Carl Weische - CRO Mastermind Behind IM8's $50M/Month, Spills On Funnels, Offers & Post-Click

0:00We see anywhere from 15 to 50 % in additional revenue on the post-purchase app experience. Got a very special guest in Carl Weische from Accelerated Agency, working with the industry's leading brands like AG1, Huel, Udi, IMA. You help take them from zero to over 50 million a month. That offer was a huge swing and a huge bet, but it paid off. And then it just had a huge, huge impact. Anytime that a specific ad creative that would get a lot of spend, we would then build a custom funnel for that. They're just investing more and more in that front-end creative and not thinking about that post-click environment at all.

0:35People need to play everything at a very high level.

0:43Welcome back to another episode of D2C Diaries. Today, online rather than in the studio, we've got a very special guest in Carl Weischer from Accelerated Agency, um one of the i'd say the d2c's biggest cro post click landing page experts really excited to have you on today kyle thanks for joining us yeah thank you bro very excited it has been a long time i think we did the last one like three years ago in london so it was super cool so yeah very excited to see you again and jump into some cool stuff today it must have been like four maybe four plus years since i met you at geek out i feel like yeah i was saying to someone the other day when I went to dinner with them, like it was a guy who was running like a TikTok shop offer.

1:28And I feel like I'm getting to, we're becoming the older people in the space slowly. And there's all the people running up TikTok shop and affiliate are the younger people like we were back then. But yeah, I really want to, we always start these episodes with a bit of a look back. I just wanted to ask a very top line question of like, what got you into CRO? What brought you into the agency space? How did you get into Accelerated? while we dive into the start school stuff. Sure. I'm happy to give some background. So basically, I would say my online marketing journey started around 12 years ago when I was a teenager.

2:06So back in school, I had some friends that were selling and wearing limited stuff like Supreme and Yeezys and Nike collabs and all of that stuff. And that basically got me into reselling. So when I was 15 and 16 years old, I would get my mom's credit card, buy Supreme, buy Yeezys. and then resell them for more expensive afterwards on the secondary market. And that's how I basically, yeah, make my first money online. And that got me really addicted to this whole thing of you can build something from your bedroom and sell products online without even like owning them really, right? And then over the years, I got into Amazon FBA, started selling my own products, got into Shopify.

2:47And then funnily enough, seven years ago, I then hired a freelancer for conversion optimization. You met last, right? So he then became a business partner. So first of all, I just hired him to do SEO on my website, help me with the copy, with the images, with all of the psychology stuff on the website. And then on the one hand side, that worked very well. And on the other hand side, it was just very exciting for me because I always had a huge passion for psychology on the site. So I would read a lot of books. I would go to seminars. I actually studied psychology in university. So it was always something that I had a passion for.

3:21And then for me, conversion and optimization was basically combining this whole like online marketing, e-commerce, selling stuff online with psychology, right? Because it's basically applying consumer psychology, sales psychology and human behavior to e-commerce, right? And tweaking some things, changing copy, changing offers to get more people to buy online, right? So back in the day, I think a bit of a six years ago, we then started with the agency just as two freelancers and then basically went from there. And I would say the rest is history. Yeah, big, big journey. Obviously now working with many of the industry's leading brands like AG1, Huel, UDI, Vessi, Bionic, and then IronMate more recently, which I'm keen to get into as we go through this episode in a bit more detail.

4:13I think it's interesting that you've got that kind of foundational background. I feel like we've been talking about that a lot internally around how it just feels like everything's going back to the fundamentals, like having that base in psychology, customer understanding, messaging, et cetera, copywriting, et cetera, is more crucial now than ever with the rise of creative and how that's played out on like media buying becoming less important, creative messaging becoming more important. It feels like people are getting more to grips in the space with that requirement for like creative volume and diversity.

