“Marketing is a race without a finish line.” — Philip Kotler

Advertising is unpredictable.

As a marketing whose managed over 13 Million dollars, ran teams, and work with dozens of clients — I’ve entered a tonne of challenges.

We may face disgruntled messages from clients, ad rejections, account bans, emerging tools, turbulent political environments, privacy changes, or algorithm updates. Just to name a few.

Yet, I’ve had an unprecedented client retention. During my agency experience this was near 12 Months — almost 3–4x the average.

There is no shortage of scenarios that we may encounter. The better we understand them the better we equip ourselves to successfully navigate them and come out better on the other end.

Here’s how I manage some of the most common challenges we face.

This is for marketers, media buyers, and business owners alike.

1. Marketing Attribution.

3rd party attribution tools are on the rise.

While this has grown into a hot-button issue around the industry, I too, have a controversial perspective. Given my personal views, I understand the incredibly complex nature of attribution and that every client and scenario must be interpreted differently. My view applies to my experiences and may not be relevant to you, or your clients’ unique situations.

My issue with 3rd party attribution tools comes from a combination of:

• Their inability to capture the actual customer journey.
• The way in which they assess and present the information.

The goal of many tools I’ve used is to assist you in profitably scaling your ads.

They do this by showing you which ads led to a sale. This has become increasingly important post iOS14 where Meta’s ability to track and report on this has become limited and inaccurate.

However, marketing is not quite this simple. These tools often suggest that by showing you which ad produced a sale, you can increase profitability by scaling those ads.

Unfortunately, knowing which ad they clicked first, or last, before becoming a customer does not tell you those ads were solely responsible for producing the sale. This misses the dozens of touchpoints that potentially contributed to it happening.

Here’s where my real issue lies:

If Ad X takes credit, would that person still have purchased without the other touchpoints?

If they didn’t see 4 other ads, watch a video, see you on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, opt-in to your email list, would they still have made the purchase decision?

While some tools attempt to circumvent these issues, they are not there yet. Attempts to capture a few more touchpoints, or spread weight across multiple touchpoints (or platforms), is be better than nothing, but it’s far from perfect.

The reality is that I have not discovered a tool that has made a considerable difference in the way I manage my paid ad campaigns.

And the bigger a brand gets, the more money that is spent, and the more channels involved in the mix, it becomes more difficult to interpret this data.

This often leads to decisions by clients and media buyers alike based solely on hard data because it’s the only data they have, however, this is not always accurate.

The simplest example is that most tools cannot attribute any weight to “views”. Meaning, that if someone watches videos without clicking the tool has no idea this interaction took place. As we further enter a zero-click world, we will need some technological advancements before we can truly capture the entirety of the customer journey.

I’ve witnessed customer journeys that involved 200 clicks prior to purchase. I’ve seen customers sign up after being on an email list for 12 months. And I’ve seen people purchase without ever seeing the company before.

There is no tool that can determine why this happened. Because it’s psychology — and that can’t be tracked with something as simple as “last touch attribution.”

It’s difficult to beat some good old fashion spreadsheets and a healthy dose of intuition.

While these tools may be better than nothing, or relying on Meta’s reporting. Especially, for high-ticket sales or products that have extended sales cycles. We cannot discount elements like offers, branding, and email marketing, and how they contribute to performance in unattributable ways.

How I approach marketing attribution.

For simple and lower-spend ad accounts, I find platform reporting and/or spreadsheets are usually sufficient. Utilizing some UTM parameters inside your CRM can assist in trends and insights with longer sales cycles.

For complex, high-spend, and multi-channel accounts, more in-depth reporting may be needed especially because there are typically more people involved in the decision-making and finance processes.

Take into consideration the nature of the product and offer. Is it an impulse buy? Short sales cycle? Does it require time, consideration, and a longer sales cycle?

• Avoid making decisions in a silo.
• View and assess trends over longer periods.
• Assess MER instead of platform specific ROAS.
• As marketing increases in complexity, assess how things impact one another.
• Don’t change too many things at once or you risk being unable to understand the impact.

The tools will continue to evolve, so I won’t list them here.

My intention is to remind you that there is no tool that can replace a thorough understanding of marketing, the market, and your customer’s journey… yet.

