What 8-figure ecom brands know about Meta that you don't
About this episode
Nick Shackelford is a partner at Brez, the THC beverage brand, and has spent 11 years in direct to consumer paid media. He also runs an agency, and joins Sam Jacobs in New York to break down how he sets up, reads and scales Meta ad accounts.
He covers his smoke test of three distinct images before any video, why front-end offers and AOV move CAC more than ad tweaks, his testing and scaling structure, reading 3, 7 and 14 day trends, his levels of levers for a stalled account, and using AI to show buyers of every race, age and body type.
Key takeaways
- Smoke test with images first. Before shooting video or UGC, launch three campaigns with three distinct images, such as lifestyle, product and us versus them, each with a bold call out, to see which angle has legs.
- Engineer the front-end offer. Meta tends to find customers at a natural CAC for your category, so building several entry offers, like his $45, $75 and $120 offers, is how you change who you acquire.
- Judge ads on trends, not the day. On the day, only raise budgets or turn things off, and make the real calls on 3 and 7 day trends against cost per landing page view, add to cart, checkout and purchase targets.
- Double spend, don't creep it. He starts budgets between $1,000 and $5,000, excludes Audience Network at the account level, and doubles spend when an ad sits far enough under target CPA.
- Pull the bigger lever when stuck. Account structure is the fastest fix, new avatars and creative come next, and price, offer and AOV changes take the most work but carry the biggest upside.
Chapters
- 0:00 Introduction & the ad creative smoke test
- 2:11 Nick Shackelford's background & building Brez
- 4:36 Structuring campaign angles & testing customer avatars
- 8:01 Why AOV & offer structure matter more than ads
- 13:09 Split testing price points & analyzing payback periods
- 16:07 Is the ecommerce MRR model dead?
- 18:08 How True Classic uses "daily deals" to gamify offers
- 22:15 Ad account structures: when to use ABO vs CBO
- 25:53 The accordion view: data-driven decisions for killing ads
- 28:41 The truth about AI-generated UGC & Meta's future
- 34:46 The "levels of levers" framework for scaling accounts
- 39:00 What struggling founders need to stop doing
- 41:38 Using AI to scale avatar & demographic diversity
- 45:00 How AI & Claude are replacing email marketing workflows
Recorded in person in New York. Every guest runs a 7 or 8 figure brand, across every category. Hosted by Sam Jacobs, co-founder of Commercive.
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