I was sweating in Facebook’s office

I remember the feeling of my face being flushed. Warm. I think I even started sweating.

I was sitting in Facebook's LA office. There was a group of ten: five from the Ampush team, two from Facebook and three of our clients from Dollar Shave Club.

We had built an amazing relationship, taking their accounts from spending $50k a month at a $100 CAC to spending $1M a month at a $50 CAC!

But now it was all falling apart… CAC was up 30% in a week. Nobody quite knew what was going on. 

We had worked for a week on a detailed, thoughtful plan and proposal for how to restructure the accounts and had just finished sharing it with the group.

The then-CMO of Dollar Shave Club, Adam Weber, was not impressed.

He had grown up at P&G before getting into the DTC world and was a classically trained marketer. I was a former Wall Street guy optimizing ads.

Adam grabbed a marker and jumped on the whiteboard. "We've gotten this far hustling ads,” he said. “Now we need to start thinking about our customers and structure things in a simple and easy-to-understand way."

He shared the simplest framework I've ever seen, but one that is powerful and that I use to this day with every business and client I have. Here it is:

Who is the target audience (in B2C) or ICP (in B2B). Most companies have a few, so list them out.

Name them and keep them simple. In the case of Dollar Shave Club, it was men 18-30, men 30-45 and women 25-45, if I recall correctly.

For GrowthAssistant, it’s venture-backed Series B marketing teams, e-commerce businesses with $10M+ in revenue, or agencies with 25+ headcount.

More specific is better. The WHO starts the rows for every category below.

WHAT is about messaging for each WHO. This isn't necessarily a specific ad type or creative format — it's more of a high-level rundown of the types of messaging that you want to test.

In this case, one WHO may have multiple WHATS.

For the GrowthAssistant example, for the "Series B" WHO, I might try a WHAT around speed.

GA can get people quickly because that's the pain point of a fast-growing startup. 

I might also try one related to removing less strategic work from the expensive team's plate. I may try a third that's just logos/credibility-building.

WHAT can also include discounts or offers.

WHERE typically speaks to specific channels you will use.

So in the Dollar Shave Club example, maybe we used Facebook and Instagram on the “men" segments, but we also added Pinterest and TV to the “women” segments.

It makes it clear in your media plan WHERE your message will show and how it’s different by different segment.

WHEN can be used in different ways. It's most typically time of year, time of week or time of day. 

For example, some companies run very different messaging to different segments at different times of year. 

Or, they may even run different messaging to the same segment at the beginning, versus the end of the week. 

A classic example of this is dating apps. Thursday, Friday and Saturday are terrible days to run ads because everyone is going to go out and feeling lucky. 

After a rough weekend, Sunday and Monday are killer days to run ads!

Imagine what would happen to your campaign if it didn't include this insight!

Time of day is also a thing. "Dayparting,” as it’s called, means I might message or focus on a different WHO depending on time of day. 

Food delivery sites do this, social platforms, news sites, etc.

Last is HOW. This is a bit of a catch-all. Typically, I'll use it to encompass "finer" details associated with the campaigns. 

For example, retargeting versus prospecting. Bid types. Maybe a specific creative HOW.

If push comes to shove, you don't need this or you can make it a few bullets on how you will accomplish the WHO/WHAT/WHEN/WHERE outlined in that row.

What you get:

The point Adam was getting across to us was that we had gotten lost in our ad optimizations.

We kept launching new ads, tweaking and hustling without any clear strategy in mind. 

We took this and married it with a thoughtful optimization and launch strategy and, not only did it work, it also made it much easier to manage and to understand what was happening.

Rather than just freaking out because performance wasn't performing, we could take a step back and say, "That WHAT is not working anymore for that WHO,” then go in and do the tactical changes with a clearer understanding of our approach.

If you've been reading this newsletter for a while, you know I love "entrepreneurial rigor.” This is a great example of it in action. 

Taking a small step back and putting a framework together lets you approach things more thoughtfully, which improves speed and clarity.

Give it a try no matter what business you are in or how big it is!

jesse