4:49And from my perspective, looking at our client base, it now feels like landing pages, post-click, and the rise of like, I call it like the fragmentation of the funnel. It seems like that's the next wave almost. How are you seeing that play out within your business and what's the last 18 months look like? Yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting progression that happened over the past couple of years in the online space. I think there's a couple of factors that you already mentioned, right? Like number one, basically, you just pay more and more to get the same attention, the same impressions and the same clicks, right?

5:25So basically, the costs are going up. Secondly, the big ad platforms like Google and Facebook, they all just push media buying the software and AI to an extent where, I mean, you're the expert for that. But just from what I've seen, it becomes more and more automated. Right. And I feel like media buying went from, okay, everybody needs media buying to now like the top brands need media buying. Right. So it became from something that everybody needs to like the, it just gives you an edge now if you spend like seven, eight figures per month on ads and then you need a media buy because then he can outperform the algorithms.

6:04Right. So I would say like those are the factors that are happening on the ad platform side.

6:09Carl Weische:Quick one before we get back into the episode, every business spends money to make money ads, software flights, travel, the hundred unavoidable little things to keep the lights on all that spending every month and none of it comes back to you. It just goes out the door. Incard is a financial platform built for digital businesses and it flips that on its head. They're giving 2 % cash back for your first year on ads, SaaS, travel and everyday business spend and it's all uncapped. The same money you were spending anyway, except now a slice of it runs back in your account. You also get multi-currency accounts, corporate cards and Shopify, Meta, Stripe, and Xero connected in one place.

6:49Carl Weische:A true source of truth. But honestly, you're spending regardless, so you may as well earn on it. Sign up for free. Use the code SWU2K26. Link's in the description. Now back to the episode. And then the second thing is I think a lot of brand owners and operators, they then slowly shifted the perspective from only, okay, how can I optimize my ad KPIs to a bigger picture? How can I optimize my overall funnel? Not only how much I pay, but also how much am I getting out in terms of the conversion rate, in terms of the AOV. And I also think very recently, especially past 12 months, at least from the people that I talked to, that focus is now shifting from ads to funnel to backend.

7:37So you hear a lot of people talking about customer lifetime value, subscription products, backend products, and all of that. So I think just due to all of the factors making e-commerce so much more competitive, people need to play everything at the very high level, right? Back in the days, like five years ago, you could have the most basic product page, basic offer, basic backend, and just great Facebook ads and you would crush. And then it moved to you have to have great Facebook ads, but you also need to have a great funnel. And now it moves to you have to have great Facebook ads and a great funnel and a strong backend.

8:14And then it's probably going to be, you need to have all of that and you need to have amazing operations, cashflow, financing, everything. So I think the whole game became more difficult to play. Yeah, I just feel like that's a sophistication level, isn't it? Across the whole industry, just increasing over time as competition increases. I still think if, and you can still see those, I guess IMA is a great case study of that where if you get all of those pieces right, it's still possible to create really outsized returns and rapid growth. But it's harder to knit those things together than maybe four or five years ago.

8:55What are you seeing brands struggle with the most across that mix currently from a post-click perspective? I've got my view from our client base, but I'd love to hear yours. just specifically post click yeah so like you've got like offer construction like messaging um i would say like most people have spent a lot of time mastering facebook ads eg media buying creatives hooks copy and all of that but they haven't spent enough time trying to figure out the whole funnel and the whole post experience right so i think they're just lacking some form of awareness and sophistication understanding of how to build it, right?

9:38Like what are the different funnel types? What's the best funnel structure? Like what ad creators do I need to push through which funnel so it makes sense? Like what demographics do I need to push through which funnel so it makes sense? Which ad channels do I need to push through which funnel so it makes sense? Right. So I think that's like the main understanding that's missing, like from the bigger picture view on basically what tool from the tool shed to use in which case. I mean, people now have the understanding of, yes, there are quiz funnels. Yes, there are list of kits and advertorials, and you can use all of them.

