The Definitive Guide to Launching & Scaling a Beauty Brand is a comprehensive digital resource created by Beauty Work Friends to support early-stage beauty founders with clear, practical guidance. Featuring insights from 19 experienced beauty consultants, including Kristin from Take Flight Marketing, the guide covers everything from product development and compliance to brand positioning, marketing, paid media, data, and scaling foundations.

The start of a new year is the best time to pause and take an honest look at how your business is actually performing. This post breaks down why a business audit is essential at the beginning of 2026, what to review across marketing, data, systems, and operations, and how to identify inefficiencies before they scale. With a practical audit checklist and real-world insights, it’s a guide for leaders who want clarity, not chaos, as they plan for sustainable growth.

The end of the year is one of the most important moments for performance marketers. Beyond closing out budgets, marketers must audit data, clean tracking, extract learnings, and align strategy with client goals for the year ahead. This guide outlines the key end-of-year actions performance marketers should take to protect performance, strengthen client trust, and build momentum for Q1 and beyond.

Performance marketing is heading into one of its most transformative years yet. Privacy restrictions will tighten, AI will reshape workflows, creative operations will become a true competitive edge, and media costs will continue to fluctuate. The marketers who thrive in 2026 will be the ones who prepare now by rebuilding their measurement systems, integrating AI into every layer of operations, diversifying their media mix, and shifting from reactive tactics to long term strategy. This moment is not about scrambling to keep up. It is about laying the groundwork for smarter, more stable, and more adaptive growth. Brands that treat 2025 as a preparation year will step into 2026 with clarity and resilience. Those who wait will be left navigating chaos without a plan.

BFCM 2025 is in the books, and now is the perfect window to prepare for 2026 while your insights are fresh and your data is clean. This blog breaks down the Google Ads strategies that high-performing brands use before the holiday season begins—warming the funnel early, segmenting remarketing, and building offer-specific campaign structures. You’ll learn what to analyze from this year's performance, what gaps to fill, and how to set yourself up for profitable, lower-CAC campaigns next year. Includes step-by-step action items and a call to book a consultation for customized planning.

AI is rapidly transforming how people search, learn, and choose who to work with. Tools like ChatGPT are evolving into full discovery engines, where users ask conversational questions and expect direct, trustworthy recommendations. Agencies that want to stay visible need to shift their content strategy to meet this new reality — with clearer positioning, consistent digital signals, and expertise-rich content that AI can understand and surface. This blog breaks down why AI-driven search matters and how agencies can ensure they’re not invisible in the next wave of discovery.

Social media ads have peaked. CPMs are rising, reach is shrinking, and attention is shifting to streaming. Learn why Connected TV (CTV) is the next frontier for performance—and how Take Flight Marketing leverages MNTN to help brands scale smarter, faster, and more efficiently.

When influencer marketing and paid social finally stop competing and start collaborating, magic happens. You get the trust and authenticity of creator content with the precision and scale of paid media. In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how to pull it off — from repurposing influencer posts to whitelisting and measurement — so your next campaign doesn’t just look good in the feed, it actually performs.

Why Marketers Are Flying Blind Without Real Attribution: Marketers are tired of guessing which social ads work. AI attribution tools like Northbeam and Triple Whale bring data clarity to paid social by combining multi-touch modeling, incrementality testing, and unified data pipelines. By layering AI-driven attribution with clean tracking and ongoing validation, brands can make smarter, faster budget decisions and finally stop optimizing for the wrong signals.

Meta Ads creative is the new targeting. In 2025, format variety, motion-first assets, and authenticity-driven storytelling outperform static ads and polished brand videos. This post breaks down the top creative formats winning right now, shows how to adapt them for your brand, and gives you a quick-action checklist to boost ROAS this quarter.

Meta Ads budget scaling doesn’t have to tank your CPA. Start with slow vertical increases, expand horizontally with new audiences and creatives, then let CBO + rules help automate growth. The DTC skincare case study proves you can scale from $500/day to $3,500/day while keeping CPA stable.

Paid social advertising still rules in 2025, pulling more weight in growth marketing than ever before. This guide covers how to scale Meta budgets without breaking CPA, which creative formats are actually converting, the AI tools reshaping attribution, and how to use influencers as a performance lever (not just a vanity play). A case study shows exactly how one brand cut CAC by 25% in 60 days.

Creative testing frameworks help performance marketing teams replace guesswork with structure. By isolating variables like hooks, messages, and creative concepts, you can quickly identify winners, scale them, and avoid ad fatigue. Frameworks like hook testing, message-matrix mapping, and concept iteration don’t just make ads better—they make growth predictable.

Paid social and paid search integration is no longer optional in 2025—it’s the fastest path to higher ROI. This blog breaks down three core strategies for alignment, shares a practical example, and gives you action steps to implement immediately.

Meta advertising in 2025 is about working smarter, not harder. Forget over-segmented audiences—your creative is the new targeting, your first-party data is your safety net, and AI is your growth partner. The brands winning now are the ones mixing authentic creative with smart data collection and AI-powered optimization. Meta ads aren’t dying—they’re evolving.

Google advertising in 2025 requires more than keyword bidding. High-spend brands must focus on layered audience targeting, creative testing, and advanced attribution models to scale profitably.

Key strategies include pairing keywords with predictive audiences, using Responsive and Dynamic Search Ads for creative variety, and implementing Enhanced Conversions and Offline Conversion Tracking to connect spend to real revenue.

With rising CPCs, proactive testing and advanced metrics like MER and LTV ensure long-term efficiency. Scaling is no longer about spending more — it is about smarter optimization.

Performance marketing in 2025 is the growth engine modern brands cannot ignore. Unlike traditional advertising, where budgets disappear into vanity metrics, performance marketing only rewards results. You pay for what works — clicks, leads, and sales that prove your money is pulling its weight.

The smartest brands are leaning into a multi-channel approach. Paid social fuels discovery, paid search captures intent, SEO builds authority, influencers drive trust, and emerging platforms like connected TV and audio extend reach with measurable impact. The right tools and KPIs keep campaigns accountable, while trends like AI-driven creative testing and retail media networks reshape the landscape.

The lesson is clear. Performance marketing is not a side tactic. It is the system that separates brands that survive from brands that scale. If you are serious about growth, the time to build your machine is now.

Lookalike audiences, CRM segments, and detailed targeting strategies don’t work like they used to. Thanks to privacy updates and platform shifts, creative now carries the weight of reaching and resonating with the right people. This blog breaks down how to build persona-driven creative that guides your customer from awareness to conversion and why your messaging is your most powerful form of targeting today.

Discover TFM's 8 tool marketing stack that unifies creative analytics, clean data, and reliable attribution for faster growth and higher ROI.

Google now shows Instagram posts in search results, learn five tactics to sync captions, alt text, hashtags, and links for more clicks and conversions, then claim a free audit from Take Flight Marketing.