Sarah Farebrother

🔊 New Bid Strategy Alert: Say hello to tCPC (Target Cost-per-Click) — now quietly rolling out in some Google Ads accounts. Nope, not a typo. It’s not tCPA… it’s tCPC 😏And yes — it’s built just for Demand Gen campaigns. That’s right: Google’s giving us a new way to control click costs with more precision, even within automated campaigns. 👉 A fresh take on bidding, blending automation with predictability. Have you spotted it in your account yet? Let’s talk testing, strategy, and how this could shift the Demand Gen game.

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If you're buying programmatic, do this one simple exercise: pull a domain report. If you see a ton of unfamiliar domains buying at volume, drill-down and investigate your buy immediately. Long tail publishers matter. Humans visit those sites for a reason, and they often have highly engaged audiences and strong contextual relevance. But this is different. If you're buying large volumes from obscure sites that most of the web doesn’t naturally visit, you're likely doing nothing for the business outcomes you expected. It doesn’t matter what tech you're using. Always check where your ads are running. Follow where the humans are, not where the user IDs are.

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The Email Equation Most Marketers Get Wrong 📧 I’ve seen it too many times over the years. Open rates look decent. Click-throughs aren’t terrible. But conversions? Abysmal. And the culprit usually isn’t the copy or the offer. It’s the fundamental approach to email strategy. Here's the thing: Most marketers obsess over WHAT to say in their emails while completely overlooking the mathematical balance that actually drives results. The real secret? It's the relationship between two critical variables: → FREQUENCY (how often you email the same person) → REACH (how many total people receive your message) This isn't just theory. It's the hidden equation behind every successful email campaign I've ever analyzed. Think about it: Would you rather send 4 emails to 100 people or 1 email to 1000 people? The answer isn't obvious. And that's exactly the point. Too much frequency without reach? You're annoying the same small audience. Too much reach without frequency? You're not building enough familiarity to convert. Finding your perfect balance depends on: ✅ Your offer complexity ✅ Your audience's buying cycle ✅ Your relationship depth with subscribers ✅ Your content quality But here's what I know for sure: The marketers who deliberately optimize this balance consistently outperform those who don't. So before you obsess over that subject line or CTA button color again... Ask yourself: Have I found my frequency-reach sweet spot? Because that's where the real email magic happens.

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If I were to start a brand today, I wouldn't look at Google Analytics, platform ROAS, or really ANY granular "performance" metrics. Including any kind of "incrementality" metrics or other complex performance (MMM, MTA, inc testing, etc). I'd simply look at: • Daily trending P&L metrics (CM) • Daily trending new customers (NTF) • Daily trending efficiency metrics (CAC) • Monthly cohorts of customer value (LTV) • Eventually get to a P&L view that has cash flow Every day I'd be able to see the last 7, 30, 90, and 365 trends of the above four metrics. I'd actually do a rolling average of each of those time periods because I don't believe in day-by-day unless I'm super tight on cash. How do I know what's working and not working? • List of hypotheses and tests • List of actions taken + tests done • Change of BUSINESS kpis (above) after each • Investigative exploratory data analysis of unexpected changes For example, I'd have something like: August • Problem: CAC is too high • Hypothesis: spend is too high • Test: reduce overall ad spend by 20% • Results: monitor CAC trend over next 30 days In September, we saw that CAC was reduced by 10% vs the trending 30 day average. This got our CAC under control and was deemed "successful" as a test. To get more granular, I might have a hunch that a particular channel or tactic is less effective at adding incremental customers. Rather than a blanket 20%, maybe we cut 50% out of Google Ads and keep everything else flat, etc. You could have tests surrounding other areas of the business beyond just ad spend: • New product drops • Pricing strategy • Promos • PDPs • New ICP • New category • New overall channel Etc. And then you'd have to keep your tests fairly clean, testing only 1 directly integrated activity<>KPI relationship at a time. For example, a lot of things affect new customers. So you need one "chief" test at a time that takes a big swing. Keep in mind -- I'm talking small brands here. If you're working on things and overall your brand is growing on those primary KPIs every day or month (e.g. contribution margin, new customers, etc) then you're in a good state. If you're not, then you need to be more prescriptive with those tests. Once you're at like $50-$100m a year, then you can start getting cute with measurement. MAYBE even $25m a year. But if you're sub $20m, quit wasting time. (For the record, there are clients at Power and fusepoint that are multiple hundreds of millions of dollars just focused purely on CAC and iCAC, at least for their marketing teams). How would you run a startup? #attribution #cac #startup

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An interesting perspective on Product Marketing career paths emerged from a discussion last week. Product Marketing as a dedicated function is only 14-15 years old*, yet it's rapidly evolving. The traditional path generally looks like: PMM → Head of PMM → VP Marketing → CMO An emerging alternative I'm seeing is: PMM → VP Product Marketing → Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) Why the shift? I'm seeing PMMs increasingly lean toward strategy over traditional marketing leadership. When you think about their strengths in market strategy, cross-functional leadership, customer insights and go-to-market planning it isn't surprising. But the irony? Many job posts ask for 15+ years PMM experience... in a function that's only 15 years old 🤔 I'm curious PMMs, which path interests you - CMO or CSO? #productmarketing #pmm #techmarketing #strategicmarketing #marketingleaders *(Product Marketing Alliance data)

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HubSpot has a great team and I’m sad for them. Any volatility at this scale is painful, but I suspect the traffic impact isn't proportionate to the impact they've felt on their leads and revenue. For SEO broadly, it is a strong and timely reminder that while brand can help withstand volatility in the SERP, it isn't the silver bullet for search. The problem here was likely a spray-and-pray approach when it comes to targeting non-ICP content and topics. It worked because of their brand name and authority, so of course they did it. It probably got them the brand visibility were after. But short-term wins are just that. I think SEO in 2025 will continue to punish shortcuts, and capturing non-competitive high-volume keywords that aren’t particularly relevant to your expertise is top of the list. It probably should be, right? HubSpot could have intentionally let this irrelevant TOFU content decay because it isn't integral to their revenue goals. Very fair. But the key thing there is relevance. TOFU content isn't dead. SEO isn't either. They're just changing. If you're focusing on keywords that align neatly with your prospect's discovery and buyer journey, you'll have the opportunity to greet them (through search and other channels) at every touch point and act as the best source of truth at each stage. In B2B, buyers typically consume between 3-5 pieces of content before they speak to a sales rep, so neglecting those early impression points is a mistake. I'm looking forward to them bouncing back. We know they have the resources for it, and I love a good recovery case study 👀 (Thanks for sharing Ryan Law)

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