Mastering paid growth | Jonathan Becker (Thrive Digital)
Jonathan Becker, an OG in performance marketing and founder of Thrive Digital, discusses paid growth. He covers privacy shifts, the importance of creatives, attribution challenges, hiring strategies, and AI's impact on the industry.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Impact of AI on Paid Growth and Team Structure
Jonathan Becker's Background and Career in Performance Marketing
The Story of Landing Uber as a Client
Defining Paid Growth and Performance Marketing
Why Diversification is Crucial in Marketing Spend
Company Fit for Paid Growth and Scaling Strategies
Comparing SEO vs. Paid Search Investments
Optimizing Ad Creatives: Strategy and Examples
Effectiveness of TikTok, YouTube, and Amazon for Advertising
Driving Growth for B2B SaaS: Beyond Cost Per Lead
Understanding and Navigating Attribution Challenges
AI's Current and Future Impact on Performance Marketing
Hiring for Paid Growth: In-House vs. Agency
Key Qualifications for Paid Growth Hires
The Story of Landing Snapchat as a Client
5 Key Concepts
Performance Marketing
An umbrella term for paid acquisition or paid ads, where marketing efforts are measurable and focused on specific, trackable outcomes. It involves investing capital with the expectation of a measurable return, often across diverse channels to mitigate volatility.
Creative (in marketing)
Refers to the visual and textual assets used in paid advertising campaigns, such as motion graphics, user-generated content, or static images. Optimizing creatives involves rigorous testing to determine which styles and features perform best for specific audiences at different stages of the marketing funnel.
Attribution
The process of determining the relationship between marketing actions and their resulting outcomes, typically revenue or conversions. It aims to understand which ads or campaigns contributed to a sale, though it remains a subjective art and science due to numerous variables and recent privacy changes.
Lead Scoring Model
A predictive model built using joined data from CRM and ad channels, which statistically determines the likelihood of a lead converting to high-revenue customers. This allows advertisers to bid in real-time on audiences with a higher propensity for valuable conversions, optimizing for profitability over just low cost per lead.
Media Mix Modeling (MMM)
A form of statistical modeling, often regression analysis, used to determine the causal relationship between various marketing activities (e.g., TV ads, paid search, social ads) and their effect on revenue. It's a modern approach to attribution, helping organizations understand the overall impact of their diverse marketing investments.
9 Questions Answered
Relying entirely on paid acquisition can be like putting all your life savings into a single volatile stock; if market conditions change or a specific channel's performance fluctuates, the business can suffer dramatically. Diversifying across multiple marketing channels is crucial to mitigate this risk.
Companies that have established product-market fit and have seen success with other marketing channels (like email, SEO, or direct mail) are generally good candidates. Success also depends on having adequate creative and technical resources, and a focus on the profitability of the bottom line, not just breakneck growth.
Yes, it is still doable, with examples like Grammarly and Athletic Greens demonstrating successful scaling primarily through paid channels. These companies excel at understanding their marketing economics, particularly the relationship between customer acquisition cost and lifetime value.
Founders should ideally do both, as SEO and paid search are not mutually exclusive and contribute to channel diversification. Paid search offers more tangible and predictable ROI for finance teams, while SEO, though harder to attribute directly, offers indisputable long-term payoffs when done correctly.
The most effective way is to undertake rigorous, scientific testing by isolating variables. For example, run two nearly identical creatives to the same audience, with only one variable different (e.g., copy or image), and measure performance using metrics like click-through rate or impressions until conversion to gather learnings and continually iterate.
Founder-led brands where the founder acts as an ambassador, creating handheld iPhone videos discussing product merits and solving problems, tend to perform exceptionally well. Also, companies that partner effectively with influencers to generate authentic third-party content see great results.
AI has influenced the industry for over a decade by automating many performance levers, shifting human capital towards more strategic work like modeling, validation, and creative levers, rather than manual implementation. Tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney/DALL-E are now used for generating ad copy variants, drafting RFP responses, and creating mockups much faster.
An agency is not mutually exclusive to in-house personnel; both are often needed. Early-stage companies might work with an agency to scale faster, gain expertise, and access resources they don't yet possess in-house, especially for net new experimentation. An in-house professional is essential as a point of contact, even if it's a generalist marketing person.
Look for a strong technical background (e.g., nuclear physics, mathematics, finance, full-stack engineering) indicating aptitude for problem-solving and data. The candidate should also have direct experience managing channels like Meta Ads or Google Ads, and an appreciation for the role of creative, proper attribution, and business mechanics.
28 Actionable Insights
1. Capitalize on Opportunities
Be willing to take calculated risks and “shoot your shot” when opportunities arise, as luck often requires you to capitalize on situations you’ve put yourself in.
2. Diversify Marketing Channels
Avoid over-reliance on a single performance marketing channel; instead, diversify your marketing mix across various channels (e.g., email, direct mail, SEO, paid) to mitigate volatility and risk.
3. Prioritize Profitability in Paid Growth
Focus on the profitability of customer acquisition, understanding how much you can afford to spend per customer before it becomes unprofitable, rather than solely pursuing breakneck growth.
4. Attribution: Ongoing Investigation
Approach attribution as an ongoing investigation, continuously looking for evidence to validate campaign outcomes, rather than seeking a single, definitive source of truth, as none exists.
5. Rigorous Creative Testing Process
Establish a rigorous process for testing and iterating creative assets to systematically determine what works, rather than relying on anecdotal findings or individual brilliance.
6. Focus on Strategic Work
Shift human capital to strategic tasks like modeling, validation, asking the right questions, and creative levers, as AI displaces manual implementation and bid modification.
