Fast Scaling Ecommerce Brands Using Direct Response
10 Fast-Growing 2025 Brands Using Direct Response (And What I’m Stealing From Each)
Fast Scaling Ecommerce Brands Using Direct Response Advertising
Connor Gross
September 19, 2025
Everyone’s talking about “brand” in 2025, but here’s the uncomfortable truth: brand doesn’t cover payroll if your funnel leaks. Growth only comes from ads, pages, and emails that close the gap between attention and purchase.
The winning brands this year know it. They’re manufacturing demand with direct response: running ads designed to trigger action, structuring offers that make buying the default, and tearing down funnels the moment performance dips.
I’ve been tracking ten of them closely and pulling tactics straight into my own playbook. Let's break them down.
Performance Golf didn’t try to be everything to every golfer. They built a $90M business by obsessing over one pain point: fixing a slice. Their VSLs work because they’re anchored in a frustration every golfer has felt, then solved by someone with undeniable authority. That mix of emotional relatability and expert framing turns curiosity into purchase intent at scale.
The proof? Forbes reported a single “slice fix” course cleared $20M in sales.
By offering affiliates up to 70% commissions on ClickBank, they turned outsiders into their salesforce. Affiliates push hard because the economics make sense, and Performance Golf keeps cold traffic profitable through upsells and mid-ticket offers. The takeaway is clear: focus relentlessly on one painful, universal problem, and then build a system where acquisition pays for itself. The VSL framework, the affiliate economics, and the upsell ladder are compounding levers you can use in any niche with a common, embarrassing pain point.
Prescription medication is highly regulated, but Ro packaged the process into a direct-response funnel that feels almost frictionless. Ads span CTV, paid social, and influencers, shifting tone depending on the channel: broad awareness on TV (“telehealth for weight loss”), social proof from creators, and specific outcome proof in paid (average members losing 15% body weight in a year).
But no matter where you enter, the path is the same: an instant consult that makes moving from interest to prescription feel effortless.
A quick consult hooks the customer today, while the recurring subscription ensures lifetime value compounds tomorrow. That play translates far beyond healthcare. If you run SaaS, memberships, or subscription commerce, you should ask: does my onboarding deliver a fast win on Day 1? And does it quietly lock customers into auto-renew before friction kicks in? Ro shows how you can stitch together urgency, multi-channel reach, and recurring revenue into a funnel that works even in crowded, regulated markets.
MaryRuth’s is one of the few brands showing steady, durable growth in a volatile product category like supplements. They achieved this by pairing strong product positioning with disciplined use of retail media. Amazon case studies show them driving new-to-brand sales up 174% with creative that shortens the distance to purchase: mocktail recipes, Fire TV integrations, and DSP placements that meet shoppers right at the point of intent.
Add to that a practice of systematic price testing, where they adjust elasticity before launch, and you get a business less exposed to guesswork and margin erosion.
The play worth stealing here is MaryRuth’s precision around first purchase economics. Instead of treating retail media as a branding channel, they build campaigns to drive measurable conversions, then scale what works. That mindset translates beyond Amazon: if you’re on Meta or TikTok, test creatives that don’t just educate but directly lower the barrier to buying.
Price testing is another underrated tactic where too many brands launch blind, only to learn later they left margin on the table. Borrowing this discipline means you can balance growth with profitability from the beginning, especially if you operate in categories where competitors race to the bottom on price.
Everyday Dose leaned into the mushroom-coffee wave but didn’t treat it like a trend and instead they treated it like a funnel.
After iOS14 made attribution more complex, they tightened tracking with third-party tools and improved their Meta campaigns: dropping CPA by ~25% and doubling ad spend. Their product page for their Coffee+ shows a strong “Try it now,” plus free gifts and subscription refill, clear UGC / creator proof, and a “skip/pause anytime” policy. That pitch feels low-risk, high-reward.
The lesson here is urgency blended with safety. Their offers remove friction by pairing aggressive “buy now” pushes with money-back guarantees and subscription perks, so the risk of not buying feels higher than the risk of trying.
