9 Marketer Biases That Are Killing Your Meta Ads

Summary

Podcast Summary: Brain Driven Brands

Episode: 9 Marketer Biases That Are Killing Your Meta Ads
Host: Sarah Levinger
Date: July 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, host Sarah Levinger and her guest (Nate) dig into the often-unseen psychological and habitual pitfalls that are holding marketers back from optimizing their Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ad performance. Drawing on responses from a viral Twitter conversation and their own high-level e-commerce experience—including work with 9-figure brands—they break down the nine most destructive marketer biases, real-world examples, and actionable insights for simplifying, focusing, and truly improving your paid ads. Whether you’re an agency media buyer or an in-house CMO, you’ll come away with fresh ways to challenge your assumptions and upgrade your ad results.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Twitter’s Surprising Insights

[01:21-05:09]

• Sarah opens by referencing a recent Twitter post that unexpectedly went viral:
  "What was the single biggest thing that you did in your ad account that you didn't think was going to make a difference, but it like, drastically changed?"
• Nate shares his example: excluding past purchasers from OG’s campaigns led to an immediate 40% drop in NCEPA (New Customer CPA) and higher MER.

  “It was an immediate, like, 40% drop in NCEPA. And blended MER was up. All our business metrics got better instantly.” — Nate, [03:23]

• Sarah’s analysis of 28 responses: No consensus 'magic bullet' emerged; answers ranged from account consolidation (18%), to hands-off management (14%), to bid/cost caps (11%), to data accuracy, and more. None cited 'creative' as the main driver, highlighting the focus on ad account mechanics.

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2. The 9 Marketer Biases That Hurt Meta Ads

Sarah and Nate outline nine common, damaging biases/habits, each illustrated with personal anecdotes and real-world advice.

1. Action Bias

[06:21-08:39]

• Marketers feel compelled to “do something” at all times, often making superfluous changes that muddy results.

  “It's so hard to trust the process when the process isn't working right in this moment. I've done 30 things and I don't know if any of them are having a positive impact.” — Nate, [07:12]

• Nate recommends a structured, logical protocol for troubleshooting before acting impulsively.

2. Illusion of Control

[08:39-11:13]

• Confusing busywork with real impact. Marketers overestimate their influence on outcomes, mistakenly assuming their tweaks are always causal.
• Sarah sums it up:

  “We're kind of mistaking a little bit of activity for influence… Is this a case for ‘let Meta cook’?” — Sarah, [09:06]

• Nate advises: let Meta run, but keep an eye on it and intervene only within set guardrails.

3. Complexity Bias

[11:19-13:19]

• An industry-wide tendency to overcomplicate account structures, assuming more complexity equals better results.

  “Simple and maybe more importantly understandable is more important than 100% optimized.” — Nate, [13:19]

• The simpler the account, the easier it is to diagnose issues and maintain stable, predictable growth.

4. Metric Fixation (Streetlight Effect)

[14:24-16:35]

• Marketers get obsessed with a single metric (e.g., CPA, CTR) at the expense of others, missing the bigger picture.

  “You need to know what changed in order to try to help it, but you also have to realize, like, there's 17 different ways to improve performance and you need to be doing like, at least six of them well at a time.” — Nate, [16:35]

• Sarah and Nate recommend monitoring various metrics and being ready to shift focus as necessary.

5. Volatility Overreaction

[17:15-18:45]

• When performance dips, knee-jerk reactions lead to drastic changes—often too many at once—making it impossible to know what worked.

  “We just noticed something changed and then we go and like fix it.” — Sarah, [17:36]

6. Sunk Cost Fallacy

[17:15-18:45]

• The inverse of overreacting: sticking with failing campaigns or creatives because of the time or money already invested.
• Nate cautions against letting fear of “wasting” past efforts override what the current data demands.

7. Expert’s Curse (Overindexing on Strengths)

[24:12-27:14]

• Success can breed arrogance or tunnel vision. Marketers overvalue their “thing”—creative, media buying, etc.—at the expense of other vital elements.

  “For me…you can be obsessed with the numbers all you want, but if you don't have an understanding of the humans, then like, it's not going to go well.” — Nate, [18:45]

• Nate argues you should lean into strengths rather than fixate on weaknesses, but balance is critical.

8. Data Blindness

[27:32-29:16]

• Ignoring or neglecting data hygiene basics: missing conversion tracking, untested landing pages, or inaccurate metrics.

