Tuesday, January 20

🌟 Today’s Highlights:

• Threads has more daily app users than X

• The latest social trend brings us back to 2016

• Here’s the secret to authentic content at scale without risking your brand

• 📊 Stat of the Day: 73% of the U.S. population were active social media users. (Source: DataReportal)

• 💡 Today’s Insight: How much of your paid media budget should be allocated to upper funnel?

😣 “How Do We Scale Creator Content Without Losing Control?”

Scaling UGC without diluting brand voice can feel impossible. More creators can equal more inconsistency, and now your team is worried about compliance, tone drift, and off-brand messaging.

Grapevine is your secret to authenticity at scale without brand risk. Top brands like Prose, Honeylove, and Home Chef all run Grapevine UGC because it works. They tap their vetted network to create content that already resonates with your target audience.

Test Grapevine risk-free: First campaign comes with 1 extra creator, on them →

⚡️ Today’s Headlines ⚡️

📱 Threads is now seeing more daily usage than X on mobile. While X still dominates Threads on the web, Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android as of January 7, while X had 125 million.

🥫 Feel like your B2B marketing is missing a key ingredient? My team has been working with 60+ companies leveraging my secret sauces to generate low-cost, qualified leads with unique strategies on LinkedIn, Google Ads, Meta, & more... Start cooking up a winning recipe with us here!

🖼️ Where were you in 2026? The latest social media trend has users and brands posting throwback images to 2016 with people longing for a simpler time.

💫 “Success has continued to scale with time.” Advertisers don’t test us once, they become long-term partners. See why sponsors keep coming back to this newsletter. 👉 Apply now

✌️ Meta’s winding down the metaverse. While there aren’t any formal announcements, the company’s huge bet on VR is showing signs of ending after it laid off 10% of its Reality Labs division and shut down several VR game studios.

💡 Today’s Insight 💡

How much of your paid media budget should be allocated to upper funnel?

🗞 TL;DR - An ongoing conversation in the world of paid media is how to split budget between upper and lower-funnel. Search Engine Journal just released a guide on how to analyze where you should be allocating paid media budgets and how to scale growth without sacrificing efficiency.

💡 Insight - There’s no single “right” number for every business, though research shows that cutting brand and awareness spend may improve short-term efficiency but degrades long-term growth. A few frameworks offer starting points:

60/40 Upper vs. Lower Funnel: Allocate roughly 60% to brand/awareness (upper funnel) and 40% to direct activation (lower funnel). This isn’t rigid, but it reframes paid media beyond short-term conversion to include future demand creation.

60-30-10 Funnel Split: ~60% for prospecting and awareness (top of funnel), ~30% for retargeting / mid funnel, ~10% for bottom-funnel closing. This helps ensure you’re feeding the pipeline consistently while still dialing in performance.

Adapt to Your Context: While some legacy models suggest upper-funnel dominance, real-world data shows many brands today (average ~31%) allocate much less to brand building, focusing instead on short-term ROI. This gap highlights an opportunity to rebalance spend and fuel sustainable demand.

While each brand will vary, you should aim for a balanced mix grounded in research and your own test data. Invest enough in awareness that you continually feed new prospects into your funnel while optimizing your lower-funnel spend for efficiency.

🙇 How I Can Help You This Week:

🟣 Run your biz on Stripe? KeepMore wraps around your existing Stripe account to bring your credit processing fees to 0% by giving your currently active & future subscriptions the option to pay with ACH for no fee or with a credit card & they automatically add the fee Stripe charges you to their invoices. Stop paying Stripe processing fees here!

🤖 Not sure where to use AI in your business? Very few entrepreneurs I speak to have identified exactly where AI actually saves them the most time or money. I had Nathan audit my businesses, identify the highest-ROI AI automations, and build them end-to-end. We now save hours every week across onboarding, reporting, and client comms. See if you qualify for the same free strategy session with him here →

📳 Want more sales calls? My personal growth team builds the trust engine that warms leads up and books calls on autopilot. Get More Quality Leads Here →

Bonus:

📈 Weekly blogs + backlinks for $99/mo — this SEO team is my go-to for every project → 👉🏼 Start your free trial here

📣 We are running some end-of-year promotions to advertise inside this newsletter, including guaranteed clicks and leads, here!