Marketers of the Universe: A digital marketing podcast

Nasya Nasseira on humanising B2B ads, budget mistakes, and the power of storytelling

• Brew Digital • Season 1 • Episode 43

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In this episode of Marketers of the Universe, we're in the hot seat with Brew Digital's Paid Media Manager, Nasya Nasera. We get to know Nasya, her background in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and her non-linear path into a marketing career that has now spanned five to six years.
Nasya shares her experience of moving away from "rigid corporate jargon" and applying more human, B2C-style messaging to B2B campaigns. She explains why it's crucial to remember that the person seeing your ads is always human, and how this simple shift caused engagement for her B2B ads to spike.

Then, we get to the story everyone wants to hear: the learning opportunity. Nasya walks us through what has been called the "quintessential paid media experience"—making a major budget mistake by accidentally confusing a daily and lifetime budget over a weekend. She offers candid, actionable advice on how to handle the situation when things go wrong: take accountability immediately, be transparent with your superiors, and focus on finding a resolution.

Throughout the conversation, a central theme emerges: the power of storytelling. From her early career aspirations to her belief that the best marketing is ultimately storytelling, Nasya explains how turning "mundane numbers and data into storytelling" is the key to success in paid media and beyond.

Tune in for an honest conversation about experimentation, learning from our mistakes, and why the human element is still the most important part of marketing.

Marketers of the Universe is brought to you by the clever folks at Brew Digital. We’re not your typical digital marketing agency; using an innovative approach to decision-making and collaboration, we help you create an impactful digital strategy that actually delivers results for your business.

See what we can do for you at brewdigital.com


Haydn Woods-Williams:

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Marketers of the Universe podcast. Our session today is all around our paid media manager, nashin Asera. We are getting to know her, understanding her experience both at Brew and before Brew, understanding how she sees the marketing industry and also looking at one and before Brew, understanding how she sees the marketing industry and also looking at one of the mistakes sorry, learning opportunities that she has made along the way that has led to her being a better and more well-rounded marketer. With me to have that conversation is our content marketing manager and my wonderful co-host, tom Innes. Let's get on with the podcast.

Tom Inniss:

So, nasha, thank you so much for joining us today and getting into the hot seat. I thought we'll start with a super existential question of who is Nasha? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Nasya Nasseira:

well, a bit about nasha. I've been in paid um media marketing, especially um in b2b, for five to six years now. Um, I'm also based in kuala lumpur, malaysia, and yeah, that's, that's all I can say.

Tom Inniss:

That's an excellent start. So you're a paid media marketer at Brew Digital, but you've been in marketing for five or six years, as you said. How did you start? Where was the beginning of your marketing career?

Nasya Nasseira:

it's definitely not a straight path. Um, I mean, rarely does one wake up one day and decide to be a marketer. Uh, maybe they are, but I've never heard that story before. But I always knew that I wanted to do something that involves with storytelling in general. So throughout my career, even during school, I've dabbled into like journalism, teaching, even PR, sales, and now I'm here as a paid media marketer. So it's a lot of like trial and error. It's never a linear path. But then I found my love in marketing and, yes, now I'm here in brew digital.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

What was it about marketing that you fell in love with?

Nasya Nasseira:

Yeah, so well, at a time actually I was previously, I think four years ago so I started in PR and then I did sales and business development. It was okay. It wasn't the best at that time. So I think it wasn't the best because I was the only salesperson in the company, so it was just me, and so I didn't really have like a team because I was working solo at the time. So I, you know, take, I took the initiative and just um, tried to get to know the other departments, you know, since I was working alone. So it's kind of sad at that time.

Nasya Nasseira:

So I became close, especially with the marketers, because sales and marketing do merge and I was seeing the way they work day to day. And I like how, when it comes to marketing, there's no right or wrong way to do things. Sometimes you think that this is the best way, but actually there's another way to do things. Sometimes you think that this is the best way but actually there's another way to do it. So I like the experimenting aspect of it Trial and error, see what works, see what doesn't work and learn from there. So there's no like hard or like hard way of doing things. So I like, I really like the testing and experimenting part and I found my love in marketing mostly well, 90% because of that, because of like the testing and experimenting with stuff.