  “I do think, like, ad account obsession is a problem in the industry... there’s so much more opportunity than the ad account.” — Nate, [28:51–29:16]

9. Self-Serving Spotlight

[30:51-33:11]

• Marketers overclaiming credit for wins, neglecting the collaborative, multi-factor nature of ad success.

  “Together is better.” — Sarah, [33:11]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Overcomplicating Things:

  “How do you find anything in here? How do you know what happened, what happened last week or this week or next week?” — Sarah, [13:51]

• On Leaning Into Strengths:

  “Every time we tried to, like, try to force ourselves to get better at a weakness, it, like, didn't go too hot.” — Nate, [26:29]

• On Resource Focus:

  "I want to work the least amount possible and still hit our goals. Like, I want it to be as simple and as easy as possible." — Nate, [12:04]

• On Team Collaboration:

  “Yes, I wrote the script, but it was the creator who delivered it... It was the media buyer who managed the account… it's not just me. That's all of these good concepts.” — Sarah, [31:17]

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Notable Tactical Advice

• Track Results by Cohort or Collection ([21:43-23:16]):
  Nate details how measuring marketing performance by collection/cohort (not just the account or ad group) provided clarity and faster optimization.

• Be Data-Aware, but Human-Obsessed ([19:28-19:39]):

  “I like data-aware. I think you need to be, like, human-obsessed… that's how I like my marketers: data-aware, human-obsessed.” — Nate Find the “why” behind numbers, not just the “what.”

• Don’t Let Greed Drive Decisions ([33:38]):

  “Greed will kill your business faster than any marketing tactic, faster than any bad hire, faster than any lawsuit or inventory issue.” — Nate

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:21 | Twitter Post That Sparked the Episode | | 03:23 | Example: Excluding Past Purchasers Lowers CPA | | 06:21 | (1) Action Bias | | 08:39 | (2) Illusion of Control | | 11:19 | (3) Complexity Bias | | 14:24 | (4) Metric Fixation/Streetlight Effect | | 17:15 | (5 & 6) Volatility Overreaction & Sunk Cost Fallacy | | 18:45 | The Limits of “Data-Driven” Marketing | | 21:43 | Managing Performance by Collection/SKU | | 24:12 | (7) Expert’s Curse/Overindexing on Strengths | | 27:32 | (8) Bad Data Blindness | | 30:51 | (9) Self-Serving Spotlight | | 33:38 | “Greed Will Kill Your Business Faster Than Anything” (Final Takeaway) |

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Takeaways for Marketers

• Keep it simple and clear: Don’t complicate structures or strategies unless absolutely needed.
• Don’t act for its own sake: Sometimes, doing less is more powerful. Trust your setup unless there is a clear signal to change.
• Guard against the illusion that you always control the results: Sometimes platforms make decisions outside your influence—monitor, but don’t micromanage.
• Look beyond the ad account: CRO, landing pages, product presentation, and influencer marketing may have higher leverage.
• Share credit: Wins come from the ecosystem—creative, media buying, product, and platform all play a part.
• Guard against greed: Business mortality is often driven by overreaching or ego, not just tactical error.

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Conclusion:
The most successful brands—and marketers—are those who stay humble, keep things simple and understandable, balance action with patience, and constantly check their own biases. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: true scale requires a collaborative approach and an open mind.

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Hosts on Twitter:

• @aralevinger (Sarah Levinger)
• @aytelagos (Nate)

For more neuromarketing secrets and practical advice, subscribe and tune in next week!

Transcript

[A]

Been doing no phone Red Bull walks every morning. Love it. Just out, just out in. Just out in the real world. Getting some sunshine and fresh air. It's amazing. It's great.

[B]

What's the real world?

[A]

Have you been outside lately? Outside's awesome.

[B]

It's so sad that we have to like, check on our friends and be like, when was the last time you went outside? Yeah.

[A]

Have you been outside? If you guys haven't been outside, by the way, this is the intro. Welcome to Brain Official intro. If you guys haven't been outside lately, mix it in, maybe go out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I've been doing walks at 8am before it gets too hot, but like, the sun feels good. 45 minutes. Life's good.

[B]

That's perfect, dude. That's a good amount of time to actually get into flow state. I've noticed I'm getting short walks, like 15, 20. It's not quite long enough. And I'm still thinking about work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Past about 30, though. I'm like, look at all these trees.

[A]

Yeah. And then like I come back, shower.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then like, my brain's like ready to write and ready to do work.

[B]

Oh, this sounds amazing. I haven't been walking as much because we're actually on your side of the planet. Here I am down in Sarasota and it is. I don't know how you deal with this because in Colorado it gets hot, but it's like, oh, 90 and dry. So it feels like it's 80ish. 85.

