Why Marketing Principles Still Matter

Spencer Lynch

To steal the words from the CMO of Meta, Alex Schultz: the principles don't change, the tools do. And that was his whole, like, basis with AI and the advent of all these changes that are happening. It's like, it's going to be easy to get overwhelmed. The ones who understand these principles, and that these principles of marketing are not changing—it's just the way that people are getting to them.

Uh, that's the key to it all, is like, there's going to be new ad creative generations and stuff like that that'll really help expedite that process, but like, does it solve somebody's problem? Uh, does this person even know it's a problem that they're experiencing yet? Like, those things remain true.

Max Baybak

So I have a rare opportunity to sit down with one of our team members, Mr. Spencer Lynch, who is our lead social ads manager. And I want to pick his brain here today about the world of Meta ads in particular and see what's going down in that whole universe, because I know that's where you live every day.

Spencer Lynch

Oh yeah, living and breathing Meta ads. Uh, it's been changing a lot over the past, like, year, let alone 30 days. Um, algorithm shifts, uh, trends are always changing, but the principle of using Meta to get in front of people, that has remained the same. And I think it's gotten more important, if anything, uh, in the advent of all the down-funnel tracking and being able to use, like, Conversion API to pass all that good data back to Meta.

I don't think that's necessarily where the future of Meta ads is going. I think it's going to be a lot more of, like, leaning into: this is a visual platform, and it's meant for getting your business, your brand in front of as many people as possible to help influence that search that they're probably going to be taking.

Max Baybak

That's all really interesting. I want to unpack a number of things from what you just said, but let me start with this. You said even just the last 30 days there's been a lot of change. Will you tell me what you're referring to there specifically?

Spencer Lynch

Yeah. So, Meta kind of put their algorithm up on its head. Um, a lot of advertisers were kind of outspoken about this towards the beginning of April. Um, a lot of other folks weren't really realizing any shifts in performance or anything like that until, like, mid-April. But basically, the way Meta is delivering ads has changed.

Um, they were previously telling you to kind of throw the kitchen sink at it and let the algorithm decide who is shown what ad based on what that creative actually is. But uh, now it's relearning what is the best performing ad. And what had happened in early April was the algorithm would find a winning creative and it would push all of the budget towards that, kind of taking away any type of potential ad spend that would go towards other ads that are maybe taking a different angle or hitting a different audience or anything like that.

But it caught a lot of people off guard, because uh, they didn't have all of the campaign setup, uh, rules in place to kind of help weather that algorithm change. Because anytime the algorithm changes, you're going to see something break on the platform. That's inevitably going to happen. Like, the ads manager is notorious for its bugs. Um, so that was one of the expected changes that came from any sort of algorithmic shift.

But uh, as far as performance, I think we were seeing changes in CPM. Um, it was just getting more expensive to get in front of that same audience that we were getting in front of months prior.

But yeah, caught a lot of people off guard. I think e-commerce really got hit. Um, they are one of those niches that uh, constantly has to be changing that creative, like, on a weekly basis. And for the folks that weren't doing that, they saw their campaigns kind of fizzle out and die pretty quickly, or they uh, they saw all of their budget get pumped towards one type of, like, product or ad placement versus everything else that they had given the system.

Um, but if you're setting up your campaign in a way so that you're not kind of going too broad with uh, with your targeting, I think you'll be okay. We've had a more concerted approach of getting creative that has a clear direction of who it's talking to, what it's promoting. And then the other piece of that is, like, what stage of the funnel are these people in, and how do you get the creative to speak to that type of person, and making that creative also speak to somebody else too? Because that's the challenge that I think a lot of practices have, is having that wide, diverse library of content. Um, it's always going to be a challenge to create 25 unique ads, but if you can create one strong video and maybe just try out some different hooks in the beginning, you can stretch that one video asset a lot further than just one type of ad.

Max Baybak

So, what I'm hearing—and I could see why this would impact e-commerce in different ways than, let— in our space, obviously patient acquisition for aesthetic practices is very different than e-commerce—but what I'm hearing is maybe with this update, um, it got a little too algorith—algorithmically— uh, the algorithm is swaying where the money is spent, and maybe going a little too focused on one creative, when you—whereas you might have creative that's meant to sell a whole range of products, or in our case we might have creative that's meant to sell a whole range of procedures, uh, or hit people at different parts of the funnel. But basically it'll drop all of those and just sell one thing, for the most part.