2. Evolving Ad Ecosystems.

Do not fight change.

Instead of throwing up your arms and taking to X and LinkedIn to complain about AI, algorithm updates, and the latest change that is affecting your ad accounts…

…Accept it.

Trends will come and go.

Ad platforms will never stop evolving.

Competition is only ever going to increase.

Social platforms will come and go.

The skills needed to thrive will change with time.

Accept it. Be with it. Don’t fight it.

Resistance will not help you get results for you or your clients. Spewing negativity online may soothe your ego but it won’t do much else.

We’re in an industry that doesn’t sleep. It will never stop evolving. If we cannot accept this it may be worth exploring different professions 😉

What works today, may not work tomorrow.

Allow this to be a motivating challenge to drive novelty and excitement within your career. Befriend change and challenge yourself to consistently test and find new ways to do things.

This is partly why I like to have at least 1 partnership and run ads for myself.

Places where I have 100% control. I can test. I can throw spaghetti against the wall without fear of it working or not working. I can test the latest ads manager updates. I can develop new strategies, test theories, and not worry if it all fails — cause it’s my money on the line.

This allows me to take the learnings to my client accounts.

We must embrace change.

3. The Rise of Artificial Intelligence.

At the time of writing, AI is making waves in marketing.

It’s not entirely new as the algorithms that drive the ad and social media platforms have been leveraging this technology for years.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve witnessed a tremendous amount of change through all ad platforms specifically around giving more control to the platform.

Meta’s Advantage+ suite, whose features change almost as frequently as Meta changes its name, is slowly providing more control to Meta.

It started with CBO campaigns. Giving Meta the ability to determine where to spend. Then leveraging broad, now “Advantage+” targeting.

We now see more and more of a push to leverage AI to the point where Meta is slowly making all of this “On” by default and if you’re not careful it’s easy to miss the settings they use by default.

We have Advantage+ placements. Letting them choose where to show the ad.

We have Advantage+ creative enhancements. They will tailor the size, color, music, text overlays, etc. based on the person the ad is shown to maximize chances of conversions.

Now, and this is where I see it going…

Meta can write, and create, ad copy variations.

And, you can create AI-generated ad images right in the platform.

There was a day when media buying was an incredibly unique skill set. The more technically sound you were, the more you managed budgets, specific placements, and targeted audiences, and you could scale your accounts.

This didn’t make sense to Meta.

They make their money off ads. If it’s hard to run them, only a few know how, that is bad news for them. AI has allowed them to reduce the barrier to entry.

If Meta can do, literally everything, ANYONE can run an ad. This improves the experience for people, and Meta makes more money.

The kicker is that many of these tools work.

Broad targeting works as good if not better than what we used to do. Just as an example.

While some of the features aren’t there yet — they will be. And the more we fight the advancements the sooner we will be replaced.

We need to understand the direction they’re heading and understand what this means for our business or our role.

The need for ad experts will change. I don’t know when, but it will happen. One thing I feel confident saying is that the value of the skill will decrease, meaning that how much you can charge to only run ads will depreciate.

That’s why it’s important to develop the skills of a modern media buyer.

Understanding where the industry is going, understanding what clients truly hire you for, and becoming a linchpin to futureproof your skill set.

4. Managing Client Expectations.

There’s not much worse than waking up to Slack messages from unhappy clients.

Except, these moments present an opportunity.

They can either strengthen the relationship or form small cracks in the foundation that lead to an inevitable divide.

It can be triggering to be confronted. Especially, when you know you’re working hard to get results. Or, when poor performance is outside of your control. Doing everything “right” but performance drops overnight, Meta removes an audience, or the client hasn’t sent you new creative.

In these moments, when you witness these emotions rise, take a step away.

Create distance between your reaction and response. You don’t need to respond to that email at 7:34 pm on Sunday (in most cases). Allow yourself to gain perspective and then provide a response.

Communication is, in my opinion, one of the most important and overlooked aspects of a successful business.

I attribute my growth and client retention as much to communication as I do to skills and results.

Remember, it’s the client’s business on the line. It’s their money being spent on ads. It’s the difference between them making payroll and putting food on their table. They have the right to ask questions.

I’ve found that we do not need all the answers, but we need to let clients know they are seen, and heard, and that we have a plan.