[A]

Yeah. I do all my walking and golfing before 11am that's how I don't, I

[B]

don't know how people deal with this. I understand now why people are like, just really. They have basically no clothes on all the time. Like, I see people walking around with no shirts like everywhere. I'm like, I get it now because it's sticky hat. We're getting. I have a specific thing that, that I wanted to bring up today based upon all of my Twitter ramblings. It always comes from Twitter. This week I didn't realize that this post was going to like, pop off as much as it did, but I posted something that asked people, what was the single biggest thing that you did in your ad account that you didn't think was going to make a difference, but it like, drastically changed?

[A]

Oh, good question.

[B]

Yeah. So I wanted to ask you this and then I'm going to share the answers because this was really eye opening for me. I was like, whoa. Okay. So I'm going to ask you what was like the Single biggest thing you've changed in the ad account, not the landing pages. Because I know you're a big, like, CRO landing page guy. Ad account.

[A]

There's an example last year, last year, Q1, we were having a really hard time reaching new people. And we weren't sure what was going on at first because, like, all the numbers looked normal. Like CPM hadn't gone up.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You know, like, click through rate. All that stuff looked good. Conversion rate on site looked good. But we were like, why are we not acquiring more new customers? Like, this is really weird. And I had never excluded past purchasers from our campaigns at OG up until this point because one, we like, struggle to get repeat purchases anyway. So I was like, if I have to pay to reacquire some customers, like, it is what it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And also when I got there, like, we were small enough where, like, I didn't think it mattered really. But, um, but we got bigger growth got a little bit harder. Um, so we excluded past purchasers like through Meta, and then we used a tool called Waste not to, like, help with those exclusions further. Um, and both worked really well. It was an immediate, like, 40% drop in NCEPA.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And blended MER was up. All our business metrics, like, got better instantly.

[B]

Interesting. Well, this is simple exclusions. Exclusions. Yeah. Like a mechanical exclusion too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I didn't actually hear this pop up when I actually ran this. It wasn't even a poll. It was just a question of, like, what was the single.

[A]

I'm super interested to hear what people said.

[B]

Yes. Okay. So I went through it and actually consolidated them all so it's easier for us to go through them. Take this with a grain of Salt. There was 28 people that responded, but some people gave me some pretty deep insights. All this stuff. 18% of the people who gave me their opinion said it was about account structure and consolidation. So, you know, somebody talked about graveyard zombie campaigns, consolidation of the overall account. Like, I know I was like, some of these I've never even really heard of. I'm like, what the heck is a zombie campaign? So 18%, though, went straight over towards the biggest thing that impacted was account structure. 14% said that keeping their hands off the account was the single biggest thing like that. That, like, the overall account starts scaling again. So not looking at the account, not touching it, not checking it once a week. Like, they just completely stop doing stuff with us that was like that. 11% said bid and cost caps, which I was like, don't like them. That's how this is. And this is why I love these type of questions. Because when I shoot this out of the Internet, I'm literally just like curious, like what's going on with these people. The fascinating part and something that we'll talk about a little bit at the end of all of this is like, look at how many different things impacted the ad account. It's not like 50% of these people said it was this, this was the one thing. And I'd also like to point out none of these people said creative at the top.

[A]

Well, I think based on the way you framed the question, we wouldn't have said that.

[B]

I, I would love to very.

[A]

Like they didn't mean that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. From a media buying standpoint, these are the things that are working. So we got 11% bid and cost gaps, another 11%. Talked about data tracking or measurements, having accurate data conversion, tracking from, from day one, ignoring click through rate, judging on hold rate or downstream conversions. So some people I think are talking about basically the differences in their data accuracy or how they're interpreting it, which I thought, interesting. And then we've got like a bunch of little things below that like creating creative offers and landing pages came up targeting audiences, like product, platform, all these different things. There are some very clear biases and I kind of want to talk about on this episode of like nine specific things that are marketer biases that popped out of this that I was like, great. I think people notice that they do this. So the very first one, and I'm always interested to see if you think you do this. Biggest thing that I see from marketers that they should probably not be doing anymore is bad habit action bias came out really strong. And almost every single one of these is like people can't help themselves. They have to do something all the time.

