360 | Serving Diverse Buyers With a Smarter Media Mix | with Christine Monaghan

Christine Monaghan is a builder of growth engines and a weaver of stories, helping brands scale from startup chaos to sustainable success. She blends storytelling with systems, tech with brand, and strategy with hands-on execution to deliver results that last. 

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:00] Intro
• [00:33] Sponsor: Taboola 
• [01:49] Building brands through storytelling
• [04:34] Tracing the roots of storytelling
• [06:23] Sponsor: Next Insurance
• [07:36] Evaluating early-stage customer signals
• [10:09] Testing assumptions about customers
• [12:22] Callouts
• [12:32] Surveying customers to validate assumptions
• [14:55] Leveraging insights to improve messaging
• [18:15] Testing media to find what converts
• [21:28] Sponsor: Electric Eye
• [22:33] Sponsor: Freight Right
• [24:36] Connecting blogs to nurture discovery
• [27:15] Targeting platforms where customers exist
• [28:58] Optimizing ads for long-term growth
• [34:48] Understanding top-of-funnel users 

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• The modern way to drink milk almondcow.co/ 
• Follow Christine Monaghan linkedin.com/in/christine-monaghan 
• Reach your best audience at the lowest cost! discover.taboola.com/honest/ 
• Easy, affordable coverage that grows with your business nextinsurance.com/honest/ 
• Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect
• Turn your domestic business into an international business freightright.com/honest 

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Transcript

Christine Monaghan

You believe you know who your customer is when you start a business, but you actually do not know. Because your customer is actually who buys from you, not who you think will buy from you. 

Chase Clymer

Immediately start surveying these people and make sure that your guess is correct. The assumptions you make about your customer are... While educated, there's that founder's gut, right? It's... You're probably wrong.

Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today. 

Have you hit a wall with performance marketing on Google and Facebook? It might be time to think about where your next customers are spending their time online.

That’s where Realize comes in. Realize helps thousands of D2C brands to tap into more ad placements across hundreds of premium websites - reaching audiences you just can’t find on traditional social channels

With intent-based, contextually relevant ad placements, you can drive real conversions, not just impressions, and expand your acquisition strategy with better data, more control, and higher ROI.

Realize helps you build high-performing AI-powered ad experiences, backed by 17 years of data.

And simple to set up, no bloated dashboards or complicated onboarding so you can start scaling fast

You can also leverage your own first-party data to retarget people already in your funnel.

So if you’re ready to go beyond Facebook and Google and start reaching new audiences, head on over to discover.taboola.com/honest That's discover.tabula.com/honest D-I-S-C-O-V-E-R.T-A-B-O-O-L- dot.COM. H-O-N-E-S-T. 

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming the show Christine Monaghan. She is currently the CMO at Almond Cow. But historically, she has helped brands grow from scrappy startups to scalable success by pairing storytelling with repeatable processes and fully activating the Ecommerce flywheel. Christy, welcome to the show. 

Christine Monaghan

Thank you so much, Chase. I'm super excited to have this conversation today.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. We met, I believe it was at E-Tail in Boston. I always like to shout out the conferences. People get out there and network. It's very good for you. But our conversation was so fun, then. I think we had like 10 minutes set aside but we ended up being in that room for almost 45 minutes. 

Christine Monaghan

Yes. I love Ecommerce. It's a tough conversation to stop. 

Chase Clymer

I think we started talking about marketing attribution and split tests. 

Christine Monaghan

Yep. You're right. 

Chase Clymer

Maybe that will come up again today. Alright, so quickly for those that are unaware. What types of products is Almond Cow bringing to the market currently? 

Christine Monaghan

So Almond Cow makes a machine where you can make your own any type of non-dairy milk, almond, cashew, coconut. Basically, when you purchase our machine, you can get a cup of any ingredients, any nut grain or seed, you put water or you can even put coffee in the machine if you want to make a latte. Press a button and in one minute, you have basically a family size pitcher of milk.

Chase Clymer 

That's amazing. And you guys have obviously had some great success over there. When did you join Almond Cow? And what was the impetus for that? 