And then it's also raising something in the algorithm change—is also increasing cost. CPM, for anyone who doesn't know uh, what that abbreviation that Spencer uses—just the cost per thousand impressions. Um, so we can look on Meta ads, we can look at your Meta ads campaigns and see if the overall cost is going up by thousand impressions, because you pay—unlike Google—you pay regardless of the click or not, and you pay in CPMs. And that's how we can benchmark it. And we see certain cities where we start to have benchmarks for different cities, where they're more densely populated or less, you know, where supply and demand scenarios are different, a lot more med spas or plastic surgeons. I mean, Boston, the city we're in right— historically had one of the highest CPMs. I remember back in the day—

Spencer Lynch

This was the Bermuda Triangle of running Meta ads. It was just like, "Oh no, we're getting into the $80 CPM range." Thankfully, those days are a little bit further behind us on uh, the $80 CPMs. But I mean, if you're just going to be looking at, like, granular level of, like, what CPM a certain creative is pulling in, it's like, you will see uh, that number kind of creep into the 70s or 80s, especially in these densely populated areas. Um, but the other thing is, like, when we're talking about competition on Meta, it's like, we're not competing with just med spas and plastic surgeons. It's literally like every other luxury brand, or—

Max Baybak

I mean, e-commerce is thrown in there, because you're not competing for that person's attention against another med spa. You're competing against any other promoted content that would be shown in front of that person, right?

Spencer Lynch

Right. Competing against any other advertiser that has selected the same set of attributes, um, in terms of the audience that they want to put their ad in front of.

Max Baybak

So certain income levels, uh, other demographic data, geographies. You're saying if there's going to be overlap, right? It's maybe not 100%, but anywhere there's overlap from another high-end retailer that's looking to go after the same people as a plastic surgery practice, then you're bidding for that same spot and you're paying every time you get shown.

Spencer Lynch

Oh, definitely. And the whole practice of that has changed completely. Um, 'cause you'd mentioned, like, demographics and, like, income level and those types of, like, targeting parameters, and I think that's all still true. Uh, just the way that you go about your targeting has changed. Now that targeting is happening on the creative, and that's where people were seeing a lot of inefficiencies with how their budget was getting spent, what it was getting spent on.

Um, it was just the fact that the creative that they were giving the algorithm, or giving the system to deliver, it wasn't super clear on who this is meant for and, like, who your target audience is. Like, your creative needs to speak to that person uh, super, super bluntly, almost. Um, you need to make it clear and obvious for the algorithm to recognize that this creative is for uh, somebody who's looking for Botox. Like, at that stage of the decision funnel, they're looking for Botox.

It's like, if your ad can speak to that type of person, it'll find its way in front of that person uh, without you needing to go in and manually specify between the ages of 25 and 60 and female in this area. It's like, really now it's just about setting up your target geo and making sure your creative is doing the targeting for you, with the copy that's written on the primary text, uh, the audio, overlaying text, and the whole visual composition of it.

Because the same way that um, SEO is just scrubbing every little aspect of that website and kind of creating its own scoring system, the same is happening on Meta, where it's looking at your creative. It's reviewing audio, each frame of a video, and then it will be able to kind of piece together this puzzle and figure out who this person, or who your intended audience is, based on what creative you're trying to show.

And in the past, we would run a ton of, like, promos and incentives, those style of ads. That's really focusing on your bottom-funnel type of audience who's, like, ready to convert. They see the ad, they click the ad, they book the treatment or the consultation. Now, it's a lot more of trust building. And I think that's where a lot of practices are able to elevate themselves above the rest, is when they're doing more storytelling. They're kind of explaining what they do differently than everybody else, because everybody else is just focused on promos and, you know, getting that patient in the door, versus really getting that patient to buy into the practice and the provider.

Max Baybak

So you would advise that a practice—and I'd be curious to hear if your answer is different for plastic surgeons versus a pure standalone medical spa—but you would advise less of a direct response approach, where you're saying here's an offer or a special, uh, a current special offer that we're doing right now, um, and take advantage, convert right now. More of a narrative, brand building approach is what you're seeing be more effective these days.

Spencer Lynch

Yeah, I would say so. Because thinking about, like, what the average patient would— would go to a plastic surgeon, like, that process can take sometimes a year to really build up all of that momentum and finally getting that consultation scheduled. It takes a lot of work to get that person from cold to warm, even considering scheduling a consultation, or at least wanting to engage in a conversation with the practice about it.

