The Old King Of The Hill Model Is Out & The Awareness Model Is In
In this monologue, Jeff Miller explains that Facebook’s historic "king of the hill" advertising approach—pouring the entire budget into a single top‑performing ad until the audience is exhausted—is obsolete. He argues that the platform’s recent Andromeda update now supports a more nuanced, awareness‑stage marketing model that mirrors how consumers actually buy: moving from Unaware → Problem‑Aware → Solution‑Aware → Product‑Aware → Most‑Aware. Miller details how advertisers should structure campaigns with 2–3 distinct creatives, messages, and avatars for each awareness stage, rather than constantly flipping ads in a single aggressive bucket. He provides concrete performance anecdotes (e.g., 20‑30 appointments per day at $30‑$70 per booking, $60k+ contracts) and contrasts the benefits of targeting the larger, less‑competitive unaware and problem‑aware segments versus the tiny, highly‑competitive most‑aware segment. Throughout, he emphasizes that misapplying the old model leads to erratic results, while deliberately sequencing ads through the awareness stages yields consistent, scalable growth. The talk concludes with a call to adopt the awareness‑stage framework for sustainable success on Facebook advertising.
Chapters
Is that gonna work? Who the fuck knows? Oh, there we go. Go live. All right, cool. All right, so I'm seeing a whole boatload of people have boatload of conversations about Andromeda, its changes, why it's working, why it's not working, and everybody's got their suspicions and hypotheses and stuff like that. And I'm gonna take this opportunity to really show you, really communicate to you how this stuff is supposed to work and do it in a way that's like very clear and obvious and explicit. So as a big picture, right? Facebook used to run on something called the king of the hill model. The king of the hill model is when it would find one ad that was generating buyers and it would take all the budget you had and run it to that ad. And it would run it to that ad until it burnt out the audience, ran that ad to the ground, and then it would find the next one and take all the budget and run it into that, burn it to the ground, burn out the audience, and then rinse and repeat through as many ads as you could. The way you experienced this was you would see wild fluctuations of your results. The way you handled this was by turning ads off, turning ads on, having multiple campaigns, different ad sets, targeting, trying to figure out all this stuff so that you can find a new audience of people who want to buy your stuff. As a side note, that means you think you're smarter than Facebook, which you're not, but there's a reason why you're doing that, which is because of this, which is based upon the king of the hill model. That is not correct. Facebook knows that's not correct and has been running on this incorrect marketing model for the entirety of existence, and it's worked up until it stopped working. Now Facebook sells and advertises the way people buy, which is through awareness stages. Unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware, most aware. Imagine this. Imagine if— well, we'll take me as an example, right? You can show me as many ads about a colonoscopy as you want. 10% off, 20% off, 2 for 1. You need to buy it right now because of blah, blah, blah. And I'm going, I don't care. It doesn't apply. You're never gonna get me to convert into buying colonoscopy because I don't know that I need a colonoscopy. I am unaware of my challenges and problems. This is just how I live my life. If you want me to buy a colonoscopy, you have to start with me as most unaware and then progress me to problem-aware, solution-aware, product-aware, most aware. You need to take me through these stages. Just showing me different colored 10% off colonoscopy ads is not gonna make me wanna buy. That's it, end of discussion. And like I was hinting at earlier, The Andromeda update has finally allowed Facebook to properly sell and market in this fashion. So I'm gonna show you with my fancy charts and graphs what that looks like, and this will help you understand the intended result. Here we go. Yeah, so Facebook again. The way it used to run is on a king of the hill model, which it was advertised the most aware or whatever the fuck your ad was and run that shit to the ground. Different styles, different headlines, different hooks, all this stuff would just be like, ah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, most aware, most aware, most aware. And eventually you run out of an audience. And what happens when you run out of audience? Your results do this. You ran out of an audience, okay? No more results. Results used to be here. You ran out of audiences. No more people wanting to buy your shit. Shit dies. That's what it looks like. And then what happens is you turn off ads, you say advertising doesn't work, blah blah blah, fine, whatever. And secretly, to your unawareness, people are progressing through these stages. There's some conference over there. They see some results, they look at some blog or post, they become unaware, problem-aware, solution-aware, product-aware, and then they fall in the most aware category again. And then 3 months later, you start advertising, oh my God, it started working again. So results go back up, and then guess what? The king of the hill model, advertise the hell out of the one ad, shit dies, that's the cycle, right? Again, that's not actually how people