Big ones that my mom would know, how sick is that?

I got my start in ads a few years ago at a subscription brand. There were a few different responsibilities for my big bad Marketing Assistant role, but the thing that really hooked me was the ~$10,000 a month Facebook ads budget.

I was obsessed with ads (like, freakishly obsessed). I’d work all day, come home, and put YouTube videos on about... ads. Hours and hours of research on campaign setups, creative strategy, and anything else I could find.

Looking back, that sponge period was the foundation of what made me the strategist I am today.

But it took me forever to figure out what a “Media Buyer” or “Growth Strategist” actually was, especially coming from a small town (shoutout Culpeper, VA) without many examples of it.

So, I’m going to explain what a media buyer actually does today, from my POV after managing 8-figures in ad spend.

Hopefully well enough that I have a link to send the next person who asks “what do you do?”, because MAN is it hard to describe.

Level 1: Media Buying (Running Ads)

Mind-blowing stuff for Level 1: You can’t be a media buyer… without knowing how to media buy.

There’s a lot of value (aka salaries to be collected) in knowing how ad platforms work, and how to make them do what you want.

For most DTC brands, paid media tends to live in two big “branches”: paid search and paid social.

• For paid social, you’re running ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and so on to show up in your customers’ timelines.

• For paid search, you have your Googles and Bings of the world where you’re running campaigns largely based on what people are searching.

Most media buyers I know have a similar skillset: very strong on paid social, and a bit lighter on the search side.

Level 2: Analysis & Communication (Understanding and Explaining Results)

A good media buyer has to know how to understand and explain a few things:

1. What is working?

2. What is not?

3. Why? (The answer may just be a theory!)

4. What are we doing next?

Here’s what that could sound like:

• “We launched a batch of ads on the new landing page and saw a higher ROAS than our product page. This week we’re sending more ads to that page.”

• “Our hoodies campaign is outperforming the pants campaign this week, so I shifted $200/day out of pants and into the hoodies campaign.”

You can move on to Level 3 when you’re operating the machine, analyzing the data, and cooking up new tests to launch.

Level 3: Creative Strategy (Making Better Ads)

A good media buyer doesn’t have to be an A+ creative strategist, but it’s in their best interest to be at least B-level and understand “good” creative.

Every great media buyer I know knows which kind of ads, messages, and offers tend to work for the brand they’re working on.

I’ve been a terrible creative strategist myself, and struggled to scale accounts (got a lil better, thank God)

It’s literally hilarious how much easier the media buyer’s job is when the ads being sent to them convert. (Shoutout Elmo Fire Team)

It’s also the biggest adrenaline rush for lil keyboard clicking caffeine fiends like me when we take an ad from $100/day to $1k/day and beyond.

Today, media buyers have to bring ideas to the creative folks working on their account based on what’s working or what’s missing.

That can be as simple as “The new UGC video we launched is doing great, let’s get 3 new hooks for it” or “We don’t have many testimonials in any of our ads, can we get more made this week?”

Level 4: Conversion Rate Optimization (Making the Website Sell Better)

At this level, you can’t just assume the website is working well. Plus, things can always be improved, or new ideas for the site can get tested.

I think about CRO in two ways.

(1) First is a daily temp check while you analyze your campaigns.

• What does conversion rate look like today vs our usual performance?

• What does cost per add to cart look like?

• How about cost per checkout initiated?

These three metrics alone have helped me so freakin’ much with catching a broken checkout, a sold-out product, or a landing-page error.

(2) Second is testing new offers and landing pages.

I keep an eye out for ways my clients can improve their pages, and bring them up on our weekly call to test.

OR I’ll bring a new idea to test. Here are a few examples I’ve actually suggested to clients:

• A “5 Reasons Why Page” to educate people before they see the product page.

• A “Buy X For $X” offer to see if we can reduce CAC/raise AOV instead of selling one product at retail price.

