The Average Lies

If someone tells you the average person has one ovary and one testicle, that's technically true.

It's also completely useless information.

Averages do this to marketing data constantly, and nobody notices.

If I take 10 of the 60+ brands we manage,
And take their Meta ROAS, they range from 2.1x all the way up to 14.2x.

If you averaged that out, you'd get roughly 8x.

But that's the problem.

Not one single brand in that group sits at 8x.
That number describes 0 of the 10.

It's a made-up middle point that exists on a spreadsheet and nowhere else.

This happens everywhere in marketing.

Industry benchmarks get built the same way.

Somebody averages a huge pile of businesses together, from tiny startups to brands doing 9 figures, and hands you back one tidy number to compare yourself against.

Your business sits at one specific point on a very wide range.

Shaped by your category, your funnel maturity, how long you've been spending, and a dozen other things an average can't see.

Chase the average number, and you might be aiming at a target that describes almost nobody.

The question worth asking isn't "Am I above or below the average?"
It's "Where do businesses like mine sit, and where am I compared to them specifically?"

That's a completely different question, and it usually has a completely different answer.

We're putting together a full breakdown of where 10 of our brands sit across every metric that matters, by vertical, so you can see the full range instead of one flattened number.

Keep an eye out; more on this soon.

♻️ Repost this for the founder still benchmarking against a number that describes nobody.
And follow me, Jacob Rokeach, for more on growth and creative strategy in retail, beauty, and fashion.