TEA 227: 5 Meta Ad Creative Mistakes Costing You Money

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the E-commerce Sally podcast where we believe that great brands are built on passionate leadership, smart operations and of course powerful marketing. My name is Josh Koffee and I am the founder of the E-commerce Sally as well as one of your hosts. And I've been doing this for over 12 years. We work with E-commerce businesses and we help them grow. We help them get more profit, more freedom and just honestly have a lot more fun in their lives. With me, I also have my co-host Dylan Counts. - Hey guys. And today we're gonna be getting, this is like a Weedy episode. And I love the Weedy episode. - A Weedy episode. - It's an interesting description of it. - A Weedy episode. - I think everyone is gonna like the Weedy-ness of this episode. - And by Weedy, it's not like many Weets, it's like in the Weeds. We're gonna be in the Weeds on five meta-ad create a mistakes that are costing you a bunch of money. How do we know this? Well, we have a software that allows us to actually look at the data and see what's costing a lot of people a lot of money called Breezeway which if you've never checked it out, you need to go check out Breezeway. If it's available, we only open 25 seats and maybe they're gone by time this podcast drops. They're probably, they're probably hot. - They're literally pinging as we're on here 'cause we just sent the first email and we only need 25 spots. Anyway, go check it out, get on the list if it's not open yet. Over's no longer open. All of that said, we have a lot of data. We work with several hundred e-commerce businesses and we do, I don't know, six or seven, or we just added another session of optimization coaching sessions every week. We're looking at live with clients, 20, 530 accounts per week and meta ads. And so we have a pretty good grasp in like a pulse on what types of creative are really working and what are and what kinds of mistakes are people making when it comes to other creative and their ad process. But before we kind of get into it, you likely are listening to this because you're wanting to know how to make your meta ads more profitable and if that's the case, well, you should consider clicking the link below to chat with our team. We help e-commerce businesses of different sizes do this exact thing. We walk through, we train on the exact frameworks that are working right now, not what worked like five years ago. It's like, here's what's working right now. We coach in a personalized way. We have three to four coaching sessions per week, per program and we walk you through everything where we help you understand how to improve your creative, how to get confidence in your advertising, how to set your metrics, how to finally be able to scale without bleeding cash. And so if you're in e-commerce business listening to this and you're running meta ads and you want to become more profitable in that, click the link and you're going to be able to talk to our team where we're going to understand first of all your business, make sure can we actually help you with where you're at or maybe there's some preliminary things we'll just point you to and say, hey, go do this thing before we actually kind of install the full like a Ferrari over here. Like let's at least get you to move in and get what you need before we give you the keys to the-- - Man, I want the Ferrari. - Yeah, you'll get the Ferrari, but sometimes there are things to do before that. And so we, and we're always honest about that. And so we do, we call them scale audits. So pretty much like we'll analyze your meta ads. So you have to be running meta ads at some point in some capacity to for us to like talk to you about this. So make sure that is, that's like the don't cross go if you don't do this, but at least we're running ads. And then we give like free scale audits all the time. Like well analyze yourself and say, hey, here's kind of what we see and here's what we would recommend doing. And if there's something else that we could do to help you, we'll make that recommendation. But these are like no pressure audits. Like we'll just audit your stuff and we'll say, hey, go do this before we could help you further. Or hey, maybe we can help you further based on what you're at and here's what we see within your account. So anyway, go check that out. Click link in the description. You'll be glad that you did. I promise. Or your money back. All right, let's get into a five meta ad mistakes that are costing you money. - Creatives are my favorite thing to talk about for meta ads. I think I come from a creative background. So I enjoy thinking about that. And then as I've continued in coaching and just the deeper I've gotten here, I messaging is just so much fun. Thinking about how to visualize your product, how to talk to people. And just, I mean, this is like the core of marketing, but it's the stuff that a lot of people skip. So this episode we're really focused on how to improve your creatives because I, time and time again, in optimizing, as Josh talked about, hundreds of clients, a week, the biggest lever that I see that people need to pull that they struggle to pull the most is creative. So we have five creative mistakes that are costing you money. And we're gonna start with number one, which is underestimating the battle between intent versus intrigue. So we used to talk a lot about intent versus intrigue. And honestly, it's because it's the most important thing in ad creative. I feel like, I mean, not even I feel like people do just lean towards intrigue more frequently in advertising than intent. The use vague headlines like, make your life more comfortable or the number one insert your product here. And anytime I see headlines or creatives that save these things, my question is always like, okay, well, who isn't saying these things? - Well, I think the other reason that a lot of people like to focus on like intriguing things is because there's like this instant gratification of engagement. So I think about, like you're really good cost per click usually. - Yeah, you get really good cost per click. So you think that this is the thing, but you go further down the funnel on the cost per credit card and initiate check out and converge right just trash. It's the same thing with like organic. So like we are head over heels in organic right now, meaning YouTube podcast in shorts across all channels. And so like today I'm gonna be filming for six to eight hours just reels. And I'm super excited about it and it'll drain me. But you know, here's the thing though, what I've been learning is that, you know, when you post something organically, views are the first thing that you're like, oh, I should do more of this because it gets more views. But what's interesting is if you actually go into the insights, I have some videos that I made that were like not a whole lot of work that I thought weren't that great and got like 200 views, but then suddenly you, well maybe a little bit more than that. But you go and you look at the metrics of it and the amount of saves in DMs of people that have sent that message to somebody else are like 10 times higher than the thing that got like, wow, 3,000 views. So for example, you remember what I did, I did a, during Christmas time I bought a, I bought a $1,000 espresso machine for the team and I literally had two boxes and in one box was this espresso machine and they couldn't see, it was a box A on one side. And then I decided to box B and inside of it, you could, I could see it from my angle and it was like one free hug, a coupon for one hug from Josh. Well anyway, that got a lot of views. And so it's like, yeah, I could go keep doing that because it's the initial metric, but it's really a vanity metric because it didn't actually transpire into anything. And so I think that's my hunch why most people lean into intriguing things because they see viral content and they think, ooh, I need something. - It's a playmaker. - Yeah, I need something that's going to get views and engagement or it's not good. But yeah, we work with people that have terrible amounts of views and their ads have no engagements and they're doing $200,000 a month or they're spending 50 grand