10:12But then they basically do a wrong combination of an ad type that would work for product page or for very aware, but then they push it to advertorial. Or they do very unaware image ad, and they push it straight to product page. So they still don't have like the congruent customer journey figured out and like understanding of just from the consumer perspective, based on their awareness stage and based on their trust that they have right now, what ad that you just showed them and based on that understanding what needs to happen in the funnel next. Do they need to consume a long form advertorial to be ready to buy?

10:47Do they maybe need to go through a quick list to be ready to buy? Can you send them directly to the product page and they're going to be ready to buy? So I think that's the main thing that brand owners need to understand and learn. Where it's not just, yeah, I'm going to just use an advertorial or whatever. I'm going to just do a bundle offer. So it's most of this understanding. And I think the main thing really is putting yourself in the perspective of the target audience. So it goes away from, I need a VSA creative or I need this funnel and that. Rather like, okay, for this specific target audience, this is the ad creative we're showing them.

11:23which means that that is the frame they have when they click on the ad. And this is how I need to continue the frame. So I have the highest probability of closing the deal. Yeah, I resonate with that so much. Obviously, we don't currently control all of that ecosystem for our clients. So we see a lot of brands where we're making more and more creative. And as we spend more, we're going further and further up the funnel in terms of how aware an audience is around their products and solution. to their pain point. And they're just investing more and more in that front end creative and not thinking about that post-click environment at all.

12:03And you're almost asking the ad to do just far too much in the customer journey. You're asking it to do the full hook, educate, and convert on a product that can sometimes be quite complex. And I feel like that's the lack of sophistication around the service that you guys provide to the market. certainly from what I'm seeing across many UK brands right now. It's just people are starting to twig onto the fact that you need to apply the same sort of strategy and thought process to the second step in the customer journey as well. I really like what you said about putting yourself in the customer's shoes as well.

12:40I always find it funny when you often look at a brand's page that they've got a team of multiple people optimizing like a PDP and you can just tell that they're all a little bit too close to the problem and it's a bit too complex or they're using language that a customer wouldn't use and they're using types of social proof that they wouldn't resonate with. So I definitely resonate with that from what we're seeing across our base as well. And there are so many simple examples where I think, as you mentioned, brand owners and marketing teams, especially if they are working inside of the brand, they're just not able to put themselves out of it and then just see it neutrally.

13:20So a great example is whatever you sell a supplement and then on the product page or on the landing page, you then mix male and female avatars in different ages. So on the first product image, there's like a 60-year-old woman. Then on the second product image, there's like an 18-year-old High Rocks athlete. And on the third image, there's like a 35-year-old woman, whatever. And then it's like, obviously, it's confusing, right? Yeah. Like, why don't you think about like separating that into different pages? Where it's like one page that only targets one specific avatar, e.g. female 18 to 25. And then you would have the other one that's male because there's no way that you're going to resonate with both, especially like supplement or beauty or health categories.

14:07Because they are just not going to be able to hit both of the pain points in terms of the copywriting or show like all of the creative so that it resonates. And I'm like, okay, that should be obvious. But then the brand team, like they don't even think about that. Right. So I think that's like, there's so many sanity checks that you can do where it's like, okay, you just have to like reset your mind and then go through everything like the ads and the pages just with this neutral mind of a prospect. And then you're going to find so much stuff, right? Like every time I audit a funnel, I don't even look at it from the perspective of like a CRO specialist or marketer.

14:44I just put myself in the shoes of like the regular day-to-day consumer where I'm like, oh, I'll just pick that a whole funnel. It'd be like, like every, everything that I sense where my gut is saying that's weird, I would just note it down. Right. And then you typically find a lot of stuff. Yeah. I find brands find it even harder to do that if they're targeting personas that are sort of often older because inherently a lot of DTC founders and operators are younger demos and they find it hard to maybe shift into like the mind of a 50-year-old woman buying a supplement and then you've got size like 10 text on the PDP images that they're just not going to be able to read and things like that.