• Adding Gifts with Purchase to increase CVR (more value = better deal = more folks wanna buy)

After a while, you start seeing patterns like “Oh, CPG Brand? We should do X, Y, and Z” which is why I consider this a later-level activity for most media buyers.

So if you’ve reached this point in your media buying career, you:

• Know how to reliably launch and manage new campaigns and ads

• Report like a mad scientist and find new things to test

• Have a solid grasp on the creative workflow of the brand(s) you work with

• Have your finger on the pulse of the pages you’re running traffic to

And if all of the above is checked, you’re ready for Level 5.

Level 5: Growth Strategy / Business Economics (Making the Business Math Work)

Level 5 is when you start to look at the whole business, instead of just zooming into ad accounts.

In my day-to-day now, I think more and more about bigger business questions for my clients like:

• Can we pay more for a new customer now that more of them are coming back for a second order?

• If we spend $20k on this offer next month, how much revenue can we expect from the customers we get over the next few months compared to our other offers?

• Where should our next dollar of paid media spend go?

• Is paid media even the thing that’s holding back growth right now?

And above all:
I spend time asking if there’s anything I can do or suggest that will put more money in my clients’ bank accounts, rather than solely reacting to the data in their ad accounts.

The Future of Media Buying

Media buyers are very much a weird mix of quarterback and finance manager at a high level.

I can see a future where a great media buyer can handle much more of the five levels we’ve yapped through today, mostly because of AI.

What happens when I can analyze data faster than ever before, and can do whatever needs to happen in a few prompts?

That could make me 10x more efficient, produce 10x more value for my clients, all while having 10x the fun doing it like Iron Man and Jarvis.

Now, you know what a media buyer does.

I wrote this post for three purposes:

1. Selfishly, as I said earlier, to answer the question “what do you do?”

2. As a resource for the young buyers that hit me up for advice. If you know one, send them this!

3. If you’re hiring a media buyer, set your expectations based on this. You might only need a Level 2 media buyer right now, or you might need a Level 5. It just depends on how matur your brand is. (I’ll let you in on a secret: the higher the level, the more expensive they will be.)

Leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback if I missed anything, thanks for reading!

Peace and Love,
Travis

A few friends have tried it too and liked it, so figured I’d share the workflow.

Super simple:

1/ First, organize the reviews + quantify the evidence.

Have Codex pull out things like:

→ Pain points
→ Motivations
→ Desires
→ Objections
→ Customer language
→ etc.

Then count how many reviews actually support each one.

This part matters a lot.

If Codex says 37 customers mentioned a pain point, that number needs to actually be 37.

AI can’t get creative with the math lol.

2/ Then assemble the research team.

I spawned 5 different subagents:

→ Customer Researcher
→ Copywriter
→ Paid Social Creative Strategist
→ Organic Social Strategist
→ Media Buyer

The agents individually used the research to build 5 different personas.

Each persona got 10 specific “why now?” purchase triggers.

5 personas × 10 triggers = 50 triggers total.

Across all 5 agents, that gave me 250 research-backed purchasing triggers to work through.

I was pretty strict about what could actually make the cut.

Every trigger needed:

1. At least 1 real customer review, with the specific review cited

2. At least 1 external customer signal, usually ended up being a quote from Reddit

3/ Last step: make the agents review the work against each other.

Nothing really fancy here.

I just wanted all five POVs to argue with each other until they landed on a strong conclusion.

I kept that process going until all of the agents agreed (with each other) on one final persona document.

That was probably the most useful part.

You’re having a bunch of different specialists build, critique, revise, and eventually agree on the same answer.

The final doc had:

→ 5 personas

→ 50 purchase triggers

→ Customer language

→ Objections

→ Required proof

→ “Why now?” moments

→ Evidence behind each trigger

And you can score those triggers by evidence, urgency, emotion, creative potential, scaling potential, etc.

