When I first started running Facebook Ads in 2013/2014, I was mind-blown by the possibilities. I skipped college in 2014 and when I joined an ad tech startup, I was also on the business development/sales side too. I remember talking to one of the VPs at TAO Group, and I told them, “Yes, I can literally target people who are GOING to Las Vegas within the next 30 days!” They didn’t believe it, and to be honest, neither did I. How could that type of data be readily available?
At the same time I met another brand, a large internet automotive media company. For them, their big funnel was driving people (with Facebook ads) to sign up for their monthly raffle. They could also target people based on their copious amounts of first-party data.
A few years later, I joined an eCommerce brand, and within 3 weeks of taking over DTC, we went from 80 new customers per day, to about 5,000 new customers per day, all profitable, and amazing LTV customers. It was like we just found a honey hole within advertising that no-one else was doing at the time. I convinced TheHustle (they had just started) to run an advertorial, and let me use their FB page to run ads + the brand’s founder’s IG account (after I got it verified). It ripped for 2 years.
The commonality in all of these, aside from the powerful force of Facebook ads, is that these “arbitrages” or honey-holes were discovered through constant testing and learnings. In 2017, whitelisting influencer handles or creating your own internet publisher wasn’t common knowledge, let-alone talked about or encouraged. It required me to think, “What can I get inspired by to test, that may work for our customer?” Had I waited to hear what every other brand was doing, and test that, well, I’d just be running losing tests all day.
The speed of execution to find something new is only one of the ingredients to find new scalable levers. The other two are the willingness of a team/brand to run these tests fluidly, without requiring leadership and budget approvals to test things, AND for the team to have the DNA or ability to be scrappy and resourceful.
RARELY, do I ever see a pretentious marketing team find arbitrages in 2025. They are always looking to copy what other brands are doing, they push back on what their agency partners or consultants might want to test in the name of “budget and approvals” and then they wonder why eCommerce won’t work for them.
If you see Gruns running a new landing page test with a funnel for moms sending their kids back to school, and want to run one, but it requires a budget approval to hire an agency to build a landing page and another approval to get $5k in ad budget to test the audience, you’ll be 4 months late. By that time, that angle is DONE. Everyone else is already on it.
The brands everyone looks to and says to their agency, “Why can’t we be like (insert fast-growing brand here)?” It’s because you don’t know how to think and act like them. Aside from how your product delivers on its promise, you can’t fake that Jolie, Gruns, Lemme, ARMRA, and Parachute Home teams know how to move fast and test things, better than any competitor. There’s a reason they are categories leaders — they move fast, break things, figure out what works, and then scale. By the time you see what they’re doing, copy it, and then try to do it yourself, there’s not the same juice there to squeeze.
Whether you believe it or not, just recently, TikTok Shop felt this way. It was really new and just for “silly brands.” The merchant fees were low and TikTok was paying for shipping fees, ad credits, etc. By the time everyone else decided it’s time to get on TikTok Shop, the fees are 8%, you have to submit ungodly amounts of paperwork, you get no subsidies, etc.
This is currently happening with: clipping. Clipping is a currently in the “underground” world of marketing and covers a few things. Mainly, making clips from large media productions, livestreams, podcasts, etc. and then posting them on social to try and generate views. The people who create and post on these accounts then earn a CPM, based on how many views they get. Similarly, brands are now starting to use AI to generate scripts, read voice overs, and create a ton of AI content, then mass-post/mass-engage to drive views up.
In another world, AEO and GEO is about to be something people will talk about, then sit and do nothing for 12 months. When the brands who first dove into it have their case studies coming out, then everyone else will try to figure out how you rank better inside ChatGPT, for, “What’s the best coffee for someone with a bad stomach?” Imagine how much $$ you can make being ranked #1 for that question.
With today’s email, my punchline is: whatever worked for you before doesn’t mean it always will work for you in the future. If the opposite was true, I wouldn’t have a job. Whether it worked a year ago, at the beginning of this year, or 3 months ago... you need to always be thinking about what else you can do to stay ahead and test.
Your next greatest growth tactic is NOT going to come from just copying what other brands are doing or complaining that your numbers aren’t where they are supposed to be. And no agency wants to work with a brand that doesn’t know HOW to be agile and test new things — that’s why those brands go through agencies every few months. Map out a list of initiatives or tests that you think will help you drive more growth, and triple down on them, even if no one else in the market believes in it right now.