Christine Monaghan

So I started at Almond Cow early last year. So I'm about a little over a year and half in. And I had allergies for many years and Almond Cow provided a solution for me because labels are not always as straightforward as one might believe they are. And it really spoke to me personally. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Absolutely. And what were some of those problems that Almond Cow was looking to solve with a hire, like a CMO hire? 

Christine Monaghan

So they're looking to basically get into some additional retailers. So we looked, we were really wanting to expand our business. I'm also looking to really drive down CAC and figure out what better ways to um enhance our performance marketing. As well as just diving a little deeper into the storytelling and leveraging more native storytelling from us. As well as leveraging some more influencers to tell some stories a little closer to our brand. 

Chase Clymer

And that storytelling element, I believe that's where you shine. 

Christine Monaghan

Yes. Yes. 

Chase Clymer 

So I guess take me, take me back in time, I guess. Where does this storytelling start in your career? And when did Ecommerce really start to become the forefront of your expertise? 

Christine Monaghan

So I started my career in technology. But I always had an affinity towards marketing. And I had some great opportunities early in my career to get some great mentors and they had and they offered me up some opportunities. Now, to be honest, my first Ecommerce opportunity, funnily enough, was at GE. 

But more storytelling came in with QVC and then a little later when I was selling sneakers. So I really think, regardless of what you're selling, if it's a large business like a QVC or a GE or just a retailer that's really looking to turn on Ecommerce. As the first sneaker place that I started at that was KicksUSA, that's now Snipes, which is now pretty large. But at the time, we had zero. It was a brand new digital business. We basically use storytelling. 

You really need to connect to your customer, whomever your customer is, and continue to optimize how you speak to them. What content is interesting to them, how you can really engage and excite your customer. Because at the end of the day, it's really about that connection, that interaction. That's how you can actually connect revenue. If you can't actually connect with them, it's very, very difficult to convert them. 

Chase Clymer 

Running an Ecommerce business means wearing a lot of hats; founder, marketer, customer service, logistics… and let’s be honest, sometimes even therapists.

But one thing you shouldn’t have to stress about? Business insurance.

That’s where Next Insurance comes in.

Next is built specifically for small businesses, including Ecommerce brands, making it simple to get the right coverage entirely online, in just minutes.

Whether you sell handmade candles, athletic wear, or subscription boxes, Next helps protect you from the unexpected, from product liability to shipping mishaps and everything in between.

And here’s the best part: you can save up to 30% on your business insurance and get peace of mind for as low as $1 per day, knowing Next has your back.

With transparent pricing, flexible plans, and instant certificates of insurance, Next gives you the confidence to focus on what matters most - growing your store.

So if you’re ready to protect your business while scaling your brand, head over to nextinsurance.com/honest to get covered today. That’s nextinsurance.com/honest. N-E-X-T-I-N-S-U-R-A-N-C-E dot C-O-M slash H-O-N-E-S-T

And I know that a lot of our listeners are in that 0 to 1 stage, working on connecting more with their potential customers and how to resonate more with them. So I guess, let's dig in more there. If you were consulting for a startup, what would be some of the first questions? Or some of the first actions that you would take within that relationship?

Christine Monaghan

If I were about to just consult with somebody, obviously, the first thing I would do would be look at their analytics. Understand who's coming to their site now. Understand if who's coming to their site now is actually who they intended to come to their site. Are they actually bringing the folks that they were thinking they would bring when they started this business?

And then optimize into who they think is their kind of ideal customer, right? And how did they, one, believe they were going to connect with their customer and two, how are they actually connecting with their customer? And then to pair that, the other thing I would do is obviously turn on surveys, right? Now there's in Shopify or Magento or... 

Chase Clymer 

There's a solution for everything, yeah.

Christine Monaghan

Every single one of these, every one of these small platforms and large platforms have the, you know, have some services where you can basically turn on surveys because there's what people do, which is in your analytics. There's what people say, which is in your survey. And then the truth is somewhere in the middle. 

So if you actually pair the two together, I think it helps you come up with a more accurate roadmap to go in there and test and figure out how you actually get the people that you intend to come to your site. Who you believe are going to be your ideal customer. And then you may one, figure out that that is not who your customer is at all. 

