Ambassador marketing

Stop funding Zuckerberg’s yacht: Why e-commerce brands must build owned media communities now

Stop funding Zuckerberg’s yacht: Why e-commerce brands must build owned media communities now">

Matt Harris

Partner and CRO

3 min read

In this story

If you’re a consumer brand in 2025 and your growth strategy still begins with “let’s increase the Meta budget,” I’ve got bad news for you: you’re not building a brand, you’re renting one. The digital marketing mix is broken. Once, Paid, Earned, and Owned media worked in harmony. Now, most brands are pouring everything into Paid, and it’s bleeding their margins dry. You’re not scaling, you’re subsidising Zuckerberg’s next yacht. First things first - let’s get into an understanding of brand ambassador programs and their place in the current digital climate.

The media mix is broken

Every marketer learns the three types of media:

Paid media
Ads you pay for: Meta, Google, TikTok, influencers.

Earned media
What you earn: PR, UGC, reviews, word-of-mouth.

Owned media
What you own: your website, email list, CRM, community.

A healthy brand balances all three. But in 2025, the scales have tipped dangerously. The easy path, the one most brands take, is to throw cash at Meta, chase conversions, and call it growth.

But here’s the problem: paid media is an auction, and as more brands pile in, the cost to play keeps climbing. CAC goes up, while LTV goes down, because your “newly acquired” customers are already discovering five other brands on their feed tomorrow.

Paid media gets you discovered. It doesn’t make you remembered.

A light skinned man with a moustache and small beard in a black suit and blue tie, wearing black sunglasses photographed in motion, walking on a sidewalk with his face angled towards the camera and looking downwards

Davod

The paid media trap

Paid media feels good because it’s instant. Spend money, get results. The dopamine hit is addictive. But what few brands admit is this: every sale from paid ads is really a short-term rental.

You don’t own the audience — Meta does. And every year, that audience becomes more expensive to rent.

If your growth stops the minute you pause your ads, you don’t have a growth engine, you have a dependency. You might feel like you’re scaling. But what’s really scaling is your ad bill, and Zuckerberg’s yacht fund.

Image of the Pacific wheel on he Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles

If your growth stops the minute you pause your ads, you don’t have a growth engine, you have a dependency.

Owned media: The only real asset you control

Let’s talk about what actually belongs to you. Owned media is your home turf: your website, your CRM, your email list — and, most importantly, your brand community.

Owned media gives you something paid never will: control. No algorithm. No gatekeepers. No rising CPMs. You decide when and how to talk to your audience, and they’re there because they want to be.

Your newsletter might be your heartbeat, your site your storefront, but your community is your living, breathing ecosystem. It’s where customers become collaborators, advocates, and fans. It’s where belonging happens.

Sara Kazemi

Community: The growth channel brands have been missing

Community isn’t a soft marketing play. It’s a hard business asset. A thriving community delivers growth across every metric that matters:

Lower CAC
Members bring in new members, and referrals are built in.

Higher LTV
Connection drives loyalty, and belonging keeps people around.

More earned media
Your fans generate authentic content that spreads your message organically.

Every conversation, every post, every share inside your community is a marketing touchpoint you didn’t have to pay for. This is growth that compounds. While your competitors are chasing impressions, you’re building equity.

A shirtless African man with short, bleach blonde hair, a black formal pants and a turquoise beaded necklace angled sideways towards the camera

Alioune Seye

The false economy of followers

Let’s be honest: your Instagram following isn’t your community. You might have 100,000 followers, but you can’t reach 100,000 followers.

The algorithm decides who sees what. You’re lucky if 5–10% ever see your post, unless you pay to boost it. So you’re paying for access to the audience you already built.

Building your community on Facebook or Instagram is like building your house on rented land. When you build your audience on platforms you don’t own, you’re always one algorithm change away from irrelevance.

The only way to secure your future reach is to own your channel — your platform, your people, your rules.

Vlada Karpovich

Why community increases brand value

Now let’s talk numbers — because community isn’t just about engagement, it’s about enterprise value. When investors and acquirers assess a brand, they look at predictable, owned reach.

A brand with strong owned channels like email lists, CRM, and direct relationships commands a higher valuation.

But a brand with an active community commands loyalty that no amount of paid media can buy. You can copy a product but you can’t copy a passionate community.

That’s the difference between a brand that’s trending and a brand that’s trusted. Your community becomes your moat — emotional, financial, and competitive.

The new unit economics of growth

If your CAC is climbing while LTV is flat, that’s not a marketing challenge, it’s a business model problem. Communities flip that equation.

They bring CAC down through advocacy and referrals. They push LTV up through repeat purchase and retention. They generate earned media through authentic content and word-of-mouth.

It’s not a fluffy theory, it’s fundamental math. Paid media buys transactions. Community builds relationships. And relationships compound.

Two women, one with brunette hair and one with blonde, one wearing a yellow dress with geometric stripes and round white sunglasses, the other in a black coat and round, white sunglasses

Molly Mears

The Club.co argument

At Club.co, we help brands stop renting their audiences and start owning their communities. We believe the most valuable asset a consumer brand can build isn’t another campaign, it’s a channel they truly own.

A Club community brings your customers, ambassadors, and fans together on your own land. It turns your customer base into a living growth engine. Because when you own your audience, you own your future.

The brands that win the next decade won’t be the ones spending the most on Meta. They’ll be the ones who’ve reclaimed their reach, built true communities, and turned their customers into their advocates.

Paid media will always have its place, but it’s a means, not a moat. Would you rather fund Zuckerberg’s yacht, or build your own fleet? The choice is yours.

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