or 100 grand on ads. - And here to second, we're actually gonna talk about how, I think Indromeda has really changed a lot of this too in the way that the algorithm is actually targeting people using your ads. But I wanna give you an example of what these very intriguing ads look like that can look good at the surface. You have fantastic cost per clicks. I'm talking like 40 cents, 60 cents, really, really cheap cost per clicks that just don't convert. So I actually saw an example. I mean, a lot of what I typically see are videos that show your product in use, but it's very hard to tell what the actual product is. So an example of this is a video of someone selling a barbecue rub. I saw this video, it was taking a majority of the spend in the campaign and here is the video. It was like in the kitchen, there's a cutting board and they have like this huge thing of meat that they just got done smoking. They throw it down on the cutting board, they get a knife and they cut the knife and or they cut the meat and that was the video. It had great cost per clicks and didn't sell anything. And the question is, okay, well, what was actually being sold in the video? Was it the meat? Can I go to your website and buy that cut of meat? Do I buy your knife? Do I buy the cutting board? It was the rub. - Do I buy the person that's cutting it? - Yeah, yeah, you know, is it a chef service? Who knows? But it was the rub. It was the barbecue rub over the meat. But that wasn't in the ad, in the creative anywhere. So I got the clicks, but it didn't get the conversions because people were interested in what you were showing, the intrigue, but there was no intent on what you were actually selling or why I should, or what should I, what I should expect on the next page. And something else that I see often are images, and lifestyle I think falls into this pretty often. Images that show your product, but don't really show it in use or show what it's being used for. So I saw a video of a baby carrier and they showed how you put it on. It was one of those, like, baby carriers, that was basically like a sleeve. It wasn't like a velcro thing that goes over like your shoulders and stuff. It was a sleeve. You probably know more about this than I do, maybe. - Maybe, keep going. - Okay. - Okay, so it's a sleeve and they, like the way they wrapped it around their body and then you, well, actually, it didn't ever show you putting, show them putting the baby in. It was like a three minute video, just wrapping fabric around them. how to use it, but it never showed a baby. So, okay, what are they wrapping? Now, it's very interesting. Oh, what are they putting on their body? Is it, does it fix posture? Is it a cooling towel? I don't know. - Is it to suck your belly in so you don't look like a cubby? - It could be, there's so many things it could be, but they didn't show a baby. So it definitely wasn't that. (laughing) So these are some examples of what really intriguing ads can look like that can generate clicks, but won't generate purchases. Yes, so that's high in trig low intent. But if you could get high in trig and high intent, that is the sweet spot. And I would say another example, or something that's really common, is if you might have the most beautiful packaging in the world, but nobody's freaking cares. Nobody cares, I'll give you an example of this. So I'm a huge fan of O2 overnight, and they have a competitor out there. I'm not gonna drop the name of the competitor, but I went and I was looking at their ads library. And the competitor literally has all of their different oats bags kind of like stacked on this. It was just a colored background, so I didn't really like that. But anyway, it was just like all of the bags, just kind of like in the background kind of like a spread. And then it had this little bitty bowl in the front of it with a spoon. You couldn't even say, "Oh, it's just a bowl." And what it was talking about was you get a free bowl with your order or whatever. And then it said, the review was so good. And that's all it said. - That was real good with five stars. - Okay. - It was so good. - And I'm like, what are you selling? Like if I couldn't, like it was kind of hard to read and it was kind of blurry. And I'm like, if I couldn't read or know that you were, if I was intentionally looking at you as a competitor of O2 overnight, I would never know that there was those oats. It's just like a plastic bowl with a plastic spoon in it in the front of it. In front of it, and that's in the foreground with all of these bags in the background. And then you go look at, and then I went and I looked at O2 overnight. And it showed the bag in the center of it and it was blueberry glazed doughnut. And then you just see blueberries in glazed doughnuts, like just literally all the way behind it and so you could taste it through the screen. - They also have the advantage of having oats in their name too. So they have to show oats. - Well, they didn't show oats. They really showed the flavor of the-- - It was cooked some flavor. - Yeah, because if I saw oats, that's-- - It's just oats. - Yeah, but-- - O2 are just oats. - Literally, both of them have the word oats in their name. So the packaging, you can sometimes get away with it if the name is the product, so in this case. But even in that regard, it wasn't very intent-driven, but then suddenly you go to O2 overnight and it's intriguing because I can taste through-- I could like, I'm like, oh, my mouth's watering. It's like, I see blueberry glazed doughnuts in the background. And then it has the packaging on there with all the macros and all that stuff. And then the other one is just literally all the packaging on the background. And there's nothing-- It's just this dingy blue background. And so I say all that because that's another one. When you focus too much on the packaging, you lose the-- I think that's low in tree and low in 10. But like-- - I like that what that's called. - That's bad. That's just called bad. So like, you wanna be intriguing, but you also need to drive intent in a good metric for you to know that you have an intriguing ad, but bad intent is that you have low cost per click, high cost per ad to cart. It means they are intrigued by the ad and they click. So your cost are cheap, right? And that's a leading indicator. It makes you feel good. But then the lagging indicator, which is the ad to cart and conversion rate, are just really trash. So if your cost per ad to cart is over 10% of your AOV, anyway, get a little nerdy there. If your cost per ad to cart is more than 10% of your AOV, it means your-- But your cost per click is good. It means your ad are intriguing, but they're not being intent-driven in their driving poor quality people. - Hopefully you guys wrote that down. That was very important. Now here's the thing though. I feel like we've talked about intent and treat a lot over the years. But we used to say that intent was far more important than intrigue, which it is. However, after Andromeda, people in coaching sessions all the time are complaining that meta is putting all of my spend into ads and they're not getting purchases. All the time, people come to coaching and they're like, I launched a bunch of ads and meta put all my spend into this ad. And I've started kind of explaining it to these people in this way, in that there's two hurdles that you have to get over when you launch an ad. Hurtle number one is does meta like it. And then hurdle number two is do your customers like it, which seems like a super oversimplification of what this is. But let me explain this. So meta uses its AI to pick its favorite creative. When you launch an ad, it does a few low dollar tests to figure out engagement. It figures out what your cost per click is. If it's a video, it's going to look at views, play through all of that kind of stuff. And it's going to determine what its favorite creative is right on launch within the first day or two. So oftentimes, if you have a very, very intriguing ad, meta will favor that because intriguing ads get engagement. Like Josh talked about at the beginning. And that's a lot of why people focus on engagement or intriguing ads for that engagement. However, those ads cross hurdle one, but they don't cross hurdle