In this cut-out edition episode, Alex Neist, founder of Hostage Tape, shares how Meta ads, strategic branding, and influencer collaborations drove his company to $40M in revenue by year three. Alex discusses the importance of creating polarizing brands, iterating on creative strategies, and leveraging different ad types to capture various customer segments. Tune in to learn actionable insights for scaling your e-commerce brand.
Full episode: S9:E35 | $40M Revenue in Year 3: How Meta Ads, Strategic Branding, and Influencers Drive Hostage Tape’s Success → Alex Neist
https://2xecommerce.com/podcast/ep444/
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Creators & Guests
Host
Kunle Campbell
Host of the 2X eCommerce Podcast and Co-Founder at OCTILLION
Guest
Alex Neist
Alex Neist is the founder of Hostage Tape, a disruptive sleep brand focused on improving sleep quality through innovative mouth taping solutions. Prior to founding Hostage Tape, Alex managed a successful SaaS business and has a background as a professional football player. His entrepreneurial journey is marked by resilience, strategic thinking, and a commitment to health and wellness.
What is 2X eCommerce Podcast?
Hosted by Kunle Campbell, who is an operator of a portfolio of consumer brands, 2X eCommerce is a weekly podcast for ecommerce operators by ecommerce operators. We interview remarkable ecommerce founders and leading enablers of ecommerce growth, with every episode promising to give you at least one growth hypothesis or idea you can test.
Our focus is growing your ecommerce revenues from a cross-functional perspective, be it marketing, your tech stack, operations, finance, or customer experience. We believe that by bringing together insights from a variety of experts, we can help you double the throughput of key ecommerce functions.
2X your eCommerce growth with insights from Kunle and handpicked experts.
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Now I want to rewind to a point you made, which is about how, at the time, there was one product, one brand that was not really doing branding well. For listeners who are in other verticals, what should they be aware of if they’re taking an internal brand audit to determine what not to do? How do you know you’re not building a brand? Sometimes we’re so stuck in what we’re doing that we don’t even realize what we’re missing.
I think I touched on this a little earlier: when you’re building a brand, you have to create something that stands out and gets people’s attention—number one, right? Because in this day and age, the way I built my company was by knowing that we needed to own our media. The central way we were going to market was through Meta, specifically Instagram and Facebook ads. That was going to be one of my largest spends. So, how was I going to differentiate? For any company out there, if you’re going to be an e-commerce brand and sell online—which most people have to do to start—it’s very rare to begin in retail. So, how are you going to stand out and get people’s attention?
On Meta, right? On Facebook and Instagram. You’ve got to have a great brand, and great marketing. You can’t just rely on a great product, right? Nobody’s going to find out about a great product if you can’t market it well. So, does it stand out? Is it polarizing? And you have to be willing to take the risk of building a brand that is polarizing. People are either going to love it or hate it, and you have to be willing to take that risk. You need to know who your target demographic is.
You mentioned earlier about attention, differentiation, and polarization. What foundational principles do you need to keep in mind to really amp up your creatives on Facebook? This is something every listener should pay attention to right now.
I think you have to evaluate all the inventory that’s available. Meaning, you have to look and say, okay, there’s a video piece of inventory, there’s a static piece of inventory, there’s a carousel piece of inventory. There are all sorts of different ad types that Meta has. So, you have to come up with variations of each, and then you have to be willing to iterate and test on those, and keep creating variations. Just because one failed doesn’t mean the business isn’t going to work. It just means maybe you haven’t found the right formula for that particular ad yet, and you’ve got to keep trying. You’ve got to keep iterating.
Sometimes you just have to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. My point is, there’s a bunch of different inventory, and different people buy from different types of creative. Meaning this—not everybody buys from a video ad, not everybody buys from a static ad, not everybody buys from a carousel ad, but there are pockets of people that will buy only from one type.
So, when you can create variations of your creative, be willing to test and iterate on those.
I needed to get on more podcasts. So, I started reaching out to more people who had seen me on podcasts. I was making more trips, doing more recordings, and then taking those recordings, mashing them up, and using clips of either me or the host. We were running those, and that allowed us to start scaling. At one point last year, I got our ad spend up to a million dollars a month—all from those style of video ads. Anyone listening, if you’re trying to get really good at Facebook ads—and when I say Facebook, I mean Meta, which includes both Instagram and Facebook—when you’re trying to get really good at Meta ads, it really could just be the creative. If you’ve got a great piece of creative, that’s almost half the battle, if not most of the battle. Because if people aren’t clicking through, you’re not going to move the needle at all. But if you can get people to actually click through, then you can get them onto your landing page, and now you’ve got something to work with.
Then you can put a great offer on there, tell a great story on that landing page, and then you can start to convert people.
So, thank you for tuning into this episode of the 2X eCommerce podcast. I hope you found it insightful and inspiring.
If you want to dive deeper into the topics we discussed today, you can find the show notes at subscribe.2xecommerce.com. Before we wrap up, I have an exciting announcement for you.
We’ve refreshed our weekly newsletter, designed to be your go-to resource at the intersection of commerce, healthy living, and the mindset of extraordinary leaders. If you are looking to stay ahead of the curve, get valuable insights, and be inspired every week, make sure to subscribe. Just visit subscribe.2xecommerce.com and sign up.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to elevate your business and personal growth. Until next time, folks, keep growing, keep learning, and keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. This is Kunle Campbell, signing off. Cheers.