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Most clients who fail with paid ads fail because they’re trying to make unprofitable unit economics work through “better targeting”… for most of my ecom clients with $200k+ monthly spend… the difference between 2.8x ROAS and 4.2x ROAS is never the ads it’s always conversion rate, average order value, or backend LTV… I don’t take clients unless their funnel already converts organically above 2% because no amount of campaign optimization fixes a 0.6% landing page… the businesses crushing it at $100k+ monthly ad spend all have one thing in common –> they were already profitable at $10k monthly before scaling.
If someone’s losing money at $5k spend they’ll just lose money faster at $50k spend… I’ve fired clients 30 days in when it became clear their offer was fundamentally broken because continuing to burn their budget while “testing” is just unethical… the hardest conversation in this business is telling a founder their product isn’t something people want to buy not that the ads need tweaking… most agencies avoid this conversation and just keep collecting fees while performance stays mediocre.
I’d rather walk away than manage campaigns I know won’t work because my reputation matters more than one client’s retainer… only work with businesses that have product-market fit already proven organically otherwise you’re just the scapegoat when their fundamentally flawed business model fails.
