Ciaran Finn

Your Glow Up

Managing Director at Your Glow Up, an award-winning DTC performance creative agency.

Lowering acquisition costs and scaling 8-9 figure DTC brands through performance ad creative.

Find out more at www.yourglowup.io.

Managing Director

Blue Finn Media

Founder & CEO of an award-winning performance marketing agency for eCommerce brands.

We partner with growth-focussed eCommerce brands, taking a CMO-based approach to hitting revenue goals through paid advertising, performance creative and growth consulting.

Learn more here: bluefinnmedia.com

scale & send

The DTC eCommerce events company that your agency tells you not to worry about.

Co-Founder

Kensington Media House

👉 Strategic Director at leading Retention Marketing Agency, Kensington Media House
👉 Regularly achieving 35%+ revenue driven through Email & SMS with no additional ad spend 
👉 Over $60 million generated with Email & SMS for clients across the US, UK, EU, & Asia

Strategic Director

Whilst at university, I founded and ran a lead generation business under the "Rank & Rent" model.

I created highly converting funnels for a specific business niche, focussing on the core pain points of their ideal customers. I'd then use SEO to begin driving traffic to my funnels and generating leads. 

From here I optimized in two ways:
1. Improved my SEO marketing to drive more traffic at a faster rate.
2. I increased the conversion rate of the funnels through landing page optimization and split-testing offers, angles, landers.

These leads were then tracked using call softwares and CRMs, and to monetize:
1. I sold leads on a cost-per-lead basis
2. Or I rented the entire funnel for a flat fee, allowing businesses to receive exclusivity on all leads that the funnels generated.

Despite having fun and learning a lot during this period, I realised I preferred the faster impact of paid advertising vs organic SEO. This led me to a career as a performance marketing consultant, and ultimately founding my next business, a performance marketing agency called Blue Finn Media.

Funnel Builder & SEO Expert

LeadX Ltd

After 2+ years working as an Account Manager part-time whilst at school, I'd finished school and was ready for a full-time role.
 
Within a few days of switching full-time as an Account Manager, I was offered to join the group's head office as a Talent Acquisition Executive, and within the first month I was promoted to the role of Talent Acquisition Consultant.

Here I was responsible for headhunting specific executive positions and strategic recruiting for team members across all departments, including organising 60+ person recruitment events and achieving company-wide recruitment and talent acquisition KPIs.

This was for all consumer brands under the LeadX Holding group, including digital marketing agencies such as Ropto, with 1000+ employees across the group.

This was a performance based role and my bonuses were tied to my team's performance, meaning I was regularly assisting and leading other team members to ensure we hit our bonuses as a team every month.

Talent Acquisition Consultant

Aged 16, I began working as an Outbound Sales Representative at LeadX.

Despite being part-time and still at school, I was quickly top of the team and was promoted to Account Manager.

My role was heavily commission based and involved lead management and sales on behalf of the company.

Account Manager

Helping DTC Brands Scale 5+ New Ad Creatives Every Week // $150M+ In Trackable eCom Sales // DM me CREATIVE and let’s chat

DTC Brands: Click the button in my featured section below 👇

Founder & CEO

Founder & CEO of an award-winning growth consulting and performance marketing agency for eCommerce brands.

We partner with growth-focussed eCommerce brands, taking a CMO-based approach to hitting revenue goals through paid advertising, performance creative and growth consulting.

Learn more here: bluefinnmedia.com

HIRING: eCommerce media buyers and creative strategists!

We're hiring multiple media buyers and creative strategists for our agency.

👉 7-9 figure US DTC brands
👉 EST timezone
👉 High performance culture
👉 Huge career growth opportunities
👉 Work alongside and learn from an elite team of marketers

Tag anyone below if you feel they're a fit for working with us!

And if you're an a-player media buyer / creative strategist looking for the next step in your career, visit the link below to see all our open roles:
https://lnkd.in/dTXEw5dw

Feel free to DM me Ciaran Finn with any questions too 🚀

HIRING Media Buyers & Creative Strategists - See My Featured Post For More Info! // Scaling DTC Brands with Performance Creative & Media Buying // $500M+ In Trackable DTC Sales

Hot take: Your video editors have more of an effect on your CPA than your media buyers do 🌶️

Why?

Because creative is king.

Stop putting all of your money into optimising the ad account.

Instead, put it into making the best creative you can.

This will have a much bigger effect on your numbers than any levers you can pull in the ad account.

I hear no one saying that they disagree with this. 

But I see too many brands acting like they do.

You don’t control the Meta algorithm.

Stop pretending you do.

The scroll, the placement, the delivery - all of it is unpredictable.

Meta decides who sees what and when. You can’t change that.

But here’s the thing:

Control isn’t the goal.

Influence is.