Um, so framing things as, like, a discovery call—like, those are the lower friction types of uh, conversions that you could ask. But really, I think plastic surgeons see a lot more production from all of their marketing channels when their Meta is focused on what Meta does well, which is top of funnel, planting that seed, building that awareness, and getting you in front of a lot more people.

Like, if you're a plastic surgeon—we've been doing some more out of state and out of market type of ads where a plastic surgeon has a page on their website for out of town patients. It's like, well, there's your destination that you are trying to send people to, or create a landing page like that. But it makes the job a lot easier when there's pieces on the website that you can really just tap into. And that's the nice part about the websites we make, is uh, it makes the job of making a nice looking ad a lot better and a lot easier from my side if uh, there's a strong asset that we can pull from, and branding and everything like that.

But yeah, I think if you're a plastic surgeon and you're focused more on telling your story and your approach and letting that help set you apart, versus getting into this pricing game of uh, like, who is the lowest uh, breast augmentation in Miami or something like that—you're going to lose that battle, I feel like, because there's always going to be somebody else that can offer a lower price. But if you are focused on kind of building the value—and you may not be the cheapest plastic surgeon, you probably don't want to be—but if you're focused on explaining why, I think you start acting as a magnet, and those people are gravitating towards your social accounts.

Because I can't tell you how many times there's a plastic surgeon who reaches out saying like, "Oh, I'm getting tons of leads in my DMs. I'm not getting them through, like, the lead ads that I'm running on my profile." And it's like—

Max Baybak

It's 'cause they want conversation.

Spencer Lynch

All these leads just want to talk. They want that human experience of connecting with a business or something, versus submitting their information and then waiting to hear back from a practice. "Is this a good time for me to pick up this call or not? Uh, I'll worry about it later and I'll just check my email inbox and see if there's anything that they want to follow up with."

But yeah, it's a big thing. For plastic surgeons, you're trying to sell a facelift in one impression on Meta. And it's a— yeah, that's a lofty goal. Some can do it, but not everybody can. And I think if you—not set the bar lower, but if you just have your goals more achievable for what the platform can actually deliver, uh, you're setting yourself up for a much better marketing strategy on that platform.

Max Baybak

I totally agree. And I don't think it's setting the bar lower. It is setting them up—it's setting you up for success, and starting with a smaller ask and making it an incremental process. And it's just simply more realistic to what the real patient journey is very likely to be, as you said. And I know people who spent years deliberating on this, and I always say they're in the phase of—because I mean, I've been doing this for a decade and a half, plastic surgery marketing specifically, and I've seen this, and it's still true today. As much as there has been so many things that have changed, it's still true today that there's the years, potentially, of considering the procedure at all, researching the procedure, determining if you want to even dip a toe into this whole field.

Then starting to get to the point where you're actually researching specific methodologies for the thing that you want to address. Maybe you're wondering if there are surgical and non-surgical. Then comes the point of decision of the provider themselves, right? And that can be another lengthy process. Um, we see people being a little more, maybe, hasty with it and diving right in, for sure, because we've become much more comfortable with this subject in general. But for the most part, most people are still not in a rush to do something this dramatic with their bodies, and they really want to make a considered purchase, a considered decision.

So, the reason I asked you earlier is, do you see a difference with plastic surgery versus medical spas? I mean, I used to advise—this is some years back—I used to advise the plastic surgeons there's not a ton of value in Meta at all for them, and that they could focus more on Google, where a person is raising their hand or specifically seeking out, and you can tell from the search where they're at. Are they looking—is it a procedure-based search, or is it a provider-based search, where now they've made the decision on the procedure and now they're in the decision on the provider? Um, or they at least want to do the procedure—they might be open to hearing where the provider steers them, but now they're ready to have a provider steer them.

Um, but I do think that when it— I think it's so competitive in the med spa space that sometimes you do have to break through with a direct offer and say, "Hey, book now. Take advantage," because that's just so glutted.

Spencer Lynch

Yeah.

Max Baybak

But I agree with you on the plastic surgery side, that it is absolutely about telling the story. Because yes, you are going to lose the battle of being the cheapest surgeon, and that's a good battle to lose.

Spencer Lynch

Yeah.

