Perpetual Traffic

Is the ad you're about to pause the one feeding every sale in your account? And is that shiny new channel really the fix for a rough month, or just an expensive distraction? Most marketers get both calls wrong, especially when the product costs thousands.
Growth strategist Ricardo Pouwels joins me again to discuss this further. We open Meta Ads Manager to show how he reads frequency, hook rate, hold rate, and cost per engagement on a campaign that spent $145,000 in 30 days. The coldest video has a lower ROAS than the other ads, but pausing it would cut off the traffic that feeds the converting ads.
I also talk about a flashlight campaign that "won" every engagement metric and sold nothing. Ricardo explains how an ad-level spend minimum stops Meta from dumping 90% of budget into one video. Plus, we cover the bad and good reasons for expansion, and why testing new avatars and messaging comes before adding any new channel.

In this episode:
- Hook rate, hold rate, and outbound CTR benchmarks by ad type
- Where last-click attribution breaks down on high-ticket offers
- What cost per engagement tells you about creative, and where it misleads
- Why creative diversification beats raw ad volume in the Andromeda era
- When to test new channels and how to pick the next right platform
- Testing new avatars and messaging before adding platforms
- Diversifying away from Google or Meta without hurting performance

Mentioned in the Episode:
Partner with Tier 11’s marketing experts: http://tiereleven.com/apply
Tier 11’s Data Suite: https://www.tiereleven.com/what-we-do/data-suite
Previous Episodes with Ricardo Pouwels:
https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-808-why-your-winning-ad-is-probably-the-one-youre-about-to-kill/
Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491
Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK

Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1

We Appreciate Your Support!
Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/

Connect with Ricardo Pouwels:
Website: https://nl.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-pouwels

Connect with Ralph Burns:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now

Everyone tells you to put a booking calendar at the end of your funnel. What if that's exactly where you're losing half your leads? For businesses that rely on a sales team to close high-ticket offers, generating the lead is not the end of the process. The handoff is where businesses lose or win the opportunity.
Thomas Mcnaught is back to break down a client case study that flips conventional wisdom. Most of their spend goes to Meta lead forms, the format everyone calls low quality. Yet show rates jumped roughly 20% once setters started calling every lead. Plus, they're turning six-figure ad spend into seven-figure monthly revenue at roughly a 7X MER.

We discuss the impact of speed to lead on conversion rates, why we let Meta run through the weekend, and the capacity problem that comes with scaling this well. If you fix the human part of your funnel, running winning ads gets easier.

In This Episode:
- How Meta lead forms work for high-ticket lead generation
- Choosing between setter phone calls and calendar bookings
- The difference between MQLs and SQLs in a sales-assisted business
- Why the call booking calendar at the end of your funnel can kill show rate
- How speed to lead affects conversion rates
- The best times to schedule Meta and Google ads
- How to manage sales team capacity and double-booked calls

Mentioned in the Episode:
Partner with Tier 11’s marketing experts: http://tiereleven.com/apply
Creative Diversification Playbook: https://perpetualtraffic.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Creative-Diversification-Playbook-Practitioner-Guidance.pdf
Tier 11’s Data Suite: https://www.tiereleven.com/what-we-do/data-suite
Previous Episodes with Thomas Mcnaught:
https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-804-bad-data-and-10-minute-video-ads-were-killing-this-account-heres-the-fix/
https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-807-why-your-best-performing-ad-might-be-the-one-getting-zero-conversions/

Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491

Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK

Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1

We Appreciate Your Support!
Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/

Connect with Thomas Mcnaught:
Website: https://www.thomasmcnaught.com/

Connect with Ralph Burns:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now

What's the real cost of running brand and performance marketing as separate teams? It is more than most marketing leaders want to admit. When every dollar is judged on last-click conversions, you're capturing existing demand while the pipeline of future customers dries up.

I sat down with Jon Chang from MyFitnessPal, the category-leading nutrition app now inside ChatGPT Health, to break down how he runs brand and performance marketing as one system. Jon shares how his team runs roughly 700 creatives at once and tests new messaging for just $100–$300 a week.

He also explains how moving off a single-message influencer strategy took CAC from break-even to about 30% below it. You'll walk away with a framework for persona-based creative, a test budget that protects your LTV/CAC math, and a smarter way to measure brand performance with incrementality.