Here are some things I have found helpful in my career:

Message clients before they message you when performance is down. This lets them know you’re on top of things.

Message clients when you anticipate potential instability to pre-empt their concerns. This is helpful during certain seasonality or happenings in the world when you know they may impact performance.

Let them know what you’re seeing with other clients or what you’ve heard from colleagues, or seen in the past.

Present them with ideas, plans, or strategies to combat things.

Avoid making claims, promises, or guarantees about performance.

Explain and help clients understand the holistic view of what makes a successful ad campaign work, even if elements of it are outside of your control.

Deploy a testing mindset, so that the client understands everything is a test to see if you can increase efficiency and performance, but that it’s not guaranteed.

This one is really important…

Be willing to test ideas presented by the client, even if you don’t agree with them.

This can be confrontational for many. While we are the experts, it’s their business. Your client may be in a mastermind, have a consultant, or have friends doing things or telling them things. They may ask you to do something you don’t agree with. What I find most helpful here, is to kindly share your perspective, understand the underlying root of what they are trying to do, and that you’re willing to run a test if they wish–it’s their money.

None of these have anything to do with ‘Media Buying’ skills, rather communication skills.

Become a collaborative partner with your client and watch your retention increase.

5. The Unpredictability of Running Paid Advertising.

All we have is a hypothesis.

Every time we publish a new ad or launch a new campaign, we can never predict how it will do.

The unpredictability of paid advertising will remain a constant challenge.

Here are a few ‘unpredictable’ situations I consistently witness.

Every account is unique.

There’s a reason I provide a list of tactics. I focus on the art and strategy that is used to build successful campaigns.

It’s partly because every ad account is unique.

When it comes to account structures, scaling strategies, or even creative testing setups…

The same strategy applied in two different ad accounts can perform completely differently. It may work great for one, and flop in the next. It might work for 3 months, and then randomly stop working seemingly overnight.

I’ve even worked with two clients, with almost identical offers, and niches where performance is head and shoulders different.

Advertising is unpredictable. We must be willing to embrace it.

Develop our own individual set of best practices and deem them starting points. But arm ourselves with a set of tools and strategies that we can leverage as needed. Rest assured, you’ll need it 😉

One reason that I like simplicity inside of my ad accounts is because fewer moving parts typically mean fewer variables and fewer things that can go wrong.

“Qualified Leads”

I’ve spent years searching for the button I can press to only target people who are ready and willing to purchase my client’s products. It doesn’t exist.

As I will touch on further in the next section, certain things are outside of our control.

I’ve accepted that clients will generally always want more leads, better-qualified leads, and to be able to scale without ROAS decreasing.

I’ve also accepted that these things fluctuate without my control.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever received a message from a client about how “last week we had really poor quality leads,” and then let the client know that nothing changed with the ads. Only to receive another message the following week that things have improved.

Same ads, same targeting, 1 day great leads, the next terrible leads.

It could be dozens of things…

• Not everyone is at the same point in their customer journey.
• The algorithm started serving the ads to different people.
• We scooped all the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in the audience.
• Impacted by seasonality, world events, etc.

Sometimes the best thing we can do is nothing.

Sometimes we must adapt and make changes, to try and improve.

It’s part of the sometimes frustrating game we decided to play.

But, ‘quality’ is an ongoing challenge we’re always going to face, for two reasons:

1. Clients only want “good leads.”
2. We have no control over targeting “good leads.”

One of the few things we can do is improve ad messaging and communicate effectively with clients.

Event driven changes.

Sometimes, it feels like we’re just along for the ride.

While our creative, offers, brand, and automations influence our performance…

…So does the world.

• Time of the year.
• Political environment.
• Natural disasters.
• Economical changes.

Just to name a few things that impact our performance.

Competing with Black Friday sales? Never easy. Getting people to show up to calls during Christmas or Summer Holidays? A nightmare.

There’s no button to toggle on to increase quality. And often, the same ads will just appear to stop working. I routinely get messages from clients. It takes a considerable amount of empathetic education to explain how these things influence consumer behavior and in turn, impact our ads.

With their dollars on the line, it doesn’t make it all better. Sometimes all we can do is hold on. Sometimes we need to reduce spend. Sometimes we need to white-knuckle it and hope we don’t get fired.

