All in Performance Marketing

Why Your Ad Creative Is Your Biggest Performance Lever (Not Your Targeting)

Why Your Ad Creative Is Your Biggest Performance Lever (Not Your Targeting)

Claudia Giraldo
Performance Marketing, Digital Advertising, Growth Strategy

Most marketers assume that poor ad performance is a targeting problem. When campaigns underperform, the instinct is to tweak audiences, add exclusions, or chase ever more specific segments. But after managing over $2M in monthly ad spend and analyzing thousands of campaigns across SaaS and performance-driven brands, a different pattern emerged: targeting was rarely the real issue.

In many cases, the targeting was already precise, data-informed, and well-structured. What was failing was the creative. Generic stock imagery, predictable messaging, and low-effort visuals were quietly killing performance before targeting ever had a chance to work.

The Future of Performance Marketing: Combining Human Storytelling with AI Intelligence

The Future of Performance Marketing: Combining Human Storytelling with AI Intelligence

Claudia Giraldo
Performance Marketing, AI & Marketing Strategy, Digital Advertising

The future of performance marketing is not a battle between human marketers and artificial intelligence, it is a strategic collaboration between the two that unlocks stronger, more scalable results. The highest-performing campaigns today are built on human insight, emotional intelligence, and creative judgment, amplified by AI’s ability to generate scale, speed, and advanced pattern recognition across platforms. This article explores how modern marketing teams and agencies can combine human storytelling with AI execution to achieve faster testing, smarter optimization, and sustained competitive advantage, without sacrificing strategy, creativity, or long-term brand integrity.

Why SaaS Companies Need Different Creative Than E-Commerce (And How to Get Both Right)

Why SaaS Companies Need Different Creative Than E-Commerce (And How to Get Both Right)

Claudia Giraldo
SaaS Marketing Strategy, Performance Marketing

One of the most common mistakes brands make is assuming creative is interchangeable across business models. SaaS companies are not e-commerce brands, and treating them the same in paid media, content, and conversion strategy can quietly stall growth. SaaS buyers require education, trust, and long-term consideration, while e-commerce shoppers are driven by immediacy, emotion, and product clarity.

In this article, we break down why applying the same creative playbook to both models often leads to underperformance, and how to build creative strategies that align with each customer journey, protect positioning, and drive real, measurable growth.

The Real Cost of Poor Creative in Performance Marketing (And How to Fix It)

The Real Cost of Poor Creative in Performance Marketing (And How to Fix It)

Claudia Giraldo
Performance Marketing, Creative Strategy, Paid Media

Most performance marketers obsess over CPMs and targeting while ignoring the biggest budget drain: poor creative. I've managed campaigns from $10K to $300K+ monthly, and the pattern is clear, weak creative doesn't just underperform, it actively burns money. It drives up CPA, accelerates ad fatigue, tanks ROAS, and erodes brand equity. The hidden costs go beyond low CTRs: wasted impressions on burned audiences, missed revenue opportunities, and long-term brand damage that makes future campaigns harder. In this post, I break down the real financial impact of poor creative and share the strategic framework I use to build ads that convert while protecting brand integrity, because you can't afford to choose between performance and creativity. You need both.

AI-Accelerated Marketing: How We Cut Creative Production Time by 60% Without Sacrificing Quality

AI-Accelerated Marketing: How We Cut Creative Production Time by 60% Without Sacrificing Quality

Claudia Giraldo
Performance Marketing, AI & Automation

For years, creative teams have been forced to choose between speed and quality—move fast and sacrifice craft, or protect the brand and accept slow, bloated timelines. That tradeoff breaks down when AI is applied intentionally, not as a shortcut, but as an operational layer within a disciplined creative system.

By restructuring creative operations and integrating AI at specific, high-leverage points, we reduced end-to-end production time by 60% without compromising brand standards, performance rigor, or strategic clarity. AI didn’t replace creative thinking; it removed friction. Research cycles shortened, concept generation expanded, and iteration accelerated without overwhelming review processes or lowering quality.

Marketing Metrics That Matter: Why Most Dashboards Mislead Teams

Marketing Metrics That Matter: Why Most Dashboards Mislead Teams

Claudia Giraldo
Analytics & Measurement, Performance Marketing, Growth Strategy

Most dashboards are designed to look impressive, not to drive better decisions. They’re filled with charts, percentages, and real-time numbers that appear actionable but often obscure what’s actually happening beneath the surface. Vanity metrics, misaligned KPIs, and shallow reporting can quietly push teams toward the wrong conclusions, wasted spend, and a false sense of progress.

In this article, we break down why many marketing dashboards are misleading, which metrics actually signal sustainable growth and efficiency, and how to rethink measurement so data informs better strategy, sharper prioritization, and smarter decisions, not just prettier reports.

The Creative Brief That Actually Works: Behind the Scenes of a $2M Campaign

The Creative Brief That Actually Works: Behind the Scenes of a $2M Campaign

Claudia Giraldo
Creative Strategy, Performance Marketing

I’ve reviewed hundreds of creative briefs over my 15+ years in marketing, and most are either ineffective or actively harmful. They’re often too vague, leaving creative teams guessing, or so prescriptive that creativity is suffocated before it starts. When done right, however, a creative brief becomes a powerful performance tool.

It can be the difference between a $2M campaign that drives $8M in revenue and one that delivers mediocre results and endless revisions. After managing millions in ad spend across hundreds of campaigns, I’ve learned which elements actually drive performance and which are just noise. In this article, I’ll walk through a real creative brief from a campaign that generated just over $2M in tracked revenue on a $350K investment (5.7x ROAS), breaking down exactly what mattered, and how you can apply it to your own campaigns.

What Fashion Brands Taught Me About Storytelling in Performance Marketing

What Fashion Brands Taught Me About Storytelling in Performance Marketing

Claudia Giraldo
Performance Marketing, Digital Marketing

There's a perception in marketing that brand storytelling and performance marketing are opposing forces. Brand marketers craft beautiful narratives about aspirational lifestyles. Performance marketers optimize click-through rates and test button colors. But this is a false dichotomy. And my background in luxury fashion taught me why. In fashion, every campaign has to accomplish two things simultaneously: build the brand's cultural cachet while driving people into stores (or online) to make actual purchases. A fashion campaign that's beautiful but doesn't sell clothing is a failure. A campaign that drives transactions but erodes brand equity is equally a failure. Fashion has been solving the "brand + performance" challenge for decades. And the principles that work in fashion advertising translate remarkably well to performance marketing, if you know how to apply them.