Max Baybak

So, tell your story, talk about why your approach merits, without directly saying "this is why I cost more money," but essentially say that in so many words. And so I completely agree with you on all of the above there. But I think, um—okay, the other aspect of it that I find really interesting is, I have a lot of experiences with this myself, running campaigns for clients, where attribution is a pain. I actually think with AI, like, we could maybe get there where we can really clearly attribute, but even then—and I could do an entire episode on attribution, because—

You and I— if you haven't spent time in the trenches like Spencer has— and by this point you've spent more hours in the trenches than I. But there was a time when I was running these campaigns myself and would just be frustrated at the inability to really attribute anything. And Facebook has all kinds of attribution models, or they've gone through different ones where they're taking credit for things that— it's questionable. You know, uh, my favorite is the view-through conversion on a retargeting ad campaign where you got them to the website in the first place.

Spencer Lynch

Yeah.

Max Baybak

I won't bother to explain what I mean by that, but basically they're taking credit for something else, and then for something that maybe they didn't do. But on the other hand, Meta can play a role in a patient journey. And that's where, like, a multi-touch attribution makes a lot of sense, to be weighting every touch point. So maybe Meta was one thing they saw in and among 12 other touch points.

But the only way to really know—and you said it, and I'm sure you have this experience dealing with, you know, clients and our account executives, and I know you get pulled into a lot of meetings to talk to our clients and help to educate them, which is such an important part of advertising, right, by the way—and I know you spend so much time on that, which is uh, where you go the extra mile. And I know Antonio and the rest of the advertising team on the Google side as well does this a lot, because patient—uh, client education is so important on advertising. But—

I want you to speak to what you see when people are looking to get direct attribution. You know, "I'm not seeing them where I expect them, but I'm seeing more DMs," like you said. "I'm not seeing the type of leads I want," um, wherever, into a CRM, wherever we're directing the leads from their campaign. But you're saying you're seeing more DMs, or you're getting more phone calls, or you're getting more lead form fills on your website. And when they turn off the ads, all of a sudden they say, "Hey—"

Spencer Lynch

"Everything stopped."

Max Baybak

Yes. Will you talk to me about that?

Spencer Lynch

Yeah. The uh, so that touches on, like, looking and paying attention to the wrong scoreboard. Uh, you're looking at your Meta metrics month over month and you're taking that as your bible or your gospel of, like, "Okay, this is what my ads did this past month." And it's like, that tells you what happened on Meta.

Uh, how confident are you in, like, you know, any bottom-funnel events or anything that you're trying to send back to say what this lead did after they submitted a form? And if you can't say "I am confident that this data is accurate and uh, bulletproof, almost"—it's like, cool, what good is data that you're not confident in? So, like, toss that to the wayside.

But the whole scoreboard thing that I think we're starting to pay more attention to and see the fruits of, uh, is paying attention to through-plays. That's like, as video becomes more and more dominant on the platform, you can, you know—a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth like a billion. I made that up.

Max Baybak

Sixty frames per second times.

Spencer Lynch

Okay. Yeah, math checked out. But um, no, if you're paying attention to "Are people consuming the content that we're promoting?"—cool, that box has been checked. It's like, okay, on to the next metric. What is that metric? It's like, are people searching branded keyword terms on Google? If that number is going up and your branded uh, keyword list is up there—

Max Baybak

Branded search. That's such a good—

Spencer Lynch

—start to connect some dots that aren't connected. But you start to see these different signals of like, okay, well, the easiest, like, test is just an on-off switch. So Meta ads weren't on—here was performance, or performance was maybe trending upwards. And then, you know, you launch Meta ads and you just see things skyrocket. Yes, there's some impact that can be attributed to Meta.

Are you ever going to be able to fully tell, like, this impression came from uh, a Meta ad, and that turned into this person coming in through direct organic on the website? It's like, I don't know if we're ever going to be there. Um, with the changes in, like, pixel tracking and how you can use a pixel in the health and wellness industry, are you even able to send data back? Like, all these things are kind of up in the air and constantly changing, and I feel like so many people are burning their wheels trying to figure out the solution or the way to kind of outsmart the tracking system and all these hurdles that are in front of us.

And I'm like, Meta is great for building engagement and getting your face out there and establishing a connection with somebody that didn't exist beforehand. So if you can lean into it that way, focus on getting people to reach out or just raise their hand of interest, whether it's a DM or submitting a lead form. It's like, if you're treating that prospect in that way, I think you're going to have a much better return, as long as your CRM and your actual, like, client management system is doing what it should and nurturing these leads.

