How an 8-Figure D2C Brand Runs Paid Social Marketing

Most performance marketers are damaging the brand. It triggered me at so many levels, so I had to pay attention to this guy.

He is the CMO of Jones Beauty, and he openly shares his marketing playbook, so I thought about learning from his ideas. Then, share those ideas with you. He is Cody Plofker - He runs the weekly growth learning newsletter and down to chat podcast.

So, let's get into his paid social marketing mental models:

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For the last two months, I have been running a paid social mastermind group, and I only have accepted 25% of all the applications. So, why do people join this group and pay €19/month for this group?

They get:

• Exclusive chat with other paid social marketing pros (no more individual jumping on Zoom calls)

• They ask for landing pages, ads, and campaigns to get quick feedback

• They also jump on bi-monthly calls to learn what's working for us on paid socials

• Content, community, rant, and whatnot

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1/ Simplest account structure

Consolidated account structure that's never crazy complex, but they (Jones Beauty) used to do LLAs, Interests, and Retargeting. Over time, they bundled it down and left with two primary campaigns: Creative testing and the main campaign.

That was new to me. They don't do retargeting 😮

I asked if the ad account has multiple countries to address, then? He said you could still use the same campaign with different ad sets.

2/ Obsession On Creative Testing

They used to spend 10% of the budget on testing. In the last 90 days, they have spent exactly 47.9% of the budget on their "Creative Testing" campaign. He used to be worried that even 10% would be too high because he didn't want 10% of our budget to be "wasted".

He sees creating testing another these four categories:

I think there are 4 categories of ads:

1. Green - "Winners" - Get moved to the main and get a lot of budget

2. Yellow - At or below CPA targets with reasonable spending but not exceeding the budget.

They just keep these ads running and often iterate on them to get them to spend more.

3. Yellow - Above CPA targets but not far off. These will get paused and iterated on, then relaunched.

4. Red - Bad ads. Usually won't spend and will get paused.

Personal note: I can vouch for this. I keep making new ads and not just making new versions but NEW concepts as well. It has worked for me over time.

3/ Creative Production Capabilities

Creative on FB is key. It's not everything, but it's the main thing. You should be spending around 10% of ad spend on creative. You should test a mix of UGC video, founder stories, and studio quality.

He recommends a mix of in-house production, and partnering with an has allowed them to seek out extra conversions efficiently while also finding "winners" to let ride.

4/ Hooks & Hold for Creatives

Half of advertising is getting attention. Nothing else matters if you don't get someone's attention. You have to balance doing something "different" or eye-catching with making it relevant to what you are selling. You should try visual hooks and verbal hooks.

For visual hooks, you want a pattern interrupt, which the viewer is not expecting as they scroll. A few learnings: Close-up does better than far-away weird stuff can do well playing around with reverse.

Pacing

Pacing is super important. Your ads are probably too slow. From what they've tested, faster cuts do better. Look at the videos. You can't follow the "heartbeat method," where you cut every 1.5 seconds to keep viewers engaged. You'll see higher average watch times.

He thinks an ad should look 20% too fast when viewed in isolation. Users scroll social so quickly, so in comparison, a "normal speed" video would be too slow.

Look at this video of Mr.Beast to understand pacing, hooks, and hold rate. Cody says, "Check out how quickly he cuts; I bet it's way faster than what you are doing in your ads. There are some cool effects in this video as well. Check the speed of the cuts, and zooming out in the opening is a pretty strong hook. I also love the sounds throughout, as well as how engaging their captions are."

5/ Educate & Enterain

Only a certain amount of folks are ready to buy right "now," and that's why pushing for immediate sale is NOT always the best idea. It is exactly why he thinks performance marketing is damaging the brand. Every ad has to educate with the solutions to the problems they have.

Cody shares:

So, you know, I think most, most things that we're trying to do is we're trying to educate people. We're trying to, whether that educates them on a problem they have, educate them on a, on a desire that they have, you know, and, and also tell stories.

Be a little bit, you know, entertaining. Because again, there are two things: first, it just converts better. It's what people are on social to do. They're not on social. Just to get sold to and buy, you know, for the majority, they're on social to be educated and, and get, you know, hear great stories. Uh, so it's just contextual, but it also, I think it comes off as less salesy and you're able to build longer, deeper relationships with potential customers, so to me, that's the most important thing.

And then just constantly testing in a very iterative fashion where you strategically test one variable up against each other. So you're generating learnings for, for, you know, future tests and future performance. I think those are the most important things that I think have been helpful for us.

I still did not completely understand what he meant by "educate."

So, he took us to the old Breakthrough advertising framework:

He meant to use "Problem-Agitation-Solution" framework with this level of awareness and try to hit your audience in an entertaining and educating manner. The key mental model here is to improve your audience's life by educating them on a problem, and your solution is THE best, but they don't need to buy it immediately (could but doesn't have to).

6/ Focus on Influencer Whitelisting

I was super curious regarding this because he says folks convert better. Why? There is a huge trust level, and that transfers over to you. So, work with influencers who have real trust in the market, big folks are who are doing this for life and loving creating content around it, regardless.

I'm gonna test this and get back to y'all.

7/ Unknown Brand That's Doing Well

This was a mastermind question, so I thought you could enjoy it a little. Since we know good brands that are doing well such as Athletic Greens, Liquid Death, Cometeer, Masterclass, and more.

I'm gonna tear their ads next time; reply with "hell yes" if you want me to do it.

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I've shared above the seven most important lessons from Cody and the mastermind call.

But there's more than that with his content:

• His take on polished vs unpolished ads

• TikTok as a new channel

• Creative roadmap

• How does Cody source creative ideas

• Is AI going to take our job?

• UGC creator vs influencer content

It would be best if you listened to this pod completely get his all ideas:

I do know that most of you like reading more than listening so I put all of Cody's content (other than the pod) in one file for you to learn from him.

This should be a good Saturday gift - Right?

Read this document to learn more and dive deeper. And learn from Cody directly in his newsletter.

Product of the week - Looking for UGC creatives?

Content of the week - Demand Curve's Newsletter

This newsletter gives me new tactics to apply every week and develop new ideas. Highly recommend you check it out.

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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