NS

Nik Sharma

Founder · Sharma Brands

Nik Sharma runs Sharma Brands, the DTC consultancy behind launches and growth programs for Feastables, Jolie, Rare Beauty, and Taco Bell. He's known for codifying rapid creative testing into a repeatable operating system and for arguing that in the For You era, creative has replaced targeting as the primary lever.

Distinctive beliefs, repeated across talks

How Nik Sharma thinks about creative testing

01

Creative is the new targeting

Sharma argues that since feeds shifted from Following to For You, accounts find users rather than the other way around — which means your creative is what actually segments audiences. The media buyer's job is to feed platforms as much first-party data as possible and then let the creative do the targeting work the algorithm used to do manually.

"Creative is now the new targeting."

"No one is really finding accounts and finding brands or finding influencers, you know, these accounts are basically now finding users."

"The more traffic and purchase and and um other event data that you can put into your pixels, the better that their targeting gets and their refinement gets."

02

Master the For You feed first, then paid

He believes the brands that won last year were the ones who learned to make native-feeling content for the For You feed before worrying about paid performance. Paid is downstream of organic fluency — if you can't earn attention organically, you can't buy it efficiently either.

"The people who succeeded the best were the ones who could maximize how well they created content made for the For You feed."

"Once you're good at mastering the for you feed, then you can pretty much crush everything on the paid side."

03

Only 10–25% of creatives scale, so test at volume

Sharma's core operational belief: most creative fails, so the answer is relentless weekly output, strict kill criteria, and never letting one or two hero ads carry the account. If two creatives are driving your entire spend, that's a testing failure, not a win.

"In most ad accounts, you know, it's only about 10 to 25% of creatives you input end up finding scale."

"The worst thing is when, uh, you know, I'll go into an ad account and see that two pieces of ad creative are driving the entire ad account's spend."

"You just need to be testing more and more and more."

04

Structured testing cadence: Broad → Lookalikes → Interests

His SB CreativeOS prescribes a fixed testing protocol: 6–7 days max, three audiences in order (Broad first, then Lookalikes, then Interests), two days per audience, with a ~3x target CPA tolerance for the first few purchases. Promising creatives get ported to scaling campaigns; losers get killed on day 6. This is the operational discipline behind the volume philosophy.

"Creative tests should last 6-7 days max and test up to 3 audiences for performance."

"I look for three times your CPA target within the first few purchases before it starts to scale."

05

Find the winning hook, then replicate it 15 ways

Once something works — a hook, a graphic, a copy line — Sharma's instinct is to double down and systematically iterate. For statics, take the file and change the copy 15 ways. Borrow the same winning hooks when briefing creators, affiliates, and influencers so the proven concept works across every channel.

"Once you find a hook or a style or a format that works, double down on that and try to implement it in as many ways as possible."

"A lot of times you'll see, um, this happens on TikTok where, you know, influencers once they figure out a hook that works, they'll make every video start with that hook."

06

Scrappy team structure beats big headcount

You don't need a massive creative department. A creative strategist, a creative director, someone bridging media and analytics, and a small pod (copywriter, animator, graphic designer, video editor) is enough. For brands, a single multifaceted creative plus a contract graphic designer with Figma templates can turn one template into 45 testable ads.

"If you just get these Figma templates of static ads, you can go in and take one template and turn that into 45 ads that you export and test."

Citation-ready quotes from across the corpus

Nik Sharma's most cited quotes

Named methodologies Nik has introduced or articulated

Nik Sharma's frameworks

SB CreativeOS

Sharma Brands' two-part creative operating system. Part one is a dedicated testing program with fixed cadence and kill criteria. Part two is rapid iteration on anything that shows promise — replicating winning hooks, graphics, and copy across many variations and pushing them across paid, creator, and affiliate channels.

  1. Build a dedicated creative testing program inside your ad platforms
  2. Test each new creative across Broad → Lookalikes → Interests audiences, 2 days each (6–7 days max total)
  3. Allow ~3x target CPA for the first couple purchases before judging
  4. If performance is met, port the creative to scaling campaigns; if not, kill on day 6
  5. When a hook/graphic/copy line works, replicate it in as many variations as possible (e.g., 15 copy variants on a static)
  6. Use Motion analytics to identify what's working and repeat it
  7. Reuse winning paid hooks when briefing creators, affiliates, and influencers
The framings Nik keeps returning to

Nik Sharma's signature questions

2 talks in Motion's library

All Nik Sharma talks

webinar/panel

Motion's 2025 Facebook Ad Creative Trends⚡️DTC Expert Lightning Round

Feb 2025 · 106 min
Lightning Round

The ULTIMATE Meta Ad Testing Program (Guaranteed to Scale)

Feb 2025 · 5 min