Tom Inniss:

Was that sort of love of iterating and testing what drew you straight to paid media, or did you try all of the different other aspects of um marketing and land up there accidentally?

Nasya Nasseira:

no, after that, after I spoke into like a few people within the department, I just dive straight in into marketing and I've been doing it for like almost six years now. So, um, I just like how most marketers um and the mentors I had before they're very curious people when it comes to working and I like how they're always researching on stuff, especially when it comes to, like, paid media. You know, platforms change every other week, so you have to be that person who wants to poke around, test weird ideas and see what sticks. So, yeah, after that, how they could simplify, like metrics and data and explain the results in like plain english. I find that really interesting and I've been trying to learn more about that. I always say that if you can't translate like ctr or like rois into something that maybe your, like parents or grandma would get, you're going to lose a lot of people fast. So I like how, at the time, they're able to like simplify things and turn mundane numbers and data into storytelling. So that really piqued my interest.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

When it comes to paid media in general, you mentioned in there as well, trying weird things. Do you have any stories or examples of where you've tried something that was a bit wacky and it was exciting to play with Whether it was successful or not doesn't matter Any examples of that? And you know it was exciting to play with, whether it was successful or not doesn't matter, but any examples of that?

Nasya Nasseira:

um, actually, well, it's not weird I wouldn't say it's weird ish to me but when you, when you think about like b2b, you think a lot of like rigid corporate jargon, um ad. So at the time, um, I know you kind of separate b2c and b2b messaging but you have to remember, um, whether it's like b2b or b2c, um, the person reading your ad or messaging or the creative that they see are still human. Um, so I, at that time, previously I moved away from your normal corporate jargon. So at first, my well, my manager didn't really like that idea, but you know, I pushed to kind of just test it anyway, um to see if like D2C kind of marketing or messaging kind of applies to b2b and our b2b ads.

Nasya Nasseira:

At that time um actually spiked um the engagement because at the end of the day, um, as I mentioned, that it's still, you're still pushing your ads to like normal human beings and um, usually when people are scrolling through like linkedin um, you're doing it on their downtime or during lunchtime. So, um, they hear a lot of like this corporate jargons, a lot um every day during meetings and all that. So, yeah, I I would say a mix between like b2b and b2c uh messaging at that time. So it's not really weird, but um it's. It's hard to kind of like um you have to. As a marketer, you need to stop putting um certain people, I guess, in a box or certain industries in a box. So as long as you can get your message across, I feel like it would and it would do well so shall we get to the part that everybody is here to hear which is your learning opportunity?

Tom Inniss:

or, I think, as hayden said, perhaps in one of his takes, where you screwed up and what you learned from it. So have you come with a juicy story of something that you screwed up, nasha?

Nasya Nasseira:

Well, I guess, when it comes to learning opportunities, well, I'm Throughout my entire career. There's a few. Well, not as if you just tons of learning opportunities. The first one I'll get to the part where I screwed up later, but I guess the first one is there's tons of platforms out there and a lot of platforms like LinkedIn, google, meta. They're getting better at finding the right audience, but if your creative doesn't speak to them, you've lost before you started, um, so I've learned that the hard way, that even the best targeting can't save a boring ad.

Nasya Nasseira:

Coming back to my, I guess, um statement, not statement. Um, what I said about like, just because it's b2b doesn't mean that you can't humanize your messaging or copy. So I learned that the hard way, um, especially when you work in a company well, not this company previously where it's very rigid and there's no room for creativity. Second, is always to check when you do like optimizations and all that, especially when it comes to ah, I don't know if I want to say it about the recent well, um, so I will keep it big.

Nasya Nasseira:

Um, well, I think the biggest fuck up is the when it comes to pay that um, you put a lot of budget into it. So, um, I guess I can tell from the previous, um, I can tell from my previous experience I won't say anything related to brew from my previous company. Well, one I learned to never launch your ads during Fridays because no one is there to QA your ads during weekends. No one is there to QA your ads during weekends. So if you put a lot of budget or if you accidentally switch between daily and lifetime budget, that would be a disaster. So I would say never launch your ads during Fridays and always double check between daily and lifetime budgets how much did you spend?