If you’re in wellness or consumables, the blueprint is clear: use guarantees to remove hesitation, amplify authentic creator content, and design every touchpoint to feel like social proof (basically, less “brand ad,” more “friend recommendation”).
Grüns reframed the greens supplement category by turning the common objections against AG1-style powders into the core of their pitch. Taste (“gummy” vs. chalk or mix), cost (cheaper per serving with subscription), convenience (easy gummy packs), and comparison ads are their biggest edge. For example, their subscription plan offers ~25-29% discount + free shipping, bringing daily cost down significantly:
What I’m stealing: build your ads around direct competitive tear-downs. Don’t just say “we’re better”. Show side-by-side comparisons (taste, prep time, price) so the buyer can decide and often pick you because the path of least friction wins.
Also, make the subscription the “default” on your product detail page (PDP) so you don’t force people to seek it out. If you do this in any supplement, wellness, or daily-use category, plus make subscribe-and-save cheaper & obvious, make single purchase options visible but secondary. It nudges higher LTV without alienating first-time buyers.
Instant Hydration’s positioning leans hard into functional differentiation + offer mechanics. Their product pages are long-form, heavy on education: detailed ingredient charts (“why our formula is better”), transparent sourcing, and cues like “lab-tested” and “trace minerals.” Their site offers autoship-save, free gifts with bundles, free shipping, free returns. For example, their “Build your personalized hydration bundle” offers “buy 3 boxes get 1 free + free vitamin D/K + free shipping”, while nudging toward autoship for recurring revenue.
I’m stealing two plays from this brand: comparison transparency and bundled overdelivery. If your category depends on efficacy (sports nutrition, skincare, wellness), ingredient charts and competitive comparisons disarm objections before they surface. And their bundle + gift + autoship stack makes the first order feel overdelivered while quietly locking in average order value (AOV) and retention. Together, it’s a funnel designed to capture both the skeptic and the bargain-hunter.
Hike Footwear plays direct response through pain-point messaging (foot discomfort, support, barefoot feel, etc.), promotional hooks (BOGO, seasonal deals), plus creator content that shows real use (walking, terrain challenges). Their ads push the “walk pain-free” narrative aggressively enough to draw regulator heat (UK ASA flagged health claims), which tells you exactly how far they’re willing to stretch.
Risky? Sure. But effective at grabbing attention in a market where comfort claims are the deciding factor.
The takeaway is how Hike Footwear ties promotions to physical relief. If your product solves a pain or discomfort problem, lead with that benefit and make it instant, for example e.g., “pain-free from day one.” Then reduce risk with clear sizing tools and free returns so buying shoes online doesn’t feel like a gamble. Finally, lean on creator content that shows function in action. Not just “looks good,” but “see me walk/run/hike [in the real world]”. The credibility of use matters.
LMNT pulled ahead in the hydration/electrolyte space by leaning into direct response + creator over brand storytelling. Per ECDB, their GMV on drinklmnt.com was ~$66M in 2024, with another 5–10% growth projected for 2025. Conversion rates sit around 3.5–4% which is well above average for consumables; because everything about their funnel is built to remove friction.
The first touchpoint is almost always sampling: low-risk intro packs that feel more like a challenge to “just try it” than a sale. Creators then take the baton, with whitelisted content fueling ads that look organic but carry performance guarantees.
But the real backbone is list growth. Every sample or bundle is an entry into an email/SMS sequence that treats your inbox like premium real estate. Each message pushes toward a purchase with the clarity and urgency of a sales page, not just “brand updates.”
If you sell a product built on subscriptions or repeats, copy LMNT’s sampling-plus-list formula. Make the first purchase effortless, then let tightly-written flows turn inbox attention into cash. And when you’re using creators, tie payouts to performance for accountability. This way, you pay for content that earns, not just content that looks good.
Hands-free footwear maker Kizik cleared $100M+ in annual sales by 2024, blending DTC + wholesale + their own physical retail doors. Their ad creative leans heavily on solving a pain point (“no bending over,” “slip on, get walking”). Pair that with painless checkout, easy returns, and sizing reassurance, and suddenly a “functional innovation” looks like a mass-market category.
