Let’s play a quick game.
What were your last three online purchases?
Now, here’s a harder question: what were your last three purchases that you made after seeing an ad?
If you’re like most people, you probably had to check your credit card statement for the first question — and really struggled with the second. Maybe you couldn’t even do it.
I just did this exercise myself. My last three purchases were:
- Replacement cleats for my Peloton shoes
- A book recommended by a podcast host
- A gift for my daughter’s birthday
None of these came from seeing an ad, despite the thousands of ads I’m exposed to weekly.
Each purchase followed a completely different trigger: routine replacement, trusted recommendation, and planned occasion.
This reality check exposes one of the most dangerous assumptions product makers fall into: believing that advertising alone will drive reliable sales.
Most innovative products are built on business plans that assume a direct line from ad exposure to purchase.
“We’ll spend X on ads, convert Y% of viewers, and make Z in revenue.”
Yet ad-driven purchases remain relatively rare compared to other buying triggers, like:
- Replacing something that ran out
- Word-of-mouth recommendations
- Solving an immediate problem
- Routine purchases from trusted sources
- Planned occasion buying
In I Need That, I emphasize how the “flip” from want to need rarely happens from a single ad exposure. Instead, it comes from an accumulation of touchpoints, social proof, and most importantly — the RIGHT product meeting the RIGHT person at precisely the RIGHT moment. (That’s a lot to get RIGHT, on a reliable basis!)
Product Payoff: Glossier built a billion-dollar beauty brand with minimal traditional advertising by understanding that trusted recommendations drive purchases more effectively than ads. Their “Phase 1 Set” of essential skincare products was designed specifically to be photographed and shared, with distinctive minimalist packaging that stood out on social media. By empowering customers as advocates rather than targeting them as ad viewers, they achieved a remarkable 90% of their growth through organic sharing and word-of-mouth. When surveyed, 79% of their customers cited a friend’s recommendation as their reason for first purchase — not an ad!
Action for today: Revisit your customer acquisition strategy with THIS thought experiment: What if you knew advertising could only drive 20% of your sales? How would you design your product, pricing, distribution and marketing to generate the other 80% through replacement cycles, word-of-mouth, and solving immediate needs? With the marketplace moving towards zero-click, this could become your reality.
Want to explore more effective acquisition strategies beyond advertising? Tap that trusty reply arrow and let’s discuss what really drives purchases in your category. Or reach out to my team of go-to-market specialists at Graphos Product.