This one is for the people …

📊 Cody Plofker on the three stages of paid growth for 7–8 figure brands

🤯 Drew Arciuolo unloads everything you need to grow via organic social

🔥 Top-5 stories from this week’s trending news with executive summaries

Cody Plofker CMO, Jones Road Beauty

The 3 Stages of Paid-Media Growth

As much as I love recording with the Connors, it’s easy to forget our stages of growth aren’t “normal.”

If you’re 7–8 figures in annual revenue, taking advice from 9-figure brands is (at best) aspirational.

At worst … it’s dangerous.

In fact, most of the arguments I see come down to size and scale — way more than right versus wrong.

I can’t tell you how to run your business. I can only tell you what I’ve learned from three stages of paid-media growth here at Jones Road Beauty.

 Stage 1 

<$500k spend per month on Meta & Google

Only two things matter. First, your product. Second, your unit economics. Maybe a third, your audience.

They boil down to a single question.

That’s contribution margin (real dollars). That’s it. That’s the whole game.

Outside of the basics, your software choices don’t matter.

For paid, know how much you can spend to acquire a customer. Set profitable in-platform targets on Meta + Google. And don’t let anything else distract you.

 Stage 2 

>$500k spend per month on Meta & Google + one or more channels

Somewhere past half a million dollars a month in spend, you have to begin exploring new channels.

I used to think most brands diversify their media mix too much, too soon. I was worried about us doing the same.

No matter how much we spent on Meta, we weren’t reaching new people. Our ads were hitting the same in-market audience.

Throughout the last year and a half, we’ve pushed into TikTok, Snap, YouTube, and (most recently) AppLovin.

But, to stay anchored in contribution margin — $s, not %s — we had to have a way to compare different conversion-optimized ad channels apples-to-apples.

For Jones Road, that’s Northbeam. It’s the same for Ridge and HexClad … well before any of us were 9-figures.

 Stage 3 

>$1M–$5M spend per month + view-based, non-conversion-objectives

While I’m excited about stage three and what’s beyond, it’s not where 7 or even mid-8-figure brands should put their energy.

We’ll keep sharing that journey on the podcast. And I will definitely keep posting about it and starting arguments on X!

But for anyone headed from stage one into stage two in 2025, now is the time to begin mapping out new channels and how you’ll hold them accountable for profitable growth.

To do that, the best MTA on the market is Northbeam.

Compare results with a consistent methodology, identify new versus returning, use APEX to feed Meta optimization, and understand revenue lift over time from all your channels.

Drew Arciuolo VP of Marketing, VKTRY

How Organic Success Transformed Our Business

In early 2022, VKTRY was struggling. By struggling, I mean (1) cash was low, (2) some of our key executives had been poached, and (3) we were not profitable.

Days were long, the future was uncertain, and we were running on fumes. Due to the lack of resources, every decision felt critical. The pandemic almost broke us.

But it didn’t.

Miraculously, we’d finish 2022 at 20% above projections (mid-7 figures) with a near-breakeven bottom line.

In 2023, revenue grew by 3.4x at a >20% EBITDA margin. Our bottom line came in pretty dang close to the previous year’s top line. Crazy.

In 2024, we’re up 80% YoY and pacing that same EBITDA margin.

A lot of VKTRY’s business success can be attributed to our organic-social success. When you grow brand exposure on a channel where reach + demand are effectively free, you’re essentially pouring gasoline on paid efforts.

Just look at the correlation between organic social views and paid social CTR last year — s/o Northbeam. Pretty significant correlation for general ROMS, too:

Since 2022, we’ve done over 1 BILLION video views on our organic channels. As overwhelming as that sounds, it can all be credited to three simple concepts.

The VKTRY Insole is a high-tech carbon fiber product designed to return energy, absorb shock, and stabilize lower extremities.

Backed by loads of independent, PhD-led research, athletes are proven to see faster sprints, higher verticals, and fewer injuries by swapping out their old foam insoles for VKTRY.

With that said, let’s get into the three concepts that catapulted our business.

1️⃣ We were everywhere, but not for everyone

It may come as no surprise that consumers need to align with your business before purchasing. When things were at their worst for us, we were marketing our insoles to be the solution for any athlete who wore shoes.

60-year-old runner? We can fix knee pain. 22-year-old football player? Let’s help you with those sprints. 17-year-old playing basketball? We’re here for you, too!

Looking back, no group felt truly spoken to. No one would look at our marketing and say, “This brand is definitely for me.” As a result, our business suffered.

One day, we made a pivot that would change everything.

In May of 2022, we gave our insoles to a U16 basketball team in exchange for some content and their thoughts on the product. The unexpected happened next …

One of the players got his first-ever dunk on camera. Not only that, but his emotion — and the emotion of his teammates — was infectious. The video went semi-viral.

The lesson? Product market fit.

We had never captured our product drawing so much emotion out of people on camera. This demographic was ready for our product. Our target audience went from 200M people in the US who participate in some form of athletic activity … to the ~1M amateur basketball players in the US aspiring to dunk.