two, which is do your customers like it or AKA do they convert off of this ad? Because oftentimes, if an ad is similar to everything that I explained earlier, the ads are intriguing. So meta likes it. They get the clicks. So meta puts a lot of spend into them. But then your customers don't convert. So now you're stuck trying to lean into meta's and drama algorithm by giving it a bunch of creatives. But because meta is looking for that engagement right out of the gates, it's going to favor that intriguing creative. Now, what do you got? I was going to step in. Yeah. What's exciting me about this. So it's like, I love these hurdles. I actually haven't heard you say this. I know we come up with a lot of our sayings in live time because we have to give people different ways of looking at it. So hurdle number one, it does meta like it. I heard number two do customers like it. So this is why if you-- I would bet that most of the people that you look at, they're like, well, men is putting it all in this Y-1 thing or something. It's probably like, if I threw in 10 ads, even if I had like seven of them all super high intent base, its product focus, and they're like three that are intriguing, those three would get it because meta likes that. But the problem is that's not driving high quality people. Like the other ones, which is just better-- Well, that's why Dylan says we're a fan of going all in on high intent first. I'd rather have 10 ads that are all just really intent. It's like, either you want this or you don't want this. Because the moment you add the little black sheep in there that's like the intrigue one, that's the one that stands out. And then everybody kind of like that's what I'm going to prioritize is because it gets that engagement. Now, what I was going to say is what I'm excited about is that this has actually-- this has been a frustration point, in my opinion, that we dealt with because like you have to subjectively know if something's going to have high intent or intrigue. The only way to do that is through volume. Now, we have a volume of looking at tens of thousands of ads. And I could look at an ad and in like five seconds, as long as it's not-- well, maybe 30 seconds of the ads longer than five seconds. But pretty fast. I could tell you now this ad is like high intent, low and trig, high intent, high and trig, low intent, low and trig. Like I could tell you exactly how I would view it. But most people don't have that. And so they latch onto the thing that meta likes because it makes them feel good and meta-spending on the thing, getting cost per click and engagements. But then it gets to hurdle number two, and your customers don't like it. Now, what I'm excited about is that meta has rolled out a new update to gem, which is their generative ads model, or else it's called the brain. And so everybody talks about an in-dramada. And I know you just mentioned in-dramada. But the algorithm is built up of some different like core pillars. You have gem, which is the brain. You have in-dramada, which is the speed to retrieve ads. And then you have lattice, which are the different surface placements of ads. And I'm not going to get into all of those. But here's-- You have a podcast on all of those. We do have a podcast, which I want to go on the record. We literally dropped that podcast a week after Andromeda released. And then suddenly everyone's talking about Andromeda in July, August, and September, and October. I'm like, Andromeda dropped into a large last year. So anyway, all that is, say, gem just got the brain, just got a huge upgrade. And so pretty much, reels that have-- reels that have genuine interest that in our relevant are what are going to get prioritized. So meaning like things vague stuff is not going to work anymore. And Metta's no longer prioritizing engagement as the true metric for where it decides what it decides to prioritize, which when I saw that, I'm just like, think. Yeah. I am so annoyed when you do something. Because we have so many clients like they do something and it gets engagement. And then it just latches on and they get battered as old as it's like, no, now Metta's going to almost self-regulate a little bit by saying, hey, Metta's going to measure the intrigue via the engagements. But then it's going to also-- it's also going to measure the intent. And that's going to accumulatively come together and basically determine the priority and the ranking of that ad or the demoting of that ad. So that's why cans of videos are like, those are low intrigue and often low intent. So those are going to get demoted pretty fast. But anyway, we're going to end up doing a full-- deep dive podcast on this and kind of give a state, but give a state of like Metta. But go back to the beginning of this podcast. I talked about our clients and our clients are all going to get at first. They're going to get it way before-- They're going to get it way before we drop this house to the public. So if you're a client, you're going to be getting access like our thoughts on what this truly means and what you need to do based on that. So I'm excited. This is going to change and I believe meta will self-regulate. But of course it doesn't change the fact you have to look through the lens for certain in intrigued. - For sure. Now a lot of you, and you actually kind of commented on this when you were just talking there, that people will come to our coaching sessions and say that meta's favoring a creative, it put all my spend to this one thing and then those people are frustrated and they're like, well, I put all this time to all these creatives and meta picked one and put all my spend here. So none of them got any chance. Now I want to encourage you that this is actually somewhat a good thing. Meta's extremely intelligent AI liked that creative enough. It had that much engagement to pick that creative as the one it was going to put all your spend into. So it went through its whole algorithm, whatever, to determine that that was the creative one of the puts spend into AKA it crossed hurdle one. Now it didn't cross hurdle two, but that's not Meta's fault. That was the creative designs fault. So when you see this, I want to talk about how you can learn and improve from this. If Meta starts spending on something and it doesn't get purchases, Meta's telling you it worked from an intrigued standpoint. Now you have to add the intent. That's all it comes down to. So for example, let's go back to the barbecue rub add. The video worked, right? It got clicks and it got engagement, but it didn't get the purchases. So go back to the video. Now you can add overlays, you can add a voice over, you can add visuals on top of the creative that add intent saying barbecue rub and shows the barbecue rub and explains what it is on the creative. So you get to keep the engagement and the intrigue of the video, but then you add in the intent that's necessary to drive conversions and now you have the best of both worlds. You have to, and that's why I started this whole section with understanding the battle between intent and intrigue. 