Here’s what most founders don’t realize until it’s already cost them: the customer acquisition playbook that built your business three years ago is actively bleeding money today. That “just run Facebook ads” strategy that crushed it in 2017-18? It’s not coming back.
Russ Macumber has been in the digital marketing trenches since 1999, so he’s seen the entire evolution play out in real time. As Co-Founder and Managing Director of Impressive Digital, he works with e-commerce brands ranging from $2 million to north of $500 million in revenue. And here’s what he’s seeing across the board: brands clinging to single-channel strategies are getting crushed by rising costs, while those treating SEO and paid media as complementary systems—not competing budgets—are finding sustainable paths forward.
This episode drops right after Black Friday Cyber Monday, when the traffic dust has settled and the real work begins. We’re talking about extracting actual insights from what just happened, understanding how customer behavior has fundamentally shifted, and figuring out where to allocate your budget for the rest of Q4 and beyond. Whether you’re running a lean operation or managing an enterprise brand, the era of linear funnels and single-channel dominance is over. Google calls it “the messy middle,” and Russ breaks down exactly how to navigate it without hemorrhaging budget on tactics that stopped working years ago.
Let’s dive in.
What You’ll Learn
✅ Why the 2017-18 Facebook playbook is bankrupting brands — CPMs have been creeping up incrementally year after year, slowly eroding margins for businesses that never adapted their channel mix. Instead of rethinking their acquisition strategy, they’ve been shrinking profits bit by bit, hoping the old playbook comes back. Spoiler: it won’t.
✅ The “messy middle” reality of modern customer journeys — Your customers are getting six to eight brand touchpoints in 15 minutes flat, bouncing between their phone, desktop, TikTok, Google, ChatGPT, and Reddit. Linear funnel thinking is dead, which means brand recall and awareness matter more than ever.
✅ How SEO and paid media actually work together — Stop treating them like competing channels fighting for budget. Paid validates what content to create, SEO builds long-term equity, and when they’re working as complementary systems, they feed each other and drive down your overall customer acquisition costs.
✅ Why brand marketing came full circle — After a decade of treating digital marketing like a pure math equation (spend X, get Y conversions), the market is rediscovering what old-school marketers always knew: brand awareness, recall, and emotional connection drive the transaction before it ever hits a shopping cart.
✅ The post-BFCM analysis framework that actually matters — How to extract actionable insights within 1-2 weeks while you still have runway in Q4, what to measure beyond top-line revenue, and why the real opportunity isn’t next year’s Cyber Weekend—it’s the next eight weeks of Christmas shopping and January clearance.
✅ How to get fresh eyes on your performance — Russ’s team at Impressive Digital is offering free post-BFCM audits for Shopify Plus brands that didn’t hit their goals. They’ll analyze either your ad accounts or SEO strategy to identify exactly what left you short and where the quick wins are hiding.
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Episode Summary
Steve welcomes Russ Macumber, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Impressive Digital, for a straight-talk conversation about why customer acquisition costs keep climbing and what brands need to do differently. With over two decades in digital marketing and experience working with e-commerce brands from $2 million to $500 million+ in revenue, Russ has watched the entire evolution—from the golden age of Facebook ads to today’s multi-channel reality.
The conversation starts with the uncomfortable truth many founders are facing right now: CPMs have been creeping up year after year, conversion rates are flat, and the margins that looked healthy in 2018 have quietly evaporated. Russ explains that if you started your business in 2017-18, you could build an entire DTC operation on just Facebook funnels—paying minimal CPMs and generating massive ROAS without thinking about any other channel. That playbook is dead, and brands that haven’t adapted are slowly going broke, even if revenue looks stable on the surface.
Here’s where things get interesting: Russ introduces “the messy middle”—Google’s term for how customers no longer follow linear paths from awareness to purchase. They’re getting six to eight brand touchpoints in 15 minutes, jumping from phone to desktop to TikTok to Google to ChatGPT to Reddit, researching and deciding in ways that make traditional funnel thinking obsolete. This shift has brought brand marketing roaring back after years of digital marketers treating everything like a pure math equation. You can’t just load up retargeting funnels anymore—you need brand recall, brand equity, and genuine connection to why your product matters.