Even more frustrating?

Outside of all of the aforementioned events? Ads can still randomly stop working.

Things can get stressful.

When things are outside of our control, we must trust in our ability to be steadfast with what we now work, trust in our intuition, and trust in our ability to communicate this to our client.

6. Accepting What’s Within Our Control And What Isn’t.

“I’m just having a hard time understanding why our leads seemed so great in November and so poor in December.” — Client.

In review, the ads running in November were the same as Din ecember.

Situations like this happen often. Clients seek answers that we don’t always have an answer to. In the previous section, I listed a few situations that we experienced.

We must accept what is and isn’t within our control.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy.

This is a skill. And as we develop it, we can put clients at ease. The client from the quote above put their trust in me to determine what we did with our spend.

The only reason this was possible? Was through a heck of a lot of communication, trust building, and transparency with what’s going on.

My response to them was that I did not have the answer. But I outlined what I saw from my evaluation, presented them with it, and said I was happy to discuss this further so they feel confident with what was going on.

Keeping clients in the dark puts us at risk of being fired.

Here are my tips to develop trust with your clients:

• Transparent communication.
• Build trust from Day 1.
• Understand it’s their money you’re managing.

Transparent communication.

Through the good times and bad be open and transparent.

We don’t always need the answer but we put clients at ease by letting them know we have a plan. Nothing sours a relationship faster than a client calling us out on something that’s going wrong before we let them know. If things drop, let them know you see it, and what you’re doing.

Communication is as powerful as having the answer.

Build trust from Day 1.

Trust starts with expectations.

The relationship with clients starts from the first time you speak. Openness, transparency, avoid claims and promises. You set the frame from Day 1. This gives you to ability to continue this once you start working together.

Start on Day 1 to ease the strain during difficult times later.

Understand who’s money it is.

It’s their money.

As I’ve managed accounts and advised media buyers, we must retain an understanding of whose money it is. We educate, we lead, but it’s ultimately their decision. I keep this in mind when working with clients. Clients may want to try or test things, and you may not agree. I handle this by sharing my perspective (and why) and that I am happy to test it and we can evaluate the results.

Remember, we don’t know everything, and working with clients builds trust.

7. Overcomplicated Account Structures.

Simplicity scales.

The more complex a business, a funnel, or an account is, the chances of things going wrong increase.

While this is a general statement and context cannot be ignored, simpler account structures are preferred. This is a recommendation affirmed by Meta reps themselves.

With too many ads, too many ad sets, and campaigns you run the risk of muddying your data. You may begin to compete with yourself in the auction. It may become difficult to know what is and isn’t working. And the more complex an account the more time it takes you to manage.

There has been a rise of “one campaign” advocates as Meta has evolved.

While this may slide to the extreme side of things and may not fit the nature of your business, it has merit.

Here are a few reasons why I prefer simpler account structures.

Let’s say you have 4 funnels running. Odds are, 1 performs best. Would your acquisition efforts be more efficient by dedicating your efforts to one? Imagine all efforts surrounding a single effort. Your creative, your copy, and your media buying focused on moving a single offer forward instead of splitting between 4.

Especially, when the ones that perform the worst generally receive the most attention to fix. Instead of seeing the top performing and making it even more efficient.

The same goes for e-commerce.

Attention to marketing an entire catalog of products compared to identifying a hero product. The product that acquires new customers at the most efficient cost, or, has the highest historical LTV.

Simplifying your efforts not only makes it easier for the team, it can be more efficient and allows more scale.

It’s similar to the difference between your media buyer working only on your account, vs. being at an agency where he manages 17 accounts and can only spend 30 minutes a day on you.

When we expand these impacts out over months and years, they add up.

Marketing Will Never Be a Straight Line.

Platforms evolve, algorithms shift, and what works today may not work tomorrow. But the ability to navigate this uncertainty — without relying on quick fixes or rigid formulas — is what separates those who survive from those who thrive.

The best marketers aren’t just technicians; they’re strategists.

We embrace change, lean into unpredictability, and understand that success isn’t just about metrics — it’s about human behavior, adaptability, and clear communication.

There will always be another challenge around the corner.

The question is will you be ready for it?