[A]

Yeah. It's so funny because, like when I think about the times in my career where like meta is absolutely ripping, I wasn't touching it. Like, I think about like we had two years in a row at og Literally two years in a row where like everything we did crushed. We beat forecasts again and again. We sold out again and again. Like we're just on, on such a heater. And I remember there was a point where I was talking to Ryan or someone and he was like, what's going on in the account? And I was like, I don't know. And like he thought I was joking and I was like, I was like, I haven't touched it in three weeks. Why would I Like, we're already selling out more profitably and too quickly.

[B]

Like, does this mean I'm ripping?

[A]

But, but, but let me follow. As soon as performance gets bad, I'm like, let's do everything. Like, I'm like, I'm like, let's consolidate account structure. Let's launch a big batch of new creative. Let's test new copy and headlines on the landing pages. Like, yeah. So, yeah, I like, it's so hard to trust the process when the process isn't working right in this moment. And then there's been a couple times in my career where, like, I definitely think I overdid it. Where it's like, I've done 30 things and I don't know if any of them are having a positive impact. I have no way to measure which thing is driving new results. And so, yeah, it definitely happens. I have a podcast coming out next week. Weird plug, but it's a really good one. It's with Cody Whitake from Kinship.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He has a protocol of, like, what to do when meta performance is bad. And it's a really, like, structured, logical sop for like, hey, when performance is bad. I think it's a six step thing where it's like, this is what you should run through.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To like, not overreact, not panic, pull levers. It's really good. It'll be out by the time this episode is out, so go check it out. But yeah, it's. All of it is way easier said than done because your instinct is like, let's change everything.

[B]

Yes. Let's do something about it. Which kind of leads us into like, the second thing that I see here. Like, bad habits that marketers have that came out in all of this data that I was finding. The illusion of control is really strong, which is kind of like a twin. Right. To the first one that we talked about. But everybody's talking about the fact that I changed XYZ and then it started to take off or like, I did this and all of a sudden it changed. I think they're, they're. We're kind of mistaking a little bit of activity for influence.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, it makes us feel like we did something that actually worked. My question to you, and that was the question I was going to ask the last question, but I'll ask it on these two. Is this a case for let meta cook or is this like a. Yeah, that's what I'm saying is I'm trying to decide is this like, meta is actually smarter than we think it is and we should probably just let it do. Or is it. No, we're, we're, we should monitor without trying to mess so much take away.

[A]

Yeah, I, I don't know. I've just seen like, I think before 12 months ago I would have told you, like, just let Meta cook.

[B]

Like, oh, okay.

[A]

Met is really good. Like we, like, we didn't do anything at all. Sophisticated media buying at og we had like two main campaigns that ran all the time, separated by product and like they just ripped. They were CBO1ad set in each and like life was awesome. And then there were a string of times in a row where Meta would spend like all of the campaign budget on one ad.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And performance, overall performance would suck. And the ad wasn't good at anything. It wasn't good at getting engagement, it wasn't good at getting clicks. It damn sure was not good at getting conversions. And it's one of those things where like I looked at it and I'm like, there's no, there's no logical reason why Meta is spending money on this. I think Meta is wrong. And when I turn those ads off, performance bounced back immediately. Now I've also seen the opposite where like meta's spending all the money on one ad and, and performance is not good and I turn it off and things don't get better. So I like my answer here is I don't know. I don't know.

[B]

That's a good answer though. I think it's a better answer than most people this industry like to come up with is like, we don't know. But what if what I'm hearing is that this is a good case for let me cook. But, but keep an eye on it. You're the manager of Meta.

[A]

Yeah. To be involved, I prefer to let it cook like within certain guardrails. Like.

[B]

Yeah. So this is the third one that I want to run into because you said earlier that you had one CBO campaign with frickin one ad set in it. I am impressed with your restraint because I think the third thing in here that marketers do this bad habit, get rid of it. Complexity bias is really big in this industry. We love if it's complex. This is coming from somebody who has very complex systems. Like mine are intense and in depth. The reason for that though on my side is because it's all attached to the weird psychology things and I'm trying to track things that you can't normally track, like emotion and communication level. Meta, though, I find marketers love this. Like I, I need 10 different campaigns all of them have like 18 different ad sets in them. And I'm like, oh my God, complexity bias is real in here.

[A]

Yeah, I, I don't know if it's just like the brain I got or what, but like I've never suffered from that. I'm a simple, simple kind of guy. And for me, like the way that I think about, I mean life and growing teams and management and ad account tactics is like, yeah, complexity must be necessary for me to do it. Like when I think about like ideal, what's my ideal structure? What's my ideal work balance? Right now it's like I want to work the least amount possible and still hit our goals. Like, I want it to be as simple and as easy as possible. Now, one campaign for us was not enough. We tried that and failed to hit our goals. So we added a new one that served a different purpose. That was enough for us to hit all of our goals. I was like, good, we're done. We're done.

