With the right structure, content is enabled to lead for growth.

DTCo manages 8-figure ad budgets, audits dozens of self-managed or other-agency managed ad accounts and business models, has collectively 80+ years of experience. We strategize, produce and design thousands of ads a year—we have strong opinions on how to grow a business.

You can ask Brunt and ARMRA, two brands that we took to 9-figure ARRs almost entirely through Meta and content strategies.

When we meet a new client, no matter their lifespan or ultimate growth goals, we find ourselves repeating the same two recommendations:

1. Dial-in your structure

2. Establish content pillars

First, on structure.

Meta’s algorithm needs data to function — the best way to train it to find your in-market audience, is to consolidate.

We manage Meta accounts that spend upwards of $5M/month profitably — and only have 2 active campaigns.

We frequently audit Meta accounts that spend under $200K/month that have 8+ active campaigns. Performance here is almost always tough.

In these scenarios, campaign structures often expand when ad creative is not performing, or targeting is needlessly driving the expansion. In both cases, CPMs usually spike because of manual guardrails, such as LAL or interest audiences, blocking the algorithm’s ability to align content with intent and behavior signals.

You need one creative testing campaign.

We debate internally on whether CBO (Campaign) or ABO (Ad Set) level budgets are better. For businesses that have broad marketing channels like TV, Podcasts, and sizable Influencers, we like 7 day click. Otherwise, we’ll roll with 7 day click + 1 day view. We rarely spend more than 10% of budget on remarketing, if that.

50-70% of your budget should be in your Creative Testing Campaign, whether it’s an ABO or CBO structure. From here, the goal is to launch new creatives in broad targeting ad sets and find a creative winner.

We’ll talk more about this next.

You need a campaign or two to put all your winners.

ASC+ is one, but it shouldn’t take up more than 30% of your budget. If you’re feeling like a cowboy, launch a Campaign with Cost Cap Ad Sets with a budget set to 5-10X what you’re comfortable spending on a daily basis. Launch another Cost Cap that’s 10% below your benchmark CPA. Adjust your CPA target based on intra day performance 🙂 Interested in this? Holler at us.

Either way, if you do what we recommend for creative testing and you haven’t found creative winners—it’s not your structure or your targeting, it’s your content strategy.

Second, on Content Pillars.

They’re nothing new to marketing, but they’re more important than ever.

Content Pillars are an approach to Content Strategy that define topics that your product marketing speaks too. We like them because they enable a systematic way to align brand with performance and then connect data to Content Strategy.

It’s native to how we work now and the proof is in the pudding—some of our client’s best success stories are centered on identifying a core Content Pillar and then expanding those Pillars as the business grows to meet an expanded audience.

How does this connect to your account structure?

Meta’s algorithm is designed to find the most in-market users. The less that a brand spends, the more in-market their audience is. As a brand grows, they inevitably reach a lower intent audience.

Content Pillars become most effective when brands increase spend.

You’ve heard this before: “whenever we increase spend, it’s not efficient.” That’s because most brands try and scale the same messaging that enabled them to reach where they are now. However, that increased spend is not targeting the same kind of audience as before, it’s targeting and learning about the engagement of a slightly broader audience than before.

Utilizing Content Pillars lets you identify what messaging resonates with the newly targeted audience as you increase spend. It might be the same pillar as before with a new format/hook, which tells us you’re still in the same tier of audience. As you find performance with a new Content Pillar, you’ll know the algo has found a new product market fit.

This is a diagram for how we illustrate this:

 How does DTCo do this?

In our Creative Testing Campaign, we match 1 Ad Set <> 1 Content Pillar.

Here’s what you’ll want to do:

1. Define your growth Content Pillars. Create 1 batch of ads for each one, ensuring you’re giving Meta enough visual differentiation.

2. Group your ads into concept-level ad sets and test them against broad (18+, all gender, existing customer exclusion) audiences.

3. Measure results against a target CPA/ROAS. We like to let ads spend 3x their CPA goal. If the ad is not at or better than the target, we cut it.

4. Any ads that are better than the target are dialed up, and let run for two days at higher spend. If the target holds, we push more and…

5. We consider that a rising champ. Rotate champs into ASC+ with other historical champs, or Cost Caps as mentioned 🤠 

6. Iterate on winners — new formats = new ways of conveying your winning message.

7. Do not iterate on ads that exceed your efficiency or profitability boundaries. Iterating into stagnation is a common issue we see — if the message doesn’t resonate, a new format will not get you there.

This is a wildly simplified take for the sake of this email, but if you want to get into the nitty gritty of Structuring Content for Growth, hit us back at [email protected]. We’d love to chat.