Revenue Problems Solved

C-suite marketing intelligence for growth-stage companies that are done playing small.

TLDR: Your agency is not your partner. They are your most expensive dependency.

This is my third marketing company, and it is intentionally not an agency. When I got into marketing (via newspaper advertising) what I found was a troubling pattern, agencies charging covert fees. Businesses would allocate an advertising budget to their agency thinking those dollars were going to digital ad placements. But they could not see the transactions. Bad actor agencies were taking 30 to 40% of the buy and keeping it, then reporting mediocre results back to the client. The agency would say we need more budget, the client would say, ok if that's what it takes. Did 100% of that additional budget go to the buy? No.

Today's reporting dashboards are more transparent. But if you have an agency executing media buys and there is any ambiguity about their markup percentage or how they get paid, know that you are not getting a good deal. A full-service media buying agency charges a retainer of $5,000 to $15,000 per month plus 15 to 20% of your actual ad spend. A skilled part-time media buyer brought in house comes in aligned to your ROAS targets, not incentivized to spend more of your money. When you run the numbers, bringing execution in house, even on a contractor basis, is almost always the right decision as long as you have a strong marketing leader to keep them on track.

Bottom line: agencies can be a useful short-term scaling lever. They are not a wise long-term investment.

The question worth asking this month: Do you know exactly what percentage of your media budget goes to actual placements versus agency fees? If you cannot answer that with a specific number, that's your answer. Run.

Rachel Wilkie has achieved 300% ROAS on a $27M paid media budget and owned P&Ls for $300M+ ecommerce businesses, including Estée Lauder and MAC Cosmetics.

Rachel Wilkie replaced a $700,000 agency relationship at Rifle Paper Co. with a single in-house hire. Her superpower? She brings focus, accountability, and channel depth that a generalist agency team can not match. That is not a one-off story. It is her pattern.

Rachel on what breaks when CMOs are not accountable to the P&L:

"So many companies get this wrong at the executive leadership level where it is just a push on revenue at all costs. And what does it take to push revenue? Spend. Spend. Margin attrition. And that is directly against profit."

Why 300% ROAS starts with letting go of perfectionism:

Most D2C brands celebrate 150 to 200% ROAS. Rachel hit 300% on a $27M budget at Merrell. The difference was not more budget. It was creative volume and speed.

"So many teams treat it [ad visuals copy] like it's super precious. Like, this is the first impression people have of our brand, it has to be on point. But I think one thing that TikTok has taught us is that sometimes a first impression, even controversial, brings a consumer in for more questions or curiosity."

Meta rewards creative diversity. If you are bottlenecking every creative through brand approval, you cannot feed the algorithm fast enough to drive profitable growth.

The testing flywheel:

Rachel built conversion rate optimization program running 20 to 40 A/B tests per month. For context, most brands run two or three. Out of 40 tests, maybe 5 win. Stack those wins month over month and in 4 months you have 20 to 30 meaningful improvements to the customer experience instead of maybe one. Her philosophy, learn fast and use AI to do so, turn off losers, turn on winners, and change what's needed inside the same sprint.

Want to read more from Rachel, but only have 5 minutes?

D2C e-commerce How Rachel builds performance marketing systems Read Now

NEW EPISODE Lightning Speed Podcast Marketing leaders who engineered revenue growth at Fortune 500 companies share blueprints to help SMBs grow quickly. In each episode, a CMO shares their learning and systems for acquiring customers, reducing churn, and scaling revenue. Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Watch on YouTube

D2C brands are choosing margin over aggressive growth

The average customer acquisition cost has increased 60%+ over the last five years, and brands that prioritized growth over unit economics are now facing a reckoning, according to Monocle Strategy's 2026 research. Allbirds peaked at $297M in revenue in 2022 and dropped to $189M by 2024, with its stock down more than 95% since its IPO. The shift dominating boardroom conversations: contribution margin over revenue volume.

What this means for you. You only want the right customers, the customers your product is very stick with. Loyalty is the name of the game, build in loyalty programs and make sure you customer are repeat customers otherwise you will spend a ton, while revenue still slopes downward.

First-party data is now the moat

With third-party cookies gone from Chrome, brands with robust first-party data are reporting customer retention rates 40% higher than brands still relying on platform-side data, per D2C Bot's 2026 strategy analysis.

What this means for you. The companies that own their customer data, can now use it in meaningful ways, I've also seen it become a secondary product. Setup your systems to capture signals from customers from the beginning, loosing touch with their priorities is not only bad for lifetime value, it is expensive because CAC for new customers is getting more expensive as the market is flooded with AI-generated content and companies.

Cheering for you,

Corinne Cavanaugh

CAC Media & Publishing, Founder & Growth Advisor

Revenue Systems for ambitious CEOs and founders.

If you're ready to improve new customer acquisition and retention, we can help.

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