So you end up with a research-backed bank of ideas for:

• Ads

• Landing pages

• Emails

• Offers

• Creative briefs

• Site messaging

Pretty sick stuff.

Comment how it works out for you if you try it out!

Peace and Love,
Travis

It’s just incomplete.

It’s worth obsessing over. But it ignores the fact that nearly every meaningful improvement in creative can be amplified by improving what happens after the click.

And this is where most brands go wrong.

Let’s start with the problem.

A founder starts a brand around a product they believe in.

Then they spend months (or years) sending every ad to the exact same website.

This works to a degree, or at a certain level of scale, but objectively means you’re optimizing the click, not the buying journey.

If this is you, that’s okay. By the end of this article, you’ll have a game plan to break the cycle.

On to the solution.

In prehistoric times (a few decades ago), you would probably have to buy or lease a building in order to create a new experience for your customers.

The beauty of ecommerce is that everything you’re doing is digital.

If you want to launch an entirely new shopping experience, you can do that in a couple of hours or days.

But it seems like the majority of brands have either forgotten, or have never thought about the fact that they can do this.

Examples

Let’s dig into different ways to think about this based on your brand. There are four examples that should cover most (if not all) niches/industries where products are sold on the innanet.

1) Hollow Socks (Link-To)

Hollow Socks runs a very simple 2-Step Funnel, that can be iterated on quickly.

1. When you click an ad, you land on a “10 Reasons Why” Presell Page that is tailored to be congruent with the ad angle/persona you clicked.

2. At the bottom of that page, they have a button that takes you to the PDP to close the deal once you’ve read through all the reasons why you should buy.

Now, whenever Hollow wants to go after a new audience, or learns something new from ad creatives, they can quickly duplicate, rewrite, and ship a net new experience for a different type of customer.

Founder Zach Stuck on a podcast episode:

"We are not going to launch an ad… if we do not have a landing page that also talks about that.” in reference to the pain point, persona, or angle addressed in the ad. He was discussing another brand where he uses the exact same playbook.

Source: The Scalability School Podcast

2) IM8 (Link-To)

IM8 runs a listicle system like Hollow, but they also run Creator-Specific Landing Pages.

1. The hero is tailored around experts/reputable creators with a ton of copy positioning IM8 as something they love.

2. The same messaging carries through to the CTA, which is a subscription-focused offer.

Now, when they run ads from new creators or authorities, they have a system for building a net new experience that resonates more with customers who are sold by the ad they got from that specific creator.

3) dbrand (Link-To)

If you run an aesthetic brand, dbrand is the benchmark.

They go to an insanely high level of custom PDP/Collection Pages for their large activations, that truly feel (from a consumer POV) like an entirely different website.

The screenshots don’t do the pages justice, here are a few favorites to check out:

1. Touch Grass

2. Area 51

3. Sketch 2D

4. Circuit Board

5. White Damascus

4) 100 Thieves (Link-To)

100 Thieves is a great example for any brand that has drops as a core part of their sales calendar.

They simply showcase:

1. What is this drop?

2. Why should I care about it?

3. What are the main SKUs I should check out?

All before you can even click into a PDP of an individual product.

For Beauty Brands, check out this Ilia Beauty Collection Page, an even simpler edition of this concept.

All of these brands build more relevant experiences for the customer after the click.

Shoutout to WWWs everywhere for this opportunity.

So how do you start?

First of all, pat yourself on the back, you probably have a cool business if you’ve even cared to read this far.

Second, there are two main “Landing Page Builders” that most folks use: Replo and Pagedeck. Both are super easy to learn.

Lastly, decide how any of the examples apply to your business.

1. If you have a SKU, Collection, or Ad(s) that are doing well right now, can you build an experience tailored for them? (See Hollow and IM8 examples)

2. If you have a new release coming, how can you be intentional about making it feel like a “big thing” to customers who land on that PDP or Collection Page? (See dbrand and 100 Thieves examples)

3. If you’re having an existential crisis figuring out how to systemize this, I’ve been there, but I wrote a whole article about how the top marketers think about it. (click here)

More generally, ask yourself: “What can I build a better buying experience around?” If you’ve read this far, I guarantee you can figure out the rest.