We knew the message “jump higher” resonated with people. The video proved our product would excite this community. I mean, who wants to jump higher more than kids who can’t dunk?

From there on out, we solely (no pun intended) began identifying our insoles as the “only insoles proven to help you jump higher” and focused our content around that one value prop.

We traveled the country, gathering more footage of athletes jumping higher in our insoles. We signed any and all basketball influencers we could find to make content for our channels.

YouTube ambassadors, partnerships, reviews. Hell, we even signed the 2X Champion of the NBA Dunk Contest to an endorsement deal before anyone even knew of him.

This is where “be everywhere, but not for everyone” comes into play. If you’re a young basketball player in the US, you’ll come across a VKTRY video at least once a month.

Thanks to concentrated efforts, we’re a household name among young basketball players and estimate almost 13% of all US male high school basketball players wear our insoles.

Pretty niche, but pretty nice.

Something else happened that was even more amazing. You know the saying, “High tides raise all ships?” Turns out the best way to increase volleyball sales was to focus on basketball.

Find your “prosumer” first. What niche, even if it’s only a few hundred thousand people, will disproportionately benefit the most from your product?

If you’re a headband company, don’t say, “People who wear headbands when they work out.” It has to be a social identity.

Why not go after the ~500k people in the US who attend Zumba classes? Learn their problems with headbands. Learn their lingo, influencers, parallel interests, etc.

Word of mouth will get much easier, messaging will be more relevant to the consumer, and people will feel seen.

2️⃣ We learned the “ingredients” to virality

After nailing product market fit, we knew organic social would be a valuable tool moving forward. A well-respected and successful founder told me to read Contagious by Jonah Berger.

The book details how product virality and social transmission aren’t random but formulaic. According to Berger, six traits shape contagious content. I’m going to cover the four that were most relevant to our content strategy. Want to guess when I read it?

Social Currency

Everyone wants to share the latest and greatest. Make that as easy as possible for your audience.

What’s the inner-remarkability of your product? What’s the impossible that you’re making possible? How can you make people feel like they’re the life of the party when talking about your product?

We were fortunate to check this box years ago, thanks to a man named Matt — my father, the inventor of the VKTRY Insole.

The reaction made it clear we had something people wanted to talk about: “Insoles that flip shoes 10 feet in the air? What the hell is going on here!”

Berger’s case study about BlendTec’s “Will It Blend?” served as inspiration. From marbles to iPhones, no object stood a chance. People felt compelled to share it — not because of the blender’s strength but because it was a unique, interesting, and fun topic of conversation.

That’s the beauty of giving people social currency with your content. Don’t give them ads. Give them something to talk about.

Triggers

A new and amazing product is great, but if there’s nothing to remind people to bring it up, they won't.

One of the first examples from Contagious that really stuck with me was a story about a Philadelphia steakhouse that created a $100 cheesesteak. Sure enough, it caught social fire. It was ridiculous, fun to talk about, and … oh yeah, in Philly!

Because people came across cheesesteaks so frequently in the city, they were reminded much more often to talk about that ridiculous steakhouse with a $100 cheesesteak. Brilliant.

This got our gears turning. How could we create triggers to remind our target demo (young athletes) to bring up our revolutionary insoles in their everyday lives? We knew we had to leverage our aforementioned shoe flip.

So, what’d we do?

We began reviewing the “bounce” of popular basketball sneakers with and without our insoles — bending, flipping, scoring.

Not only did it align our product with our target audience, it got them to share our product + brand more.

Whenever someone saw a new pair of LeBrons on TV or at basketball practice, we wanted them to feel compelled to ask their friends: “Hey, you see the company that flipped those almost 7 feet into the air?”

“How High Will It Flip?” (HHWIF) is now an incredibly successful content series that allows us to keep our brand top-of-mind in a sneaker-obsessed demographic.

It’s garnered well over 150M views on social media. Even better, every video’s comment section is filled with 100+ requests for the next sneaker we should flip.

If you’re looking to scale your organic social channels, create a series that leverages some item or concept your target market can relate to on a daily basis.

Stories

Information is carried through narratives, not ads. What’s your origin story? What problem do you solve? What happens to people when they experience your solution?

Everywhere I look, I see founder content. It’s relatable; it humanizes your brand. A boardroom of private equity executives didn’t start your company. A person brought it to life. Someone who took a chance and bet on themselves.

Your story — whether you believe it or not — is heroic, inspirational, and admirable to consumers. It’s something people feel much more inclined to share.

In our case, my parents started this company after owning a shoe store for their whole lives. They took a chance on an idea my dad had. They weren’t doing this to get rich; they were doing this to change sports footwear forever.

We’ve shared our story a million times over. Other people want to share your story, too. Never undersell it. You’re amazing, your product is amazing, and so should your storytelling skills.

Emotions

Berger and his team studied which emotions cause people to share the most. There were three …

Awe: What about your product makes people’s jaw drop? People want to feel proud of other people. It’s inspiring. It injects hope into humanity. We love to feel awe. Show your audience why they should be proud of your innovation.