15:24So I definitely think that makes a lot of sense. You mentioned, you talk a lot about offer and obviously I feel like that's probably the biggest lever of all from a consumer perspective. I feel like it gets a bit of a dirty word for many brand owners, like this concept of discounting. But I know from watching, I've referenced a lot of your content internally around reframing offer towards perceived value. And I also feel like that's something that many of the clients we come across just aren't thinking about, like how your messaging and how you position a product and how you package it up translates to offer, not just through discounting.

16:10How are you finding that play out currently? Very good question. I mean, there's like two ways to go about this. And the first thing, as you already said, is the perceived value. And the perceived value is derived from, one, the positioning, and two, the actual, let's say, deliverables of the offer, right? And what I mean with the packaging and the copy and everything, that all comes down to the understanding of the customer avatar that you're selling to, right? Because just super quick example, I would just say, hey, Oli, buy this water bottle for five bucks. It's water, it's going to hydrate you.

16:47And you're going to be like, yeah, whatever, maybe five bucks is cool. Always say, hey, Oli, listen, you're a young and accomplished entrepreneur, you're rich and successful, you care about status. And if you buy a San Pellegrino bottle, which is 20 bucks, and you have it on the table, when you do a meeting with another entrepreneur, it's just going to have a great impact on your status. and you're going to close this deal. Then you're going to be like, well, 20 bucks sounds good for the value that I'm getting. The point that I'm making is the perceived value is not only this product itself, it's how you position it for the prospect, right?

17:19And that you derive from a deep understanding of the customer avatar, which is why that is super important because just from like repackaging it or selling it in a different way, you can just charge a higher price point for. So that's number one. Number two is then thinking about, okay, what are the things that I can put inside of the offer that then deliver a higher perceived value? So typically, the way that we like to do that is not just saying, okay, this is a San Pellegrino water bottle. It's like 20 bucks, and now I'm going to put 50 % on it and sell it for 10 bucks, and now it's a great offer, right?

17:53I would rather think, okay, if I have the San Pellegrino bottle, what makes sense to sell with this water bottle? So potentially I could sell a very nice glass to it where you can put the water in or I can sell whatever. So that's how we typically think about that, especially if you have a bigger product portfolio, where we typically combine multiple different products together in one offer. So we can go away from, okay, buy product A for like one specific pain point to buy this bundle or buy this routine. And it's basically going to change your life. right so for example we've had this beauty brand and hair care brand coconut beauty right um from spain so they're one of the biggest ones in spain in retail and stuff and for them a lot of the stuff that we did is going away from just selling like one shampoo for like hair washing the hair to going through to like a whole hair routine with like a shampoo and conditioner and serum and a mask like four products.

18:51And then on those four products, we may give like 30 % discount. But then if you think about it, you have a way higher AOV, the cogs don't drastically increase because you're already shipping the product and like adding multiple more products to like one order. It's just not going to have that negative impact. So you have a way higher margin. So that's how we typically think about it. And then if we have brands like IM8 or products where it makes sense, we also like to play around with stuff that's not a physical product, right? So a lot of times we like to add digital products to the bundle. Well, for example, we say, okay, we have this welcome kit, Oli, where you can get the San Pellegrino bottle to drink.

19:33You have amazing glasses that you're going to get to it. But then we also have an e-book teaching you how to drink, right? So that's the whole concept of we do that a lot with like health, beauty, pain relief brands are like everywhere where it makes sense, where we add a digital product to the bundle to also increase the perceived value. Digital product is 100 % margin. You just have to build it once, but it has a huge impact on the perceived value. And especially for consumable products, it has a huge impact on educating the consumer and on the customer lifetime value, right? Because you basically educate them and train them and build the habit on taking the product.

20:12So for IM8, for example, it has been a huge breakthrough once we added the digital product to the offer, which is like the 90-day transformation program, just because we then could build the habit of them taking the product every single day. Because otherwise, you may sell somebody on a subscription and they may take it, but then they take it every second or third day. The results are somewhat okay. The second shipment hits, the third shipment hits, and then they're like, well, I would just cancel this because I have too much. So that's also something that you want you to think about. So long story short, that's how we think about offers, right?

