Hey 👋 The Crew here.
Whenever you get negative feedback for a product or service, just remember that at least nobody took time and effort to inscribe it on a small clay tablet.
In case you didn’t know, that is the oldest customer complaint to this date—and is written to a copper trader by a customer dissatisfied by the product quality, but also by the treatment of his servant.
Guess the trader should’ve invested in better customer support at least…
Reading time: 4 minutes, 57 seconds
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Getting bad results from LinkedIn Ads? Here’s how to fix it ASAP
Maybe you’re bravely handling LinkedIn Ads in-house… and seeing higher CPCs and CPMs there than on Google and Meta combined.
Or maybe your current marketing agency managing your LinkedIn Ads isn’t performing as well as you need it to.
Either way, if you find yourself dreading Campaign Manager or avoiding the CEO during lunch, it’s probably time to get expert insight into the state of your ads.
Alamere Digital is offering two ways to improve your LinkedIn ROI right now:
- With the recipe for LinkedIn Ads success right here, or…
- By doing the hard, time-consuming work for you.
Why them? Alamere Digital specializes in turning these LinkedIn challenges into revenue opportunities.
Their team members are pros at strategy, content, creative assets, and technical optimization—everything you need to build thought leadership and fill your pipeline.
Halo effect
In 1920, psychologist Edward Thorndike asked a group of military officers to evaluate their subordinates based on nothing but their own impressions.
He found that if an officer perceived a soldier as physically attractive or strong, they tended to also rate them highly on unrelated traits like intelligence and leadership.
He called this phenomenon The Halo effect, and it’s a cognitive bias where our overall impression of a person, product, or brand is influenced by a single trait or characteristic.
It’s also why we say that first impressions matter, for example.
Assuming they have equal skillsets, think about who’s more likely to get a job—a well-dressed, charismatic, kind candidate, or a dumpster fire of a person. It’s cruel, but it’s psychological, and even primal.
The Halo effect is one of the most popular and frequently studied biases, especially among marketers.
So let’s see how you can leverage it for better results.
Three ways to leverage Halo effect
1) Build brand reputation from multiple angles
Imagine Apple suddenly announced a toaster. What would your first impression be?
A lot of people might think it’s going to be a super cool, “smart” toaster that will toast bread like no toaster before—without even trying it.
… Because Apple built its reputation on innovative, premium, user-friendly products. That reputation carries over.
Also, nowadays, you see most e-commerce merchants opting for Shopify simply due to their reputation of helping businesses launch and maintain their online stores without a fuss.
Here’s how you can leverage your brand touches to create a positive Halo effect:
- Be consistent across all touchpoints. Every interaction should reinforce the same core values. If you’re positioned as luxurious, everything from packaging to customer service to web design should feel premium.
- Leverage thought leadership or social proof. Get endorsements from respected figures in your industry, share success stories, and case studies.
- Maintain a strong identity. Your branding should be recognizable, both visually and verbally. Think of how Nike is synonymous with the “Just do it” slogan and associates their customers with motivation and performance.
All this can help form a positive reputation in your customers’ minds that will help with acquisition.
2) Prime your brand or product for a winning first impression
As we said, first impressions shape lasting perceptions in a single moment.
The Halo effect kicks in the second someone interacts with your brand—whether it’s your website, packaging, or even customer service.
A sleek, well-designed interface makes a SaaS product seem more powerful. A friendly, professional salesperson makes a service feel more trustworthy. And so on…
A good onboarding can make your entire SaaS feel like the real deal before users even start serious work.
Strava, an exercise tracking app, immediately guides you through a tour of every feature—making you feel like the app has no major flaw:
Truth be told, are there any?
3) Avoid the “Horn effect”
Thorndike, who coined the term Halo effect, also coined a term for the opposite: The Horn effect.
It’s a bias where one negative trait creates the belief that something or someone must have more negative traits.
In the case of your brand, one slip can cause irreparable damage.
One of the most obvious examples today is probably Tesla. And you can guess why…
Most people associate the car brand with Elon Musk. And while the company itself makes innovative products, Musk’s controversial presence might make many potential customers back away.
The same goes for X, which many brands still avoid advertising on.
But sometimes, a simple update like a price hike can create a negative impression. Evernote, a note-taking app, doubled its pricing in 2023—infuriating users and causing a mass exodus.
The takeaway: One major mistake, like a security flaw, bad UX change, pricing controversy, or even something a CEO did irrelevant to the product itself can overshadow years of good work.
Public perception sticks, even after fixes.
So make sure you test any feature on a good enough sample, invest in social listening, always ask for feedback, and stray away from controversy.
… Unless the right controversy would put your brand in the right limelight, creating a Halo effect.
You know what we mean?
MARKETING: Struggling to make sense of all the chaos? It’s not you, it’s them (Dropbox). Start this spring season the right way, and fall back in love with your workflow and tech stack. For a limited time only, Air is offering a free 1:1 creative operations audit with their in-house expert Eric Magne. Sign up here.*
AI MARKETING: With new AI product updates and releases dropping almost daily, it’s impossible to track everything… or know what you should dig into. The Deep View summarizes the absolute must-know AI news in a fun and informative 5-minute read. Join 450,000+ subscribers for free daily updates.*
E-COMMERCE: Everybody talks about online sales. But rarely anyone talks about reverse logistics—aka returns—which can pose quite a challenge for many brands. This report looks into money that goes into product returns and how they’re becoming a negative shopping habit.
INFLUENCER MARKETING: …is growing both upward and inward in the US. New reports predict that it will surpass $10B this year, one year ahead of schedule. Yep, that’s some crazy money.
AI MARKETING: In the US, AI tools drove 1,300% more traffic to retailers over the holiday season year-over-year (YoY). That growth has kept pace in 2025, too—AI-driven traffic rose another 1,200% since July 2024. Message to SEOs—pay attention to AI traffic, too.
GOOGLE: Uh-oh. The EU just charged Google with giving preferential treatment to its own products and services in Search results and not giving app developers freedom to guide users to alternative platforms. Not nice Google, not nice…
*This is a sponsored post
ICYMI, last time we looked at the Buyer’s Remorse.
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