Because the quickest way to lose a lead from Meta is to hit them up with a question that is way too far down the funnel with where they're at. They submit a lead form for, like, a new patient offer, new client offer or something, and cool, the CRM sends an autoresponder within five seconds of that coming in. It's like, "Hey, we'd love to get you scheduled for a consultation." That lead more often than not is probably going to go cold, be like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, too much, too soon."

But um, if you're a little bit more restrained in how you chase up with those leads—like, stay aggressive but almost passively, it's a weird balance of the two. Um, I think you'll find more responsiveness, because that's the first step in getting, like, a strong qualified lead from Meta: is this person even responsive? Like, what good is high volume of leads if none of them are actually reaching back out or responding to any of our communication attempts?

And I think if you're focused on getting an engaged lead, you can do that on Meta without sending people off platform or anything like that. Um, you can pay attention to how many messaging conversations were started from your ads. And so if you're looking at all these other metrics and gauging your channel's impact, um, I think you can actually get a much more coherent picture of, like, what's actually going on, what's moving the needle. Because rather than paying attention to what your lead volume is month after month after month—it's like, cool, but the whole goal was to get more people in the door.

And so what is that number doing whenever you're making these adjustments on the Meta side? Like, okay, we were just running top of funnel, like, awareness and engagement ads, and then we launched lead form ads and everything skyrocketed. It's like, there's a sign that maybe you can go harder into that direct response type of strategy, because it seems like your audience is already primed and ready to act on that. So now you can shift over into that. But you only get there by testing out all these different strategies.

And I think, like, as the system grows, you're going to be able to do more with less, in the sense of, like, you get in front of more people and more relevant people with less manual targeting. But at the same time, you need more creative. And rather than just, like, 50 of the same videos, it's like, no, you need to have videos that speak to different people in different decision stages and focused on different treatments. Because unless you want to just go super hard on, like, facelifts, or you want to be the, like, Botox provider of your little geo—um, it's like, you can go deep.

Max Baybak

I think there's value in that strategy too. Going broader, going narrow but deep, and just really, really being focused and driving home, reiterating, hitting it over the head until that message really— but with different creative that's reinforcing the same thing. That can be also a powerful strategy, I think.

Spencer Lynch

Oh yeah. Focus, that's the key word, 'cause—

Max Baybak

I agree with that.

Spencer Lynch

I get in that trap sometimes too, where it's like, okay, we're doing this really well, and, well, maybe if we try testing out GLP-1s, like, throw that in the mix. It was like, come on, what do we want to do here? We wanted to focus on these uh, these gateway types of uh, aesthetic treatments and things that do a great job of getting people in the door, versus kind of putting all your chips on red.

Max Baybak

Yeah. And I think it also depends on your budget too, right? If you have a certain budget, it's better to stay focused. You have enough budget, you have enough room to start playing around with multiple procedures, right?

Spencer Lynch

Absolutely.

Max Baybak

Different campaigns. But I think the gateway versus the destination procedure is really important to delineate as well. I've spoken to clients about this a lot, where they want to promote something and I'm like, you're really going to have a hard time educating a person on that through these platforms. And I always say the bigger the education gap, the more expensive the campaign, the more expensive the conversion is, the patient. Because you're essentially shouldering the burden of the education, which really the manufacturer of that product or device should be doing through their uh— ideally they would be doing that through their own direct-to-consumer campaigns, and that would bring consumers to your ad campaigns a little bit more educated and ready to take action.

And when that's not the case, that means they're leaning on the doctor to do that education, which means really get them in the practice, and then the provider can educate them on that and kind of bridge them over to these upsell or cross-sell procedures. And those are good destination procedures. And there's certain ones that are really primed to be your gateway to get in front of new people, to get new people in the door. I think that's a really key part of any advertising strategy in this space, is to understand that really well.

Spencer Lynch

Oh, for sure. Like, the destination procedures versus gateways is one that— I enjoy that puzzle, because I take it as, like, a challenge of, like, okay, destination—like, sweet, here's the game plan for creative that we can take somebody from awareness all the way to that offer stage. Um, but you do need that full story, that full funnel of uh, creative content to show that person, in order to get them from never having heard of this type of treatment or uh, approach, and then getting them to the point where—

Max Baybak

"Hey, this is for me. I think I'm ready. I trust this doctor enough to at least start the conversation with them." But you need to think about the logical journey, whether it's through Meta or just sitting in front of a person. How much time does it take to get them from completely cold on something to now understanding it? And then taking it back to ads: how many impressions, how many words do they need to read, how many visuals do they need to see, to then understand what this is, decide that it's for them, and then trust the provider?