Or two, you may actually start getting the right folks onto your site by using those appropriate tactics and talents, and then actually start to grow your revenue. But why is that important to do? Because if you can't actually figure out who's coming onto your site, it's very, very difficult to truly sell them, to optimize what your product pages really should say. What is it that your landing pages should be really communicating? 

And what is it that you're not telling folks on your site today that you should be? Which is the reason why you're struggling for conversion. 

Chase Clymer 

That's amazing. I've got so many follow-ups. Alright, first, if I'm like... So I know there are people listening to this. They're like, “Well, alright, I don't think I even have the traffic to start diving in.” So I think there is something to be said like the start, it's traffic for all means until you get something going? Or can you start this from zero? 

Christine Monaghan

Yes. So from zero, if you have any type of brick and mortar, you probably have some basic traffic coming through, right? Because they have some familiarity with your stores. If you have zero traffic coming through and this is an eCommerce just direct to consumer opportunity to start, to be honest with you, the way you have to start is actually performance, performance marketing. 

In that case, it's actually slightly easier to control what comes to your site because you're actually able to buy that type of customer. Now, the complexity is, if you think back to the very first thing that I said, is that that may actually not be the right customer for you. I believe if you're starting from zero, the best way to do it or the best way that I have done it in the past is actually to use influencers that I know and or partnerships that I'm aware of that are within that space.

And have them assist and try to drive traffic to you as well as some of the performance marketing. Why would that make a difference? Well, because then it actually starts giving you a better traffic mix so you can actually start to figure out who's converting and who is not.

Right? Because Chase, the complexity is if you don't know, you believe you know who your customer is when you start a business, but you actually do not know because your customer is actually who buys from you, not who you think will buy from you. Getting a better mix. Figuring out and doing some partnerships or ideally another opportunity is also [a] collabs. So if there is an adjacent business that's similar to you that you have some relationships with.

Doing a collaboration to launch your brand is also another unique way to do it. And it will actually drive more relevant traffic to you. 

Chase Clymer 

Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe. If you haven't, we're releasing interviews like this every week. So don't miss out. Now back to the interview. 

You mentioned having a more healthy traffic mix. Not only that, but you can retarget the people that you're earning through that influencer campaign with your paid ads. That's another advantage of launching that way. But I don't want to overlook... I want to circle back to something you said earlier. 

Immediately start surveying these people and make sure that your guess is correct. The assumptions you make about your customer are while educated, there's that founder gut, right? You're probably wrong a little bit. And you should let your customers tell you. The real customers, not people like, there are two different segments. There are the people that have purchased and there people that are on the website. 

Christine Monaghan

Yes. 

Chase Clymer 

And you should take those things with a grand... You should keep them in those separated buckets. But understand, you give more weight to the people that are actually giving you money. 

Christine Monaghan

Yes. And also, once they have given you money. This, I believe, was our attribution conversation. To continue to treat those folks, especially now that they're customers, and to continue to build out your site content to really support them, to drive that long-term relationship with them. Know that the second time they visit your site, they may or may not actually be buying. 

They may actually be exploring what they were purchasing to begin with, getting excited that it's coming. The fact that they are not converting that second time they came on does not mean that you have a conversion problem. It means you need to make sure that you're really treating those customers uniquely and differently as you continue to build that business because the easiest person to sell is the person you have already sold.

Building that relationship is obviously very, very key to retention and lifetime value. But also key to many other things as you build your business. When we first started talking about Almond Cow, one of the things we really wanted to do was expand in retail. Well, one of the ideal opportunities to expand in retail is to have a strong affinity for brand[s] and customers that have been around with you for a long time.

So building that relationship is key to getting into large retailers. You want to go in on [the] shelf on Walmart, you want to go in Costco or Macy's or whatever you're selling. The first thing they're going to look at is folks that have a strong brand affinity. So that customer relationship is extraordinarily important.

Chase Clymer 

Yeah, I've had numerous, numerous brands on the show and they said that… Basically, their direct-to-consumer sales and the information they had about their customer and the demographics and the locations only made it easier to get into locations like physical retail. 

Christine Monaghan

Yes. And the larger the retailer, the more critical those relationships are. And that information is, which is actually, by the way, another reason why I was talking about surveying. Because it actually helps you build a much broader case, one for your direct-to-consumer business, but two, whatever else you decide to do. 