Nasya Nasseira:

I would only tell stories for my previous companies that's fine, uh, okay, so check your budgets it's a pretty solid one.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

I think it's also one of those ones that I'm pretty sure is like in the catalog of paid media experiences is that you have those, those paid budget challenges. We'll call them challenges.

Nasya Nasseira:

Yeah, I agree, because, especially when you feel like you really need to launch an ad or a campaign ASAP, need to launch an ad or a campaign asap, um, sometimes it's okay to push back, um, and tell the client, hey, can we launch it maybe during the early of the week because, um, well, statistically, if you launch your ads during like later during the week, people are in the weekend mood already. So it's definitely a good idea, first, to launch early during the week and never on thursdays or fridays and, second, always have someone to double check your budgets, because that's the most important thing, um, especially when the daily and lifetime spend is, like above each other, it's it's easy to just click on one of those accidentally dui issue is what you're saying.

Tom Inniss:

See, I see. I think that, as as hayden was saying, I think that this is sort of like the um winter experience. Yeah, it's the quintessential paid media experience, isn't it? Everybody goes through it. Um mckelly, one of our other paid media managers, has told me that he's done very similar thing, and I'm sure if we managed to pin ross down, he'd probably confess to doing it once or twice as well. So I think everybody makes that mistake. That you learn from it, don't you?

Haydn Woods-Williams:

that's the most important thing is is learning from it. Um, for someone, because there's going to be a paid meaning manager who's who's been in that situation before? How do you handle it? How do you handle it when you do that?

Nasya Nasseira:

I would say, definitely the first thing you do is to take accountability and definitely reach out to your superiors head on as fast as you can, detail everything, um, what happened, how you could move forward, find a resolution, because you know mistakes can happen. But there's no use in kind of thinking about it, um and thinking what you've done before. So pass this pass. Make sure you're taking the right steps into finding a solution or resolution in general. So I would say, definitely be transparent as you can and take accountability and learn from your mistakes, um, because human error does happen from time to time, but make sure you don't do the same mistakes over and over again. So I would say that's key you know, to just be transparent as possible.

Tom Inniss:

And Hayden as a manager. What is the best way to react if a subordinate tells you hey, we've just spent the whole lifetime budget in three days or something? How do you like? How do you reinforce the learning while, at the same time, not completely demoralizing your staff?

Haydn Woods-Williams:

I think you just scream at them as loud as you can and then shout out and berate them, make sure they really feel as little as possible. As small as possible, sorry, not as little. That way, you know, you kind of make sure that.

Tom Inniss:

It's reinforced.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

Yeah, no, obviously I'm joking. I think it's really just about empathizing, it's about understanding that this is not, it's not been done maliciously, it's not been done on purpose, um understanding that it is an easy mistake to make. I think it's really about initially just kind of um almost being there to comfort that person, um professionally, obviously, uh, and then kind of working with them to understand what went wrong, being honest, um, and making sure they know that actually, you know there's no, there's not a blame culture, being honest why it went wrong, how we can make sure it doesn't happen again. And then looking at the, the client or the account or, if you're in-house, um the budget that's been impacted and finding ways to minimize the impact that's going to have on forward performance.

Tom Inniss:

um, I think that's that's how I would deal with anyway and from a process's perspective and this is a question for both of you how do you stop this happening again? Obviously, as an individual, you're likely to never forget the first time you spent all of that money accidentally over a weekend. But, like, how do you install systems that ensure that it doesn't happen again without then having like a culture of six or seven people doing eventual sign-off, I should probably add?

Nasya Nasseira:

I feel like processes, um, obviously, um, before launching anything, you should be, you should have processes in place. But processes can evolve from time to time, depending on my case by case basis. So, from what I learned, definitely set alerts, definitely check everything and not just like at first glance, because sometimes you tend because um, within certain platforms there's a lot of um factors that you are looking into. Um, you you look at the ad copy, you look at the, for example, like um, targeting um, there's a lot of factors when it comes to build campaign, um, I will try to not be focused on one thing at a time.