[B]

Yeah, until you need it. Don't open a new one.

[A]

Like, yeah. So that's kind of how I've always handled it because I think like, seems

[B]

like a no brainer to me.

[A]

I think simple and maybe more importantly understandable.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Is more important than like 100% optimized. Like if I'm running an account, let's say it's 85% optimized, whatever you want your definition of that to be. But I have a solid grasp of what is driving results and what's not. That's way more useful to a brand than account. That's 100% optimized but muddy. And when something goes wrong or right, it takes you three days to figure out what it was like. That's not a good place to be.

[B]

Oh my God. Especially with some of these accounts when they have like 4 to 500 ads in there. I'm like, how do you find anything in here? How do you know what happened, what happened last week or this week or next week? I have no idea what's going on. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Like, I think I've never experienced in my career, like surprise growth or like uncontrollable growth. All of the growth I've been a part of has always been like very stable and predictable and controllable. It's the way that I like to do things. Hats off to you guys who have grown faster than me. Obviously a bunch you have.

[B]

There's nothing wrong with viral growth. The problem with it is though, it's very difficult to control. You can't Grab it and do anything with it. It's so volatile. It's just like out and gone. So, yeah, this is. These are leading into each other very nicely today. This leads me to like, our next one. Which is biggest habit I see. Bad, bad habit of these marketers these days is metric fixation. It's interesting because when I was going through here, something that Claude highlighted was streetlight effect, where it's like, we. This is the only thing I'm going to look at. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where people get focused on. It's all about CPA or cms. I need to look at click through rate or conversion. I'm like, technically, all of these different metrics exist for different reasons, but you got to look carefully. Not just one carefully. I like a stack of. Yeah.

[A]

So I have a spreadsheet that when performance is bad, I fill it out. It has a whole bunch of metrics in there. Some are meta metric, some are just like overall biz ones.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But I'll fill it out from, like, if the last week has been bad, I'll fill out the last seven days compared to the previous week. And I do that to see, like, which individual metrics changed. I want to know where the problem is. And then we attack that problem. But we don't lose sight of everything else. Like last year at og, when we were going through that tough time at the beginning of the year to reach new people, our cpmr, our cost to reach new users was way higher than it had ever been. So we're like, cool. That's what we're gonna attack. That's what exclusions helped with. That's what waste not helped with. But we didn't forget all of the, like, conversion rate work. We were.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

We didn't stop making creative that would be better at driving clicks. Like, I. So I don't know. I. I think it's a. A balance between, like, you need to know what changed in order to try to help it, but you also have to realize, like, there's 17 different ways to improve performance and you need to be doing like, at least six of them well at a time.

[B]

I think so all the time you need to be doing well. I mean, it's kind of true, though. Like, we talk a lot about acquisition and all of the ad account stuff and the creative and all this blah, blah, blah. We talk, at least from what I can see on my timeline. I'm like, where's everybody talking about landers or copywriting or like, product photography? Okay, I'll do that. Other than Nate.

[A]

Product photography is a huge one, though.

[B]

Oh. Like, I've been doing so much work with people on this exact thing recently because I'm like, guys, not. It's still not quite good enough. Even with people creating AI versions of it where it's like all pristine and stuff. I'm like, you still haven't shown me the product and supplements in particular is real bad about this. But I digress. We can talk about product photography.

[A]

I was going to say, do you know, it's. So let's do an episode about it.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, we'll do an episode on that one because that was okay. Next two on here, 5 and 6 are really interesting bad, bad habits that I see. Marketers get into volatility overreactions where we just go. It's. Which is interesting because something you called out, you were like, when things go bad, I just change everything.

[A]

I want to do everything. Yeah.

[B]

Second one is interesting because it's almost the inverse sunk cost. Yeah. I see marketers go either way. Either they overreact and they're like, I got to fix everything all at once. Let's change it all right. Or they're very much like, no, we've already spent way too much time on this top five spread of ads and we have to make them work. Like, change budgets, cost caps, put them into a different campaign. Like, it's just, it's interesting that we're not spending as much time, in my view, at least looking at the actual data, trying to figure out what happened. We just noticed something changed and then we go and like fix it.

[A]

I, I think what's hard about like trying to be obsessed with the data is like, the data doesn't tell you why.

[B]

I know.