Back in Dec. ‘22, we had a video go incredibly viral, racking up almost 60M views in just 3 months across all of our social accounts. The dominant emotion in the video? Awe!

Sure, my explanation in the first ~5 seconds makes for an interesting and engaging video. But what pushed this to be a massive success? The amazement + awe on all of those kids’ faces. The perfect display of that particular emotion.

Anger: When people are angry, they are inclined to share with others. When a friend or family member shares anger, it strengthens the fact that their views are aligned.

Depict a problem that people can bond over and watch your comments and shares fly.

In this one, we messed with people saying we didn’t cut our videos when, in reality, we did. Some were pissed. Most got the joke. Maybe not the best look for “brand” … but great for performance marketing when you’re growing.

Anxiety: Whether we like it or not, when something gives us anxiety, we tend to fixate on it and then act. Stating the facts — i.e., eating vegetables is good, smoking is bad — won’t get people to act.

This is where anxiety comes in. Being able to create messaging that evokes emotions about the repercussions of bad health habits is how you move the needle.

We’ve done this in a few ways.

After breaking the ceiling panels in previous HHWIF posts, I pretended to get fired. The videos got ~10M views between TikTok and Instagram. There were people who believed it, so we made a follow-up. Both were flooded with comments.

Here’s a more subtle example mixing anxiety + anger. In basketball, it is a big no-no to sit on the ball. This one had people freaking out in the comments. On top of that, we cut the video … and so accusations doubled the comments.

3️⃣ We became a “problem solver” brand

When we were hitting our revenue ceiling, we always talked about how great our insoles were and the research that backed the claims. Looking back, it was pretty ineffective.

One day, a fellow entrepreneur looked at our homepage and said, “You’re trying to kiss before taking her out on a date.” It took a few weeks for it to hit me.

Why would anyone want a fancy insole … if they don’t even know what’s wrong with their current one?

As soon as we realized we weren’t alerting athletes that their current insoles were wasting the energy they were putting into the ground, we saw an immediate spike in engagement.

The “aha” moment clicked for people! All of a sudden, they saw a real problem our insoles could solve.

Go to our homepage now. The first thing you see: “Get the added performance your regular insoles aren’t providing.”

Immediately, the consumer is problem + solution-aware.

Now we can hit them with the good stuff — backed by scientific research, thousands of 5-star reviews, a 120-day money-back guarantee, etc.

And that’s a wrap!

I know it was a lot, but I hope you found some of these points helpful. I truly believe there’s no better vehicle to help you get to 8-figures profitably than organic social media.

The best kind of reach is the free kind.

Have any questions? Let me know on X at @DrewArciuolo or over on LinkedIn.

THE FEED

Election Tariffs?

• ​YouTube​
• ​Apple​
• ​Spotify​

Zach Stuck on the Core Marketing Tactics to Drive Growth as You Scale

• ​YouTube​
• ​Apple​
• ​Spotify​

TRENDS: CPG Wire

1. Shopify Shares Surge On Q3 Results: CNBC​

Shopify had nothing but good news to report in Q3. GMV increased 24% to $69.7B, while revenue increased 26% to $2.16B. The company reported net income of $344M, a significant improvement compared to $173M a year ago. Shopify also cited key new accounts like Reebok, Hanes, Vera Bradley, Lionsgate Entertainment, and Off-White.

2. Forerunner Ventures Grabs $500M: PitchBook​

Forerunner Ventures, a leading investor in consumer brands and consumer tech startups, closed on $500M for its seventh fund. Founded in 2012 by Kirsten Green, Forerunner Ventures was an early investor in brands like Away, Glossier, Warby Parker, and Nécessaire. The firm expects to invest in seed and Series A with checks ranging from $1M-20M.

3. Electrolit’s $400M Facility in Waco: KWTX​

Electrolit, one of the fastest-growing hydration brands in the US, is betting on itself by building a $400M manufacturing facility in Waco, TX. The 600k-square-foot facility is expected to create 200 jobs and open in early 2026. Electrolit — popular in Latin America for over 70 years — signed a long-term sales & distribution agreement with Keurig Dr. Pepper last year.

4. OneSkin Secures Series A Funding: FinSMEs​

Biotech skincare brand OneSkin raised an undisclosed amount from Selva Ventures, Unilever Ventures, PLUS Capital, and a handful of existing investors. Founded in 2016 by four Brazilian PhDs, OneSkin’s key active ingredient is OS-01 — a patented peptide capable of reversing the skin’s biological age.

5. General Mills Bets $1.5B on Pet Care: Business Wire​

Since 2018, General Mills has made five acquisitions in the pet care category for +$10B. On Thursday, the consumer goods giant shelled out another $1.5B to acquire the North American division of Whitebridge Pet Brands, a cat food and pet treats manufacturer. General Mills is clearly eager to become a major player in the $52B US pet food category.

Good gravy!

Drew smashed this out of the park.

Interested in contributing, too?

If you’re up for delivering his level of insight and depth …

Hit reply with (1) your topic + (2) your expertise. As always, operators only.

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff (Executive Editor)

PS: Special thanks to Northbeam for sponsoring this week’s newsletter.

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