Nasya Nasseira:

I would say, like, set aside a time to just kind of check everything. So maybe, like this week could be checking about, like budgets this week, a few days later, or the next week you should be checking about budget pacing. The next week you should be checking about, I would say, like ad copy, whether it makes sense for the ad copy and also the landing pages. So, rather than checking everything at once um at a time, um, I know it's, it can be overwhelming at times. So trying to find time to just block your calendar and set um to check one, I, I guess factor, no factor isn't a right word. Element At a time, I would say that. And always have someone to QA, even when you think that it's minor changes. Always have someone to kind of double check on your work definitely.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

I think.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

I think that's just rounded up most of the things that you can do, um, I think also, adding in a qa check to your own work um, it's really difficult, or sorry, it's really easy sometimes to, when you're in a rush, just kind of get things done as quickly as possible.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

When you're playing with stuff like um ads platforms that have a very, very easy interface to overspend and I'll look at the ads platforms to why it's so easy to um adding in that qa, even if it takes an extra five minutes, just means you cover your back. Um, if there's anyone who's junior, who's just starting out, if you can get into the practice of kind of like pulling that into everything you do whenever you build a campaign, you will um, you will thank me and nasha for hopefully being one of those few people who don't make this mistake. Um, and then, on top of that, it's just getting into the habit of, with your regular optimizations, just checking things like that are in the right place, having a kind of comparison of the monthly report versus the budget or your weekly report or your live dashboards, and understanding that doesn't look right. Being in the account is going to help you to understand if something doesn't look quite right perfect.

Tom Inniss:

So, moving from looking backwards to looking forwards, before we wrap up here, nasha um, conscious of time, what do you see on the horizon for paid media? Obviously, everybody's talking about AI at the moment, and we know that Google are implementing more and more AI learning methods of ad that seem to just spend more money. But your answer could be AI or it could be something else. Entirely up to you. What is on the horizon for paid media? What big changes do you see coming to practice or to strategies?

Nasya Nasseira:

when we talk about ai or like the future of paid media. Well, personally, for me, the future of paid media is less control, more guidance. So stop, I guess, stop having tunnel vision a bit so you don't platforms. More and more platforms are doing more of the heavy lifting with with AI. So our job kind of shifts from micromanaging every single thing to setting the right signals, crafting strong, creative and make sure you feed your platforms, whatever that you're using, quality data. So I would say it's with AI. Obviously you can't hand everything to AI, but it's more of like less hands-on but more of like a strategic director role, um, I suppose. So, yeah, try to have less control and just more of just feeding whatever platforms that you're using the right data that you have excellent.

Tom Inniss:

Thank you, uh. Last question if you weren't in paid media, what section of marketing would you go into? Section of marketing would you go into social? Would you go into content? Would you do what's the one?

Nasya Nasseira:

uh seo or would you leave and tame lions yes actually I really wanted to be a marine biologist before this, but if I have to pick within marketing, I would say content. I would say content because, coming back to how I got into marketing in the first place, because I really am drawn to the storytelling aspect of it, so I would say content.

Tom Inniss:

The best marketing is ultimately storytelling.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

That's true. The best reporting is storytelling, the best marketing is storytelling, the best connection is made through stories.

Tom Inniss:

It's the human experience. There you go, there we go. Ignacio Nacero made through stories.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

It's the human experience there you go, there we go. This is Nasia Nasero, queen of stories.

Tom Inniss:

Great. Thank you so much, nasia, for joining us today. And yeah, storytelling is just so important to everything that we do at Brew Digital, but it should be important to everything we do in marketing, and I don't think we're going to top that, so I'm going to hand it over to hayden to wrap up this podcast thank you, tom.

Haydn Woods-Williams:

We are moving from the delta tones of tom and nasha to my voice, um, but that is all we have time for today. Thank you everyone for listening. We really hope you found some useful snippets, uh, from our chat with nasha, um, and hopefully feel a little bit better about that time that you overspend your budget by accident. We love that you've made it this far for your listen. We really enjoy making this content. We would really love it if you could go and recommend the show to a friend or colleague that you think would enjoy listening. Thank you, as always, the brew digital team, uh, nasher in particular this time for their input in today's session. Make sure to go check out our past episodes, subscribe on whatever platform you use to listen to our podcasts and we will see you in the next one. I've been Hayden and these are the marketers of the universe. Thank you.

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