#355 - The Truth About Scaling on Facebook: Lessons from $150M in Ad Spend

Marin Ištvanić is a partner at Inspire Brands, a boutique agency focused on paid social ads, primarily on Facebook and Instagram. He has personally spent over $150 million on Facebook ads for clients and internal brands, successfully scaling Inspire's own brand to $30 million in revenue by their third year.

In this episode of DTC Pod, Marin shares his insights on growing brands profitably through paid social. He discusses the importance of achieving product-market fit, crafting compelling offers, and understanding unit economics. Marin also details his agency's creative testing process and how to efficiently scale winning ad angles from static images to videos to landing pages.

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On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover:
1. Achieving Product-Market Fit
2. Scaling Brands through Facebook Ads
3. Product Differentiation
4. How to Craft a Compelling Offer
5. Subscription Products and Pricing Strategies
6. Landing Pages for Facebook Ads
7. Advertorials and Third-Party Content for Ads
8. Whitelisting and Leveraging External Trust in Ads
9. Ad Format Mix and Budget Allocation
10. Advantage+ Campaigns and AI
11. Scaling Ad Creative Production
12. Testing Ad Variations and Hooks

Timestamps
00:00 Marin's background and joining Inspire Brands 
04:48 Importance of product-market fit and differentiation 
06:50 Creating demand vs picking an established market
10:34 What makes an effective offer and how to craft one
12:41 Subscription models and free trial strategies
16:59 $1K/day spend as indicator of product-market fit 
18:36 Choosing the right landing page for your product 
25:07 Whitelisting strategies and organic-looking content
27:48 Typical budget allocation across ad formats
30:29 Facebook's Advantage+ campaigns and AI features 
33:23 Strategies for scaling ad creative
24:44 Final tips: know your numbers and when to spend

Show notes powered by Castmagic

Past guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more.  

Additional episodes you might like:

• #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth

• #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content

• #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views

• #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands

• #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook

• ​​​​#243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands

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Projects the DTC Pod team is working on:
DTCetc - all our favorite brands on the internet
Olivea - the extra virgin olive oil & hydroxytyrosol supplement
Castmagic - AI Workspace for Content

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