Andrew Faris previously managed huge Meta advertising budgets while serving as CEO of e-commerce brands. He still manages huge budgets, but now in his agency on behalf of clients. I asked him for advice on advertising for commodities.
“The answer is candor,” he told me. “The more closely you communicate about your product and what it does, the better.”
This is Faris’ third appearance on the podcast. In 2022, we discussed his career transition, after leaving the CEO position. Last year, we covered its new agency and its focus on Meta Ads management. This interview continues with meta advertising: tests, tactics, creatives and more.
The full audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.
Eric Bandholz: Give our listeners a recap of what you do.
André Faris: I run a boutique marketing agency called AJF Growth. It’s me, a few people in the United States, and a few people in the Philippines. We work together to grow e-commerce brands, primarily using meta ads. I provide strategic advice to a small list of clients.
My “Andrew Faris Podcast” addresses what I see and learn. This includes what I experienced as a media buyer on the brand side. I started in e-commerce about 10 years ago.
Bandholz: Let’s talk about the episode I did on your podcast a few weeks ago.
Faris: You came to me with the idea of a series of episodes of brands wanting to discuss their business, their wins and their losses, with a high level of transparency, like your discussions on Beardbrand . You told me Beardbrand was buying more meta ads. I didn’t have room for another client, but suggested we do a coaching call to work on your advertising account. I will provide my honest perspective if you share honest information. We’ll record it and release it to my podcast listeners. This was the second “Opening the Books” episode I did. I try to do more.
Bandholz: We started with some media buying rules.
Faris: I use a volleyball analogy to describe advertising. Media buying is the deciding factor, and creativity is the hitter – the spike. The whole thing matters a lot. Placing the ball in the right place will make the batter’s job much easier. You need both, but creativity is the point.
Many brands define their meta ads poorly. They mostly run creative tests, put significant amounts of money behind them, and then try to pick winners and scale from there.
This seems intuitive, except for two things. The first is that brands systematically underestimate the cost of these tests. Testing creative is probably the largest advertising cost in many direct-to-consumer businesses.
Second, humans are very bad at analyzing data objectively. This also applies to me. I have 10 years of experience managing Meta Ads for brands. I’ve done it in every category, but I’m horrible at analyzing a data set, picking the winner, and scaling it. The beautiful thing is that Meta Ads will do this for us via its machine learning.
Bandholz: Which ads work?
Faris: Meta removes your losers and evolves the winners. This eliminates the need for ad testing. This means running lots of unique ads as long as the cost of production is low. The first thing I do for any Meta account is review and restart the creative backlog. I grab the ads and reactivate them with a bid cap.
Meta will only spend if it expects click-through and conversion rates to generate a cost per acquisition consistent with your goal. I like to repurpose a client’s organic social content – as long as it references a product without licensing issues – and launch it as an ad. Even if he has underperformed organically, throw him into a supply cap and see what happens. This is a low cost of production with a potentially high impact. Once again, humans cannot predict ad performance. The more crap we think an ad is, the more likely it is to be great.
Bandholz: Most products are more or less commodities with strong competition. How do these merchants stand out?
Faris: I recently spoke with the owner of Jones Road Beauty, the cosmetics supplier. He described a concept called a single mechanism. Product sellers with many competitors need to focus on what makes theirs unique.
The example he gave was the P90X, the home workout system. There are many companies selling at-home workouts. The unique mechanism of P90X was “muscle confusion.” This phrase in the commercials was powerful. Carrying out muscle confusion in your training program builds strength and improves body tone.
How can advertisers focus on unique benefits? The answer is candor. The more closely you communicate about your product and what it does, the better. To be clear. Keep your message focused on what people are looking for.
Bandholz: Where can people follow you and watch the episode?
Faris: Go to AJFgrowth.com for more information about the agency. Find it Beardbrand Episode in any podcast directory. I am @andrewjfaris on X.