In this episode:
- Why last-click attribution and performance-only marketing run out of demand
- How Meta's Andromeda update rewards creative diversification
- Running multiple creatives to build brand differentiation and lower CAC
- How to measure each funnel stage with brand lift and last-touch
- What GeoX incrementality studies reveal about true channel credit
- MyFitnessPal’s influencer strategy and media mix
- How Klarna builds micro-communities and campus activations

Mentioned in the Episode:
Partner with Tier 11’s marketing experts: http://tiereleven.com/apply

Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491

Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK

Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1

We Appreciate Your Support!
Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/

Connect with Jon Chang:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchangny

Connect with Ralph Burns:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now

Is your creative saying the same thing over and over? We can help you build a messaging strategy that scales your paid media. Talk to us at: https://www.tiereleven.com/apply
Your creative team is producing more ads than ever. So why does every one of them say the same thing? Most brands skip the one step that decides what their creative actually says, and then pay for that mistake with every new dollar they spend.

On today's show, I'm breaking down a real conversation with the VP of marketing at a $40 million disability benefits advocacy brand. They've had two agencies in two years, no messaging strategy, and 80% of their leads are from affiliates, mostly from just one.

I’ll show you the five-step messaging engine we used to fix it, from extracting real customer language to building nine content pillars and reading every script aloud before production. If your ad account looks like 30 ads with one message, this episode shows how to restructure your messaging framework effectively.

In this episode:
- Why most brands skip the messaging step and go straight to ad production
- The danger of relying on affiliates for most of your lead generation
- Why paid traffic beats SEO and AEO for fast, predictable growth
- How Meta Andromeda rewards distinct messages over ad variations
- How to run a messaging extraction call with sales and customer service teams
- How to build content pillars with emotional, functional, and authority layers
- Why reading ad scripts aloud catches weak ideas before they cost you money
- The 30-day timeline for launching a full creative diversification strategy

Mentioned in the Episode:
Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz: https://breakthroughadvertisingbook.com/breakthrough-advertising/

Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491

Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK

Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1

We Appreciate Your Support!
Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/

Connect with Ralph Burns:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now

Running ads across multiple channels and not sure which ones are actually driving growth? Our teams can audit your attribution and show you where your budget should really go. Talk to us at: https://www.tiereleven.com/apply
A video is soaking up your ad spend and showing almost no conversions, so the obvious move is to kill it. But what if that video is the reason your cheap last-click image ads look so good in the first place?

Ricardo Pouwels, one of our growth strategists at Tier 11, joins me again to break down how attribution and creative measurement change as a business grows from one channel to ten. He explains how he finds a client's true scaling channel using historical spend data, why he'd rather run a real budget test than trust an incrementality study, and why so many brands are hitting a ceiling on Google Search.

Ricardo also shares the scaling campaign structure he's using right now: ad-level spend minimums that keep top-of-funnel videos funded so your account stays a funnel, not a pile of discount images. If you're spending across multiple channels, this one is for you!

In This Episode:
- Why last-click attribution breaks in multi-channel marketing
- How to measure no-click channels like CTV, YouTube, and radio
- Using historical ad spend data to find your true scaling channel
- How Google branded search and Amazon ads often steal last-click credit
- The limits of incrementality testing and why budget tests tell you more
- How to state a hypothesis and timeline before shifting ad spend
- Why Google Search ads hit a scaling ceiling while Meta ads keep growing
- Measuring top-of-funnel videos with hook rate, hold rate, and first-click CPA
- Why image ads and carousels get credit that video ads earned
- Using ad-level spend minimums to keep your Meta funnel balanced
- How "spend to message" and creative diversification prevent account fatigue

Mentioned in the Episode:
Watch the Previous Episode with Ricardo Pouwels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P8Fs7DVjDg
Join Ralph Burns and John Moran every Friday for The Ad Lab Live: https://www.youtube.com/@Tier11/streams

Listen to This Episode on Your Favorite Podcast Channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491

Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK

Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1

We Appreciate Your Support!
Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/

Connect with Ricardo Pouwels:
LinkedIn: https://nl.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-pouwels

Connect with Ralph Burns:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now