Paid Media That Works: A Founder's Guide to Growth with Jhara Valentini of Valentini Media Group

At Female Founder Collective's The 10th House, we know that most founders treat paid media as either a magic button or a money pit. In our latest hands-on workshop, Jhara Valentini, founder of Valentini Media Group, shared the framework she's used to manage over $200M in media spend for brands like Louis Vuitton, Disney, and Hello Sunshine. Her biggest revelation? Paid media isn't a fixer, it's a multiplier. If your customer journey is broken, paid ads just amplify the leak faster and more expensively.

Before spending a single dollar on ads, Jhara insists you need to answer one critical question: does your website convert cold traffic at an acceptable rate organically? If not, paid media will only scale your problem. "Paid media is a multiplier, not a fixer," she explains. A broken customer journey plus paid spend equals expensive leak amplification.

Here's what needs to be working before you turn on ads. First, your awareness stage must answer who you are, what you offer, and why someone should care. Success here looks like strong engagement rates, shares, and new site visitors discovering your brand. Second, your consideration stage builds interest through education. "If they don't know you, they won't like you, they won't come back," Jhara notes. This is where you explain your value proposition, differentiation, and brand story. Third, your conversion stage requires simple navigation, clear pricing, social proof, and fast checkout. Finally, your retention stage keeps customers coming back, which is your actual margin multiplier.

Most founders jump straight to conversion campaigns without building awareness or consideration first. This is why their cost per acquisition skyrockets and their marketing efficiency ratio tanks.

The Strategies That Actually Drive Profitable Growth

Here's what Jhara revealed about building paid media campaigns that scale with margin, not just revenue:

• Your campaigns need to match where customers are actually dropping off. Low website traffic means you need awareness campaigns with founder stories. High cart abandonment signals conversion issues that social proof and retargeting can fix. Poor repeat purchases require retention work through email and loyalty programs. The important part is that all these stages work together, as running conversion campaigns without feeding awareness at the top is like filling a bucket with no bottom.
• How much you spend should reflect your actual business stage. Early-stage founders need 5-8% of revenue to learn what resonates, starting with $100-200 daily. Growth-stage founders scale to 8-12% once the model works. At scale with proven retention, you can push toward 12-18%. The goal is sustainable growth that protects margins, not aggressive scaling that kills profitability.
• The metrics that actually matter are MER and CPA. Marketing Efficiency Ratio (total revenue divided by marketing spend over 35-90 days) shows real profitability and you should aim for 3-4x early stage, 4-6x growth stage, and 5-8x scale stage. Cost Per Acquisition should stay at 30-35% of Average Order Value. Both need to be healthy before you scale.
• Three margin levers matter more than ad spend. Before throwing more money at ads, focus on boosting Average Order Value through bundles and upsells for immediate revenue lift. Then work on Lifetime Value with email automation and loyalty programs that create compounding returns over time. Finally, improve efficiency through creative testing and landing page optimization. Most founders obsess over lowering CPA when increasing AOV and LTV actually delivers better results.

• New brands need a different Q4 strategy. Established brands dominate holiday conversion auctions with months of targeting data you don't have. Instead, allocate 70% of Q4 budget to awareness campaigns targeting gift-seekers.

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