'Cause no longer is it just intent, intent, intent. There has to be a little bit of intrigue in here to get over that first hurdle of Meta actually choosing to spend on your ad. So when you find an ad that works that gets the cost per click, that gets the intrigue, but doesn't get the purchases, take that as a learning and say how can I get this more intent based? So I have both high intrigue and high intent. - Which will actually tie in later to mistake number five, which is the solution to that. - You'll notice, yeah, I don't wanna talk about number five, but it will actually help solve that. - You will notice a lot of these all tied together. I was trying to find a way to split these up to where they felt like different things, but guess what, they all tied back to the same thing, which will be number five, which I saved till the end. So stick around. (laughing) - You know what I just realized? I love this new podcast setup and I love how these mics sound and everything like that. You know what I hate is how freaking sensitive these are because you're talking over here, dude, and I'm drinking this coffee, and I'm about to like choking on it. And half coughing over here and clearing my throat and it's coming through. You need to get me like a mute button or something right here. - Ooh, that's a good idea. - There are possibilities. You need to have a mute button 'cause I would totally mute myself. - Probably. I think when you wanna drink the coffee, like pull away. - I still heard that. - Yeah, but you weren't talking. You let it go completely quiet for me to drink coffee. - Maybe my mic's just more sensitive. - No, you just drink it right next to it. (laughing) - Dang it. All right, all right. - All right, let's move on to number two. - Mistake number two. I'll cover this one. - Okay, go for it. - And this is focusing on quota over quality. Now, we are a huge fan of deter-- So cadence is required. Quota is the goal, the number of creatives you need to build. But quality has to be maintained. And this is a pretty big, this is a shift of how we've done things over time. At one point, we used to test 50 ads at a time with iterations to let meta find like the one that had the greatest outlier possibility. And we had calculators that were statistical probabilities of it winning and then we would take those things. Well, now it has changed a ton. And so when I say cadence is required, what this means is you need a weekly launch cadence. It's where you launch and you edit on the same day. And so cadence, you have to keep no matter what, okay? So cadence is the non-negotiable, right? Every Wednesday, we launch ads and we trim ads and we just try to edit it. - You just have to create the habit. But then also meta learns your launch cadence and we learn that from one of our high ups in Facebook. So meta learns your launch cadence. And if you're launching on Monday and you're like, "Oh, well, I didn't finish all my stuff, so I'm gonna launch some more tomorrow. I'm gonna launch some more on Thursday and some more on Sunday." Well, it actually creates a lot of volatility. And meta needs time and it actually wants cadence. And so cadence is the non-negotiable. So you need to pick one day per week that you're doing most of all your stuff. Launching should only be one day a week. Now you may have some trimming criteria in between that. But for the most part, we try to do it all within one day. Now, quota is what you're aiming for, but it is a negotiable. So if I say the quota that I need based on my ads spend levels and my business and where I'm at is five create, five new, five net new unique ads per week, five diverse unique ads per week. Maybe it's 10, the higher you spend, the higher your quota is going to be. And so five is a number I think everybody should do. You shouldn't do less than five. You should aim for five. If you can do more great, but I don't want it to be a number that deters you from maintaining consistency. So if you're like, my goal is 10 every week and you always end up doing five, just change your quota goal to five or you're just gonna feel depressed 'cause you never accomplish what you wanna do. So you need to set a quota in aim for it. But here's the thing. Here's what often happens. You're like, hey, I'm gonna launch five new creatives every week. And then Tuesday night and you're like, I literally have three or two, right? And so you're like, well, you know. - But there are two really good ones. - But you know what I'm gonna do? But that's fine. Yeah, that's good. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm actually going to, I'm gonna wait until Friday to launch, ooh, well now your cadence just changed. Your cadence just got off. So cadence is the non-negotiable. There's a lot of, in this, cadence quota quality, okay? Cadence quota quality, everybody remember that. And so cadence is non-negotiable. Wednesday, I launch every Wednesday. Quota is the goal, but it is negotiable. If I have two, guess what? I'm launching with two. But this is where the third thing comes in. Quality must be maintained. So it used to be small iterations are great. And if you were at two and Dylan was given, like he was saying this is what he sees a lot. Someone will aim to launch 10 or something or five. And then they'll be at way less than that. And then they'll just be like, ah, you know what? - Go find some lifestyles. - And then they just grab some random freaking things and just lob them in there. - Yep. - And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. So cadence, so really, I'm gonna flip the order. Cadence quality quota in that order. And if you have two that are good quality, diverse, unique, different ads launch with two. Yep, I don't care if you don't have five or 10 or whatever your quota is. Because what happens is, then it gets your cadence off. And you need to create habit around launching on a cadence because that is a requirement of growing a business. And if you're running meta ads, it is a requirement for being a great advertiser and getting great performance. And so cadence is not negotiable. Quota is required. You need to maintain, or I'm sorry, quality must be maintained, but quota is the goal. And if you don't hit the quota, that's totally fine. If you're over, here's another hack. If you end up doing seven in your objective is five, and you could just do five, that's totally cool. You can launch all seven if you want, but if you want two on the hopper, throw two on the hopper if you really want to, and then it kind of helps you out the next week. But as time goes on, your quota will change, but I would not die on the hill if I have to have this many more. I'm gonna lob low quality things and just for the sake of hitting it. Yeah, and truly what happens here is when you lob things in for the sake of having things, the chances of you giving meta just something bad, objectively bad is really high. So what happens is now with this whole new AI, this whole Andromeda gem, everything that you want to say, you can't just lob things. You have to put your marketing brain. You have to put your marketing brain behind ad creatives. Because if you trust the AI to pick a creative for you, then you can't give it things that you yourself wouldn't pick because it may pick it, it doesn't know better. It's just going for the engagement. So this happens with our coaching clients all the time where we give them a recommended quota and it's so funny, 'cause I will look at their ads and I will start critiquing their ads because typically I look at the ad that gets the most spend because if meta deemed it the most spend, let's see why and let's figure out how to improve it. So I look at the one that gets the most spend and I start critiquing the ad, I say things like, I can't tell what you're selling here. The video's cool, but I can't, if I saw this in my feed, I would scroll past it 'cause I don't know what is being shown here and then I start giving recommendations. That's what we do in coaching. I say, here's how I would add intent to this. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and then they're like, actually, hey, hey, hey. Yeah, I haven't add down here that says all of that. It only spent 27 cents. And I scroll down and sure enough, guess what? Right there is a perfect ad that has all the intent that's required, but meta didn't spend on it. So then it comes back to those hurdles that we talked about. Does meta like it? Well, meta didn't like your intent ads because there was no engagement. There was no intrigue. And so it didn't spend on it. And hurdle number two, did your customers like it? Well, the one that got to spend, no, they didn't like it because it was very intriguing and they didn't convert. So no, they didn't like it. So now you have to find a way to improve this. Once again, be okay launching less for the sake of your weekly cadence and for the sake of making sure your ads are actually good. You need to launch good ads because when you trust meta to make the decision for you, you have to give it the best foot forward or it could make the wrong decision 'cause it doesn't know any better. Most important like Josh said is to launch ads weekly, stay in that habit and then make sure your quality is good no matter what because meta will put spend into something. And if it doesn't put spend into something that you actually truly believe could perform well, then you've wasted a week of spend