC.

No clicks.
No CPMs.
No manual media buying.

A few important nuances:

OpenAI just started testing ads inside ChatGPT. It’s still in beta.
Large retailers (like Target) are also participating.
Shopify’s ad network is still a small slice of its $11.6B revenue, but they’re clearly expanding it.

And right now, this is the only direct path I’m aware of for a small brand to advertise inside ChatGPT, since it's still in beta and there's no self-serve interface.

Thoughts?

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

The 2026 Meta Reality Check

"Everyone is blaming Andromeda.”

That’s how this part of my conversation with Jon Loomer started.

But here’s the reality:

Andromeda isn’t “the algorithm.”
It’s not the reason your performance changed.
And it’s definitely not some hidden Meta conspiracy.

In this episode of The DTC Insider, Jon explains what Andromeda actually is, and why the real shift happening inside Meta Ads is about creative diversification, not targeting control.

If you’re still optimizing like it’s 2019, this episode will challenge your assumptions.

🎧️ Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 Almost half of the U.S. consumers use TikTok as a search engine [read more]
📰 Where Are Brands Seeing the Biggest Growth: TikTok or Meta? [read more]
📰 Instagram opens up content scheduling to all users [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.

AI Just Entered Ads Manager

Brian Roisentul — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:16:00 +0000

The seed has been planted.

Last year, Mark Zuckerberg said agencies wouldn’t be needed by 2026.

That’s clearly not true. But it is directionally interesting.

Because if you zoom out, the trend is obvious:

Ad account structures are simpler.
Audiences as we knew them are gone.
There are fewer and fewer real levers to pull.

And now Meta acquires Manus, an autonomous AI agent designed to act like a digital employee.

Not just answering questions.

Executing.
Building.
Delivering.

What does this actually mean for advertisers?

I decided to test it.

Topics we'll cover today:

💠 AI Just Entered Ads Manager
💠 From Startup to CES Innovation Award Winner
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

AI Just Entered Ads Manager

In December 2025, Meta acquired Manus: an advanced, autonomous AI agent designed to act like a digital employee, not just a chatbot.

It doesn’t just answer questions. It independently executes complex, multi-step tasks from start to finish.

Why should this matter to you?

If you’re on Shopify, you’ve probably used Sidekick: its AI assistant. We use it all the time. It’s great for pulling insights that used to be buried or difficult to extract.

This is similar. But bigger.

Meta did something along those lines with Manus.

To access it, go to the “All tools” menu in the left sidebar and click on “Manus AI”.

If you don’t have a Manus account yet, you’ll need to sign up (you don’t need to pay for simple tasks).

Once inside, you’ll see a chat interface similar to ChatGPT or Gemini.

Now the real question: What can you actually do with it?

A lot!

Let me show you a simple, yet powerful example.

I’m going to audit a brand’s competitors’ ads.

Not only will it generate the insights. It will also build a professional-looking mini-site to present them. 🤯

Ready?

Let’s go.

Step 1:

Copy and paste the prompt below, replacing the brands mentioned in it:

You are a world-class direct-response ad creative analyst specializing in DTC consumer health/supplements. My client is Grüns (Gruns) Superfood Gummies.

Objective

Analyze ACTIVE ads running in the United States using the Meta Ads Library for Grüns’ closest category competitors. Identify their core promises, creative patterns, offer mechanics, and angle strategy, then synthesize this into a competitive content strategy report that Grüns can use to produce better-performing ads.

Competitor advertisers to analyze (Meta Ads Library, US, Active)

Search for and analyze ads from these brands (verify the correct advertiser pages in Meta Ads Library; if multiple pages exist, use the most active/main US-facing one):

AG1 (Athletic Greens)

Live it Up Super Greens

Bloom Greens & Superfoods

Goli Supergreens / Supergreen Gummies

Ancient Nutrition (Organic SuperGreens)

Thorne (Daily Greens Plus)

Huel (Daily Greens)

Amazing Grass (Greens Blend / Super Greens)

Garden of Life (Perfect Food / greens line)

Vibrant Health (Green Vibrance)

If any brand has no active US ads, note “No active US ads found” and replace it with the closest adjacent competitor you can find in Meta Ads Library (same “daily greens / all-in-one nutrition” job), and explain the replacement choice.

Data collection requirements

For each competitor:

Review at least 15 active ads (or all active ads if fewer than 15).

Capture key metadata per ad:

Format (UGC video, founder-led, animation, carousel, static, testimonial, before/after, etc.)

Length (if video), aspect ratio, placement cues (Reels/Stories/feed style)

Primary text + headline (if visible)

Landing page angle guess (what the click likely promises)

Offer mechanics (trial, discount %, bundle, subscription push, guarantees, “free shipping,” etc.)

Extract verbatim hooks (first 1–2 lines / first 3 seconds) for the top patterns. Keep quotes short (no long copying).

