The big Q4 push in both B2B and B2C

October 1st is the start of the fourth quarter - a significant time period for many business categories:

1. All DTC brands relying on Thanksgiving through Christmas deals

2. Companies offering Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals until the end of the year

3. Amazon sellers tapping into shopping seasons - including the new Prime Day happening on Oct 7-8

4. Winter businesses (anything from Christmas lights and trees through jackets and boots to vacation places, bars for Christmas parties, and many more)

5. B2B sellers relying on remaining unallocated budgets for the rest of the year

6. B2B businesses approaching companies with a fiscal year starting on Oct 1 or Jan 1

7. Businesses negotiating 2026 roadmaps

8. Educational institutions loading up for the new school year

9. Any other businesses saving budgets for discounts (wholesale shopping, SaaS renewals, IT infrastructure, office equipment)

10. Publishers counting on high CPMs for their ad deals and email newsletter sponsorships

11. Event companies doubling down on tradeshows and key events in Oct and Nov

And digital pressure is adding up

The channel mix for sales teams is finite, and everyone is targeting the same set of channels:

• Organic social

• Paid social

• SEM

• Email marketing

• Digital sponsorships

• Cold emails/DMs

• Cold calling

• Affiliate

• Influencer deals

• Events

• Partnerships

As I’m typing this email, I’m muting a third cold call in a row since the start of the newsletter. This overlaps with pop-ups from LinkedIn pitches and email event invites over the course of the last 15 minutes.

As mediums get oversaturated, costs go up as well. Meta, Google, TikTok are raising their prices for ads, performance lead companies increase their quota or revenue share distribution, and influencers/brand ambassadors increase their package fees as a result.

Three ways to optimize for ROI

There are three different strategies we implement across our portfolio in Q4, depending on the stage of the company and the industry.

1. Halt all spend until Christmas

For all-round businesses and well-packed pipelines, we halt (or rather, reduce by 80%) all spend across the board during the peak seasons.

Why?

Costs are up 2x while conversion rates are down, and the negative connotation from prospects that get blasted continuously escalates more often.

Not applicable for all businesses, but it’s a plausible strategy for bidding when others don’t, and the other way around.

2. Double down where ROAS holds

In situations where profitability holds substantially, we push harder to outcompete the others.

For businesses with 60% gross margin where net stays the same, going down to 40% is still significantly profitable. This keeps us engaged throughout the year, especially whenever we can tap into the shopping holidays with very high conversion rates (even when discounts are applied).

3. Diversify the spend portfolio

Last year, I paused certain campaigns in Q4 because efficiency was non-existent - including paid ads for this newsletter or some SEM campaigns to DevriX.

I’ve relocated budget this year to some events + brand ambassadors in specific categories where on-site and internal networks perform well enough, and costs are comparable to ad spend, but results are higher.

This was especially valid last year while certain US campaigns before November were flooding the Internet, and only mid-November saw some progress in some campaigns after a series of global and US-centric events (which I don’t mention as sharing this would otherwise get flagged in different filters).

Bottom line, planning a year-round strategy around the peak holidays and busy, competitive seasons, is always a mindful strategy to account for.

Planning for weeks or two months ahead is far from sufficient. Most ICP development campaigns take 9 months. Expecting early results is unlikely to show promising results. And budgeting the full year around these fluctuations can bring a better mix to the table.

Mario

📚️ Books I read this month

• “The Sweaty Startup” by Nick Hueber (85% in)

• Ray Dalio’s “How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle” (55% in)

• The FP&A Handbook: Mastering Financial Planning & Analysis (40% in)

• “Revenue Architecture” by Jacco van der Kooij (55% in)

• “Hooked” - on habits and cues and product alignment (50% in)

• “The Sales Acceleration Formula” ✅ 

• I have 2 more in the backlog, one on RevOps and one for sales leaders, coming soon as I catch up on the list above!

🏆️ A record-breaking weekend for a portfolio company. One of our accounts broke their high score on top sales for a single day + the whole weekend. This hasn’t been an accident, nor an individual event leading to this spike. Here’s a list of things we worked on together over the past two years, contributing to the growth.

📰 Working with generational businesses. I had several calls with century-old companies this week. Talking about long-term thinking in this newsletter, you can see how planning for generations takes a different turn when an 80-year-old company plans for the next 2 decades.

🤖 AI LLMs yielding fake data. Hallucinations are one thing, but we’re now seeing LLMs learning from fake AI content. The second-order consequences of navigating AI is programmatic content and loads of AI slop now fed to LLMs, where machines can’t tell truth from fake news.

💵 a16z talking about a decentralized registry. My comments on an interview from Ben on X around their blockchain augmentation are pretty interesting.

I supplemented this with a summary from a video I watched over the weekend.

🔖 Track real PPC results to revenue. Use CRM links and lead scoring to improve paid campaign performance.

🔖 Create better PPC ads faster. Modular templates and AI help scale ad creative automation while staying on brand.