The steal is in how the brand packages the problem and solution.
If your product solves an everyday pain you can show in five seconds, your ads should lead with that proof. The other lesson is using physical touchpoints (stores, pop-ups) not just for sales but for learnings: which creatives work, what objections come up, what sizing issues, etc.
Underneath it all is a continuous attribution stack. Tools like Northbeam, among others, gives Kizik visibility on what's working across channels so they can push spend into high ROI segments confidently.
Dr. Squatch is the rare DTC brand that turned viral video into durable scale -and their $1.5B acquisition by Unilever shows just how much value they built.
Their playbook started with soap ads that didn’t feel like ads: funny, irreverent, and shareable, but always grounded in a product truth (“natural ingredients,” quirky scents). That humor carried them out of obscurity, but what sustained the business was LTV discipline (subscription/repeat purchase), and expanding distribution (online + retail) that made every new customer worth more over time.
The lesson to steal isn’t just “be funny.” It’s pairing bold creative with financial discipline. Hero videos delivered personality and proof, but always pointed clearly to a purchase. If you’re in a category where identity and loyalty matter (think: grooming, skincare, wellness), that’s the formula: entertain first, close second, and build a customer base that keeps coming back long after the joke lands.
What ties these brands together is discipline around the fundamentals:
Every one of these brands picks a single, visceral outcome and makes it the centerpiece of the offer: fix your slice, step into shoes without bending, swap your salad for a gummy, hydrate better than Liquid I.V. That clarity is what makes the rest of the funnel work. Buyers know exactly what they’re getting, and why it matters.
The media follows the same principle. Performance Golf’s VSLs are structured like closers. Instant Hydration’s comparison charts walk you line by line through why their formula wins. Long-form PDPs, explainer videos, before-and-afters, all content assets are designed to convert.
These brands know their CPAs down to the decimal. They publish case studies, plug into attribution partners, and reallocate spend the second efficiency shifts. Everyday Dose, for instance, dropped Meta CPAs by 25% with tighter attribution, and that single move doubled their budget. That’s the discipline you need if you’re scaling beyond lucky breaks.
Repeat orders and higher AOV are what make the math work. That’s why subscribe-and-save is the default, bundles are engineered to cross the free-shipping threshold, and first orders are oversized with bonuses that make the customer feel like they got more than they paid for. It’s math and psychology working together to fund the next wave of growth.
The final common thread is how heavily these brands lean on creators. Influencer consult flows, UGC seeded on TikTok, whitelisted ads running from a creator’s handle instead of the brand’s. It’s refreshable, it’s measurable, and it delivers credibility polished ads can’t.
The whole thing starts with the hook. If the headline can’t deliver a clear promise in one line, the funnel won’t stand. I aim for something outcome-driven that earns attention immediately which is a reason for the buyer to stop scrolling and see what’s in it for them.
Once the hook works, I settle on the angle. I’ve tested plenty, but four keep proving themselves: solving a pain point, saving time, showing a side-by-side win, or leaning on expert authority. Picking one and staying with it creates the kind of consistency that makes ads feel stronger, not scattered.
From there, I build the system. The core is a hero VSL, then I slice it into shorter cuts for social. A raw UGC demo brings credibility. A founder-on-camera clip builds trust. Each piece looks different on the surface, but underneath, it’s the same story told again and again.
The offer has a job too: carry its own weight. I like to open with a low-risk entry like a starter bundle, trial pack, something that feels like an easy yes. Then I layer in bumps: subscribe-and-save, build-your-own bundles, gift thresholds. That structure means even cold traffic doesn’t just cover spend but also sets the foundation for repeat revenue.
Product pages finish the work. Comparison tables, reviews, FAQs, and a strong guarantee take away reasons to hesitate. Buyers should feel ready to say yes without clicking anywhere else.
Lastly, I won’t scale until the numbers are solid. Server-side tracking, one shared dashboard, clear rules for action. If CPA drops, the budget goes up. Simple, repeatable measurement.
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