7. Leverage AI for Creative Mockups
Use AI tools like DALL-E or Midjourney to generate creative mockups significantly faster, but ensure you understand how to ask the right questions and iterate effectively.
8. In-House Expertise, Then Agency
If you’re focusing on performance marketing, start by building in-house expertise, and then consider hiring an agency to scale faster, gain more resources, and access specialized capabilities.
9. Hire Technical Performance Marketers
For your first performance marketing hire, prioritize candidates with a strong technical background and ingenuity to solve problems related to tracking, attribution, data visualization, and campaign management.
10. Experienced Performance Marketer Hire
Look for candidates with direct experience managing various ad channels (Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon) and a deep appreciation for the role of creative, proper attribution, and understanding your business mechanics.
11. Assess Composure & Problem-Solving
In interviews, ask unexpected logic questions (e.g., “How many windows in NYC?”) to assess a candidate’s ability to think on their feet, break down problems, and maintain composure under pressure, especially for client-facing roles.
12. Cultivate Adaptability Culture
Foster a company culture that welcomes change and new technologies, encouraging a playful mindset with new tools rather than resisting shifts in the industry.
13. Advise Clients Bravely
In client interactions, be brave enough to tell clients what you believe they truly need, even if it differs from their initial requests, to avoid inadvertently leading them down the wrong path.
14. Integrate Classic Marketing
Don’t solely focus on performance marketing; remember to leverage classic and offline marketing methods like direct mail, email marketing, and SEO, as they can work beautifully.
15. Exercise Patience in Paid Growth
Do not expect overnight turnarounds in performance marketing; understand that every business is unique and requires patience to work out what works for its specific metrics and nuances.
16. Validate Paid Acquisition Potential
If your business successfully leverages other marketing channels (e.g., social media, email, organic search, direct mail), it’s highly likely that paid acquisition will also be effective.
17. Invest in SEO and Paid Search
Don’t view SEO and paid search as mutually exclusive; it’s a great idea to invest in both to diversify channels and create a robust marketing mix.
18. Iterate Creatives Based on Data
Avoid using a single homogenous message across all targeting; instead, dedicate resources to paid marketing and continually iterate creative assets based on performance data from ad sets and campaigns.
19. Scientific Creative Testing
Experiment with creative assets by isolating single variables, maintaining similar targeting conditions, and determining which ad styles perform best for specific audiences at different funnel stages.
20. Structured A/B Testing for Ads
For ad creative testing (e.g., on Meta), create an ad set with a single audience and two nearly identical creatives, varying only one variable (e.g., copy or image) to isolate impact and gather learnings for iteration.
21. Prioritize User-Generated Content
Use unpolished, authentic user-generated content (e.g., iPhone videos with influencers) as it often massively outperforms highly produced ads due to its perceived authenticity.
22. Test Playful Creative Elements
Experiment with unexpected and playful elements in your creatives, such as including pets in product photos, as this can dramatically increase engagement and performance on paid social channels.
23. Use In-Platform Testing Tools
Leverage the sophisticated creative testing tools available directly within ad platforms like Meta Ads and Google Ads, as exotic third-party tools are not always necessary for effective testing.
24. E-commerce: Investigate TikTok Ads
If you are an e-commerce, wholesale, retail, or direct-to-consumer brand, you must investigate TikTok advertising due to its massive, highly engaged audience and exciting opportunities.
25. TikTok: Founder/Influencer Content
On TikTok, founder-led brands creating authentic, handheld iPhone videos, or companies adept at partnering with influencers, tend to achieve significant success due to highly engaging content.
26. High Creative Output for TikTok
Be prepared for the high creative asset demands of TikTok advertising, as it requires launching net new assets several times per week, which necessitates significant creative resourcing and investment.
27. Lead Scoring for High-Value Customers
For lead generation, use data connectors like Supermetrics to pipe CRM revenue data into a database, join it with channel data, and build a lead scoring model to bid on audiences with a higher likelihood of converting to high-revenue customers.
28. Multi-Faceted Attribution Methods
Beyond cookie-based attribution, incorporate statistical modeling (like Media Mix Modeling), customer surveys, and population surveys to gain a comprehensive understanding of campaign impact. Consider tools like Recast for this.
5 Key Quotes
I think you have to make your own luck. So I could have been like, oh, cool. I met this guy in the back of a taxi and that was it. But I decided to take a risk.
Jonathan Becker
I know half my marketing dollars are wasted. I just don't know which half.
John Wanamaker
The effect ultimately that we've seen from a human capital point of view is displacement. We have more people now than we've ever had, but the nature of the work that they do is more strategic.
Jonathan Becker
Anyone who can think a thought can generate an image on a, on an AI image generator.
Jonathan Becker
Be brave, and tell them what they need, rather than just conforming to what they're asking for, because sometimes inadvertently, that leads you down the wrong path.
Jonathan Becker
1 Protocols
Rigorous Creative Testing on Meta Ads
Jonathan Becker- Create a campaign structure with a single target audience at the ad set level.
- Within that ad set, use two nearly identical creative assets.
- Ensure the only difference between the two creatives is a single variable (e.g., copy, image).
- Monitor ad performance, acknowledging that ad serving algorithms may deliver different impression numbers.
- Use leveling metrics like click-through rate (CTR) or impressions until conversion to compare efficiency.
- Gather learnings from the test results to identify which creative style or feature performs best for the audience at that funnel stage.
- Send feedback to the creative team to iterate and refine future assets, using successful elements as a new base to challenge.