Even if you decide to basically use partnerships to sell and you don't go into retailers, it doesn't really matter. All of that information is critical to be able to expand your business. 

Chase Clymer 

Yeah. We do a lot of surveying when we're doing the research and strategy portion of a conversion rate optimization engagement. I tell our clients, I'm like, “All this information giving you like, sure, we're going to do split tests with it. But also give it to your marketing team. Give it to your... All of this... This is the problem solution in your customer voice.”

All it does is make your ads better. It makes all... You can use this everywhere. It will give you things to say to the buyers at Walmart. It's like these were the problems they're experiencing. Here's the solution in their own words. 

Christine Monaghan

Oh, yeah. And the funny thing is that you think you know what the content should really be. But you really don't. And it's not about that you don't understand your product. It's about that the customer changes all the time. So that constant survey will actually show you how that ebbs and flows and where it really impacts. 

And it gives you a really good opportunity to also to ultimately do content marketing, which is a lot less expensive than regular performance marketing. And also will help to continue to build out that true customer that you're really looking for. 

Chase Clymer 

Absolutely. That earned traffic lasts a lot longer than... Pay traffic only lasts as long as your budget is there.

Christine Monaghan

Yeah, that's true. Even the retargeting, just gets very, very expensive, especially to buy that same customer over and over again. So that's why that relationship is really key. And even during that dating element of your relationship where you know that you're building that awareness. It's very important to drive and have that customer really understand what your offer is and to continue to build it. 

Because yes, many people will, you know, convert depending on the cost of your product between one to 10 or 30 days. There are still customers that take longer to do that. So making sure that you have content to support and answer that as well as you can do objection handling. So basically objection handling is answering, I know you know, Chase. 

Basically answering the question of your customer without introducing the problem. you know, essentially providing responses for retargeting for answers that perhaps you didn't give to those customers or maybe those segments that add or need a little bit more information or want you to add a little bit more color to what they have seen.

Leveraging that objection handling, how that really works. It one, can tell you things you may want to add to your product. Or it also may show you where you may want to add an additional funnel for a segment that really just needs to be sold slightly differently. Both are okay. And both of those options can be supported easily in literally every platform that I can think of off top of my head, which is, I guess, a bunch. And it's really just about what works for your customer.

Chase Clymer 

It also will make it much, much easier to sell those customers. Yeah. So back to your objections, right? People do not buy because of 3 reasons. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And also, you talked about returning visitors after they purchase. People do get buyer's remorse and they might cancel their order because they had something come up afterwards. They're like, “Oh, what about this?” And they'll come back and look for it. 

And I like how you said that you need to answer these questions without introducing the problem, which is just being a good copywriter. But yeah, all this stuff should live on the website so you can answer all those questions that your customers have about the product. And then to your point about there are certain segments that might be... They might have a problem that's unique and maybe just slightly different than the core. 

But it's maybe a more profitable or a faster sales cycle. You start to identify this stuff. And that's super fun. [I] love working with our clients building out landing page templates, and that it's all dynamic. So you can swap out the content for those different use cases. And you can watch your row return on ad spend just go up when your targeting is better, your message is on point, and it all just works. 

Christine Monaghan

Yeah. No, agree. And also the media that some will sell some folks is very different. Some folks are sold better by short videos that you have on a landing page. Some folks really don't like that. They prefer to have a before and after some other type of media to explain it. Neither way is right or wrong. It's really just about having a variety available. 

And if you're starting from zero to one, it's racking and stacking which thing to do first. Because if you're starting from zero, you can't have 15 different commercials running at once. Also then optimize six landing pages or whatever. It's really about getting one or two things to work well and then taking the benefit of those things that are working well and then slowly expanding. 

Because your customers aren't going to respond to 10 videos that you launch immediately. Because one video works doesn't mean 10 will work better. So it's really just about working slowly through it and truly using your past successes to drive your future ones because that's how you get compound growth. 

If you're just scattershot, if you're doing things that don't actually apply to each other, it makes it very, very difficult to get compound growth. Yes, you might get some conversions across the board, but it starts getting very, very, very expensive to keep them all up. 