buy. People buy through the progression of awareness stages, and for the first time ever, Facebook supports this. This is the update that everyone's getting hit with that refuses to acknowledge. This is why my clients are quoting $60,000 contracts. Yes, $60,000 contracts. The way you're supposed to run your stuff now is you have 2 or 3 assets 2 or 3 marketing messages, 2 or 3 avatars, 2 or 3 creatives for each awareness stage. If you're good at your job, you will label them as such. So I have accounts right now that are getting 20 or 30 appointments per day at $30 to $50 per day, and this is how we're running shop. We have 2 or 3 communications for the unaware stage, 2 or 3 for the problem-aware stage, 2 or 3 for the solution-aware, product-aware, and most aware. The result is that people start here, they're scrolling up and down Facebook, they pause for a half second, look at your stuff, they do no interaction at all. They're not clicking on it, they're not opening, they're not buying. They are just simply pausing for a half second. Facebook knows this, says, ah, now they are aware. It shows them the next ad, shows them problem-aware ad. In this case, somebody may pause for 2 or 3 seconds and click the See More button. Cool. Maybe they scroll up and down looking for some bullet points, headlines, read a little bit of your long-form article. Cool. Facebook knows this, shows them solution aware. Then they see the ad, they click see more, they look through it, they click on the link, but they don't schedule. Product aware shows them the next ad. Then finally, most aware shows them the next ad. It shows them these ads in an order that makes sense. Again, if you don't know this and you're operating on a king of the hill model, you're gonna be bitching and moaning and complaining going, oh my God, this isn't working. Meanwhile, I have a coaching client that hasn't lost a client in 18 months because we run on this setup, the awareness stage model. Again, not the king of the hill model, the awareness stage model. And I had this conversation with a guy who's doing sales coaching, I had this conversation with a guy that runs gyms, I had a conversation like this. Somebody does taxes. Here's what you're doing on the king of the hill model. You exist here in the smallest, most aggressive, most difficult, most aware stage where everybody is cutthroat, angry, and pissed. And you're here, and then somehow there's some competition. Some guy pops up here, some guy pops up here, and you're just sitting there going, oh my God. It's all the same. You get phone calls of clients going, how are you different than everybody else? You go, oh, I need to be different. I know what I'll do is I'll be different, okay? And then you're different. Ooh, so exciting. It's working for a little bit. And then all of a sudden they go, well, how are you different than everybody else? Well, actually, you know what? We have a risk reversal, all right? So my shape is different, okay? Well, actually, we spend a lot of money on ads, okay? So that's how we're different. Not only do we have a different avatar marketing message, you know, we donate our money, like, oh, we do cool ads, but you're all still fucking fighting in the stupidest, most aggressive, most angry category right here. This is you guys bounce around like a bunch of fucking idiots fighting over the smallest bucket. Of the most aware people that are most aggressively looking at your competition. If you're ever on the phone with a client and they go, oh yeah, I've been seeing a lot of your ads with your, you know, the other guy, and you're like, oh fuck, dude, that means you're in this bucket right here. It doesn't matter if you're successful or unsuccessful here, you're still in the smallest bucket. This is why you hear Dan Kennedy or Alex Hormozi talk about the person who spends the most to acquire wins. That's because they're all talking about this fucking bucket. This is the smallest of the buckets, the smallest, the most competitive, the most angry. You do not want to exist here at all. Go let your competition deal with shrinking margins, being angry all day long, clients that leave, all that shit. If you read any of those guru stuff over the past 5 years, They only talk about the most aware bucket, and that's just why everybody is so fucking pissed off at these guys. Because not only does that shit not work, but it tends to work for a little bit to get you addicted, and you're like, damn, man, like, this shit sucks. So here you are bouncing around the most aware with your risk reversals, your guarantees, you know, I'll get you 30, I'll get you 35, I'll get you 4, I'll get you 100 appointments. And then just bounce around other. This is you. This is what you're doing because you're used to the king of the hill model. This shit sucks. Don't exist there. Instead, exist here where the market is just so much bigger. Where you're talking to clients that are not being actively funnel hacking you. We're not talking to clients that be actually hit up by your competition. Where your objections are more fun and interesting. Where they go, wow, this is so cool, I had no idea, where they know that this shit gets hard and has ups and downs and totally okay with it because they've gone from unaware, problem-aware, solution-aware, product-aware, and then they are in most aware, and you got them before the competition did. This is how you're supposed to run your marketing, fellas. This is it right here. Again, this is why I'm getting 30 appointments