Why familiar discounts fail on Meta ads

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Jonathan Strauss of Neven Eyewear tried everything to sell sunglasses. 10% off. 20% off. Standard BOGO(buy one get one). He burned through $30,000 to $50,000 on ads. Nothing converted.

Jonathan's theory is: on Meta, established brands have already won certain discount levels. A brand that's been running 20% off for two years, with thousands of reviews and a big retargeting pool, will beat you at 20% off every time.

Meta favors them because they spend more and convert better.

So he stopped competing on their terms. Buy one, get two free. Nobody else was doing it.

Day one: 20 orders. Day two: 40.

When someone scrolls past a 20% off ad, they've seen it a hundred times.

Buy one get two free makes them stop because they haven't seen it before.

Action Summary:

Credit: Ethercycle

Most small business owners treat TikTok like a slot machine. Post, hope it goes viral, repeat. But TikTok has become a search engine. People use it to find products, local businesses, and recommendations the same way they use Google.

Your videos can show up when someone searches for exactly what you sell. But only if you set them up to.

When someone searches on TikTok, the algorithm scans three things:

Start with the phrase your customer would actually type.

If you sell desk organizers, that's probably something like "how to organize a small home office".

Now put that phrase in all three places. Say it in your video: "Today I'm showing you how to organize a small home office on a budget." Put it in your on-screen text. Use it in your caption instead of a vague one-liner.

You're making it easier for the algorithm to understand what your video is about and serve it to people already searching for that thing.

Action Summary:

Credit: Sproutsocial

In this DTC Daily Podcast, Seth, founder of Wellness, broke down how having a built-in audience turned a product launch into an instant seven-figure business.

Most founders build the product first and then figure out who to sell it to. Seth did it the other way around. His health and wellness education company for moms was already the largest of its kind before Wellness existed. When he launched, the customers were already there.

Here's what founders should actually focus on.

Build the audience before the product: Wellness launched because Seth's existing audience kept asking him to sell what he was teaching them to make. The product followed the audience, not the other way around.

Create anticipation before launch: Seth used a separate email list to slowly drip product details without revealing everything upfront.

Use your email list to seed Meta ads: Once customers came in, Seth uploaded that list to Meta to build lookalike audiences.

Test influencers in volume first: Start with 20 to 30 influencers and see what converts. Smaller, up-and-coming creators tend to have more loyal audiences and charge less than established ones.

Push subscriptions over one-time orders: Wellness nudges customers toward quarterly subscriptions. It saves on shipping, reduces churn, and keeps customers from forgetting to reorder.

Don't write off direct mail: For customers who have stopped opening emails, Wellness sends physical mail twice a year with a discount code to reactivate people who have otherwise gone quiet.

🎧 Watch the full episode YouTube | Spotify | Amazon

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