Here's the sentence I hear more than almost any other.
"Acquisition is just really hard right now."
Founders say it like they're talking about the weather. Something you brace for and complain about every quarter.
But what if the ads aren't the problem?
I know. You're watching CAC swing with no clear trigger. Your best ad stopped working. You're testing 20 creatives a week and nothing sticks.
It feels like the ads broke.
They didn't. They're the messenger.
When CAC gets volatile, the ad account isn't malfunctioning. It's diagnosing. It's telling you something upstream was never quite right.
If you go to the doctor with a fever, the fever isn't the disease. It's the signal.
That's what most founders do with their ad accounts. They treat the fever. New creative. New agency. New platform.
Performance bounces back for a few days. They think it worked.
Until it doesn't. Again.
CAC volatility is not the problem. It's the clue.
More on that tomorrow.
See you then,
Jeremiah
P.S. If your first instinct when CAC spikes is to open the ad manager and start tweaking ... you're not alone. But that instinct is costing you months.
100% Typo Guarantee … This message was hand-crafted by a human being … me. There was no review queue, no editorial process, no post-facto revisions. I just wrote it and sent it … so I can pretty much guarantee some typo or grammatical error that would make all my past English teachers cringe.
Anonymous Data Disclaimer … Most of my clients prefer that I not share the inner workings of their businesses or the exact details of the marketing strategies we develop. To share my proprietary intellectual property without compromising the sensitive nature of my relationship with them, I often anonymize what I share with you. This may include changing the specifics of their industry, what actually happened, or what we developed together. When I make these changes, I work to preserve the success principle I want to convey to you while obscuring sensitive data. This is necessary.