Chase Clymer 

“I have been in business for nearly 20 years, and very few companies I have hired in that time have performed as well as Electric Eye. They have knowledgeable staff, and our project was delivered on time and on budget. Electric Eye has exceeded my expectations, and I look forward to working with them again.”

That is a direct quote from one of our clients at Electric Eye. 

Electric Eye is a Shopify Plus partner that has helped over 100 brands migrate, redesign, and optimize their stores since 2016.

If you'd like to increase your conversion rate, average order value, and revenue per session, we are the true Shopify experts you've been looking for. 

Right now, we're offering a free diagnostic to qualified brands that reach out and mention the podcast. Visit electriceye.io today to schedule a call and send us a message. Find out why we have over 50 5-star reviews in the Shopify Partner Directory. Again, that's electriceye.io. E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C-E-Y-E.io 

If you sell big, bulky, oversized products on Shopify - saunas, reformers, ping-pong tables, exam tables, you know the pain: your cart can’t automatically show the real price to deliver. So you guess a flat rate for shipping or you ask to “email us for a quote,” and the buyer bounces.

That’s why Freight Right built the world’s first solution to make merchant’s checkouts freight-ready for heavy goods.

Quote less. Ship more.

With Freight Right installed on your Shopify store, your customers see the cost of shipping - including options for white-glove or curbside, liftgates, appointments, even taxes, duty, and tariffs - all automatically calculated for any buyer, anywhere in the world. Behind the scenes, Freight Right books the carrier, generates the bill of lading , dispatches, tracks, and writes the actual shipping cost back to the order, so finance doesn’t stare at a $0 placeholder.

Prefer to offer free shipping domestically? Go for it. Freight Right automates the operation behind the scenes. Sell in other countries without local fulfillment facilities or distributors. Ship DTC from your warehouse or even from your factory with accurate landed cost and reliable delivery times at checkout.

Quote less and ship more with Freight Right.

Make big & bulky, finally buyable on Shopify.

For the first 50 listeners to set their stores up with Freight Right, we’ll cover up to $500 in shipping costs on your first order. Act now to get your store ready for 2026 and the new year

Go to freightright.com/honest to get your free customized quote and start selling your best sellers around the world. Visit freightright.com/honest today.

Chase Clymer 

I wanted to talk about [the] budget. I think a lot of startups can't afford to do multiple different angles on performance marketing. Also, even if they want to do, another thing is they will still do it at times. But it's like you're not even optimizing. It is expensive to run these ads. And if you can pour all of it into a successful ad, it's going to be more return than splitting it between 5 not so successful ads. It's like people never maximize their channel or an ad that's doing well. 

I see that all the time. And we don't even do marketing or advertising as a service. [I] just, I see it all the time. 

Christine Monaghan

Well, you're 100 % right. Because yes, you could have 1,000 ads, but you probably have 12 that are working. Maybe 25. You know, and I think the inclination is to kind of dump most of your budget into Facebook or Instagram or one of those. And I, yes, maybe that helps immediately in our zero to one conversation, getting some stuff started. But ultimately it actually is harmful to you to not distribute across the whole flywheel because it is very, very difficult. 

Not even Facebook wants you to jump all of that immediately into Facebook. They are kind of expecting to have that full 360 view. Really build out email and start building out all of your trigger series and your lifestyle series and actually start building out your content marketing and actually working with your blogs. As you continue to build out your blogs and then you put a content marketing solution behind it.

There's Taboola, there's, Taboola comes into my head, but there's about a thousand of them. And you can basically push those blogs out. Get those folks in and the benefit of that is you actually know they have some interest in your content. So you know that that content is important to them. So as you start to convert those customers, that's some additional information that you can feedback as you're growing your business to sell into those retailers. For instance, for Almond Cow, we sell a lot through recipes or additional information about labeling or different nutritional things. Organic content, 40 or 50 % of it is going directly to our recipes. 

We don't immediately sell those folks because they're really just at the edges of discovery. So building that out, connecting the blogs together, getting them to be able to really explore actually will open up and let them get entertained by your brand, educated by your brand, and ultimately, you want them to be converted. 

