Hey, it's Alex.

If you’re reviewing your ad-spend, ROAS, Google organic traffic and seeing decline after decline - there is good and bad news.

The bad news - paid channels are going to get more competitive each month that goes by, not just because of your competitors, but because where and how people browse is changing constantly, and as a result - your cost to buy a sale is going to continue to increase, eating away at profit in the process.

The good news - if you’ve been following along, then you’ll know that your brand shouldn’t be relying on ad-spend to gain you profits.

So it might be time to do something about it.

Let’s dig in.

I want to be clear - millions of businesses are seeing a decline in Google traffic - a lot being hit this month - why?

Well ask yourself - over the last few months, have you reduced your use of Google? Probably - instead turning to ChatGPT or Claude - well, this is a little snippet of the problem.

Now consider ads:

Ads are like Uber - they can take you to the party, but they’re not responsible for you having a good time once you get there.

Your ads do however have a responsibility to represent your brand and product to your ideal customer in a way that contributes to what I call The Trust Account.

Your brand needs to be making more deposits than withdrawals into the trust account in order to generate profits, and increase the chances of a customer not only buying, but telling family and friends about their amazing experience - leading to more organic and profitable sales.

Contributions into this trust account don’t happen by spending more on ads - the trust account balance increases by making sure that a customer’s experience is as consistent, on-brand, and as enjoyable as possible - ideally, exceeding expectations - across all touch points - ads, website, PR, newsletters, social content and customer service.

To drive this home - I’ll go back to the Uber analogy - because there’s a catch: the ride is still part of the experience.

Imagine you are going to the Oscars - and the academy arranges to pick you up (yes - you are Matt Damon about to win an Oscar for The Odyssey) - and an Uber turns up - wtf?

Has your trust in the academy and what the Oscars represent, the values they stand for, and their consideration for you just increased or decreased? Decreased of course.

Well this is the problem - most brands count on the idea that - if they can just get people to their website - then their ideal customers will see value, and they’ll buy, and unfortunately, this just isn’t true.

Often performance marketing strategies act like the Uber, even though the brand wants to be the Oscars. As a brand looking to grow profit - you want to optimise the full experience, and deliver to exceed expectations, so that your customers can’t wait to tell people about their experience.

Here’s the thing though - “optimise the full experience” isn’t a plan. Every touchpoint matters, but you can’t fix all of them at once, and most brands that try end up doing everything at 60%.

This is why I built the 5C’s - the operating system I’ve watched every profitable brand run on across 10 years and 200+ ecommerce sites, whether they knew it or not:

Clarity. Customer Value. Conversions. Community. Collaborations.

Every touchpoint in your business lives inside one of those five. And the declines you’re seeing in Google and Meta right now are the symptom of over-investing in one C - buying conversions - while the other four sit empty. That’s an Uber business - all transport, no party.

The brands that hold their margin over the next five years will be the ones making deposits across all five - so when the cost of a click doubles again, it barely touches them.

The hard part has always been knowing which deposit to make next. That’s the problem we built M-nus to solve - it connects to your store’s data and shows you, week by week, the highest-value move across the 5C’s - guided by the same strategic thinking behind the award-winning, high-converting stores we design and build.

More on that below.

We’ve been working away on M-nus ahead of launch next week.

The waitlist will be notified first - and this is the last chance to put your hand up for one of the founding spaces.

Founding members get access to a weekly coaching and advisory session from our senior strategy team at Studio Almond, alongside a system that recommends and guides 24/7 - to be honest, some of what we’re teaching, most brands don’t know is possible yet.

Once the founding spaces are gone, that’s it until we open again.

Reply to this email with the biggest challenge you’re facing trying to grow profit, and I’ll make sure you’re first to get notified of an available spot.

See you next week.

Thanks for reading!

Alex Murton
Shopify for Lifestyle Brands
Co-Founder @ Studio Almond & Almond Labs.