[A]

And I like, I. For me, it's a red flag these days when someone tells me they're a data driven marketer. Maybe a hot take. But like, I, I wouldn't want to hire someone that leads with that or like has their resume to title because. Because you can be obsessed with the numbers all you want, but if you don't have an understanding of the humans, then like, it's not going to go well.

[B]

True.

[A]

And for me it's like, all right, so you can look at why, you know an ads click through rate or sorry, you can see that an ads click through rate collapsed. You have no clue why from looking at meta. And you need to go do a deep dive on comments on that ad, comments on other ads, Reddit, to figure out what people are talking about. You need to look at the industry As a, a whole. And then like even that can be a time suck a little bit. But that's going to help you make a better ad rather than just trying to throw out a random idea to replace it quick. So you're like, I don't like data driven. I like data Aware.

[B]

Oh, okay, that's a little better. Data aware.

[A]

I think you need to be like human obsessed. Okay, Yes, I, I, that's how I like my marketers. Data aware. Human obsessed.

[B]

Human obsessed. Especially because. And this, this is a good question to you. This is free consulting for me because again, I've constantly tried to like keep a no time.

[A]

I pay you on free consulting. 140 episodes in, well, 100%.

[B]

Okay, so free consulting for me because you spent tons more time in deep ad account data. I'm a consultant, so I typically get into ad accounts for a span of like maybe to take a look. Yeah, yeah. It's not that long. And typically these, these ad accounts, I'm coming in to solve acute problems. So it's like we are dying. Come and help us fix it. I fix it. And then they move on and they just continue. Right. So one thing that I've been asked a lot from my school group this week, shout out to other lab, go join us every shameless blog. That's right.

[A]

I plugged mine too.

[B]

Somebody asked me, when it comes to trying to figure out what strategy to make inside the ad account, should I be managing by ad or should I be manning by average of ads? Like, should I go in and try and diagnose a winner because the click through rate dropped and spend 10 hours of my week trying to solve that one problem or should I just all boats rise? Like as long as the entire account is doing well, should I go that way? I'm like, ooh, yeah.

[A]

I mean the answer is like it depends on a million other things I know.

[B]

I'm like, well, what is the brand doing? What are they optimizing for? How healthy are they? Have they seen gross recently? Is everything D Like I don't, I, there's no definitive answer for me, so I wanted to check with you.

[A]

Yeah, the, the most simple thing that we did at OG that like really helped a lot. I got to OG in February of 2021. I don't know, time flies. I got through that whole year, most of a year, you know, but like it was a transition year. Like there was not really a marketing team in place. I like built it from scratch tactically. I didn't even change a whole ton for the first six months, because I was just trying to, like, build the team the right way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But after I'd been through a year with them, we started something new in January of the following year where we started to measure our marketing performance by collection. By collection of watches. And the measurement became really simple. Like, we essentially built out, like a mirror or like a blended return on ad spend by collection.

[B]

Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying is

[A]

I would say, like, all right, this week we spent 100k on our whiskey barrel watch collection.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, we.

[A]

We did 280k from that collection. It's a good week. I am happy as long as that number is good. I really didn't mess with the ad account. Like, we, you know, we continue to test concepts on the lp, we would continue to launch new ads. But, like, I really wasn't doing too much until we had a week where it's like, hey, we spent 100 on this and we made 170. Like, yeah, that's not good for us. Like, yeah, some. So I look at that. It's like, okay, cool. Our overall advertising efforts for this collection of watches is not working.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

The reason might be one ad.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I know, like, whatever we're spending the majority of the money on right now is not doing what I want it to do. So kill those and find something new that works.

[B]

I like that you did this by product, by sku, basically by collection or whatever it was. Mostly because it's so much easier for me to understand what happened or what's going on if it's not the entire account for every single product we have.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is why I tell people, like, the ad account these days is basically a glorified folder system. It used to be very important that, like, ad sets had their own thing. We had campaign set to this, whatever it is. Now that everything is just based upon whatever meta feels like doing that day. I'm like, the ad sets for me are helping me stay organized. So I want to know this campaign in this ad set. What happened? What was that ad set built for? What were we trying to do? And then I could go through and kind of backwards diagnose it. That's really interesting. So, okay, we have three more. We're. Oh, my God, we've been. We're going through this for so long. And I'm like, oh, this conversation. I have a hard time when we, like, go off into the weeds. Cause I'm like, now I want to know. Okay, number seven is interesting because this. This is where I think a lot of marketers struggle because they don't see it very quickly. Experts curse. Right. Where it's like, all of a sudden we. We start getting wins and we start thinking, like, ooh, I'm good at this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then we just can't stop ourselves from, like, over indexing on the things that we're good at. And this is the reason why I'm like, I'm very good at creative and human. I need the media buying and the numbers side of it more. So I'm trying harder to increase those skill sets so I don't get this, like, expert level bias.

