Sarah Levinger

After watching my agency clients struggle to connect deeply with their customers, I went on a 10 year long search to figure out what really makes buyers tick.

What I found was kind of shocking…

My gut feeling was right - it’s not always about how creative your ads are, how irresistible your offers seem, or even the strategy you've spent months perfecting.

Nope, the secret to truly connecting with those elusive customers and unlocking the potential to generate millions is...well, a bit deeper than that.

When you understand the real reasons behind customer behaviors, you're not just shooting arrows in the dark hoping to hit the target. You’re crafting messages that resonate, strategies that work, and connections that last. 

And that’s where the magic happens, where browsing turns into buying, and casual customers become loyal fans.

I’m here to guide you through this journey, translating complex consumer behavior into actionable, growth-driving strategies. 

It’s time you unlocked the full potential of your brand…using psychology.

Director of Growth Marketing

🚨 I'm sorry, but if you're not going to put in the time, energy and discipline required to learn how to pull TOF audiences with FREE organic content, you're going to be required to do it (and pay BIG $$$ for it) in the ad account.

I keep hearing way too many conversations around Meta's inability to target top of funnel, which is completely backwards. The ad account was never built to be a TOF engine, and will never be a good TOF engine...because it's an ad machine.

If you're not gonna put effort into building an organic following, you're just gonna keep paying for customers who could be free. 😬

Helping you get off the creative testing treadmill. 🧠 Psych-driven frameworks that turn customer insights into ads that actually stick. Founder @ Tether Insights. FREE Skool: Skool.com/tether-lab

Two things you need to know as a creative strategist:

1. Pain-state creative talks to someone feeling the problem right now. 

2. Prospective-state creative talks to someone who is *thinking* about the problem right now.

In my experience, about 90% of ads are built for the first state of mind...but most impressions land on the second!

Here's a 20-min diagnostic to fix this:

1️⃣ STEP 1: Pull Hook Rate and Hold Rate side by side.
2️⃣ STEP 2: Read the pattern.

High Hook + High Hold → Right state. 
In this case, your hook matched the viewer's internal narrative, and the body of the ad continued it.

High Hook + Low Hold → Most common problem. 
In this case, your hook grabs attention but body pivots to features too quickly. Don't pivot to product info, just continue the narrative. Stay in the movie.

Low Hook + High Hold → Most promising. 
In this case, substance works, the opening doesn't. It's too polished for a feed of creators speaking directly. Choose hooks that sound like thinking, not pitching. "I keep coming back to this idea that..." (you want internal dialogue, not advertising.)

Low Hook + Low Hold → It's a dud.
In this case, you want to look and see if the brief was built from pain-state research (like reviews, or tickets) or thinking-state research (like Reddit, comments, organic). If it was pain-state research, everything downstream inherits the miscalibration.

3️⃣ STEP 3: Pull retention curves for your top 5 and bottom 5 ads. If you see...

Sharp drop at 3–6s → State mismatch. 
In this case, the Prospective mind expected a good story, but got a pitch too quickly. Time to upgrade your story angle.

Gradual decline → Register slightly off. 
In this case, you're probably using too many pain words (i.e.: frustration, "nothing works.") instead of thinking words: (possibility, "I keep imagining what it would look like if...")

Steady retention, drops at end → Losing them at the CTA. 
In this case, "Shop now" is a state break and it's probably causing some scroll behavior. A better option: "This is what it looks like on the other side" would work well here because it doesn't breaking the mental flow...it's just offering a continuation.

4️⃣ STEP 4: Before anything goes live, ask yourself three questions:

1. Is this hook for a problem being felt or a problem being thought about?
2. Does the body stay in the same register or pivot?
3. Does the close keep them in the story or rip them out?

📌TLDR: The ad content winning right now is *prospective* (they're ads that sound like someone thinking out loud). Pain-based concepts are unstable in the ad account because Andromeda evaluates creative first and matches it to global behavioral signals for each person it sends the ad to, which includes their organic engagement!

More often than not, the thing that makes you most successful is born out of necessity, not talent.