What makes Impressive Digital’s approach different is treating SEO and paid media as complementary systems instead of competing channels. Russ breaks down how paid campaigns validate what content actually resonates, which informs SEO strategy, while organic rankings build long-term equity that reduces dependence on paid spend. The two work together—paid gives you speed and data, organic gives you sustainability and lower costs over time. Neither operates in isolation, and brands that get this integration find more efficient growth paths than those fighting internal budget wars.
The conversation wraps up with practical post-BFCM guidance that goes well beyond analyzing Cyber Weekend performance. Russ lays out the immediate analysis you should do within 1-2 weeks (while you still have Q4 runway to act), followed by a comprehensive review that wraps everything together. The goal isn’t to celebrate wins or mourn losses—it’s to extract insights that inform what you do with Christmas traffic, gift card redemptions, and January clearance. For brands that missed their BFCM goals, Russ is offering free audits of either ad performance or SEO strategy to help identify what went wrong and how to fix it.
This isn’t about chasing the next silver-bullet channel. It’s about understanding that customer acquisition has fundamentally changed, and sustainable growth comes from building systems that work together—not hoping the 2017 Facebook playbook magically starts working again.
Strategic Takeaways
👉 Measure how paid and organic feed each other, not in isolation. Use paid campaigns to validate what messaging resonates, then let that data inform your SEO content priorities. When organic rankings start driving consistent traffic on specific topics, amplify those angles in your paid creative. Winning brands aren’t asking “paid or organic?”—they’re building systems where each channel makes the other more efficient.
👉 Build for the messy middle, not the linear funnel. Your customers are hitting six to eight touchpoints before they buy—often in a single session. Focus on brand recall and consistent messaging across every platform. When someone jumps from your TikTok ad to Google to Reddit to your site, every touchpoint needs to tell the same story about why your product matters.
👉 Invest in brand marketing like it’s performance marketing. After years of treating everything as pure math (spend X, get Y), the market has rediscovered that brand awareness and emotional connection drive the transaction before it reaches a cart. You can’t retarget people into buying anymore—they need to know who you are and why they should care first.
👉 Run post-BFCM analysis in two phases: quick wins now (1-2 weeks), full review later (January). Don’t wait until January to figure out what worked—you still have Christmas traffic, gift card redemptions, and January clearance ahead. Extract actionable insights immediately, then do the comprehensive Q4 review after the dust settles.
👉 Get third-party eyes on your strategy. You can’t see your own blind spots. Fresh perspective from someone who’s analyzed hundreds of accounts will spot patterns and opportunities you’d never catch reviewing your own work. It can save months of wasted budget.
👉 Reduce dependence on any single channel. Brands that built everything on Facebook ads in 2017-18 are suffering now because they never diversified. Build multiple discovery paths—organic, paid, social, affiliates, partnerships—so when CPMs spike or algorithms change, you’re adjusting a system instead of scrambling to replace 100% of your traffic.
Guest Spotlight
Russ Macumber
Co-Founder & Managing Director, Impressive Digital
Russ Macumber co-founded Impressive Digital with a mission to help e-commerce brands navigate customer acquisition in an increasingly complex landscape. With over 25 years in marketing—starting in 1999, back when “brand marketing” was just called “marketing”—he brings the rare perspective of someone who’s lived through the entire evolution from traditional advertising to the Facebook golden age to today’s multi-channel reality.
At Impressive Digital, Russ works with brands across the entire spectrum: $2 million operations finding their footing to $500 million+ enterprise businesses optimizing at scale. What sets the agency apart is its integrated approach to SEO and paid media—treating them as complementary systems that strengthen each other, not competing channels fighting for budget. This philosophy comes from watching too many brands waste resources on internal channel wars when the real opportunity was synergy.
What makes Russ’s perspective valuable right now is his willingness to challenge the performance marketing orthodoxy that dominated the late 2010s. While many marketers still treat acquisition like pure math, Russ recognizes that brand equity, customer recall, and emotional connection drive purchase decisions in ways last-click attribution never captures. His work reflects this understanding—building sustainable acquisition systems that don’t collapse when platform costs spike or algorithms shift.
For brands coming out of BFCM who missed their goals, Russ is offering free audits of either ad account performance or SEO strategy to identify what went wrong while there’s still Q4 runway ahead. That commitment to actionable insights over vanity metrics reflects the practical, results-focused approach that’s helped his clients navigate an increasingly challenging acquisition landscape.
Links & Resources
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