[A]

Yeah. This is where I actually think a lot of brands get it wrong.

[B]

Oh, interesting.

[A]

I. I kind of think you should only focus on your strengths and, like, not really worry about your weaknesses too much. And I mean, that post, like, for, like, the individual marketer and for the brand. Like, when I look at a brand like, OG, our strength was that we sold fashion pieces that looked good in photos.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's, like, cool. We're gonna. We're gonna invest a lot in taking the best possible watch photography that we can. And I think we got it to a place where, like, we were, you know, some of the top watch photography, like, in the world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think JB and Chris got, like, really, really good at it. So that was, like, a brand strength that we leaned into. And, like, there was always a constant conversation internally of, like, we should get more video ads going. And every time we tried, like, we kind of failed.

[B]

And after this video wasn't your strong suit.

[A]

Yeah. And after, like, 40 or 70 of them, I was like, why are we doing this? Like, we're trying so hard.

[B]

There's a lot of tests, too.

[A]

Videos at it, and none of them rip. And, like, meanwhile, like, a bunch of statics rip. And then, like, for me, on the personal side, like, I wouldn't say that media buying is like, a super power of mine. Like, I can run an account. Well, we made a bunch of money with the way I ran the account. But, like, it was simple. Like, you know, I'm sure a lot of media buyers out there would be like, oh, like, you could have made more money or, like, you could have been more efficient and, like, yeah, maybe. But, like, the better strength of mine was website optimization, was writing all the concepts for all of our static ads. So, like, every time we leaned into that, we made more money. And every time we tried to, like, try to force ourselves to get better at a weakness, it, like, didn't go too Hot.

[B]

I mean, this is making me feel better because I'm always like, am I missing something? Like, again, I'm. I'm a good media buyer. Like, I can run an account and everything's good. I'm much stronger at the creative and the storytelling and the character works and, like, the psychology. So I don't know. Maybe you're right.

[A]

Yeah. I think everyone should be leaning into their strengths more. Like, we talk a lot about how I never do dishes. It's. I'm not good at it.

[B]

It's not your strength.

[A]

I don't like to do it.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

But, like, I'm pretty good at making money. And it's easier to just pay a housekeeper 250 bucks a week to come in and clean up.

[B]

That is hilarious.

[A]

Than it is for me to like your wife.

[B]

It's not my strong suit, babe. Like, it's. I can't.

[A]

She's the one that found the maid to come.

[B]

Holy.

[A]

Well. And, like, that's the point. She doesn't even like when I do them because, like, I don't do them good enough or whatever. So it's like, it's a win. Win. Why? Like, it's a. It's a bad use of my time to try to get better at that.

[B]

Okay, that leads us to the last two on here, which I'm. These are really interesting. And I can't wait.

[A]

Terrible example.

[B]

I think it's great. I mean, why not? Yeah. The other thing is everybody's constantly talking about, like, get better. Optimize, like, kill your weaknesses.

[A]

I'm like, yeah, get, like, really good at two things.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

And outsource the rest.

[B]

Okay. I feel better about this.

[A]

Outsource or just don't do the rest.

[B]

Like, I can be good at something in exchange to be really great at one other thing. I'd rather have that. Yeah, 100%. Okay, number eight here. Last two. Bad data blindness. So a lot of people were talking about the fact that, like, they didn't have accurate data to make decisions, or, like, we input, like, conversion tracking, and it finally started working and things like that. And this is no dig on them. It's just bad habit that we get into and as marketers is we fixate. Right. Like we talked about before. But then we also just ignore things when it becomes obvious that it's a problem. Yeah, I see a lot of people ignore stuff. Landing pages is a really good example of this. It's just like, landing pages CRO. Like, price testing, title testing images on your website. Like, all of that stuff still needs to be done. You can't just focus on the ads. And I have a couple brands that I'm currently mentoring with this, which is like, let me see the landing page that this is going to. And they were like, we don't really test landing pages. And I'm like, well, that's a problem.

[A]

Yeah, I do think, like, ad account obsession is a problem in the industry. And like, it became really, really eye opening to me when like the conversation on Twitter, which is largely dominated by media buyers or media buyer agencies. So like, that's what they want to talk about. But like, as I made more connections in the industry with other CMOs, we almost never talked about accounts.