You can influence your inputs:

• The creative you make.
• The angles you test.
• The offers you push.
• The audiences you structure.
  
Those are the levers that actually move the needle.

Focus on what you can influence, iterate fast, and the algorithm will do what it does best: reward consistent winners.

—

You can’t control Meta.

You can control your system.

And a strong system beats wishful thinking every single time.


—

P.S. - We're growing super fast and are hiring media buyers and creative strategists right now - click this link to see all of our open roles and apply https://lnkd.in/dTXEw5dw

When making performance ad creative.
↳ You need to be ok with failure.

No person, brand, or agency has a 100% creative hit rate.

Most ads don't work.

You need to be comfortable with 8 out of every 10 ideas being a flop.

And not let this discourage you.

Even the best of the best have a creative hit rate of 25%

No one gets it right all the time.

Instead:

1. Come up with your creative hypothesis
2. Test that hypothesis
3. Extract key learnings from the test
4. Apply those learnings to the entire creative strategy moving forward
5. Use these learnings to come up with your next hypothesis

Be willing to be punched in the face over and over again and still keep on testing.

And when you find that unicorn ad that scales, all the failed tests will be worth it.

Helping 7 Figure DTC Brands Scale to $10M+ per year // $500M+ In Trackable DTC Sales

If you're looking for the latest ‘hack’ for your FB ads
↳ Then stop ...

→ 1 Advantage+ Campaign only
→ All accounts must be using Cost Caps
→ The 3:2:2 method

These are all just slight nuances in tactics.

They won’t make your brand profitable overnight.

And won’t suddenly turn bad results into good results.

What truly moves the needle is:

→ Hypothesis-driven ad creatives
→ A proven offer
→ Product-market fit
→ Congruency in the entire funnel
→ Understanding your target customer

Focus on the fundamentals.

Not on the latest hacks.

If someone tells you that there is 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 one way to run Facebook ads.

They are trying to take your money.

The easy to create winning Facebook ads
↳ (steal my process)

𝟭. 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵:

Understand your target customer better than they understand themselves.

Look at:
→ Product reviews
→ Competitor ads
→ Review sites (Quora, Reddit etc.)

𝟮. 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲:

Come up with the core idea behind each ad. Focus on proven concepts, as well as taking big swings to test wacky ideas.

Decide on:
→ Angles
→ Creative formats
→ Variations

𝟯. 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗲:

The fun part. Bring your idea to life.

You need to:
→ Give instructions to graphic designer for statics
→ Create brief, oversee filming, and edit footage for videos
→ Review and approve all assets

𝟰. 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵:

Test your new ads to see what works, and what doesn’t.

Once launched:
→ Pay close attention to soft and hard metrics
→ Kill losers
→ Duplicate winners into your scaling campaign

𝟱. 𝗜𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲:

This is where you make your ‘Frankenstein’ ads. Combine winning elements from ads across your account to create the super ads behind which you will scale.

Build off winning concepts by:
→ Identifying the assets hitting CPA/ROAS targets
→ For statics, test the winning design with multiple new headlines
→ For videos, assess Hook % and Hold % and create a new iterations accordingly

—

If you feel like you're repeating the same creative strategy over and over and nothing is working.

Give the above 5-step process a go to find new winners the easy way.


If you found this post valuable,

1. Give me a follow Ciaran Finn 
2. Consider sharing this post with your network!

I audited 75+ Facebook ad accounts in 2024
↳ these are the 11 biggest mistakes I saw:

 1. Not using third-party attribution tools
 2. Incorrect CAPI setup
 3. Killing winning ads too early
 4. Not leveraging Whitelisting
 5. No congruency across the funnel
 6. Not committing enough resources to creative production
 7. Not split testing offers and funnels
 8. Overcomplicated ad account structure
 9. Not iterating on winning creative
10. Putting too much focus on audience testing
11. Having '-copy' all over their ad account

Winning at anything in life is more about elimination than it is about addition.

So eliminate the above 11 mistake from your growth marketing process.

And your 2025 stretch goals will become a reality quicker than you think.

HIRING Media Buyers & Creative Strategists - DM Me For More Info! // Helping 7 Figure DTC Brands Scale to $10M+ per year // $500M+ In Trackable DTC Sales

When making your next set of Facebook ads

Remember that no one cares about your brand.

Always assume that:

1. No one knows about OR cares about your brand

2. No one has the time to watch any of your ads

3. No one cares about what you say unless it clearly relates to them

Too many brands get lost in the magical fairy world of 'brand-land'.

Thinking that all people want to do is go to Instagram and watch their branded ads.

I've got bad news for you.

They go on Instagram to watch more Hawk Tuah memes.

Not to learn about your brand's sustainability pledge.

Your ads have to give the viewer a CLEAR reason to watch your ad and buy your products.

