the dtc live newsletter:
May 21, 2026

How a brand cut their ad CPA by 36% in 90 days

We were chatting with the team over at Rainy City Agency, and they shared a recent win that perfectly highlights a hurdle many founders run into.

They took over a generalist skincare brand whose revenue had plateaued. Their positioning was broad: "For all skin types." Their CPA was sitting at around €36.

Within three months of the Rainy City team taking over, they drove revenue to track at 74% YoY while successfully dropping their CPA to €23.

They did this by rethinking their approach to traditional angle testing.

The problem with most "angle testing"

Many brands think they are testing new angles when really, they are often just testing new hooks.

They change the headline or opening visual while targeting the same assumed audience. If your brand is positioned for everyone, beautifully produced ads can sometimes point at the wrong audience for months without anyone noticing.

What they did instead: True persona testing

Instead of just swapping out creative, the team ran a true persona test. They built six distinct personas based on different skin concerns, using targeted language and pain points.

They ran them cold, side-by-side. Within two weeks, two personas clearly pulled away. The winning persona hit a CPA at nearly half the cost of the next best option.

That was the signal. The brand had a highly profitable, specific audience hiding inside its broader, generalist positioning.

Then came the hard part of choosing to focus on fewer products.

Once they found the winning audience, they pulled a portion of the product range out of the ad account, rebuilt category pages to speak directly to that specific condition, and updated the homepage. By narrowing their focus, they successfully scaled their revenue.

Here are simple steps to run this test yourself:

  1. Isolate your heroes: Limit your test to one or two hero SKUs so you don't eat your budget before learning anything useful.
  2. Mine competitor's 3-star reviews: Competitor 3-star reviews tell you who is almost buying in your category and what stopped them. Comments like, "I bought this for X but ended up using it for Y," are great starting points for building personas.
  3. Run 4-6 distinct personas in parallel: Target totally different pain points with three hooks per persona, so a bad format doesn't accidentally mask a good audience.
  4. Read the spread: If your best persona is hitting a CPA at half the cost of the others, you have found a strong positioning signal. If they are all clustered within 10-20% of each other, you likely just have creative variation on the same audience.
  5. Rebuild the funnel: If the ads target a specific persona but the landing page is generic, your conversion rate will drop. Align your ads, landing page, and homepage to the winner.

The Takeaway

Open your ad manager and pull your top ten ads by spend. Are you actually testing different audiences, or are you mostly testing variations of the same persona? Your next stage of growth might be waiting in an audience you haven't directly spoken to yet.

London Deep Dive Workshop: Scaling Smarter

4th June 2026 | London

If you're ready for less listening and more doing, and actually want to get the work done, our next event is for you.

We are stepping away from the main stage for a highly tactical, workshop-style day designed strictly for founders and operators who want to scale smarter, not just faster.

No generic presentations. Only eCommerce leaders sitting around a table, opening their notebooks, and actively fixing the bottlenecks holding their businesses back. You will leave with a concrete action plan you can implement the very next morning.

Capacity is strictly capped at 35 people to guarantee hands-on value.

Secure your spot

The DTC Live Podcast: Inside Monday Muse

We sit down with Lune M., founder of the fast-growing skincare brand Monday Muse. We uncover the unfiltered reality of scaling a business based on real results rather than fleeting trends, breaking down:

  • Why launching with just one product was her smartest move.
  • How she built massive organic traction before touching paid ads.
  • Using TikTok as a rapid testing ground for winning ad creatives.
  • The biggest mistake most founders make.

Watch on YouTube

Listen on Spotify

In Other News…

Lucy & Yak's Offline Resale Push: The iconic, bright apparel brand is hosting its first-ever physical "Preloved Weekender" in Brighton, giving customers a real-world space to buy, sell, and trade second-hand pieces. What this means for you: Circular fashion is no longer just an online side-hustle. Setting up brick-and-mortar touchpoints for resale is becoming a vital, high-trust community builder that turns one-time shoppers into lifelong advocates.

Google Doubles Down on AI 'Information Agents': Google is entering the "Search agent" era with new tools that continuously scan the web to monitor specific questions or tasks for users (like instantly alerting a buyer when a limited-edition sneaker drop lands). What this means for you:eCommerce is entering an age of passive, persistent discovery. To be recommended by these scanning agents, focus on building active social buzz, real-time community chatter, and keeping your product schema data perfectly structured.

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