because you gave it something that didn't actually work. There we go. There's number two. Number three is only saying important stuff in the primary text headlines. Remember, these are mistakes. So the mistake is only saying important stuff in your primary text and your headline. So imagine you're looking at an ad, maybe it's a skincare for new mothers. And on the ad, it shows the skincare, the product is set with like a nice background. And on the headline, it says, headline in the creative. So like big text on the creative, it says all natural skincare and it shows your logo. So if you were a new mom looking at this creative, you see this ad and you're just gonna scroll past it probably. But it's made specifically for you. The product is made specifically for you. So why are you gonna scroll past it? Well, once again, I see this so much in coaching because people tend to leave important information off their creative to reduce clutter or simplify messaging. So then when I ask clients, I'm looking at their creative and I ask them, who is this for? Who would benefit from this product? They typically answer with, oh, that's all in the primary text. And that's great. But you can't assume that the headline, all natural skincare, is going to be interesting enough for people to want to even look at your headline or primary text. So that's like the first thing is, if the important information is in your headline or your primary text, you at least have to have a creative interesting enough that's gonna make them want to look at your primary text. But let's assume that even if the headline on your creative was clear, the headline said, "Skin care for new moms." That's not a great example, but let's say it is, "Skin care for new moms." If it's something that people actually want, most likely they're just gonna click on the ad and not go to your primary text because they know they can learn more on the page. So your creative needs to have everything that your prospective customer is going to need to make a decision to click. You can't leave it vague, it can't be generic. You have to have all the important information on that creative because if you leave it on the primary text or the headline, people need to understand what your product is as they're scrolling through their feed and they will probably never see it in the primary text or the headline. - The other thing too is like, you have to think about placements. So like, certain placements will not show headlines. Certain placements will not show primary text. They all show creative, every placement has created. That's why this is so important because it doesn't matter if this is a real placement, a feed placement, a desktop placement, a WhatsApp placement. It doesn't matter what the placement is or an audience network placement. It's like creative is always going to be there that it makes sense. If you have something that is not clear that has low intrigue or low intent, you're kind of screwed because you can't rely on your primary text and even your headline to tell the full story. So I would say that like in the past, before advantage placements came out and stuff, it used to be that an AI started shifting things around as well with text enhancements. It used to be, you want them to all tell a story. So you'd like have the headline as they're scrolling, the creative stops the scroll. And then the headline validates the creative and then they go up and they read the primary text to get further context. And so now it's almost like, they almost individually have to be able to kind of stand, well, the creative has to stand on its own under what? The headline you have some flexibility with, I don't think the headline is as important. But the primary text, I think it ought to also be overlooked because I think that you should have important information in there for the sake of meta having more context within its ability to target people that express that interest are in that stage of their buying journey. And so I think that primary text should not be the only place. Like you said, the mistake is only having important stuff in primary text and headline. I don't think it should only be there. I think it should be there, but it shouldn't only be there. The creative also needs to have it because what I see the inverse is, some people will just say, creative is the only thing that matters. And you could say yes, yeah, absolutely. But there's only so much that you can actually put in it. Like meta's AI is not, it's smart. It's smart. But let's say I have one headline that delivers my message, a gist of my message. Why would I not have a greater degree of context in the primary text while I'm at it? If I could, right? Because it could look at an image and if it has a headline on it, that's context. And that will help it. And it'll do the targeting all of that. But it would just help it more. If my primary text actually had even further information, like it doesn't hurt it to do that. So you might as well take advantage of that. Yeah, I kind of have started to look at the primary text as think of like your opening chat GPT. And you say, I'm selling this. And it's for this person. Here are the unique selling points that this person cares about. Now, you don't want to just put that in the primary text. But essentially, your primary text is the prompting tool. It's the where you go to prompt meta on who to target. Now, it doesn't mean your customer will always see it. But meta does use it to identify it. But meta has it. That's a matter of meta has it. So who cares if it's not in the placement? Meta knows that they have access to that. Yep. So some people may read your primary text. So like, literally don't just treat it like AI prompting. Like you just put a bunch of stuff in there. But think about it that way. In that this is what, basically, when you used to go in and select your audiences and your targeting, you basically write that out in your primary text now, essentially. So essentially, all this boils down to is your ad needs to be clear. So these are really bland examples, but they get the point across. If you sell a subscription box, you probably should have subscription box somewhere on your creative. If you sell a barbecue rub, your creatives should probably clarify that you're selling a barbecue rub. If you sell skin care for new moms, you should probably call out new moms on the creative. Yeah. Again, you could assume that meta is AI is so smart, it could analyze the creative and know that it's this flavor of barbecue rub. Yeah. Maybe. And it might. And it might. Yeah. But why not just make sure that you say this is a Korean spice whatever? You might as well say this is lemon garlic wings wing rub. Yeah. Also keep in mind the hurdles too, because that's really what this comes down to. Meta can know all this stuff. Meta can analyze your website. Meta can analyze your creative. Meta can analyze your primary text and understand who to target. So for example, the skin care that I gave, it's skin care for new moms, right? Meta knows that. So then meta is going to start targeting new moms. But if your creative says skin care, all natural skin care, then a new mom is going to see this. And they won't know why they got targeted with this ad. And that's the key. Your customers have to understand why meta has placed this ad in front of them. Because if not, they're not going to click, right? So they have to understand because meta knows, typically, I've seen this all the time, meta knows who they're targeting. But if your ad is not calling that person out and reassuring that person, that this is the product for them, they need to click this, then they just won't click. So you have to reassure the customer, which is hurdle number two. Do your customers like it? You can, you, meta can like it all at once. But if your customers don't resonate with the creative, then you don't cross hurdle number two. So there you go. There's, there's number three. Let's move on to number four. Not using this vague messaging framework that I'm about to explain. I didn't know really how to put it in like the headline, not using this messaging framework. You think you can go and I'll workshop this puppy when I go online? All right, we'll go back to number four on