80% of my success can be attributed to the fact that I write well. 

I learned how to write well because (for quite some time) no one would listen to me when I spoke. 😅 So I put all my energy into learning a communication form that would break though. Took many years, but I finally mastered it, and now people pay to read what I write…and listen to me talk.

This post isn’t to toot my own horn, here. Your goal, your business, your personal brand, and/or your life might be seeing some stagnation, but it’s often not because you’re not trying. It’s mostly just because you’re weak at one form of communication

And that is something you can most definitely learn how to get better at.

📌 CREATIVE STRATEGISTS: the #1 hook that's working for me right now sits in Valence Zone 1 (this article shows you exactly what that means and how to make them your brand):

While your LLM is busy cranking out high-intensity headlines, the rest of the world is pivoting toward something much calmer. This guide will show you

Open article: The 1 Hook That's Working Best Right Now (And Why Your AI Will Never Get It Right) by Sarah Levinger • 14 min read

The 1 Hook That's Working Best Right Now (And Why Your AI Will Never Get It Right)

🚨🎉SHAMELESS PLUG...(because too many creative strategists told me this week they're confused as hell…)

The entire education ecosystem for creative strategy is about 3 years behind where the platforms actually are, and nobody is talking about why!

Meta doesn't rank ads like ads anymore. 

It ranks them like For You Page content. 

Which means the entire skillset most of us were trained on is partially obsolete.

🏁 The new goal isn't to "make a good ad", it's to make something the algorithm wants to push AND that a human wants to finish watching, which are two completely different problems.

And solving both at the same time requires a different way of thinking about creative that most people haven't been taught yet.

(I know this because I watch 100+ DTC operators try to solve it every single week.)

The creative strategists who crack this new algorithm don't test differently...they think differently.

(About ads, content, and growth in general.)

Not "storytelling" in the superficial brand voice sense...I'm talking about the actual mechanical structure of why a human brain stays or leaves, and how to engineer that into 15 seconds of video before your competitors have even opened a brief.

📌A few weeks ago (in my creative strategy community, Tether Lab) we:

1. Reverse-engineered a viral TikTok
2. Pulled out the story framework inside it
3. Then turned it into a live working ad framework for a hair care brand

...in under five minutes.

This is the stuff we're learning how to do inside Tether Lab.

If you've been looking for the room where the conversation is actually two years ahead instead of two years behind 👇 come find out what we're working on.

🧸Creative Strategy for Babies

1. This is a Brand.

The brand has a ball. They want their ball to be your favorite toy. But there are many balls in the toy box. How do we make this ball special?

2. This is a Person.

We call them the Target Audience.

• Some people like green balls.
• Some people like shiny balls.
• One person really likes balls that squeak.

3. This is the Problem.

That person is bored with all the balls in the toy box. They have a blue ball and a shiny ball, but neither of them makes a sound. They are sad.

4. This is the Insight.

"Bored people want to be surprised." A squeak is a surprise for the ears!

5. This is the Strategy.

We will not tell them the ball is round. They know it is round. We will tell them: "This ball talks back." This is something they don’t know yet.

6. This is the Creative.

Now we make a video of a loud, yellow, squeaky ball and show it to the person. The person hears the squeak. The person is happy!

8. This is the Algorithm.

The ball follows the person.

In the toy box.
In the car.
In the nap-nap.

The person thinks, "Is this ball following 
me?" 

Yes. The ball is everywhere.

We call this Advertising.

9. This is the Conversion.

The person stops one day and picks up the yellow squeaky ball. The person squeezes the ball.

SQUEAK!

The person is delighted.

The ball is now their favorite toy.

We have a High Retention Rate.

10. This is called Scaling.

Now we make a blue squeaky ball.
And a red squeaky ball.
And a shiny squeaky ball.

The toy box is full of squeaks.

We make more videos of each ball so every person can have one of their own. 

The people are delighted.

The Strategist takes a nap.

The End.

(Somebody make this book for me 😅)

15 years in marketing and NO ONE TOLD ME THIS!? 🤯🤯🤯

According to science, customers are 4X more likely to enjoy an *experience* as an upgrade instead of an object…and will spend MORE MONEY if they’re offered one.