Chase Clymer 

Absolutely. And it's funny that you brought up different media, different advertising places like Facebook, all over. But I think also it's... You need to make sure that your audience is on that platform. And so I think mixing it everywhere... This is a very obvious example. I don't think anyone would ever do this. But if you're selling Harley Davidson-inspired menswear, I don't think your audience is on Pinterest. So... 

Christine Monaghan

No, probably not. 

Chase Clymer

But you got to, you have to point that stuff out at times because people will still spread their marketing budget across all sorts of mediums where it's like, I don't think your customer is there. 

Christine Monaghan

Unless maybe it's some very fascinating gifting opportunities from there. You never do know. It's maybe worth a few dollars. But I agree with you. That's where I think, know your customer. Look at your surveys, who's actually buying from you. And then expand out from that. It's like in concentric circles, you just have to continue to build out and figure out what really works. 

And then you have to also understand that there are going to be discovery channels that are not going to immediately convert. That doesn't make them bad channels. It means you have to kind of make sure that those discovery channels are funneling in the customers that are interested in you, but that you have all of the rest of the pieces of your ecosystem to help support and ultimately convert.

And then continue to convert them as customers. It's really just not about a one-time relationship. It's about building a general relationship where they want to continue to interact with your brand. 

Chase Clymer 

Absolutely. Now, Christy, is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience? 

Christine Monaghan 

The bigger thing... So we already talked about where you put a lot of money into just one channel. I also think the other big issue that I see is the way people define ROAS. So, and define conversion also. So maybe I'll step back a tiny bit. You sell users, right? Everyone does. You don't sell sessions. So making sure you know who's actually coming onto your site. Understand generally why they're there. 

And, you know, yes, if you're at, know, maybe a, I don't know, Kroger and, you're trying to get people to buy from their previous cart every time. Perhaps you theoretically think you're selling sessions. But you're really not. You're really selling that user and you're selling a lifetime value to that user. So I think that looking at your conversion by users, I think is a very helpful thing to understand. 

As well as how those users are interacting and how much time they're really spending with you and if they're really getting what they need. So I think that's one important thing. If your business wants to define it by sessions, fine. But you need to understand the users. 

Chase Clymer

Let's distill that down a bit. Just a little bit for folks that might be a bit confused. So you're saying you're selling users. So basically, an individual, single customer is what you're defining as a user, like a unique individual. 

Christine Monaghan 

Yes, a unique individual. And that unique individual has a phone. They probably have a laptop. They may also see you at a retailer depending on how big or small this is. But that is the same person. Right. And that's like the whole idea of Omni-channel is meeting someone wherever they are in a slightly different way. Because depending on what channel they kind of expect things to be different. Right. 

But that one person is who you're building that relationship with. A session is, you know, them coming to your site via a phone or laptop or a visit also could be into your store, but neither here nor there. So the common conversion, if you look at Google Analytics, is based on a session or a visit. But really, what you're selling is a visitor or a user. Does that help, Chase? 

Chase Clymer

I believe it helps the audience. Yes. And sessions are usually, they take away high bounce rates as well. So it's only people that are active in your store. 

Christine Monaghan

Yes.

Chase Clymer

And then I've also seen some people do math based on traffic, which is just wild. Which is just individual hits to your website with no filtering on top of it. 

Christine Monaghan

Yes. And I think it's because that's what the analytics programs give you. And depending on which analytics program... So if you're looking at Shopify or Magento, Magento uses users. Shopify uses sessions. You're right. Google Analytics uses engaged sessions. Unless you dig a little further, then you can get all sessions.

So I think that's why I really think it's important for you to understand who you're selling, what they're doing, and make sure that you keep that in mind. And then for how I define return on ad spend, because I think that was the other piece that I mentioned. When people are trying to go in and save money, the very first thing they do is they strip off all discovery spend. 

They go only to usually Google or retargeted Facebook and go to the absolute bottom of the funnel to optimize their paid opportunities, which is fine. For a very short period of time. But if you're actually trying to grow your business, it actually will ultimately kill your business, actually. Because you're not actually building the top of your funnel. So you have to continue to distribute your spend in a way that you continue to feed your customer acquisition cycle. 

If you turn off your acquisition cycle, it's not easy to turn on again because you have to go all the way back, depending on how long your awareness cycle is. And it could take, you could turn it off and you would think it would be fine for two weeks, but it might take 45 days for you to really build that funnel back up. So you could go dry for 30, 45 days.