the actual headline here. So obviously this episode has talked a lot about intent. But what does intent really mean? I see people get tripped up on this all the time. And ultimately, you have to answer three questions on your ads. Who your product is for, what your product does, and how it does it. So I was on a coaching call with someone yesterday who sold a baby carrier. It was a really unique baby carrier. Had a lot of great USPs. And I looked at the ad and all I saw, it was a lifestyle image of a baby in this baby carrier. So when I look at it, I see it's a baby carrier, right? So, you know, who your product is for? OK, I guess it's moms. What your product does, it holds a baby. How it does it? You know, you strap the baby to your body. That's super generic, right? And you have to infer all of that from the visual that I'm looking at. So I ended up looking up a competitor to help compare Baby Carrier A to Baby Carrier B. And this competitor did such a good job at calling out some of these things. So I looked through the website and I found the who, what, and the how for the competitor. The who was new moms looking for all natural products and seeking calm and confidence postpartum. Look at all those keywords, new moms, natural, calm, confidence postpartum, really, really, really specific who. So now when you know what the who is, it makes it a lot easier to figure out what the what and the how is. Because if you look at your product as just a general, it's a baby carrier. Well, it might be really hard to identify the what and the how because it's a baby carrier that holds babies by strapping into your body, right? You can say so surface level. But if you identify what the who is, then you can identify what the what is. Their what was really interesting. It was reduces crying 43%. Which I'm like, okay, I don't know how it doesn't. I don't know what it does, but I'm in. - How many studies? - I don't know how many studies, but they did say, they did say the how, the how it reduces crying and they had this. Keeping your baby close for three hours a day is proven to reduce crying. But the soft, breathable ergonomic design allows for folding laundry or applying to emails with hands free convenience. - Oh, that's really gritty. - Boom. - I like that good. - So now, not only are you talking to new moms, you're talking to new moms that are maybe lacking confidence, right? The baby is always crying. So you can now assure that mom that this product reduces crying 43%. How, because keeping your baby close for three hours a day is proven to reduce crying. But the reason maybe you don't keep your baby close is because you have stuff to do. You have to fold laundry. You have to reply to emails. But because this product is so good, it's soft, breathable, ergonomic. It allows for those things with hands free convenience. Boom. We now have the who, the what, and the how. Now the problem is, as we just talked about, if you put all this in your primary text, someone's gonna see the ad of the baby and the baby carrier and not know what it's for. They're not, it's another baby carrier. So you have to find a way to put this on the creative 'cause this is the intent. This is what you have to have on the creative for a mother to resonate with it. So here's what I did. I took the who, the what, and the how. Copy it and I threw it in the chat GPT and I said, put this into a meta ads creative and I was super impressed with this output. I made it set the most gorgeous creative, but it does a really good job prioritizing the who, the what, and the how, both visually and with text. So I'm gonna just talk through what this creative looks like. There's a, there's a, what looks like a new mom with a sleeping baby in a baby wrap and it's kind of funny. She has a laptop on one hand and she's folding laundry with one hand on the other side. So it really took that legitimately with the laptop and the laundry. - I think this would, I think this would get roasted in the context. - It probably would. You probably need a good lifestyle. - Every mom is like, there's no way I'm pulling out a laptop when I have a baby strap to me and I'm standing and trying to fold laundry. - Yeah, this, and the fact that they're folding laundry while also supposedly answering emails probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but for the sake of this, the more important thing is the text that's being shown here. The top headline, really big, reduce crying by 43%. It's not necessarily calling out the baby carrier because a baby carrier is a baby carrier. But if your baby carrier can claim that it reduces crying by 43%, keep your baby close three hours a day. Okay, I'm interested, you know, this is not just a normal baby carrier. And then on the side, it does have some like USB check mark things, it says hands free and ergonomic, soft and breathable. Okay, so now it's kind of backing up how I'm able to keep the baby close and reduce the crying and then at the bottom it says more calm, less crying. That one probably could have gone without. But even just throwing this in the chat GPT, not knowing anything, you know, I don't have a baby. So I don't know anything about this. I just pulled from the website, what the brand was claiming, threw it in the chat GPT and it came up with this, with this creative that now has the intent, but more importantly, it has the intrigue, reduce crying by 43%. That's pretty intriguing, I'd say. So that is essentially the, did you workshop my number four here? - Yeah, I actually have a different perspective I'm gonna share. - Kat, what do you got? - So you said mistake number four is not using this messaging framework. You could have just, Claire, we could have just said, it's just not using the who-what-how framework. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That would just be instead of this messaging framework, say who-what-how framework. - Yeah, I guess I'm not really trying it. No one's gonna see the-- - It's all right, maybe we'll add some chapter markers or stuff. Okay, so actually this is interesting. I, I'm gonna give a different perspective on this. When I look at this, I believe, so all of this relates to message. And this comes back to how I look at things, there's three dials. You have three dials you can pull in your ads. The product dial, what product you're doing, you just tweak that one and suddenly it's a different audience, right? Then you have the message dial, which encompasses this stuff right here, and then you have the creative dial. And the message can overlay into the creative and the copy. And so I prefer, this is a simple way of who-what-how. But sometimes things may not have a how though. So not, I'm not gonna try to like a, yeah, actually, maybe I'll fight you on this lifetime. - All right, all right. - Okay, so let's say I'm selling dog scarves. How is like, it's just cute. - You have to identify the what though. - Yeah, okay, so I would view this, here's how I look at it. I look at it as two things. A message is the umbrella. And the two things that create the message are the ICP, which is the who, right? And then the context. I just generalize and I call it context, because there's a lot of different contexts. And within this there are contexts that actually really like. So you can look, like sometimes there's pain-based context. Sometimes there is benefit-based context. Sometimes there's seasonality-based context. Sometimes there's holiday-based context. The context can just change. So like, and here I really like how it's like, it allows for folding laundry. Okay, boom. I think folding laundry is actually a single context, right? And now I can mold a message for my ICP of moms with babies under one year old that they have to still strap to them, right? - Yep. - Who don't have time to even fold laundry because the baby, they constantly have the baby on them. And now I don't think that I have to focus on crying, because if you have a baby that's like, if you want to carry your baby around, maybe it's not about crying, maybe it's about just getting time back. And so I think that context is more, maybe it's just a little bit more generic that you have flexibility to just say, here's a piece of context, and how do I want to, how do I want to attack