A good reminder that scaling usually comes from creative velocity, not website tweaks
So I've been working closely with a Belgian buddy of mine. He sells skincare products and also haircare products.
He was stuck at an approximate turnover of €1k every month for long time.
He was doing everything right on a theoretical level. The website looked fresh and clean, social proof was there, he had an AI chatbot to answer the most basic questions, the pictures looked professional, his ads were clean and branded, and he collaborated with a lot of different influencers.
But he just couldn’t really surpass that plateau I previously mentioned.
What actually changed everything was when he scaled his ad production volume and, more importantly, his testing volume.
Instead of having just 4–5 ads running on Meta and Google, he went hardcore and started testing like actual media buyers do: one variable at a time.
For example, he would keep the exact same audience, budget, landing page, offer, and CTA, and only change the hook / first 3 seconds.
Something like:
- my hair stopped falling out in 2 weeks
- I wasted €200 on products before this
- the serum that fixed my dry scalp
Once he found a hook with a strong thumb-stop rate / hook rate, he moved to phase two and tested the body of the ad.
Same hook, but different middle sections:
- product demo
- before/after
- UGC testimonial
- ingredient explanation
- founder story
After that came offer testing:
- single product
- bundle
- discount framing
- buy 2 get 1
- free shipping threshold
This is what professionals actually do.
They don’t test randomly.
They isolate the exact lever that moves performance.
One metric he started watching closely was hook rate. For DTC brands, once a creative starts pushing above the 25–30% range, it’s usually a strong early signal.
Then he tracked hold rate to understand whether people stayed after the hook.
A lot of creatives had great hooks but poor hold rates, which meant the opening was strong but the rest of the ad wasn’t carrying intent.
One of the best performing formats ended up being what is called yapping.
Longer UGC style videos where someone just talks naturally in a natural setting (bathroom worked best for him), almost rambling, explaining the problem and how the product solved it.
Those outperformed the polished branded creatives by a mile.
The biggest lesson for me was this:
most brands don't test creatives enough when trying to scale.
Once he increased production volume and started testing systematically instead of randomly, he finally broke through that €1k plateau and started scaling.
With AI you can actually scale ads production at a much lower rate, and much higher speed. Use tools like Reloop or Creatify. We're in a an age where the cost of testing has never been so low, and the possibility of mass production has never been so high.