DTC763: Tips On Growing Your Following on Threads

Good morning,

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

🚀 Threads Growth Tips
Six quick ways to boost your following.

📺 Why Most YouTube Ads Fail
How to optimize your content for maximum impact.

📉 The Latest Brand Discovery Trends
Why paid media efficiency is on the decline.

🧠 Test This Psych-Based Ad Hack
And get more viewers hooked on your creatives.  

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Stuckey’s, Up Up Balloons, and HyperThread AI. 👋

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2,000+ ecommerce, DTC, and Amazon brands rely on Insense to find their perfect niche creators and run diverse collaborations. They’re seeing results like:

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While a lot of users were skeptical of using Threads when it first launched, it has quickly become a powerful social media platform.

With over 320 million monthly active users, the platform is growing quickly and emerging as a competitor to X.

Meta shares advice on how to grow your Threads following.

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Here are some top tips for posting on Threads:

• Replies account for almost half of the views on Threads. Join conversations to reach more people.
• Post at least 2 - 5 times weekly to get more impressions and build your audience.
• Add humor to your post: Funny content performs better, so don’t be afraid to add a bit of your personality!
• Posting more on weekends can drive higher engagement, so post on Saturday or Sunday for maximum impact.
• Include text in videos, photos, and carousel posts to get more views to provide context and make it easier to be found.
• Prompt your followers to add to the discussion: End your posts with a question or a thought that encourages discussion within the community.

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The takeaway?

Being active on Threads can lead to major follower growth.

Top-performing creators create original content specifically made for Threads, so add newness rather than reposting the same message across platforms.

💰 Tariffs Are Here. Here’s What You Should Know

Starting today, Trump announced a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, and the tariff on Chinese imports has increased from 10% to 20%. With many DTC brands reliant on Chinese manufacturing, these tariffs are expected to drive up supply chain costs.

The de minimis exemption, which allows U.S. imports under $800 to avoid duties, temporarily remains for Canada, Mexico, and China. However, this could change once systems for tariff revenue collection are fully in place.

Ecommerce businesses face higher costs, shipping delays, and the need to adjust pricing, which could squeeze margins and require sourcing strategy reassessments.

Keep in mind: These details are current as of writing but could change before this reaches your inbox.

🌎 This Startup Unlocked Global Status With Walmart Marketplace

In the competitive ecommerce market, how do brands punch through the fray to achieve sustained growth? 📈

In the case of NexGrill, a startup specializing in outdoor cooking and heating products, they took a chance on Walmart Marketplace. ✨

Unlike other platforms, Walmart Marketplace charges $0 monthly or setup fees and offers powerful ecommerce solutions designed for growth and Walmart’s unique omnichannel advantage. 💥

That decision, along with leveraging Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) to manage fulfillment, was critical in helping them grow from a small startup to a global entity in just two years. 🌐

👉 Today, NexGrill is a Pro Seller and has nearly tripled the number of SKUs they had in the market, going from 60 to 160, and has seen a 200% increase in revenue YOY.

Inspired?

🎧 Why Most YouTube Ads Fail—And How to Make Yours Work

YouTube isn’t Search or Shopping—so why do so many brands treat it like one?

On today’s episode of All Killer No Filler, we’re joined by Dougie from Pilothouse to talk about how DTC brands should structure YouTube ads for growth.

Many advertisers expect immediate conversions from YouTube, but the real value comes from top-of-funnel awareness that increases brand searches, customer engagement, and long-term conversions.

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In this podcast, we cover:

✅ Why YouTube should be seen as a demand generation tool, not just demand capture.
✅ How to structure YouTube campaigns based on customer awareness stages.
✅ Biggest mistakes brands make when running YouTube ads.
✅ Google’s new measurement tools and how these could change how we track ad success.
✅ The right creative strategy for different stages of the funnel.

💡 If your brand is running YouTube ads—or considering it—this episode will help you optimize your approach for maximum impact.

👉 You can listen to the full episode with Dougie here.

📉 Brand Discovery Trends: What’s On the Decline?

This portion of DTC Newsletter is brought to you by DTC Index, your go-to source for performance and consumer behavior insights.

Twice per month, we'll share key takeaways from our latest report.

DTC Newsletter subscribers get $50 off their first report—use code DTCNEWS at checkout.

This month, Varos brought us insights on TikTok ad spend, or should we say… lack thereof.

TikTok's Share of Wallet has been on a sharp decline in 2024 and so far in 2025. The outage didn't spark this, however, it did push it forward—even though it was brief.

So far, there is no clear view of a bounce-back.

How is Meta Doing?

Like TikTok, Meta's performance declined significantly, but we can pinpoint more of what's happening here: ROAS was down 18%, conversion rates are down, but CPM is up.

The more you spend does not suggest higher performance, more so, ad spending increases, and performance deteriorates disproportionately.

What This Means:

It looks like paid media efficiency is struggling across the board, with Google also having a soft month.

It seems that over the last few months, the largest ad platforms have been watching ad spending decline.

Want more insights? Subscribers get $50 off their first report—use code DTCNEWS at checkout.

🌐 IN THE SOCIAL SPHERE

Want to get customers hooked on your ads?

Try this psychological hack.

End your story on a cliffhanger and tell them to ‘tune in’ for another installment next week to create an open loop in their mind.

They will unconsciously look out for your ads to see how the story ends.

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

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