a day every day for the past 30 days at $50 to $70 a pop. This is why I have clients getting $50 booked appointments of people that saw the VSL Went through the qualification form, booked with a 50% show rate. This is why I have clients booking and closing $5,000 to $8,000 deals of people going, wow, I had no idea this fucking existed. This is so cool, I'm really interested. Again, this is why I have clients doing $61,000 quotes because they're doing this shit here. They don't sit here. If you sit here, you are in the angriest, most competitive, most difficult, most frustrating part of the market. Don't go here. You don't go here by purposefully not going there. If you're trying to be different or unique or whatever, not— you're still fucking there. You have to purposefully have a strategy on unaware marketing messages, problem-aware marketing messages, Solution-aware marketing messages, product-aware, you're gonna go all the way down. Here's what's fun. Some markets have different market attributes, strategies, and I was gonna say forces, but that's very Michael Porter. I have some clients that are advertising GHL as a SaaS, right? They're paying $700 per subscriber 'cause they're right here. They're like, look at my value stack. It's so wonderful, it's so exciting, all these things. And the buyers are like, well, how are you different than everybody else? I'm like, don't fucking sit in the most aware market, it's gonna suck. I have a client doing GHL SaaS for a paint dent repair. 90% of their leads come from the unaware market. He is in the blue ocean because we are purposefully creating marketing messages Specifically for people who are unaware. I have clients who sit equally between problem, solution, and product. They have no unaware, no must-aware. They are only problem, solution, and product-aware advertising. That's it. They're getting 10 leads per day from each category, purposeful by design. The objections here are much more interesting and friendly. Than the objections here. Massively different interaction, massively happier clients, massively better clients. Purposefully sitting in these stages makes your marketing pay off. Accidentally sitting in these stages means your marketing will never work. You know all that funnel hacking that you're doing? Which market do you think you're sitting in, buddy? You're sitting in the most aware. So you're copying somebody who's already in the bloodiest, most difficult, most angry, most frustrating market there is. You're like, why isn't this working? I guess you're too stupid to know the difference, right? That's how this shit is supposed to work. You're supposed to purposefully understand which awareness stage your clients sit in. This is how you win in 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, from now until the end of time. This is the marketing— this is how your market's supposed to work. If you're not doing this, you are sitting in here. If you're doing this purposefully, you're sitting in here. That's how this stuff is supposed to work. I have a client that does Google My Business rankings. They use AI to increase Google My Business rankings. Apparently the software fucking works fantastic. Do you think we are creating marketing messages for the most aware market? Hey roofers, I know you already have a GMB agency. Let me re-quote you. No man, fuck you. I'm not doing that. We are targeting people who are totally unaware. That they could use Google My Business to increase their business. We're talking people who know that they have a problem and they know that GMB is a solution. They just don't know which product to do it with. We're targeting a market inherently 10 times bigger with less competition, with less frustration, because we are purposefully creating marketing messages at each stage. This is what Facebook wants you to do. You just decided to stop paying attention and you're only looking at these guys. This is how marketing is working with the awareness stage. Again, if you're operating on the king of the hill model, you have a campaign with an ad set with an ad, and every day you're turning them on and on again and turning them off and then back and forth, and you're just having a damn fucking hard time. If you're doing the awareness stage marketing, you have one campaign One avatar, awareness stages. Some of my clients have 10 avatars. Facebook is bouncing around up and down having a great time. $30 booking, $40 booking, $50 booking, whatever, doesn't matter. One avatar, one awareness stage is working a lot better than the avatar, the awareness stage, and just bounce around 50 or 60 different awareness stages and avatar combinations. This is not doing slight variations of a slight hook. This is not doing red versus blue. This is not saying I'm going to test one different sentence and see if that magically changes. Incorrect. That is pussyfooting and pretending that you're making a massive change. Incorrect. It's awareness stages. This is the model you need to migrate to, to have the success that you're looking for. If you don't, you're going to be very much flustered for the remainder of your advertising agency journey, and you'll probably exit the industry thinking that you have bad clients or marketing just stopped working. That's how this shit is working from now on until the end of the foreseeable future. This is what you're supposed to do. I have a meeting right now. I'm logging off. Digest this. Be an adult. Be a better business owner. FIFO. Get it done. Peace out. Bye.
