In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Emilio Murphy, Head of Paid Media at Muscle Nation
Emilio Murphy is Head of Paid Media at Muscle Nation, the community and culture driven fitness brand. Before that, Emilio spent three and a half years at hypergrowth start up HiSmile, helping them conquer the teeth whitening sector. Emilio gives us all his tips, plus the channels and formats he sees as essential for success. He reveals the most important lever in his advertising arsenal and shares his predictions on the future of search.
“For me creative is one of, if not the most important lever in my arsenal”
Emilio Murphy
From HiSmile to Muscle Nation
“Before this, for three and a half years, I was at the startup HiSmile. So I was the advertising manager. These days, it’s definitely a little bit more than a startup. When I started in 2019, they were really cracking the code on early paid media, utilising influencers. So it was a really exciting time for me to join the brand.
And then at the nexus of their breaking into other platforms like TikTok, and now they’re kind of a staple on the platform. Funnily enough, I pushed the go button on those TikTok ads on Black Friday in 2021. That was an exciting time. We went from spending peanuts to spending six figures the next day. So it was pretty ridiculous.”
An easy win
“I think the very basic, easy plug-in and play one is Advantage Plus Shopping Campaigns on Meta. Super easy. Essentially, it leverages machine learning and AI to best serve your ads to people who are more likely to purchase your product. So you set it at a budget, whatever you feel comfortable spending, and then you skip the targeting.
I know it sounds scary at first. I was very hesitant at first because I was worried. I said, oh, well, if I can’t control my targeting, I don’t know if I really want to do this. Because I personally know what audiences work well for the business, as I’m sure business owners are also aware of. But it gets to a point where targeting gets diluted.
So you’re able to give it a budget and then feed it multiple pieces of creative. I’ve heard stories of people putting hundreds of pieces of creative within these campaigns. And then just pressing go. You can start at a small campaign, small budget, and then slowly work your way up to where you feel comfortable spending. But it’s such an easy way and such an easy, such an easy result just to get wins on the board.”
One day last click attribution
“I think you need to have a really good understanding of attribution. It’s important to be able to benchmark platforms against one another and not look at them in isolation. It’s all very well to say, oh, well, this platform is doing really well, that platform is doing really well. But what does that look like from a multi-channel outlook? There needs to be a single source of truth, and then you should be able to benchmark platforms against that source of truth.
Alot of performance media marketers think I’m a little bit weird for doing this, but I look at one day last click attribution. It’s essentially the most conservative attribution method you possibly can do, which has come back to bite me a few times, but I think it’s honestly just looking at what brought someone to the website and did they convert off that ad immediately? It’s definitely not a best fit for a lot of businesses. For instance, if you’re a mattress brand, you’re probably not going to look at a one day attribution model, because I know it probably takes me a few weeks to decide for a big ticket item, what I want to buy.
But for a business like Muscle Nation or even a business like HiSmile, it’s very much grabbing attention and doing all you can to elicit a purchase in that interaction.”
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