Logically, that's more impressions. Every impression is dollars. So if that gap is— if that's a longer journey, that's just more expensive. And if it's a shorter journey, just say, "Yeah, I already know what Botox is. I'm interested. Oh, what's my reason for going to you?" Could be price. And in a competitive, you know, uh, space or treatment like Botox, that price is often where competition occurs. But maybe you have another value proposition on your quality, on your training, on your, um, you know, your word of mouth, your testimonials—it could be influential people that you've treated that really build trust.

All the trust signals and all the social proof that you need can help you. So the more that your deck is stacked towards helping to earn trust fast, and the more that the deck is stacked towards them understanding what that procedure is without a bunch of education, then those things you should put up in the front of the funnel.

Um, before we wrap up here, I'll say a couple things. You know, at the beginning of it you said, like, the platform is really changing and it's a little bit more about—I guess you said brand awareness, or how did you word it? Um, uh, but just kind of getting first impressions. But I think at the end of this conversation, what I hear is it still is a great way—and I believe this, and again, we're talking, I think, more plastic surgery here—it is a great way to get in front of new patients. But you have to understand that journey and understand that it's not a straight line, and thusly attribution is not necessarily a straight line.

And that if you're thinking about it as a click to convert to now patients in my door, then you may be disappointed as a plastic surgeon, as a plastic surgery practice running Meta ads. But if you're understanding the journey and you're putting in the time, there's a little bit of a delay from first impression to patient. But with enough months of running ads, you should be kind of, you know, harvesting ripened fruits every month, to the point where it is actually a great way to get new leads. But it's just not a straight line, and it's not an overnight proposition. It's not an immediate click to convert one time—which again, just use real world logic here, it's not a one-click decision, a surgery. And I think plastic surgeons of course know this, um, but maybe they are not thinking about it in this context.

So I think it's still a wonderful way. 'Cause you know, saying "Hey, this is really good for brand awareness" is like the age-old way that marketers would say, you know, "You can't really measure my work." You know, but it does need to be measurable. But we just need to understand it's not a straight line, and it's a little bit of a uh, it's a little bit of a delay from here to there. Um, I guess, would you say that's correct?

Spencer Lynch

Oh yeah. I mean, I think that's the whole point, is like, there's SEO, and then there's, like, what your brand awareness or your top of funnel ads are doing, which is like somebody's mental uh, search index. And, like, you want to stay top of page in that person's mind, and that's what these top of funnel ads are doing. So, like, the fruits of SEO kind of come months after, you know, you're really starting to go hard on it. And the same kind of goes for top of funnel ads.

Like, yeah, you don't see the immediate impact of, like, getting 50 new followers the first month that you decided to run an engagement campaign or something like that. But who's to say in six months that somebody has been following you that entire time, engaging and consuming your content and educating themselves off of your platform?

Max Baybak

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think obviously organic social, organic SEO—or SEO—and as we've discussed here with your Meta ads, you need to have maybe a little bit more of a lead-up to building, in the case of Meta, sort of building up that audience that you can now start to retarget to, or start to harvest with a more direct response ad like you mentioned. But if you want something— what would you recommend to someone who's looking for an ad product they can turn on right away and start getting patients, surgical patients, in the shortest time frame?

Spencer Lynch

I would say you're best spending your money on, like, email acquisition or direct messages, like DMs. Like, hit the DMs. That's where people want to continue a conversation, since they're already on platform. Um, the nice part with email is you're still able to capture that person's information. And like you were saying, uh, for that patient or that lead journey, you're essentially paying for every impression to get them to that point.

The nice part about email acquisition is now you've got that person in your system, and you can continuously feed them educational materials at a very uh, passive way, where you're giving them the information to make the decision to reach out. But they're already in your web, and it costs nothing to send that email back out to them to just let them know, like, what's going on in your practice this month, or, you know, you've got an open house coming up going over rhinoplasty specifically. It's like, now you start to play with the levers on direct response, but outside of paid. You use paid to get this person in the web, and now you're able to kind of retarget them with more cost effective remarketing.

Max Baybak

I want to clarify, so people understand what you mean. So you're saying that a strategy that I know we've seen work, and I love this strategy very much, is rather than spending money on Meta campaigns as a plastic surgery practice trying to get people to book for surgery right away—where you're going to get very little results per spend, per thousand impressions—you can say the ask is just sign up for an email list. Give us your email, that's all we want. We're not asking you to book for surgery, where per thousand impressions you could expect a pretty good return and your cost per email is within dollars, right, for the most part.

And then now you can retarget those same emails through your email man—your CRM. You can hit your list, or you could even, you know, use marketing automation and AI to hit them in an intelligent way and then nurture those leads. And that's a much more cost-effective way than going kind of straight for the jugular with an ad campaign that's just unrealistically asking someone to book a surgery right now.

Spencer Lynch

Oh yeah. Like, thinking about one of the top questions that, like, plastic surgeons ask whenever they're thinking about starting Meta ads is like, "Where can I use my before and afters?" And it's like, well, if you've got email— you can't use before and afters side by side in Meta ads per their policy. You can get creative around, like, showing a before transitioning into an after, or maybe just focusing on the after itself. Um, but using email acquisition, those emails that go out to these leads after they uh, sign up for email, that is not subjected to Meta's policy. Meta has no insight on that.

Max Baybak

That's where you—

Spencer Lynch

—display your before and after galleries. It's a beautiful thing to be able to not have to work within Meta's policy constraints when you're trying to follow up with these leads. Versus if you were trying to take this person through the whole lead journey on the paid social side, where you're paying for each impression, you have to make sure the content you're showing them is all compliant and stuff too. So if you were going about it that way, it's not only more expensive, uh, but also you have to play by Meta's rules the entire way. Um, whereas the other way, you can kind of collect the email, they've let you know that they're interested, and now you can give them the information that you're actually most proud of and is going to move that.

Max Baybak

I totally agree with that strategy. And I think the key takeaway here for me that people need to understand—and a plastic surgeon who's looking at running Meta ads or wondering how they can better produce better results out of their Meta campaigns—is just to understand the funnel. Just to sort of think— just funnel thinking is what I like to call it. So think about this platform as a place where you can harvest an email, and then like you said, there's all kinds of other opportunities to nurture that lead, and now you're not subject to some of the things that do make it challenging for a plastic surgeon to run ads on these platforms.

I mean, I know you've spent countless hours of your life helping our clients also get their uh, you know— people will come to us with all kinds of problems because their accounts have been suspended because they violated Meta's policies as it relates to this kind of sensitive medical uh, subject matter, um, content. And it's a pain. But now you can just think about how you can make that first introduction. I think that's really a key thing about Meta, is it really does provide a nice opportunity to get in front of people for the first time. And there's a lot of ways to leverage that. You know, get in front of them one time and then continue to build an impression and build trust, get an email within the first time, you know, things like that.

So I want to encourage people to think that way. I think that thinking too short-sighted is exactly how you end up going, "My marketing never really works," or whatever. It's because it's too knee-jerk. The expectations were not realistic.

And I'm going to leave us with uh, two last thoughts here. One, uh, two things that I always kind of try to point out to people when they're trying to understand and wrap their heads around this idea that attribution is not really a straight line. Um, even today, while these platforms have all gotten a lot better— if you're looking on Facebook or on Instagram on mobile at an ad for a product, and it's wonderful at targeting me with stuff that I want to buy, right? And I think we've all experienced that in our own ways. It's gotten so much better than five years ago. It really knows me.

But how many times do you click on an ad and then it's just a bit slow loading in the browser, which is their in-app browser? And it is much better than it used to be, because it used to be really bad. But even still today, I'll just— if I see an offer, I will often just go straight into my— I'll then just jump over to Safari or Chrome on my phone and type in that brand.

Spencer Lynch

Yeah.

Max Baybak

And then look at it there, because I don't want to click in, and I also don't want to click in and forget it, you know, because I can add it to cart in Meta but I forget it, right? So, what I think ends up happening is—

Spencer Lynch

I've worked with e-commerce brands where they don't understand why they don't see the attribution that they're looking for, but they are seeing a lift in sales, and they see that lift drop out when they stop running those ads. And that's a big reason why. And like you said, it's because people are seeing the ad and going, "Great, I'm just going to go straight away." They don't even click, sometimes.

Max Baybak

They're smarter. Everybody's smarter than the advertiser.

Spencer Lynch

You got it. Yeah.

Max Baybak

It's hard for the advertiser or for the platform to follow them down and track all these actions. They might click and not convert and then later on go to your website directly, or they don't even click—they just see the ad and they go to your website. And that's where you were spot on about seeing branded search, because often they don't remember your exact website. They just type in your brand. And so branded search, for anyone who doesn't understand, is like, those are your brand's keywords being searched on Google and showing up, and then someone will then go straight to your website through Google. So they're also not going straight to your dot-com, they're going through Google.