[B]

You said this a couple times and I, yeah, I'm like, what do you talk about? Tell me what you're saying now.

[A]

It was so shocking to me. The difference, like, when I'd have conversations about growth with agency guys and some agents together are awesome. Like, there's a bunch of. And let me also point out, some CMOs are idiots. Like, I know some of those too. So like, that's not what I'm saying. All I'm saying is like, I, I, I think brand, I think brand side marketers, because they're full time on it, they know like, hey, we can't media buy for 40 hours this week. Like, we, we have to do other stuff. So a lot of the, like, growth outside the ad account tactics, like, became what we talked about. Because I, I think at the end of the day, like we all acknowledged, like, hey, if, if you have your meta account set up to be like 80% of the way there, that's fine. I actually think there's not much to gain from that last 20%, but there's another 100% to gain if you get really good at copy on site. There's another 100% to gain if you get really good at influencers. Like, there's, there's so much more opportunity than the ad account. And I know it's the thing we obsess on and like, it deserves its time. It gets, you know, 50% of our revenue at times, but it's not the only thing we got. There's, there's a lot of things you can do outside the account that make the account work better. Maybe that's the next question that you should ask is now, okay, what have you done outside the ad account that had the most positive impact on the ad account?

[B]

Okay, I'll go get that data this week because I think that would be a Super interesting question to see the differences between, between inside and outside. Because the last one on here, bad habit that I think most marketers should just drop is this kind of like self serving spotlight where it's like the thing. And you just talked about it, the thing that I do matters the most. And I'm like, that is not true. This is the reason why I have a hard time because I've had some brands come in and say, can we see, like, examples of your work? Can you show us some of the things that you produce? Can you like, bring us some ads so that we can vet you as a creative strategy, whatever it is? I have a hard time with this because I typically advise a lot of teams. I teach a lot of media buyers and creative strategists. I'm in a lot of ad accounts. But it's not just me. Like, yes, I wrote the script, but it was the creator who delivered it correctly. Right? And yes, they delivered it correctly, but it was the media buyer who managed the account well enough to make sure it got spent. Like, it's not just me. That's all of these good concepts.

[A]

Let me actually shout out an agency guy, quick. He. He's a media buying agency that runs media for one of my copywriting clients right now. And they've done such a good job, like, taking what I've done and running with it and building off of it. And I sent a message today to him and the founder of the brand where I was like, hats off to you guys. Like, you are doing exactly what you should do with what I'm doing. And, like, it's been awesome. Let me find his name because he deserves a shout out.

[B]

Get ready, dude. You're gonna have a lot of clients. If Nate gives you a recommendation, you're gonna go real deal.

[A]

Oliver. Oliver Galang.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Oliver Galang.

[B]

All right, well, and I'll find his. His profile and I'll see if I can find it.

[A]

I think the agent is called off guard. Marketing. But yeah, like, absolutely killing it. Like, I think we've scaled meta spend like 70 in the first month that

[B]

I. Oh, my God Almighty.

[A]

And yeah, it's fantastic.

[B]

This is the reason why. Anyways, everybody weather.

[A]

Yeah. And like, let me say, like, I didn't scale that by 70. Also. He didn't scale it by 70 the month before I got here. But like, yeah, together is better.

[B]

Yes, yes, yes, together is better. We're going to end it there because I'm like, this was such a good, like, easy chat today about all the things that I think we need to work on, work on ourselves as marketers because this is what we're seeing in the industry right now. There is no one thing that's like, this is what changed everything. There's lots of different things that we need to work on. And really a core takeaway. You need a lot of good people to be able to do it. So don't over index, don't get greedy and don't please don't get selfish.

[A]

By the way, just one quick note on on greed. We're going to end this episode on a serious one. Greed will kill your business faster than any marketing tactic, faster than any bad hire, faster than any lawsuit or inventory issue. Greed will kill your business faster than anything weird dark note. Thanks for listening to Brain Driven Brands. You can follow me at Nate Legos fals. Follow at Sarah Levinger on Twitter if you want to work with us, hit us up. We are. Well, my client Prosthor's full for another month, but I'll be opening it back up in August. Sarah runs more organized business than me, so she can help you out right now. And we'll see you guys next week.

[B]

Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Appreciate you guys listening. If you want to follow me, I'm aralevinger Anywhere you consume content, he is aytelagos. If you like this show and if you like this episode, go ahead and like subscribe. Share with a friend. Drop us a review when you have a minute. We would appreciate it. Otherwise, have a great week. We'll see you next time.