✅ Like this: 
“Get full access to our training library.”
 
❌ Not this: 
“Get a free gift with purchase.”

Source: https://lnkd.in/g2SU_G2N

After working with 150+ DTC brands over the past 6 years, one pattern shows up more than any other...

It's not that internal creative teams lack skill necessarily (most of them are genuinely good.)

It's that most creative strategy...even sophisticated creative strategy...stops one layer too soon. 😬

Teams are nailing the hooks, the story, the customer language. What they're rarely touching is the layer underneath: 

👉 How emotion lands, not just whether it's present.
👉 The emotional state an ad meets.
👉 The timing of a message relative to where a customer is internally.

That's the layer that tends to explain the performance ceilings no amount of testing seems to break.

Here's 7 ways to help your creative strategy team go deeper:

This is a guide to the psychological mechanics of how emotion lands in advertising, and the layer beneath hooks, story, and customer insight that dete

Open article: Most Creative Strategy Stops One Layer Too Soon...Here Are 7 Ways to Go Deeper by Sarah Levinger • 10 min read

Most Creative Strategy Stops One Layer Too Soon...Here Are 7 Ways to Go Deeper

🧠 Your best creative thinker might be your media buyer.

⚙️ Your best systems thinker might be your designer.

❤️ Your best empathizer might be your CFO.

I've been running psychological team audits lately (25+ brands), and I keep finding the same pattern buried inside otherwise high-performing teams:

We hired people to cover tasks, not to think. 

Someone to run ads. Someone to write copy. Someone to manage the account. We've got our weekly tasks covered. A neat org chart. Creative output that's... fine.

But "fine" doesn't scale a business.

I think we've unintentionally siloed ourselves into something pretty scary...

Role-based hiring optimizes for task completion, and yes, that matters. We all need the seat filled, the work done, the deadline hit. But in doing so, we almost always bury what that person is 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘢𝘵. The instinct they were born with, the pattern they see that no one else sees, the way they process a problem before anyone else has named it.

I truly hate this, because it's detrimental to your team (lots of frustration, hopelessness, and unanswered conviction within the team) AND it's detrimental to your growth.

We never ask people, "what's your zone of genius"? in the interview.

We tell them what the job is, handed them a Notion doc, and pointed them at the to-do list.

Half the team members I talk to have a very specific, often brilliant, view on their work, the brand, the customer, the creative that they've NEVER been invited to share. It just lives in their head (or occasionally slips out in a Slack message.)

This is costing brands millions in creative solutions, and thousands of hours of quality work.

So in an effort to bring more of this to light, I have a challenge for the C-Suite this week:

1. 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿: "What problem do people always bring to you because they know you can solve it in a fraction of the time, even though it's not your job?"

Pay attention to who answers quickly. They've been waiting to be asked.

2. 𝗠𝗮𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀. Look for patterns that don't match job titles. You're not looking for anomalies here, you're looking for the real org chart. The one that reflects how work actually flows through your team versus how you drew it on paper.

3. 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗮𝘁. Not just execute something, or "weigh in." Actually 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥 the thinking in that lane.

I promise you, if you do this, the team will 10X what they did last week.

Just starts with a question.

🎉 HOW TO STEAL WINNING ORGANIC CONCEPTS (Ethically):

1. Copy the prompt at the end of this thread
2. Download an organic post that has at least 50k likes.
3. Drop both into Gemini, run the prompt.
4. Ask Gemini to make you a viral ad script using the exact story structure it just pulled, but for your brand (make sure you drop in your URL.)

You’re welcome. ☺️ 

Prompt: 

“I’m going to give you a piece of UGC content.

Your job is to reverse-engineer the story mechanics, not summarize it.

Perform the following steps in order:
STEP 1 — Transcription
Transcribe the video or audio verbatim.
STEP 2 — Structural Analysis
Break the content into labeled story beats.

Use these labels where applicable:

Hook
Setup
Rising Tension
Conflict / Escalation
Turning Point
Climax
Resolution / Release
Button (final line or emotional endpoint)

If a beat doesn’t exist, mark it as “absent.”