Over time, you start to notice patterns: sequences of thought and execution that reliably produce the outcomes people talk about after the fact.

This piece illustrates how I think about the three levers that actually drive scale, and why the order you focus on them matters.

It’s not a playbook. It’s the sequencing of “auditing” brands that has held up over time.

1. Creative

Today, you can craft a message, put ad dollars behind it, and learn faster than ever before.

Creative is valuable. It’s hard. And when it’s right, it’s synonymous with rocket fuel.

There’s no comparative rush to doubling budgets every day on a winning creative for a brand that’s starting to scale.

When working through creative, ask:

1. Who is this for? (The ICP and their level of awareness.)

2. What message am I pushing? (Offer, angle, etc.)

3. What format carries that best? (Video, static, etc.)

The work is answering those questions.

Because creative is the cheapest and fastest way to learn how a product actually sells, it’s the place to start when a brand hits a plateau.

The bigger mistake is the inability to decide when creative isn’t the issue.

Creative is (most of the time) not a magic trick for scaling an unsellable product, especially at real scale.

2. Funnels

A decent volume of relatively good creative usually reveals one of two things:

1. Great front-end metrics, weak conversion

2. Or a clear “scale me” signal (high ROAS/low CPA)

Assume it’s the first.

Creative doesn’t convert in isolation. It’s the entry point of a funnel.

“Funnels” can be simplified to three questions:

1. What does someone give?

2. What do they get back?

3. It it clear why purchasing this is worth it?

The first two define the offer. Everything that earns belief in it is the funnel.

The “funnel” is where category matters.

Aesthetic brands can get away with simpler flows, think apparel.

Functional brands, think supplements, can’t. They need education, proof, and context before checkout.

Common funnel patterns worth testing:
→ Pre-landers (advertorials, quizzes, listicles)
→ More DR-oriented PDPs with real detail
→ Bundles and incentives (BOGO, Buy 2 Get 1, etc.)

Even when a funnel is working, it’s a mistake to treat it as done.

Many teams test endless creative and only revisit the funnel once in a while, instead of trying to improve it, or beat it with a new funnel.

3. Website Structure

At this point, if your creative and funnel are dialed, a few things should be true:

1. You know which ICPs convert at scale

2. You know the messages that resonate

3. You know which products or offers they’re happiest to buy

Those learnings shouldn’t only live in acquisition.

They should flow downstream into the main site. (and realistically, retention too.)

If a specific bundle converts cold traffic best, it should be reflected in your hero and/or navigation.

If certain messaging and imagery work when acquiring customers, they should show up elsewhere, not stay locked in ads-world.

There are nuances here around margins and how aggressively you’re playing the LTV game. But directionally, the job is the same:

Take what you’ve paid to learn and use it to make the site convert better.

Especially because at some point, you’ll invest in channels with less control: TV, influencers, events, and partnerships.

When that happens, the highest ROI usually comes from a site that’s already been engineered around the learnings you earned earlier.

When I take over an ad account, it often begins with account structure (a separate discussion entirely). After that, the sequence is almost always the same.

Creative → Funnel → Main Site

P.S. If you’re a startup reading this, reverse the order:

Website → Funnel → Creative

You have the luxury right now of setting the tone for a higher conviction website and funnel before you start slinging $ at creative.

This is a perspective crafted across in-house, hold co-ish, and agency environments, with little-to-no evidence the sequencing will change much.

Likely, just the execution. (Everyone, wave to the AI & Software Devs listening!)

If you’ve read this far, you should have a clearer sense, or at least another POV, of where scale is breaking for you.

And if something’s missing from your perspective, share it!

Leave a comment

Peace and Love,
Travis