that piece of context? - Yeah. - So I would say the context is folding laundry and not being able to do it without carrying your baby in your hands. Well now this actually doesn't solve the crying thing. Maybe it's not crying this to the pain point. Maybe it's actually the fact that I don't have two free hands to be able to do something. So now the context is like, I'm gonna lean into the pain point of folding laundry. That's the context, and I'm gonna mold a message around the context of folding laundry. And it might be pain-driven. It might say, hey, are you, is it too, and I'm terrible on the spot, like I know you are too. This is hard, but like if you're like, I'm better at creative. If you're like, hey, are you not able to even fold, is it, do you find a difficult even folding laundry with your baby because your hands are constantly occupied? - Yeah. - Boom. That's how this can help. But I could also take the benefit-driven thing and say, instead of saying, do you find it difficult to fold laundry? Instead you just flip it and you say like, this makes folding laundry five times easier because your baby is strapped to you and it reduces crying at the same time so you can fold for longer. So like I think that I prefer to say context and the what and how are two different, they're just types of context because I don't think you always have to have a how. - I think the reason that I've added how is because a lot of people will focus on the what. You can reduce crying 43%. If that's what you're saying, or you can fold laundry, well how does a baby carrier help me fold laundry? Now, and I think a lot of people will make the claim but they won't say the how it happens. So then you're making claims and hoping, fingers crossed, people will find on your website how the fact that this is soft, breathable and ergonomic allows you to keep it on for longer periods of time so that you can fold laundry. So you're what could be folding laundry. - So how is always, this is always, how is best I believe for like a pain driven approach but like let's say you, and maybe some benefit too but if you were doing a context of like holiday seasonality in Black Friday or something like that, I may not have to explain, I may not have to do my how. And actually I'm gonna add one more thing here. I think how is more essential if you have a product that is not easy to understand. - Yeah. - You know, so let me just say, if I'm selling sauce, I don't have to explain how this sauce is good. I have to probably use vivid language that would allow them to taste the sauce while they're through the screen. I say that I'll taste and smell through the screen for certain things like that. So I would. - Now for sauce, you could say who, the sauce is for, the dads that are always hosting the barbecue at their house. The what is that it's going to make your barbecue irresistible to your people. How it's going to do it is because it's going to get more compliments than any other sauce you've ever used before. Yeah. That was on the spot. Yeah. I'm not, hey, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, hey, you do you. Who what how is Dylan's way? Mine is ICP era, ICP times contact because I don't think you always have to say how because we've done a lot of ads that don't always have the how. But I do, but here's the thing, like if you haven't established any general messaging, this is a better way to go because how is going to help you when you're doing pain-based messaging, which generally works the best? Yeah. And another thing I think for a lot of what we're talking about today, this is something that I've talked to clients about just recently, depending on your stage in advertising, I may suggest way more than you think you need. You know, a lot of people are like, don't you think it'll feel a little cluttered? The creative might feel a little cluttered? And I'll say, yeah, but I guess would you rather have purchases? It may be cluttered, but would you rather convey to the person what's actually happening? And then as you learn your messaging over time, you can start to remove those things, because I'd rather you remove things than have to have, then start with nothing and have to add things and hope you add the right thing. I'd rather you have everything to start and then remove things as you start to learn and understand how to talk to your customer, which actually perfectly leads into number five, which is not following the breadcrumbs, because this is kind of the all-encompassing, how do I scale with this podcast? How is this podcast going to actually help me scale? So, a lot of times I feel like people feel like they have to reinvent the wheel every time they launch creatives, which is a good thing. You need diversity. However, people get stuck and they're like, how do I show the same product again and again and again and again? How do I find new ways to describe the same features? How do I show the product in use? I've already shown it used a billion times and it doesn't change. If it's a cleaning product, you spray it. Spray it the same way today as I did a week ago. Following the breadcrumbs is less about how do I make the add different in last time, but how do I make the add better than last time based on what I've learned and based on how I've learned how to message to my customer? You explained that with the barbecue rub. You said, "Okay, well, meta, first of all, every time I go in, we look at a seven-day look back. Every week that we're doing analysis, so Robert will do analysis on whatever it is, Monday or something. He used to brief us on creatives that we need and then we have until Wednesday or Thursday to create those, I forget our launch day." So, when you're doing your analysis and determining what your next creative should be, following the breadcrumbs typically looks like this. I'm going to give a really practical step by step. Log into your ads manager or breezeway. You should be on breezewaysway better. It's the ads manager that a meta wish they had built. Log into your ads manager and then you go down, look at whatever campaign you're going to analyze, that you're trying to follow the breadcrumbs and determine what to determine what creative and you need to build next. And then you go down to all of the ads within it. You filter by amount spent and you look for the ones that take majority of the spend percentage. Because that's just telling you what meta is prioritizing. So, earlier, Dylan, you gave the example of barbecue rub, right? That video, right? So, meta is prioritizing that spend. Okay, what does this tell us? It does tell us there's probably not a lot of intent here. But it's telling us a meta really like this video, right? So, now the breadcrumbs is the video got engagement and meta prioritizing the feed from a spend standpoint, but it didn't get the purchases that I need. So, I can look at this video and say, is it the making process that people really like? I could take that single video and now overlay a greater degree of intent based messaging to then kind of bring that to where it needs to be. And then I could also say, okay, well, I should go make some different videos of me doing not just like barbecue or whatever it was. It was slicing, but I should do it with fish and I should do it with chicken. And now I'm getting diversity into different food groups of different types of people like some people don't eat fish and some people eat fish every day. And so that's- And they resonate differently with different foods. Yeah, and that's diversity, right? That's the kind of diversity that you want to really find. And so, that's like that's tangibly how all follow breadcrumbs. I'll just go look at like what are the ads that are getting all the spend and then how do I just make not small iterations? Now, don't get me wrong. Typically, we don't want to make small iterations. Meta doesn't really care about small iterations. They want big differences. What's an example of a small iteration? If I had a static that had a headline for Oats overnight and it said, the only protein breakfast you need. And then I went and I had the exact same creative and I just swapped the headline and I said, this protein breakfast will change your life in save you time. Yeah. It's like, okay, yeah, it's