Experiments, Gusto, Learnings

Hiccups & Learnings

We innovate and often times that means collecting L's--Learnings. Because it's only a loss if you make a mistake twice. More L's we collect, more W's we'll earn.

Hiccups & Learnings

Sometimes we have hiccups. We take accountability admit to them and take action to prevent it and leave things better. Because it's only a mistake if it happens twice. Other times we come up with amazing ideas that bomb and have learnings of that test. We're not perfect but we strive to be our best. Always. Here's a running list of just a sliver of our L's (Learnings).

  • For every 200 creatives we test, 160 doesn't achieve our business outcomes, 40 achieves business outcomes, 1 goes viral and supersedes business outcomes. That's a 20% business outcome hit rate and 0.5% virility hit rate. Learning: To create a viral ad is a 99.5 percentile outcome. Innovate for it but don't expect it.
  • Spending 5 Figures retargeting Shark Tank episode viewers and getting under performing ROI Back. We hypothesized people who watched one of our partner's Shark Tank premiere airing episode and visited homepage were prime prospects. We retargeted these prospects with 12 pieces of unique creatives that hit different types of creatives including brand, social proof, authority, product, founder's story, entertainment, educational. On Facebook and Instagram Ads. This campaign underperformed. Learning: Not all traffic is equal.
  • Spending 5 Figures collecting Email Leads using the Facebook Conversion Objective prior to Black Friday. The ROI was less than if we just used that money to prospecting campaign. Learning: not all audience from Conversion Objective is equal.
  • Spending 5 Figures on video views and brand awareness objectives with our strongest performing creatives assets. The ROI wasn't there compared to conversion objective. Learning: Brand Awareness and Video View Conversion Objectives didn't work for this Partner's Ad Account with the variables we had. Anecdotally we hear other DTC Brands with scale when everything was aligned (product, creatives, landing page, retention, business economics)
  • One time we were scaling one of our partners past $50,000/day on Facebook and Instagram Ads for a promotion. We got cut off at $20,000 because we didn't age the ad account. We pivoted to scale on YouTube. Learning: Always age your ad account in anticipation if you haven't already when a big launch is happening.
  • Overspent $5,000 in the span of half a day. We didn't catch it until it was too late and reached out to our Facebook Rep to reimburse us. After 40 days we got reimbursed. Learnings: Cost caps, Min ROAS* and Bid Cap are not infallible. This is why it's important there's someone checking the ad account at least twice a day. *Now known as Cost Per Results Goal and ROAS Goal.
  • We made a spelling error on an ad and didn't catch it for an entire week. Learnings: Always have someone do quality assurance on spelling before ads are live.
  • We launched a campaign only to find out 24 hours later we were promoting another brands catalog instead of the brand partner's creative asset. Learnings: Always have someone do quality assurance on the entire campaign build out through a checklist.
  • Tried out Hyros Attribution Software. We realized that optimizing based off of first party data is imprecise because that data is not fed back to Paid Social algorithm. Learnings: Instead look at Business Metrics like Contribution Margin (Cash in the Bank) will always show reality. Rather than chasing our tail with attribution we optimize based off data with a hierarchy of importance. Business Metrics, Ecosystem Metrics, Platform Metrics.