The Catalyst Creatives

"Should I run Instagram ads or Facebook ads?" is one of the most common questions brand owners ask when they're getting started with Meta advertising.

The honest answer is more nuanced than most people expect, and it depends entirely on your product, your audience and your goals.

Swipe through for a clear breakdown of when to use each platform and how to decide what's right for your brand.

Save this before your next campaign planning session.
DM us if you want help deciding where your brand should focus its ad spend.

If your ads are driving traffic but your sales aren't matching, the first place to look isn't the ad.
It's your product page.

Your product page is the most important piece of real estate in your entire e-commerce business. It's where the buying decision is made. And most brands treat it as an afterthought.

A high converting product page needs to answer 5 questions the moment someone lands on it:
→ What is this exactly?
→ Is it for someone like me?
→ Can I trust this brand?
→ What happens after I pay?
→ Why should I buy it today?

If any of these questions go unanswered — your customer leaves. And your ad budget paid for that exit.

If your ads are driving traffic but your sales aren't matching, the first place to look isn't the ad.

Most e-commerce brand owners assume the difference between where they are and where they want to be is more ad spend or more products.

It's usually neither.

After working with multiple e-commerce businesses, the same patterns separate the brands at $10K/month from the ones at $100K/month, and almost none of them are about budget.

Swipe through to see exactly what the difference is.

Save this and honestly assess which stage your brand is currently at.
DM us if you want to talk about what's holding your brand back from the next level.

"How much should I spend on ads?" is one of the most common questions e-commerce brand owners ask.

The honest answer: it depends on your numbers, not on what you feel comfortable spending.

Swipe through for a practical framework for setting an ad budget that's tied to your actual business goals rather than guesswork.

Save this before your next campaign planning session.
DM us if you want help planning your ad budget properly.

Here's a pattern I see in e-commerce brands that are stuck:

They run a discount to drive sales. It works. So they run another one. And another. Until discounting becomes the only lever that moves product.

But here's what's actually happening underneath:

Their customers are being trained to wait for the sale. Full price starts to feel like a rip-off. Margins shrink with every campaign. And the brand becomes completely dependent on promotions to survive.

The brands that scale profitably don't lead with discounts. They build enough perceived value that customers buy at full price, and feel good about it.

Discounting is a tactic. It is not a marketing strategy.

How often does your brand run discounts? And do you think it's helping or hurting long-term? Drop it below.

Most e-commerce brands talk about what they're spending money on. Very few talk honestly about what they're wasting it on.

After working with multiple e-commerce businesses these are the patterns that show up every single time — budget going toward things that feel like marketing but aren't actually moving the needle.

Swipe through to see if any of these look familiar.

💾 Save this and audit your own budget against this list.
📩 DM us if you want help identifying where your budget is actually going.

There's a conversation happening in every e-commerce marketing team right now — brand vs performance.

Performance marketing is measurable, immediate and easy to justify to a CFO. Brand marketing is slower, harder to attribute and easy to cut when budgets get tight.

But here's what cutting brand investment actually does: it makes your performance marketing more expensive over time. When nobody knows who you are, every click costs more to earn. When people trust your brand, they convert faster and come back without being retargeted.

The most efficient performance marketing sits on top of strong brand awareness. Not instead of it.

How do you split your marketing budget between brand and performance? Let me know below.

Most e-commerce brands spend weeks perfecting their creative and ten minutes writing the copy underneath it.

If your ads are getting clicks but not converting, the copy is almost always part of the problem.

But copy is what actually closes the sale. The image stops the scroll. The words make the decision.

If your ads are getting clicks but not converting, the copy is almost always part of the problem
Swipe through to see the most common copy mistakes and exactly what to fix.

💾 Save this before you write your next ad.
📩 DM us if you want us to review your current ad copy.

There's a debate that never ends in e-commerce — organic vs paid.

Here's the honest answer: it's not either-or.

Organic content builds trust, warms your audience and gives paid ads something credible to point to.

Paid ads scale what's already working and reach people who've never heard of you.

Brands that rely purely on organic hit a ceiling fast; there's only so many people you can reach without distribution.

Brands that rely purely on paid are one algorithm change or CPM spike away from a crisis.

The brands building sustainable businesses in 2026 treat both as essential rather than competing strategies.

Which one does your brand rely on more right now? Be honest below.

Most e-commerce brands launch paid ad campaigns without asking the most important questions first. Then they blame the platform when results disappoint.

The truth is, the brands that consistently get strong results from paid ads do the groundwork before the campaign even launches.

Swipe through to see the 5 questions every founder should be able to answer before running paid ads.

💾 Save this before your next campaign launch.
📩 DM us if you want to go through these together before you start spending.

The truth is, the brands that consistently get strong results from paid ads do the groundwork before the campaign even launches.