20:44So number one is basically the packaging to increase the perceived value. And number two is like, what are the specific deliverables or products inside of the offer that you can then sell? I referenced, you did like an hour and a long, maybe two hour long training on your YouTube channel going through this process with that coconut example, which I've referenced internally loads. I'll link it down below. I can't remember the name of the exact video, but I think everyone should go and watch it as a as a follow-up and apply it to their brand you touched on im8 just then um very nice segue because i wanted to spend a fair bit of time on on this episode talking through that obviously um it's well documented for i saw i saw you recently posted on twitter a breakdown of this but you you were working with im8 from day one um we've obviously had danny on on the podcast we've done some work with them um and you helped them take take them from zero to over 50 million a month it'd be great to to really dig into into that story like how did you come about um how did you get to contact them with them first like what did that process look like how did the launch go and like and like what what parts of their machine that crazy growth machine were you responsible for driving forward yeah so it's a very funny story because i was in Dubai.

22:00It was actually my birthday. So the 2nd December, 2024. And then I saw an email coming in from Danny where he booked a call through the website and then basically booked a call at like 8.50 PM. And then at like 8.51 PM, he sent me an email saying, Hey, can we do the call now? I'm like, okay, whatever. He seems to be pretty straightforward. And then I was like, yeah, let's do it. And then we jumped on a call at like 9 PM on my birthday. And then he basically just talked me through the whole vision. So they basically only did like a small organic launch, right? With David Beckham's audience of the product.

22:39So it was literally day zero pre any paid ads, right? So it was just a paid launch. They didn't touch anything yet. And he basically walked me through the whole vision that he had for the company. And based off his conviction, his confidence in the brand and them being able to take it through big numbers, I was basically saying, okay, let's do it. All right. Cause I mean, also, as you know, we only typically work with like eight and nine figure brands. So I was a bit hesitant because it was pre-revenue. So I fortunately then made the decision to take them on. And mostly due to the fact that I talked directly with Danny and he was so convicted.

23:21All right. So we then took them on and then from the one, we basically took the complete ownership for all of the funnels, right? So building new advertorials, physicals, quiz funnels, all of that stuff, and then all of the website optimization in terms of running split tests, right? And we then just basically did that over a period of 17, 18 months, where every month we would basically build new landing pages, new advertorials, new funnels to run traffic to, and then also run a lot of split tests around the creative assets on the website, the copy, the sections, and specifically the offer on the product page.

23:58So what you see now on the product page is like the V27 of countless iterations that we did on the offer. And to answer the question around the explosive growth, I would say there's thousands of factors, obviously that play into that. I would say the biggest ones are that they had a perfect timing in terms of going to market just because AG1 did a lot of like the groundwork of educating like consumers. Number two, they had a very good start, like basically getting the authority and trust from David Beckham. Number three, they had like a very new approach in terms of the brand and the product experience, because you see like hundreds of people basically selling another greens powder.

24:46And then they basically did a whole other swing at the market with selling somewhat of the same value proposition but in a completely different package of like dark red like this octagon shaped product like everything that look different right yeah um the internal marketing team is just fucking cracked danny is fucking cracked so everybody that we talk to internally is just cracked um and yeah i mean i could go through so many more factors but i would say like those were the biggest ones in terms of our work i would say ima is like a state-of-the-art example of individual and congruent customer journeys.

25:26I mean, the last number that they published is that they spent 250K per day on Meta with thousands of ad creatives that they're testing. And anytime you go to the Ad Lab, it's like thousands of live ads. And then we've had around 50 live different funnels that we push traffic to. So basically, the idea was that anytime that a specific ad creative, specific angle, specific influence, whatever, that would get a lot of spend, we would then build a custom funnel for that. So e.g. they have whatever, a doctor that's working well, we would then build a specific advertorial from the perspective of that doctor.