 So if you want to acquire new customers and scale your brand, make your ads all about the viewer.

Not the other way around.

8 foolproof steps to find new winning Facebook ads ↓

(Steal my process)

Complete the following 8 research steps in order when producing your next round of ad creative:

1. Product

Write down it's:
- Main Benefits.
- Offer.


2. Customer Persona

Determine:
- Age / Gender / Location.
- Pain Points.
- Desires.
- Language used.


3. Reputation Research

Simulate the same process a potential customer goes through by:
- Searching for Relevant Press Articles on Google.
- Looking at Review Sites, Blogs, Reddit, etc.
- Mining through Organic Social and Ad Comments.


4. Ad Account Data

Find winning and losing creative in the ad account over the last:
- 30 days.
- 60 days.
- 90 days.


5. Features → Benefits

Turn any features of the product into benefits. E.g:

Waterproof fabric → Dry in heavy rainstorms
Insulated pockets → Warm hands in cold weather
Dishwasher safe → Easy to clean and reuse


6. Customer Reviews

Mine through 1000s of customer reviews using AI and summarise the most common:

- Benefits
- Pain points
- Purchase blockers


7. Competitor Analysis

Spy on competitors' ads to find out:
- Their longest-running ads.
- Creative formats.
- Offer details.
- Risk-reversals.


8. Angles

Now you can make your angles. Determine:
- The type of idea.
- Why it should work.
- What creative format will be used.


TL;DR:

Complete the following 8 research steps in order when producing your next round of ad creative:

1. Product
2. Customer Persona
3. Reputation Research
4. Ad Account Data
5. Features → Benefits
6. Customer Reviews
7. Competitor Analysis
8. Angles


Are there any other steps you'd add?

—

PS - We're hiring media buyers and creative strategists right now - visit this link to see all of our open roles: https://lnkd.in/dTXEw5dw

“You just need better creatives”

Sounds easy, right?

When sales from ads dip, the knee-jerk reaction is always the same

“Let’s make better creatives.”

But bad creatives are rarely the only reason campaigns underperform.

There’s more in play:

• Your offer
• Your targeting
• Your landing page
• Your timing
• Your retention strategy
  
I know brands that scaled faster by fixing their offer than by changing a single ad.

I know stores that doubled sales just by improving their product pages.

I know founders who cut CAC in half by reworking their targeting.

You might have the most beautiful ads in the world.

But ads don’t work in isolation.

They work when every piece - from the hook to the checkout is built to convert.

So yes, you might need better creatives.

But what you really need is every part of the funnel working together working together so your creatives can actually do their job.

Black Friday isn’t the growth event most brands think it is.

Hear me out…

If your ads, creative, and offers aren’t already working in October… Black Friday won’t save you.

Yes, you’ll see a spike.

Revenue will look great on a dashboard.

But it’s margin-crushing revenue.

You’re discounting heavily, paying inflated CPMs, and burning your best customers on short-term promos.

The real winners?

They use Black Friday as an amplifier and not a lifeline.

• Their retargeting pools are already full.
• Their creative angles are already proven.
• Their offer doesn’t destroy lifetime value just to drive vanity numbers.
  
Black Friday is jet fuel.

If your creative engine isn’t already running, all it does is start a fire.

--

P.S. - We're growing super fast and are hiring media buyers and creative strategists right now - click this link to see all of our open roles and apply https://lnkd.in/dTXEw5dw

If you can't produce enough ad creative to scale
↳ you have one of three problems:

a. not enough raw content
b. no system for reusing existing content
c. not enough bandwidth

Here's how to fix each of them:

a. not enough raw content

You need to source more content. A lot more.

↳ pay influencers
↳ offer gift cards to customers for testimonials
↳ design statics
↳ organise product shoots


b. no system for reusing existing content

This is a very common issue. Some brands have more than enough content, but don't know what to do with it all.

↳ organise all content
↳ tag according to clip type (see attached photo)
↳ create iteration briefs so strategists can easily explain to editors what footage to use when editing new concepts
↳ strict naming conventions


c. not enough bandwidth

Most brands know they have one of the above problems, but don't have the bandwidth to fix either of them.

↳ hire an editor, strategist and content co-ordinator to build your own internal performance creative pod
↳ hire a creative agency to produce, systemise and run the whole process
↳ hire a part-time strategist to help (better for small-scale operations)

—

There's a lot that goes into producing a performance creative.

And to scale on paid social, you need a creative operation that pumps out performance-focused ads every week.

So if your creative ops are not where they needs to be:

Identify which of the three bottlenecks above is holding you back, and fix it.

—

If you need help increasing the creative output over Q4 for your DTC brand, DM me 'CREATIVE'.


Ps. Are there anything other problems you'd add to the list?

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