“Should we try this?” 🗣️

Hi there 👋,

“Should we try this?”

You have no idea how often I receive this message from founders.

It’s usually accompanied by a link or some interesting opportunity they’ve come across.

I get it. We love new shiny objects, we’re like magpies in growth.

But sometimes we need to focus on the dull objects we already have in our nest, and we need to shine them into something new.

I see this happening most often with ads.

We aim for quantity over quality when it comes to ads, and we don’t squeeze an ad for all its worth.

A case study in ads

Let’s look at a specific example that happened recently with one of my clients.

We had the following two ads running:

Ad 1 - A video clip from a podcast feature

£20.41 cost per purchase 

Ad 2 - A UGC (user-generated content) video highlighting athletes

£22.07 cost per purchase

Both were doing decently, but I wanted to see if I could ring that cost down and increase their conversion. 

So we created a combined ad, and got the following:

Combined Ad 

£18.51 cost per purchase

It was 9.3% cheaper than Ad 1 and 16.1% cheaper than Ad 2.

What was the cost of creation? About £20 for video editing!

This new ad immediately started getting hundreds of purchases per month. We turned something semi-successful and a little dull into a shiny new ad.

How to improve your ads

Rather than trying to create a new ad from scratch, look at how you can improve your existing ads. 

Use your best-performing creative and try the following suggestions.

For video ads

1. Add winning hooks from other ads (either replace or insert)

2. Start the ad from different points or go back to the original unedited videos to find a new hook

3. Length changes (try a shorter version or a longer, I’ve seen different versions work)

4. Mashup with other creatives, e.g. showing reviews/features, overlaying the creator or other UGCs

5. Get multiple people to re-record the winning script/concept to speak to different target audiences

6. Have a creator/multiple creators green screen the ad

7. Add additional content, e.g. showing reviews/features overlaying the creator

For image ads

1. Test different colour schemes

2. Add or change the text layover - I’ve seen a different headline on the image cause a 20% - 30% improvement in CTR

3. Try different angles

4. Create an animated version of the original ad

5. Turn it into a carousel combined with different versions of that image

6. Use different individuals in the same style as the original ad

7. Get an AI tool to create some variations (Okay, I had to throw that one in there)

But that’s not all! Don’t forget about the text accompanying the ad.

For the text

1. Short vs long

2. Different hooks

3. With and without emojis

4. Starting with social proof

These are just a few ways to transform a mediocre ad into something incredible.

So before you rush off to create something new, take some time to look at what’s working and how to get the most out of it.

Recommendation

In every edition of Growth Waves, I also share a related book, individual or newsletter to check out related to the week's topic.

Tobias Green is a Former Global Head of Performance, Head of Performance Marketing & Head of Paid Social.

He’s spent over $200 million building omni-funnel, multi-touchpoint performance strategies for some of the world’s biggest brands.

“Something that really pushed me to build my own consultancy was the number of faceless agencies I came across that are pushing lazy, inefficient broad targeting with broad creative, letting slip the true power of fully segmented funnels.

I've invested hundreds of millions into building out gold-standard multi-touchpoint omni-funnel strategies with tailor made creative for each stage of the customer journey.”

Tobias founded Catalyst, a one-to-one consultancy scaling D2C brands with creative and data-driven growth.

If you keep going for the new big thing, you’ll never get to make something truly great.

Trust me, that feeling is unbeatable.

To have an ad that is doing so well, converting with a low cost, is worth the effort of improving what you have.

So start dusting off those ads, and I’m going to go dust off my very messy bookcase.

Daphne