STEP 3 — Framework Matching
Identify which established storytelling framework this UGC most closely aligns with.

Choose from (but do not limit yourself to):
Freytag’s Pyramid
Pixar Story Framework
Hero’s Journey
Dan Harmon’s Story Circle
3-Act Structure
Serial Escalation (comedy trope)
Problem → Agitation → Solution
Open Loop → Disruption → Resolution
Rant Arc (claim → frustration → break → resolution)

Provide a short justification for your selection:

“This content most closely matches X because…”

STEP 4 — Extract the Underlying Story Formula

Convert the structure into a generalizable story equation, removing all specifics.
Example format:

Start with a confident assertion
Immediately introduce a contradiction
Escalate tension through repeated failures
Insert self-interruption
Break into climax moment
End with punchline or release

This must be framework-agnostic, meaning it describes behavior and pacing, not plot.

STEP 5 — Generate a Pure Template (No Script)

Turn the extracted formula into a blank template, using placeholders only.

Use this format:

Template:
Line 1: [action/emotion/purpose]
Line 2: [conflict introduced]
Line 3: [escalation step]
Line 4: [escalation intensifies]
Line 5: [turning point]
Line 6: [climax moment]
Line 7: [resolution / button]

Rules:
No product mentions
No specific lines of dialogue
No creative writing
No script generation
Only structure + placeholders

STEP 6 — Output Format

Your final answer must include ONLY:

Transcription
Labeled story beats
Framework match + justification
Underlying story formula
Blank template (structural only)

Do NOT generate a rewritten script.
Do NOT generate creative lines.
Do NOT add suggestions unless asked.”

Such an amazing breakdown of how Valence + Intensity works in social media/online communication. 👀 It's so fun to see other people dive into this stuff too!!

Building a visual canvas for AI ( it’s like Miro, Figma and ChatGpt decided to have a baby <​ ceo & founder at qme.ai ​>

Is AI Writing in the Wrong Emotional Zone? If YES = here's how to fix it:

When you ask AI to write a hook 
or a post, it pulls from a black box. 

Old training data + generic brain. 
It defaults to:
fear, urgency, and FOMO most of the time.

Meanwhile, your reader is living through:
- economic uncertainty and 
- real-world instability.

If you're using general AI models, 
you could be adding noise to a world already
drowning in panic. 

The brands who actually move people 
understand that AI was never trained 
to grasp the emotional state
the reader is already in.

So there might be a better way...

Few days ago, Sarah Levinger
started a series of posts where
she talks about the "Emotional Zones"

Sarah says: 
"𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘔𝘖𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘐 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯'𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘨𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘴 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨."

She also mentions that:
"𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 7 𝘞𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘎𝘰 𝘋𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘳"

Her original post is here: 
https://lnkd.in/dtamiu7r

In this carousel I tried to go deeper and explore the HOW. 
How can we use AI to go deeper
using human psychology.
 
I created an AI agent for the T-E-E-P Model: 
Trigger → Exploration → Evaluation → Purchase

An AI visual system that 
connects to all social media channels:
- Instagram
- Tiktok 
- Youtube
- Reddit 

It reads all the transcripts and the comment section. 
It then analyses your ICP (as a human being would do).

So now I don't use AI to write for me.
I use AI to help me understand how humans feel.

There's also a concrete example: for Linked.

2 posts compared: 
========================
HYPE / PANIC TERRITORY
HOOK: "Most people using LinkedIn for sales are playing the wrong game."

VS

SOFT / RELIEF ZONE
"The LinkedIn algorithm is simpler than everyone thinks."

========================

The brands who win in 2026 are
obsessed with one thing:
using AI to feel more human.

AI is not trained by default to account 
for the emotional state of a human being. 

The empathy, the observation, 
the humanity - that is entirely on the
person doing the prompting. 

Using AI to spit out content without this
understanding misses the one thing 
that makes someone feel something.

There's an alternative: 
It's a more human approach 
for working with AI.