🔖 Streamline collaboration across teams. Break silos using shared dashboards to keep teams aligned on data and decisions.

🔖 Respond to churn signals earlier. Use this churn alert checklist to turn behavior data into action.

🔖 Compare KPI tracking tools. These benchmarking platforms reveal key metrics across your growth lifecycle.

🔖 Allocate resources with less guesswork. This AI resource guide helps SMEs cut waste in budgets and staffing.

🔖 Rethink your data stack with AI. This guide to AI-driven warehousing simplifies stack management and unlocks predictive power.

🔖 Use Python to weigh conversions. Build a time decay model in Python to make marketing ROI tracking more balanced.

🔖 Restore focus, think more clearly. Daily screen time slows cognition. These digital detox tips help reset decision-making quality.

🔖 Build companies for the long term. Why private owners chasing legacy create lasting strategic advantages over those chasing quarterly wins.

🔖 Challenge herd thinking in leadership. Replace false alignment with risk frameworks that support real strategic action.

📰 Anthropic settles $1.5B copyright dispute. The deal shapes how generative AI handles intellectual property risks and future settlements.

📰 OpenAI adds Instant Checkout to ChatGPT. The feature lets users buy directly from over a million Shopify merchants in ChatGPT.

📰 World Cup turns into a geopolitical tool. Trump uses tournament visa access to sway foreign policy negotiations.

📰 Trade routes face a political siege. Dockworkers across Europe block shipments to Israel, risking supply chains and defense logistics.

📰 Denmark bans civilian drone flights. The airspace closure highlights tightening digital borders amid growing threat concerns drone flights.

📰 The true arms race is infrastructure. Hyperscale deals from Oracle, Meta, and Nvidia drive trillion-dollar bets on AI buildouts.

📰 South Korea misses key trade payment. South Korea misses a $350B pact payment, revealing cracks in US trade negotiations.

📰 Horizon and Havas launch global ad powerhouse. Horizon Global pools $20B in billings to unify data platforms for large media pitches.

📰 Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite challenges Apple. The new chipset delivers multi-core speed gains and 80 percent better GPU performance.

📰 Anthropic unveils Claude Sonnet 4.5 model. The release boosts coding tasks for enterprise automation workflows.

📰 Oura targets record public listing. Oura targets $1B revenue and $11B valuation with a public listing that safeguards user privacy.

📰 Kodiak AI debuts via SPAC merger. The SPAC merger raises $2.5B as Kodiak AI targets commercial and defense self-driving tech.

Let’s see the latest offers from Flippa. Don’t forget to sign up for their newsletter for daily/weekly/monthly offers like these.

Marketing and Business Blog: InterCool Studio, a 5-year-old blog covering marketing, tech, and business insights. Delivers $3,750 monthly profit with 100 subscribers and just 1% churn - reduced price $133,321 (down 14%).

AI Video Dubbing SaaS: 3-year-old SaaS platform localizing video in 75+ languages, generating $200K+ ARR with 56% profit margin, 1,200+ paying users, and organic growth - asking $584,000.

Mobile Slider SaaS: Leading mobile slider library with 800K active subscribers, generating $194K annual profit at 100% margin and only 7% churn - reduced to $769,500 (down 14%).

Design-Driven Merch Business: Established 16-year-old merchandise company with 60% repeat revenue, global brand clients, and 8,000+ customers. Generates $21K monthly profit at a 25% margin - listed at $815,000.

Home and Garden FBA Brand: Profitable 4-year-old Amazon FBA business in the garden niche with $2.1M net sales (18% YoY growth), $404K adjusted SDE (19% margin), and clear transition support - asking price is $1,180,000.

Australian Skylight eCommerce Store: 11-year-old eCommerce brand with $7.5M AUD annual revenue, 32% customer return rate, and 300%+ TTM growth. Primed for continued nationwide expansion - available for $2,286,371.

Need My Help?

Keeping myself busy - here are the main projects I focus on:

🌐 Scaling enterprises on top of WordPress? DevriX provides martech retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo and we manage high-traffic platforms (hundreds of millions of monthly views), B2B SaaS apps, partnership management solutions, supporting $10M - $250M businesses with scalability, custom funnels, CRO, big data augmentation, AI-driven processes, HubSpot workflows, programmatic SEO - and everything a modern business requires in digital in 2025.

🚀 Work 1:1 with me? At Growth Shuttle, I run two popular plans: Async Advisory ($3,500/mo) for $3M - $30M founders and executive teams and the smaller Strategic Growth Circle ($997/mo) for $100K - $500K entrepreneurs, agency founders, scale ups.

🌠 Feature your business across the community? The B2B Ecosystem includes this newsletter and 40 other digital properties (directories, newsletters, blogs, SaaS, and social accounts) targeting B2B executives. See how your business can benefit.

📈 International founder looking into US LLCs? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.

📊 Into digital M&A? I work closely with Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interest. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides the tools to list your business and close the deal.

💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink.