Marketing psychology explains why some ads earn a customer’s trust within seconds while other ads get scrolled past without a second thought, and the difference usually comes down to whether the ad signals real value or simply demands attention. Matthew Slaymaker, founder of the performance marketing agency Slaymaker Marketing, has spent his career studying that gap firsthand, working with B2B companies, e-commerce brands, and everything in between to figure out what actually separates an ad that converts from one that only gets a click.
This episode of DissedMedia centers upon that exact question, moving from the psychology behind an offer that hooks a returning customer to the platform-by-platform breakdown of where ad dollars actually perform, and it lands, eventually, on one of advertising’s more uncomfortable current debates: what happens to a brand’s trust once its ads are visibly built by artificial intelligence. Slaymaker has run his own polling on that exact question. About seventy percent of people, he found, say AI involvement in an ad actively damages how they see the brand behind it.
What Marketing Psychology Actually Explains About Trust
Marketing psychology, in Slaymaker’s experience, tends to come down to a small handful of signals a potential customer is scanning for, whether they consciously realize it or not. When someone searches for a local painter or a roofer, he explained, they are weighing three things almost simultaneously: who is close enough to actually show up, who has a reputation and reviews that suggest they can be trusted, and how the price stacks up against the value being promised. A business that fails to make those three signals obvious, however polished its ad creative looks, is seemingly asking people to click on faith alone, and most people will not.
That same marketing psychology, it is believed, extends into how established brands protect the loyalty they have already earned. Slaymaker pointed to Coca-Cola’s advertising as a clear example, noting the company rarely spends its budget trying to convince anyone that Coca-Cola tastes better than a competitor, and instead focuses upon staying emotionally present so people simply do not forget the brand exists. Pepsi took the opposite approach for years, running blind taste tests that directly attacked Coca-Cola, and Wendy’s has built its entire modern identity around needling McDonald’s in the same way. Neither approach is inherently wrong. However, Slaymaker suggested, the right one depends almost entirely on whether a brand is emerging and needs to fight for attention or already established and needs to protect what it has built.
Why Small Businesses Sabotage Their Own Advertising Before It Starts
A theme that resurfaces throughout the conversation, and one that seemingly catches small business owners off guard more than anything else, is that most advertising fails for reasons that have nothing to do with the ad itself. Slaymaker described a friend who runs a painting business and who had built a website consisting of little more than a phone number and a contact form, with no before-and-after photos, no testimonials, and no visible reason for a stranger to trust him over the next painter that shows up in a Google search. Small businesses, he argued, often get a little too excited or a little too impatient, and they jump into advertising before investing in the foundational elements, a well-designed website and visible proof of past work chief among them, that actually make advertising successful once the traffic starts arriving.
That pattern lines up closely with what Amber Gaige described in her own conversation on small business marketing strategy, where founders who skip the groundwork end up spending more money for measurably worse results. Slaymaker’s advice mirrors the same conclusion: get the website converting first, even at a modest rate, before turning on paid traffic that will otherwise be wasted testing a funnel that was never ready to receive it.
The Break-Even Math Behind One-Time Purchases and Subscriptions
How much a business should spend before expecting a return, Slaymaker explained, depends heavily on whether the product being sold is purchased once or purchased repeatedly. He used a sleep mask as an example of the first category, a product bought once, rarely gifted, and almost never repurchased, which means the entire cost of acquiring that customer has to be recovered from a single sale. Skincare sits at the other extreme. A customer might spend ninety dollars in month one, come back for another bottle in month two, and by month six the business has recovered far more than it spent to win that first purchase, which means it can often afford to lose money upfront in exchange for the lifetime value that follows. Knowing which category a product falls into, before setting an advertising budget, changes the entire math of what counts as success.
Building Loyalty Where None Naturally Exists
Some industries simply do not reward brand loyalty the way laundry detergent or diapers historically have, and Slaymaker pointed to categories like wine and deodorant as examples where customers actively want to try something new rather than stick with what they know. In categories like that, he suggested, a strong offer tends to matter more than the product story alone, and this may explain why loyalty programs proliferate in categories with a weaker natural brand identity, whether that is a discount reserved for first-time buyers or a subscription that rewards people for staying. Staying top of mind, even without a hard sales pitch attached to every touchpoint, is often what pulls a customer back before a competitor gets the chance.
B2B vs B2C Advertising: Why Lead Quantity Isn’t the Goal
The biggest mistake Slaymaker sees marketers make when they move from e-commerce into B2B advertising is carrying over an e-commerce mindset that rewards volume above everything else. In e-commerce, a campaign that generates fifty purchases from a thousand dollars in spend is an obvious win, and the feedback loop is fast enough that results show up within a day or two. In B2B, that same instinct toward volume can quietly bury a sales pipeline in leads that were never going to close, because a junior marketer optimizing for lead count alone can hand a client twenty five leads that all turn out to be, in Slaymaker’s words, total junk.
B2B buying cycles can stretch six to eight months once a manager has to loop in a CFO, a buying committee, and sometimes a CEO, which means the fast feedback loop that e-commerce marketers rely on simply does not exist in the same way. Budgets tend to be far less fluid as a result. A B2B client might have six hundred thousand dollars allocated for the year with no ability to shift more toward a channel that is working until the next budget cycle opens, regardless of how promising the early lead volume looks.
The AI Lead Generation Promises That Rarely Deliver
Slaymaker gets pitched by AI powered lead generation tools on LinkedIn nearly every day, and he decided to actually test one rather than dismiss it outright. The promised thirty free leads never materialized, the quality of what did arrive was, in his description, total junk, and the excuse offered afterward was that results simply take three months to show up. Ben shared a similar experience testing one of these tools himself, noting a clear disconnect between what the platform’s dashboard claimed and what he could actually verify happened with his ad spend. Neither Slaymaker nor Ben doubts that AI can handle the mechanics of outreach efficiently. However, the flood of nearly identical pitches, seemingly all promising the same guaranteed results, makes it difficult for a business owner to separate a legitimate tool from one that is simply chasing a fast sign-up fee.
When AI Generated Ads Undo Years of Marketing Psychology
The clearest example of marketing psychology working against a brand, rather than for it, showed up in the backlash to a widely discussed AI generated Christmas commercial last year. Slaymaker described watching the comment section fill with criticism the moment viewers realized the ad’s imagery, including its familiar CGI polar bears, had been built with artificial intelligence rather than filmed or hand animated the traditional way. The irony, he noted, is that the campaign had been marketed as capturing something magical, and much of the audience felt the opposite was true the moment they recognized the trick.
That reaction lines up with a broader pattern Wes Towers explored in his own conversation about how AI is reshaping digital marketing, where brands that lean on AI without disclosing it risk a credibility hit the moment their audience figures it out. Slaymaker’s own polling backs this up directly: roughly seventy percent of people say AI involvement in an ad damages how they see the brand behind it, and a single ad that reads as obviously synthetic can undo years of goodwill in a matter of days. He still uses AI tools with his own team, largely to speed up static image ads and creative brainstorming, but he draws a hard line at using AI to fabricate people, testimonials, or results that were never real, arguing that the moment an audience feels deceived rather than delighted, the entire point of the ad has backfired.
Ranking the Ad Platforms Matthew Slaymaker Actually Trusts
Asked to rank the major ad platforms based on results rather than reputation, Slaymaker put Google and Meta in a near tie for first place, with the right choice depending heavily on what a business already has to work with. Meta rewards businesses with strong creative assets and increasingly favors broad targeting over narrow interest based audiences, while Google tends to deliver higher intent clicks at a higher cost per click, which usually means better results for businesses more focused on immediate profitability than rapid growth.
AppLovin surprised him as a rising option, particularly for mobile app based placements that most advertisers instinctively exclude, while LinkedIn and TikTok landed near the bottom of his list for very different reasons. LinkedIn delivers the most expensive clicks of any platform he uses, sometimes climbing past thirty dollars per click for B2B clients, and TikTok simply has not converted as reliably for the brands he manages. Reddit, meanwhile, sits in a strange middle ground: the targeting concept sounds ideal because ads can run directly inside communities built around a specific interest, and Reddit’s user base tends to actively resist advertising, which may explain why the platform’s actual return lags behind promising click through rates on the surface.
Where to Find Matthew Slaymaker
Businesses looking for a senior led team rather than an account handed off to a recent graduate can find Matthew Slaymaker and his agency at Slaymaker Marketing, which offers free ad account audits for brands wanting a second opinion before committing to a new agency relationship. Slaymaker is also active on LinkedIn under his own name, where he regularly shares the kind of unfiltered take on advertising and marketing psychology that came through in this conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is marketing psychology and why does it matter for advertising?
Marketing psychology refers to the mental shortcuts and trust signals people rely on when deciding whether to engage with an ad, a business, or a purchase. It matters because an ad can be beautifully designed and still fail if it does not address the underlying questions a potential customer is asking, such as whether the business is trustworthy, nearby, and worth the price being charged.
Why do AI generated ads hurt brand trust?
AI generated ads tend to hurt brand trust once an audience recognizes the content was not real, because that recognition itself feels like a small deception, even when nothing false was actually claimed. Polling cited in this episode found that roughly seventy percent of people say AI involvement in an ad damages how they view the brand, which suggests the discomfort is widespread rather than limited to a vocal minority online.
How much should a small business spend on ads before expecting results?
There is no universal dollar figure, since the right budget depends on the type of product, its price point, and whether it earns repeat purchases. What matters more, according to Matthew Slaymaker, is making sure a website already converts visitors at a reasonable rate before spending anything on paid traffic, since ads sent to an unprepared website tend to waste money regardless of the budget behind them.
What is the difference between B2B and B2C advertising strategy?
B2C advertising generally rewards volume and moves quickly, with results often visible within a day or two of launching a campaign. B2B advertising rewards lead quality over quantity and can take six months or longer to show a return, since decisions often require approval from multiple people before a sale closes.