How to make AI more human

🍎 Byron Sharp (Professor of Marketing Science at the University of South Australia, known for his work on loyalty programs) studied 100,000+ purchase decisions and found something weird...

Loyalty...the metric whole retention teams are built around, the thing brands celebrate in their quarterly reviews, the reason you have a points program and a VIP tier and a "thank you for being part of the family" email sequence is, for the most part...significantly overstated.

(Not entirely. But mostly.)

The majority of your customers are 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 buyers. 

They purchased once, maybe twice. 
They don't have strong feelings about your brand. 
They are not in a Discord server debating your packaging. 

They will buy from your competitor next Tuesday without experiencing any emotional conflict whatsoever, and they represent the single largest pool of growth available to you.

You've been writing ads for the superfan:
👉 The one who already gets it
👉 The one who already believes in you
👉 The one who already just needs a reason to click. 

𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 ads are landing beautifully on maybe 12% of your audience. The rest scrolled past to watch a video of a golden retriever terrified of a balloon...

This is the Self-Concept problem. 

Every buyer sits somewhere on a spectrum between who they actually are right now (bored, behind, just trying to hold it together), who they 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 to become (strong, free, finally on top of it), and who they feel they're supposed to be (responsible, prepared, the kind of person who reads the fine print). 

Most DTC creative lives permanently in the middle.

Aspirational, "become the best version of yourself" energy. Which works great when someone already sees themselves as part of your world, but light buyers don't yet. 

They want to feel seen before they feel sold to.

So how do you know if you're speaking to the right person? 🧍

1️⃣ Pull up your last 3 ads

2️⃣ Ask Claude: "does this sound like something a stranger would recognize about their own life? Or something only a fan would nod along to?"

If your hook assumes the reader already cares, you're talking to a fan. If it uses language your existing customers love but a first-time buyer wouldn't (words like: "optimize," "elevate," "unlock your potential") you're talking to a fan...which should only be happening on owned channels, NOT your ads.

(Another fast diagnostic: take your current hook and replace "you" with the name of someone you know. Does it describe their actual Tuesday, or the Tuesday you wish they were having?)

The brands I've watched break through spend plateaus aren't running more ads. They're running more 𝘱𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘵 ads. Creative that meets people where they actually woke up this morning, not where the brand deck imagines they live.

Now, I have to be honest...(continued in comments.)

Growth marketer with deep experience in demand generation, performance marketing, marketing strategy, and full-funnel acquisition. I combine hands-on digital execution with award-winning strategic planning to help organizations grow efficiently.

Started in the trenches running Google Ads, writing copy, and building websites. Later led e-commerce for a national retail brand, earned a mini MBA in Marketing, and moved into consulting for a mix of B2B and B2C clients.

I’ve since partnered with companies across Healthcare, Financial Services, Tech, and SaaS to develop brand strategies, acquisition programs, and go-to-market plans that drive measurable growth.

Currently at RBC Insurance, where I built and launched the organization’s first-ever demand generation engine for Life Insurance—leading strategy, creative development, landing page builds, email automation, paid social campaigns, and analytics. Early results are already outperforming initial targets and establishing new KPIs for scalable growth.

WRITING

How to build a big brand on a small budget
https://creativebusinesscompany.com/big-brand-small-budget

How to create custom marketing funnels that drive sales
https://www.ianbarnard.ca/post/how-to-create-marketing-funnels-that-drive-sales

INTERVIEWS/PODCASTS

Measuring marketing strategy
https://www.ninjacat.io/blog/measuring-marketing-strategy

Improve marketing performance with brand salience
https://benjaminboman.substack.com/p/brand-salience-ian-barnard

CORE COMPETENCIES:

- Marketing strategy
- Brand management
- Brand positioning
- Integrated Marketing
- Online advertising (Social media, content, email)
- E-commerce
- Marketing Communications
- New Business Development / Demand generation
- Brand development
- Market Research
- Data Analysis/Analytics
- Social Media Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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The Battle

Sarah Levinger

Ian Barnard

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The Battle

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Ian Barnard

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Sarah Levinger's LinkedIn Performance

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