TIL: vision, novel & $1M case - Growth of Influence

You are probably wondering how to actually help a +$1,000,000 per year company find their first winning ad in 8 weeks.

It sounds almost counterintuitive at first — how could a business generating seven figures annually not have a winning ad already? But that’s exactly the kind of hidden opportunity that makes projects like these both exciting and highly rewarding.

Well, a couple of months ago I was hired to help Young Collective launch and scale their paid advertisements, and things took a wild turn.

From the first call, it was clear that this wasn’t going to be a simple plug-and-play operation. Young Collective had built a solid reputation through organic marketing strategies, but when it came to paid ads, they were stepping into entirely new territory. And with new territory always comes a little chaos.

When we started working together, I had made it clear. I hadn’t worked with another business in the industry before.

Even though I had spent hundreds of thousands on ads, my experience wasn’t really relevant.

Industry nuances matter, and even the most skilled marketer has to respect that every niche has its own culture, customer psychology, and buying behaviors. I wasn’t about to assume that what worked for e-commerce, coaching, or SaaS would automatically apply here.

I didn’t know what marketing funnel they would have to run.

I didn’t know what the marketing copy would look like.

I didn’t know which of the dozens of cities they operate in we should focus on.

Even though I had many more fundamental questions like these and the project seemed challenging, I knew I could trust the methodology that I had followed on every other digital marketing project I’ve run so far.

I break everything down to the “GROW YOUR INFLUENCE” section on the second half of this letter, but for now, let me share with you some of the things I learned this month.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED

1.
Making your vision clear is hard.

Two weeks ago, I finished the 5th version of my business vision in the last 7 years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working on it for the 6th time, it’s this: Creating a vision that truly feels right to you is one of the most challenging things you’ll ever do.

Using a tool like this can help you create the first (or next) version of your Mission Statement.

But feeling truly aligned with what you write is a longer process — one that usually takes several months and tends to repeat every few years.

2.
The difference between reading a novel vs a business book.

Reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy taught me that novels can stretch your imagination in ways business books rarely do.

A novel pulls you into a world of emotions, characters, and unexpected ideas, while business books stick to frameworks and strategies.

I realized that creativity often comes from stepping outside the logical, structured world of business thinking.

Fiction invites you to feel and wonder, not just to plan and execute.

3.
Mindfulness is an every second task.

“Letting go is not a one time event.” — Yung Pueblo

GROW YOUR INFLUENCE

In this letter, I will share with you the key moves that I made to successfully help this organisation plan, launch, and scale its ads, so you can grow your influence without wasting thousands of dollars.

Building a successful ads infrastructure from scratch can feel overwhelming at first, especially when every wrong move can cost precious time and money. That’s why it’s important to have a clear, strategic plan that cuts through the noise and focuses only on the actions that bring results.

In the first week, I had to deal with all the technical problems that were in place. Getting access to the proper Meta Business Accounts, connecting the right Meta Pixels to the right accounts, making sure that the Data Sources are in place, verifying the account, coming in contact with Meta for an unexpected issue that came out of nowhere, troubleshooting the previously wrongfully connected pixel, connecting both Facebook and Instagram to the same Meta Business Account, and a bunch of other tasks were all done as fast as possible.

The urgency was not just about speed but about ensuring that the whole system was functional and reliable, because without a clean technical setup, even the best ad creative would have been wasted effort. Time was of the essence, but precision was non-negotiable.

When you start a project like this, you hope to spend as little time as possible on areas like these; however, setting up the proper foundation is key to move forward.

Without a rock-solid base, scaling becomes impossible, and small overlooked mistakes can snowball into major roadblocks later on. Laying down a stable technical structure was our first real investment toward long-term success.

The second and probably the most important part was competitor analysis. Identifying what works and what doesn’t without wasting unnecessary money is one of my key goals every time.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, my aim was to shortcut the learning curve by studying the battlefield before stepping into it. Observing in real time what was resonating with audiences — and what was being ignored — saved us from costly trial and error.

I wanted to make things work as fast as possible, and studying what the competition is doing this very second was the make-or-break step.

Speed matters, but so does direction — and analyzing active competitors ensured we were sprinting in the right one from the start, not guessing blindly.

As you will soon find out, we invested less than 8 weeks and about $500 in ads to find the first winning and scalable ad creative.

This disciplined and strategic approach allowed us to move from foundation to first success without blowing through budgets unnecessarily, a trap many businesses fall into during the early phases.

When it comes to the ad creatives, the usual pattern appeared. The marketing team recommended me some creatives to start, but they overwhelmingly underperformed compared to the ones that competitors were using to scale, so before the end of the 2nd running week we switched to the ones that were proven to work.

This moment reinforced an important principle: trusting the data over assumptions. Even well-meaning internal teams can miss the mark without the objectivity and clarity that comes from real-world testing.

The marketing funnel structure was a big challenge, because the client was using a 3rd party ticketing software that was connected to WordPress to make the sales.

Normally, smooth data flow from ad click to purchase confirmation is critical for optimization, but in this case, the integration added unexpected layers of complexity.

The connection between this 3rd party app and Meta Pixel wasn’t only extremely hard, but the ads traffic, before the landing pages, was landing at a Facebook group.

This kind of detour significantly disrupts the ability to properly track user behavior and conversions, making performance analysis and optimization much trickier than it needed to be.

Which made the job of Meta even more challenging to attribute sales.

Meta’s algorithms heavily rely on clean, straightforward data paths to optimize campaigns properly, so adding this level of friction meant we had to work even smarter to get reliable results.

The reason behind this was because one of the Meta Pixel’s jobs is to attribute the sales of the ads back to the ads, but when you run ads to a Facebook group that redirects the users to a WordPress page, that uses a 3rd party ticketing software to make the sales, things become even more challenging.

Understanding this chain reaction early helped us adjust expectations and put contingency plans in place to still measure, improve, and scale the campaign effectively.

Our marketing hypothesis, however, was simple. The business was already making a considerable amount of revenue every year from a marketing method that wasn’t paid ads, so we could just use the infrastructure of the business to create another profitable, automated, and scalable marketing method.

In other words, we weren’t building something completely new; we were adding a jet engine to a vehicle that was already moving — and doing it in a way that amplified what was working rather than disrupting it.

And that’s what we did.

With focus, persistence, and constant feedback loops, we transformed a messy setup into a clean, scalable system built for growth.

The first couple of weeks were used solely for the resolution of the technical problems and the competitor analysis. By refusing to rush this phase, we ensured that every dollar spent later would be an investment, not a gamble.

As soon as that was done, the testing period didn’t last for long.

Thanks to our earlier preparation, we were able to go straight into launching campaigns with clarity, confidence, and agility.

We created in record time the new creatives and the copies.

The messaging was aligned with what we knew the audience was already responding to, giving us an edge right out of the gate.

The ads were set up and launched, the second optimization phase of the ads was up and running in less than a week, and just like that, we invested $500 and 8 weeks to create one of the most profitable assets for a business — a scalable, automated, and profitable Meta Ads campaign.

Every action we took during those eight weeks was intentional, based on proven principles, and aimed at building an asset that would keep delivering returns for months, if not years, to come.

The feeling after each successful project doesn’t get old.

Every win reaffirms that the right mix of strategy, hard work, and smart risk-taking pays off in ways that numbers alone can’t fully capture.

As a matter of fact, it gets better every time, and that’s one of the reasons why I’ve devoted almost a decade to this and I keep loving it.

There’s a special kind of fulfillment that comes from not just achieving success, but doing it in a way that I keep every promise that I make and I deliver more than expected.

To your growth and influence,
>> Chris Fountoulis
Founder – Growth Of Influence
chris@growthofinfluence.com
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