And the other lesson that I think reinforces this is, you know, driving around LA where I'm from—I don't live there anymore, but I go back a lot—I feel like all the billboards are purchased by personal injury lawyers now. All of them. And a key thing I noticed a while ago is that the big ones—they spend millions per month, millions on these billboards all around LA and LA County—they don't put a phone number anymore, and they don't even put a website anymore.

Spencer Lynch

It's just a name.

Max Baybak

It's just a name. And that is absolutely— there is only one way they're measuring that, and that is their branded search. They know that people are not even going to remember a website if they put it up there. So there's some big names that are even drilled into my skull after all the years of living there and going back. And, you know, 1-800-Call-Jacob—or it's not even 1-800-Call-Jacob anymore, it's just "Jacob," "Call Jacob," or whatever the campaign is. There's that, there's like Jacoby & Meyers, a couple other ones that have been, you know—

Spencer Lynch

Yeah, imprinted.

Max Baybak

Imprinted. And now you just go search, and they know that their search— they're looking at their web traffic, they're looking at their organic search volume. So if you want to understand how your ad campaigns are working, I think that's a first thing to look at. And if you're deciding to dial up budget or dial it back, pay attention to that. I think that's super key.

Spencer Lynch

Yeah, you'll avoid some headaches in the future.

Max Baybak

A hundred percent. And the last piece I wanted to leave with, it's interesting—talking about algorithm updates with Facebook, with Meta. And we also know a little while back they had their— was it Andromeda, the big AI change, right? Which was mostly, I think, impacted e-commerce more than lead gen type. Would you agree with that?

Spencer Lynch

Uh, yes and no. I think they felt it a lot, but it definitely changed, because Andromeda is like how the ads are actually delivered versus, like, the actual ranking. That I'm still, like, trying to sink my teeth into, the Andromeda gym strategy, because it is a matrix of different categories, um, of, like, what constitutes, like, one unique creative from another, what differentiates the two. And it's all, like, persona, angle, and decision stage. So if you're thinking about those three variables, it's like, well, you can cycle an infinite amount of creatives through there and stuff.

But yeah, it's just rolling with the punches that the algorithm throws at you. Did we feel it as much as, um, like, e-commerce? I think in ways we did, because the campaigns that now adopt that Andromeda setup, where it's kind of like a kitchen sink approach—it's just less is more as far as targeting. Um, yeah, we see a lot of improvement in those campaigns versus some of our more, like, uh, historical setups and whatnot.

Max Baybak

Cool. I think the part that's interesting to me is we spent so many years—better part of almost two decades, really—paying attention to these Google algorithm updates, and the ground would shake and everyone would, you know, really try to be ready for these updates and try to react to them. And now we see so much AI coming into ad targeting, and we see a lot of changes there.

And I feel like, while it's going to get more automated and more simple in some ways, it's almost like the Google era of algorithm updates. And we had Mobilegeddon in, like, 2011 or something—or no, when was that? Maybe 2015. Um, where everyone was scared because it was going to go 100% mobile and the algorithms were going to change, the rankings were going to shift to prioritize mobile.

And um, now I feel like we're going to see a lot of these algorithm updates continue. We're in that era, but now for Meta advertising and for ad algorithms, where it's going to get easier for you to fire up and run ads, uh, you know, even an uneducated, untrained specialist in ads. But I think there's always going to be an advantage to understanding— to someone who's kind of lived through some of these shifts and uh, understands all the homework we have to do to be ready and to respond to these algorithm changes. It's a different world for the world of uh, display advertising and advertising in general.

Spencer Lynch

Yeah. To steal the words from the CMO of Meta, Alex Schultz—he said the principles don't change, the tools do. And that was his whole, like, basis with AI and the advent of all these changes that are happening. It's like, it's going to be easy to get overwhelmed with all these new tools and toys. But like, the ones who understand these principles, and that these principles of marketing are not changing—it's just the way that people are getting to them.

Uh, that's the key to it all, is like, yeah, there's going to be new ad creative generations and stuff like that that'll really help expedite that process. But like, does it solve somebody's problem? Uh, does this person even know it's a problem that they're experiencing yet? Like, those things remain true—

Max Baybak

—through the test of time. That's why we got you, Spence. Appreciate you sitting down with me. This was awesome.

Spencer Lynch

Yeah, I enjoyed it.