DTC957: Scaling into December, Sharma on Retention, and Core Desire in Ads

Good morning,

Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC:

• 🚀 Your December Strategy for Scaling Successfully
• 💡 Ways To Turn First-Time Customers Into Repeat Buyers
• ✏️ Don’t Start Writing Ads Without Thinking About This!

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Houndberry, Exact Espresso, and Sweetapolita. 👋

‍🎁 Holiday Momentum Is Taking Off On Roku. Harness Shoppable Ads And Capture More Sales

The shopping season doesn’t dip after Black Friday… it takes off. 🚀

🎄 Early December is a high-intent discovery and conversion window, especially for last-minute shoppers. It’s a vital time to meet your buyers where they already are.

📈 Roku reaches 90M streaming households, and consistently sees record hours of viewing during the post-Thanksgiving period and weeks leading into Christmas. These holiday viewers are tuning in with a hybrid entertainment + shopping mindset.

👀 They’re browsing, researching gifts, and making purchases while streaming, and Roku’s shoppable Action ads and seamless Shopify integration lets them make purchase decisions directly from their TV screen. 📺

Want even better results? Run exclusive offers inside Action Ads to capture peak streaming attention and drive higher engagement and conversions. 💥

🛍️ Don’t drop the ball. Keep the holiday sales soaring.

‍🚀 Keep That Cyber Week Momentum Going In December!

BFCM may be over, but the buying season certainly isn’t.

Pilothouse saw strong wins across categories this year, and now the goal is simple: keep that momentum alive as shoppers shift from deal-hunting to gift-giving.

December is still one of the highest-intent shopping windows of the year. If you pivot fast, you can outperform BFCM.

Here’s how to keep performance strong as you move deeper into holiday shopping:

1️⃣ Pivot From “Deals” to “Gifts”

Once discounts end, transition messaging from sale-driven to gift-driven:

• Still Time to Gift
• Low Stock on Holiday Favorites
• Deliver In Time For Christmas

2️⃣ Target Last-Minute Shoppers

Not everyone finishes holiday shopping during Black Friday.

Emphasize:

• Express shipping
• “Order by XX DATE for guaranteed delivery”
• Easy gifting, bundles, or quick-ship picks

Make it obvious your brand can save them time.

3️⃣ Focus on Evergreen

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Take your top BFCM performers and update headlines, hooks, and visuals.

4️⃣ Leverage Q5 (Dec 25–31)

Christmas Day through New Year’s is a mini-boom of high-intent traffic.

Gift cards, returns, store credit, and self-gifting drive conversions. Keep self-purchase angles ready:

• You deserve one too!
• Your size is still in stock

The takeaway?

Gift season doesn’t stop after Cyber Week!

Refresh your messaging, lean into urgency, recycle what worked, and prep for the Q5 surge. Brands that treat late December as its own performance window can stack meaningful incremental revenue before year-end.

‍🚀 Kick Off Your Holiday Campaign With a Win. Roku’s Gifting You $5K To Double Your Impact

This holiday season, it’s time for your sales to heat up. 🔥

📺 Roku gets your brand into 90M streaming households, right as viewers are starting their holiday shopping in full force. Roku users are watching an average of 3.5 hours per day, creating sustained reach for holiday campaigns, right when it counts. 🛍️

💵 Even better, your gift from Roku this year? Get $5K in ad credit when you spend your first $5K with Roku Ads Manager with code GET5K. Terms apply.

👀 Get your brand in front of viewers during peak streaming season on America’s #1 TV streaming platform with advanced targeting, shoppable ad formats, and real-time insights all in one convenient dashboard.

👉 Don’t miss this limited-time offer.

‍🎧 Nik Sharma on Scaling DTC in 2025: Creative Strategy, Offers & Retention

Nik Sharma, founder of Sharma Brands, returns to the DTC pod to dig into how DTC brands should be approaching Cyber Week with simple, tested offers, and how to turn those one‑time buyers into repeat customers.

In this episode, we dive into:

• What makes a Black Friday offer work (hint: starts with an S)
• The “two‑layer strategy” to ads and how that applies to landing pages, creatives, and funnels.
• Why these types of emails are low-cost and have a high emotional return.
• What brands get wrong on landing pages and why that kills scale.

▶️ Watch the full episode on YouTube here.

🎧 Or click here to listen on Spotify.

‍What do your customers actually want?

Acceptance, Power, Love? Figuring out your customer’s core desire is key to crafting a great ad and hook that resonates.

Olly Hudson shares his strategy for testing messages and doubling down on ones that grab attention and make people feel something.

‍🛠️ Google Ads New Targeting Option

Google Ads plans to launch a new targeting option called Partner Match.

The new feature will let brands use third-party partner data to build custom audiences for YouTube campaigns.

Learn more here.

‍📺 Streaming time on Roku continues to spike post-BFCM weekend. Will your brand be there? It's not too late to set up your CTV ads ahead of the holidays with Roku Ads Manager. Sign up here. *

‍📥 Got a B2B Biz?

Join dozens of B2B companies finding demand-gen success through our niche community of 150k brand leaders and founders this year. Talk to our team to learn more.

Have you heard our latest podcasts?

• 💸 Ad-venturous 30: Squeeze The Rag Dry Black Friday Weekend
• 🕝 TWBERP 61: Last Minute BFCM Checklist
• 🚴 How Priority Bicycles Grew To 25K Units Per Year
• 🧠 AKNF 561: Unwinding the Tactical Spin Cycle with Pilothouse
• 📱 Ad-venturous 29: Marketer’s Guide to Using Social On Purpose
• 📧 TWBERP 60: Deliverability Office Hours Feat. Senders.co

Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Frances Du. Edited by Eric Dyck.

Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content.