What 40,000 Candidates Taught Me About Hiring a Meta Media Buyer

Today, I want to show you how to make sure your next media buyer is the one coming to you with what creatives to test next, what to cut, what to scale inside of your Meta accounts, so you're not the one stuck in the day-to-day. In my recruitment firm, we vetted over 40,000 candidates and made 100 plus placements with our clients. And I have these calls almost every day with agency owners, entrepreneurs that are scaling their own Meta accounts or their clients meta accounts and are not getting the growth that they want.

Now, that's actually the reason that I wanted to make this video is this weekend I had a call with a business owner on his third 7-figure business. Obviously, smart guy. He had run the ads in all the previous businesses. But in this current one, he got to the point where running the ads was no longer the best use of his time. He saw his time into higher leverage opportunities. Let's call this business owner Timmy.

Timmy made the logical decision when he determined that media buying was the constraint of his. So, he set out to find a media buyer. Now, why was he on a call with me if he already had a media buyer in place? Well, he basically explained to me that he was still the one having to direct this media buyer. Basically, he hired a button pusher that he was stuck having to babysit. And I've talked to a lot of business owners that are in that exact position where they they hired a media buyer, but they weren't actually doing a lot of media buying.

In fact, once we got down to it, come to find out, they're only launching 10 creatives a month on like 15 grand in ad spend, which is insane. And so Timmy was paying a full-time salary for something he could have just asked Claude to do. This media buyer was not coming with any suggestions on what to do. And when the Facebook Andromeda update released, Timmy was the one that had to tell the media buyer what to do as a result.

And obviously, Andromeda meant that everything was in the creative now. Yet, they're still only launching 10 creatives a month. So, not much change there. Now, it's easy to blame the media buyer and say, "Oh, they were just bad at their job." But as the intelligent entrepreneurs that we are, everything is a reflection of our own decisions. And obviously, this media buyer did not spawn into the business. He was vetted and hired by the business owner.

And so, we go back to the root of the problem, which is the original vetting that got this person in place to begin with. It starts with knowing what good looks like because a lot of people can interview well, but does that mean they're a good fit for a media buyer role? Now, I see media buying in three main areas. There's the execution, the day-to-day stuff, the optimizing of the accounts, the campaign structures, which for the most part you can do with that with Claude or with views.

The second part is the creatives. Now, creatives is not graphic design. It's using the data, using what's out in the market, and knowing what creatives, whether it be static image ads or video scripts to make that's going to resonate most with that ICP. A good media buyer is going to be bringing you those new angles to test and sending that off to the talent that's recording the ads, making the statics with ChatBT or with Canva.

They're not a graphic designer, but they see what works in the market and applies it to your meta accounts. Then there's the third part, the strategy side. Within a meta account, you can see a lot of stuff that you don't care about. You can see the hold rate, the hook rate, but if you're optimizing off that data, you're going to be wasting a lot in ad spend. That's why a good media buyer on the strategy side, they're looking at the fullfunnel attribution.

What is the cost per downstream actions? Now, this is all important to know first before you start trying to even see who's a good media buyer because you need to be able to differentiate who has watched a couple videos, is BSing you, and who is actually skilled at it, who actually can come to you with the ideas and the changes rather than waiting for you to tell them what to do. Now that we have an idea of what that person looks like, you have to actually go out and find them.

You can use Upwork, you can use Facebook groups, you can ask for referrals. Those definitely work for some people. They work to some extent, but you are banking a lot on luck and that the right person is just going to fall into your arms. Now, I have a recruitment firm that places media buyers, so I'm a little biased here, but I think it's the best way to go. I mean, one, recruiting is like, as a business owner, if media buying is a low leverage thing for you, so is vetting a bunch of applications.

But two, you also get to leverage the internal networks and the databases that a recruiter has built up. like the amount of inbound that we get because we've become known in these markets for placing media buyers. We get the kind of talent that is not sitting on Upwork, that is not sitting on online jobs, more so the person that is looking for a long-term career with a business owner. And so the execution media buyers, like I said, that's AI.

We could throw that to the side. You could prompt that pretty easily. If we're looking at the creative side though, the big thing here is I want to get evidence on the creative and the strategy that they can actually do this for my business, not for a past case study or some nice resume that they had. I want to get evidence that they can do it for this funnel, for this business.

And so my favorite way to see someone's creative ability is to have them make ads. Let's say I'm doing it for a client that does lead genen for injury law firms. We would have these candidates find their favorite ad libraries that are performing the best in that niche, break down their top ads, why they work so well, and then apply those same frameworks to this specific injury law firm. I want it to be for the actual funnel that we're running.

I don't want to take some case study that is maybe attributed to them or a resume that they made with AI. I want to see how they actually make a script, make the creatives for this business. Then on the strategy side, being able to look at fullfunnel metrics. So say it's for a e-commerce brand, giving them the full CRM numbers like whether it's with Hyros or some other full attribution methodology and giving them like stats from the actual client ad accounts that we're dealing with and having them determine what changes we're going to make inside of the ad account.

And I get all that proof out of the way before we ever hop on an interview. Now, an important piece here is I will offer these as a paid assessment. It's nothing crazy. it' be like 50, 100 bucks to these applicants that have made it this far, that have given me enough confidence to make that bet on them. But I find that gives me a much higher level of effort and quality.

It's like the the best media buyers that I'm speaking to are not just out here willy-nilly wanting to do free work over here, free work over there. They're like, "We I need something in return for this, man. I got other opportunities that I could be focused on." Now, only once we have the proof out of the way does the interview actually come into place. The most important thing for the interview for me is energy.

So seeing how someone's interacts on my team or with my client's team. Now this is more the culture fit side and I don't mean that as like a are we going to be friends sort of thing. It's like I want to make sure that I look forward to meeting with them, look forward to hopping on one-on- ones and celebrating their wins because if I don't, I'm not going to be able to give them the leadership they need to succeed no matter how good their skills are.

Whether you find yourself with that media buyer that Timmy that we spoke about in the beginning has the button pusher, the one you have to babysit, or you're ready to hire your first media buyer, these are the things that I would focus on to make sure you get the right person in place so you don't have to do it again. Most important takeaway here is get the proof. And I don't mean case studies, I don't mean resumes.

I mean for your specific funnel, your specific creatives, your specific offering. If you do this right, not only will you be able to scale your ad accounts further than you have, but you will no longer be the smartest person in the room when it comes to your ad account. Anyways, that's what I got for you. Uh, if you want a media buyer in place, if you want to chat about if we're a good fit to work together, link is down below.

I'll catch you in the next one.