You send all of your paid search into learning mode. And it's just a very, very difficult way to continue to build your business, which is why at the beginning I was talking about focusing on a few ads. And I know that's what Chase is talking about too, making sure that you really get those working and you kind of keep those evergreen ads really going. 

You always want a piece for your testing. You always want to make sure you have discovery and you obviously want to have [a] retarget, but making sure that you use that balance. And when you're looking at ROAS, you're looking at a balanced ROAS. I think that's key. Not just finding the two ads that are at the bottom of the funnel. Because yes, you can get those super, super efficient. 

By the way, they're almost always branded and they're not really going to be that helpful to you anyway. But it just hurts you in the long run. So, Chase, yes, if I could impart anything on a brand new founder, it'd be very, very careful with these ads that convert 20X. And the ads where it says it doesn't convert at all because you really have to understand the objective or what you're trying to achieve to know whether or not they're working or not. 

Chase Clymer 

Yeah. To use an analogy that I like, it's just like, imagine a funnel, right? There's the top, there's the bottom. Now if you turn off adding stuff to the top of it, you're eventually going to run through everything in the funnel and it's going to dry up. So you need to keep those awareness ads on those top of the funnel ads, getting the people that don't know you to know you. 

And it is a hard pill to swallow. It's on paper. It looks unprofitable if you really just look through a finite lens at just that one thing. But without it, you don't grow your business. 

Christine Monaghan

Yeah. And it actually will also lead you to fix things that are not actually broken. Which is the other reason why I was talking about users, not sessions. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. 

Christine Monaghan

To really understand what you're getting and to know whether or not you want to do it. Because the next most popular [thing] I see founders do is in their second and third session visit from a new customer, if they're not immediately buying, they think that there's something wrong with their retention cycle that may not actually be the case. Because Chase your right. 

Maybe they're just looking at an answer for something that they originally forgot. Maybe they're looking for how on earth they start to use this product. So really looking at that and building it out that way, I think is important rather than assuming something is broken. Something may absolutely be broken. But you don't know that for sure until you actually understand the why. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Yeah. You don't want to offer a steep discount to someone that already purchased because you think they haven't purchased. 

Christine Monaghan

Yes.

Chase Clymer

Now you just gave away money.

Christine Monaghan

Yes. And actually, it turns people off. Because if you offer someone a discount that just purchased your product and you're offering them the exact same product, one, they might think, well, why did I pay full price? I think I need to call customer service and go get more money back. Two, is this really just a big discount brand? Why did I spend that much money to begin with? I don't really understand.

Unique offers you give a customer, they should be unique. And when you give them to them, you need to make sure you explain why you're giving them to them. And what is the value and how it builds that relationship, which is a different offer than maybe just reselling. But if you don't know, it's the same user. If you really haven't defined and made sure that your customer funnel is telling you who your customer is, you're retargeting. If you just have general retargeting on, is probably going to give them some crazy discount for something that they just bought.

Chase Clymer 

Yeah. And like you said, now you have a customer service issue, which now is costing you money, people, brainpower, whatever to give this discount. It creates some interesting trickle-down issues. And at the end of the day, it's just going after your profitability. Pivoting a bit, Christine, if I am a listener and I am interested in creating milk from, I believe it was nuts, grains and seeds.

Christine Monaghan

Yes. 

Chase Clymer

What should I do? Where should I go? 

Christine Monaghan

Well, you can just come on to almondcow.co and we have lots of landing pages. You can come to anyone you want and come and give our machine a try. It's literally just one cup of ingredients, one button press, one minute and you can kind of make whatever you want. You can make creamer too. 

So if you like, you know, craft creamers, because I personally love bougie creamers, you can kind of make any flavor you want and you can use 2 ingredients or you can use 20. And you know every single thing that's in your milk, which is obviously what drew me to the brand in the first place. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Christine, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing all those amazing insights. 

Christine Monaghan

Thank you so much, Chase. This is amazing. And I'm really so glad that we met and I just love your blog. 

Chase Clymer

Thank you. 

Christine Monaghan

Podcast. It's awesome.