a different message. It's the same thing. So like this is- oh, another example of this is when you have- I'm going to give you a video example. We used to go film videos and then film like five different hooks and then throw it in there. And then it's like the same video, but there's just a different first five to 10 seconds, right? Meta is still analyzing all those and it's like, hmm, this is fishy speaking of fish. It looks like you basically just did the same thing and gave me like five different hooks. Now, one of the hooks will probably stand apart. Yes, but it's going to- it could just be random chance that it just chose one of them because the first one got more engagement. And so like that's not diversity and variety that Meta really needs. And so breadcrumbs, I go and I look at, hey, what's them getting the most spend? Meta clearly likes these for some reason. And now, how do I anecdotally decide what does Meta maybe like? And then just chase the breadcrumb the next week and your breadcrumbs might be off. You might be like, oh, I think Meta really liked the cutting of the food. So I do all these different food options and it's like, no, it wasn't that about the- it wasn't that. It was actually it really liked beef. Okay, great. So now I should just go do more beef stuff. But then you show, you know, you're going to show smoking the beef, cutting the beef, serving the beef. That's how you can then diversify if it wasn't different types of meat. It was the beef. Or you go in and you just film different- you film some b-roll shots. You add in some voiceover and you film some aero with it. And then you add captions when you don't have captions. So like there are different ways to diversify and go deep within the things. But just choose one breadcrumb each week and then just go follow that breadcrumb. Yeah. So we have a client in the max-profits mentorship that sells natural cleaning products. And for the longest time, she had a video that did really good. That got a majority of her spend. I'm talking like 60-70%. And it was like teetering on the line of profitability. Some days it was good, some days it was bad. Basically, it was a video that started on a dirty glass shower. It had captions. It showed her using the product, but it was really slow. It was like showing the dirt and then it feels like she was like grabbing the thing and then she sprays it and then slowly wipes it down. But it did get spend and it got purchases. So what that means is it crossed hurdle one, meta liked it. But hurdle two, you know, you tripped over it every once in a while. But she had another ad set that showed just before and after images. So one ad set had this video, another ad set had before and after images. So what she went and did is basically remade that video. But better, faster, better messaging quickly showed the product and use versus like the time that it took for her to start spraying it and clean it off. Very quick cut. It was a completely different video. But taking what she learned from why that video got the spend and why the before and after images got the purchases and combined them together. So she went and remade it and it did really well. She learned from her video, people like seeing the product in action and then she learned from the images that people like seeing the before and after. And then after she figured this out, it did really well. After she figured this out, she started. So what did she figure out? She figured out the quick cuts, the product in action, the before and after and a bunch of different cleaning applications. So she started applying this to shower glass, faucets, tile, etc. Guess what? Shower glass still did the best. Even though she applied it to all those different things, shower glass was a thing that people resonated with the most. So she went back to shower glass and the videos that she has running now are so good, they, it starts like this. Does your shower glass look like this? Image, image, image, image, image of all these before nasty looking shower glass? Then try this and spray it, clean it. And this video has gotten 44% of her campaign spent in the last 14 days and she launched it three weeks ago. So that fast, it has taken a majority of her spend. Killin it, Amy. We had Amy on the podcast. Amy was on the podcast. We had a podcast with her probably like six months ago. Go listen, she, she's grown a lot and it's for a good reason. She's really freaking smart. Do her ads are so good. Yeah, she's so good at her stuff. What she does. And the main takeaway from this is it's because she didn't reinvent her ads every time. It wasn't like, I don't know why people are liking this. So I'm just going to go try something completely different. It was no, she was very pinpointed and specific as to what she was going to try next. It was, okay, before and after, okay, combine before and after the video. Okay, was it the shower glass or was it the tile? No, it was a shower glass. Okay, so now I'm going to make a really freaking good shower glass before and after video and it is paying off. We'll say that much. And I'm just going to say this because I'm in Amy's ad account right now. I just pulled something and they said this. She has, I just want to go, I want to show how that why it's so crucial to your, your consistent. And by the way, hers is a great example of crossing hurdle one consistently is the amount of spend that those new adsets get. So Amy has 20 active ad sets all following the breadcrumbs. So we, there's one, there was like snow day focus and then pros and handheld and the new before and after and then shower and the new upgrade and small batch and then faucet videos and then non toxic and then myth versus fact and then anti vinegar and then educational. So I'm saying all this to give you, I give you perspective on this campaign that Amy's running has without giving all her numbers away. I'm just kind of bragging on her because she's the last 20 weeks. She has launched a new batch of ads into this campaign for this product every week for over 20 weeks now. I see 20 active ads in the 20 active assets in the last 30 days, which means there's like five to 10 ads per ad set in there. Something like that. I'm going out of the ad set level. Ad level to just see it's taking a while to load here. 156 ads. Yeah. There are 156 ads. So you just take two. Okay. So she's averaging like seven to eight ads per ad set every week for over 20 weeks. Guess what? Amy is breaking records. Yep. She, oh, literally, she posted a win in one of our channels yesterday and she said month to date, just January is up 380% over last January. Wow. That's absurd, which is really, really exciting. That's amazing. So like I share that because like Amy's doing the work and launching this stuff and just following the breadcrumbs every week, you need to commit to the cadence. You need to, you need to commit to the cadence. You have to maintain quality and you need to aim to hit a quota every week, even if it's not perfect. Yeah. Well, I mean, you basically just summarized it. But I'll do a quick one through five summary, the five creative mistakes that are costing you money on your meta ads. Number one is underestimating the battle between intent versus intrigue. Number two is focusing on quota over quality. Number three is only saying important stuff in your primary text in your headline. Number four is not using who, what, how framework or just not having very good context. And number five is not following the breadcrumbs. Boom. There you go. That was fun. You know what? Every time we get into it, we're like, hey, you know, we're going to spend about five to 10 minutes on each point. And then here we are an hour in. I'm so glad we covered this. I hope you all found this valuable. If you did, do us a really big favor. Please just rate this podcast on whatever app you're listening to. If you're on YouTube, please go ahead and give us a thumbs up. But then also give us like a, give us in the comments, give us a big, like what was a big takeaway for you that you're going to actually go work on based on some of these different mistakes that we said in here. So if you do that, it would mean the world to us. And of course, we will see you in the next episode. [MUSIC]