Analysis framework (what to look for)

Message hierarchy

Primary promise (e.g., “energy,” “gut health,” “immunity,” “daily foundational nutrition,” “convenience”)

Proof points (ingredients, clinical, “doctor recommended,” third-party testing, social proof)

Objection handling (taste, price, skepticism, habit formation, “greens are gross,” etc.)

Creative strategy & patterns

Dominant angles (problem/solution, identity shift, routine stacking, transformation, comparison, myth-busting)

Creative containers (UGC testimonial, creator demo, founder story, explainer, unboxing, “day in the life,” challenge)

Visual motifs (greens pouring, ingredient callouts, motion graphics, packaging hero, “morning routine” scenes)

“Scroll stoppers” and repeated edits (jump cuts, captions, pattern interrupts)

Offer & funnel mechanics

What offer is being sold (trial vs full price vs subscription)

How they push continuity (subscribe & save, bundles)

Risk reversal (guarantees, refunds, “cancel anytime”)

CTA language patterns

Competitive positioning map

Plot competitors across 2–3 axes relevant to Grüns:

Convenience (gummy vs powder vs tablets)

Taste enjoyment vs “serious health”

Clinical credibility vs “lifestyle/viral”

Premium pricing vs “value”

Identify the white space Grüns can own.

Deliverables (structured report)

Produce a competitive content strategy report with:

Executive summary (10 bullets max)

What’s working in the category right now (creative + claims + offers)

The biggest “table stakes” messages

2–3 high-leverage gaps for Grüns

Competitor-by-competitor breakdown
For each competitor:

Top 3–5 key messages (with examples)

Top creative formats used (ranked)

Repeated hooks/lines (short quotes)

Offer mechanics and risk reversal

Notable differentiators vs Grüns

Category creative pattern library

A list of the most common winning angles (with examples)

A list of the most common visual frameworks

A list of common objections and how competitors address them

Actionable strategy for Grüns

10 new ad angles Grüns should test (clear “claim + proof + why now”)

10 hook templates tailored to Grüns (gummy convenience + outcomes)

5 UGC scripts (30–45s) with shot list + on-screen text beats

5 static/carousel concepts (headline + visual concept + body copy)

Offer testing plan (3–5 offer variants; when to use each)

Creative testing roadmap (30 days): volume, prioritization, and how to judge winners

Output format rules

Use clear headings and bullet points.

Be specific and concrete: write like a creative strategist handing work to a media buyer + editor.

Avoid generic advice. Tie every insight to observed competitor patterns in Meta Ads Library.

If uncertain about an interpretation, label it as a hypothesis.

Step 2 (optional):

It may ask you to log into Meta to continue. You can skip this if you prefer. I did.

Step 3:

Manus will begin the research and return its findings.

From there, you can ask it to export everything into a PPT, or even better...turn it into a website!

And just like that, in a few minutes and with very little effort, you have a comprehensive competitor analysis.

In this case, it generated a detailed 20-page report. And honestly? It was pretty solid.

My take:

Right now, this feels similar to connecting any third-party AI tool and running an analysis.

But we’ve seen this movie before.

Shopify’s Sidekick started as a simple assistant. Today, it surfaces insights in seconds and executes real operational tasks: creating discount codes, building workflows, pulling segmented data.

Meta didn’t acquire Manus randomly. They’re compressing the distance between thinking and executing inside the ad ecosystem.

Does this mean agencies disappear? No.

It means leverage increases.

Your turn:

What would you have Manus build for you inside Meta?

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Want to Make 2026 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

In 2025, we audited over 90 brands, and we found that many of them have been stuck in a revenue plateau for 2, and even 3 years.

So, the question is: will you stay in the same place for yet another year, or will you draw a line in the sand and start a new chapter for your brand?

At BSR, my agency, we’re offering just 1 spot for brands that want to unlock the next level of growth.

Will you be one of them?

Let’s chat

From Startup to CES Innovation Award Winner

Most brands say they listen to their customers.

Very few actually build with them.

In this week’s episode of The DTC Insider, Brian Roisentul sat down with Sabrina Wescott, the Head of Marketing at MAXPRO to unpack how a simple idea sketched on a napkin turned into a CES Innovation Award-winning fitness brand.

One of my favorite takeaways: some of their biggest product evolutions didn’t come from internal brainstorms. They came from paying attention to how customers were actually using the product.

That level of listening compounds.

If you’re building a physical product brand or scaling DTC in 2026, this one is worth your time.

🎧️ Tune in

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Latest News in the DTC Space

📰 The path to purchase just got dramatically shorter [read more]
📰 Amazon becomes the world's biggest company [read more]
📰 Professional AI adoption could unlock up to $4.1 trillion capacity for US [read more]

About The Writer

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Want to talk shop?
If your brand is doing at least 7 figures, apply here to get featured (for free) on The DTC Insider podcast and my team will get in touch.

Need help to grow your online sales?
Book a call with me and let’s explore how my team and I at BSR can help you.