Happy Sunday, Everyone!
After my last two issues, I’ve received over a dozen emails from readers asking for advice / lessons learned over my career. It’s probably also the most common question I get on panels/podcasts – but I’ve never actually written them down. So, for this week, here’s my first pass at “Sam’s Hard-Won Advertising Wisdom”:
Lesson #1: Clear Beats Clever - All Day, Every Day
One of the biggest creative time-sucks is “clever” – at best, it’s a vain attempt to demonstrate our own skills as marketers (look at this pithy, punny tagline!); at worst, it’s jargon-jammed non-descript nonsense. It’s copy written for marketers, by marketers.
And while 2% of your audience will read a clever headline with a wry smile on their face (and maybe even with a chuckle), here’s the reality: even if you converted 100% of those people, you probably did so at the expense of the other 98%.
Instead, focus on two things: clarity and simplicity.
Clear: assume the reader has no understanding of whatever it is you’re promoting (product, service, program, whatever) - then present the offer and benefits in plain language. Explain how this [whatever] will make the lives of your audience members better.
Simplicity: the average American adult reads at an 8th grade level. 130M+ Americans have low literacy skills – meaning they either read below a 6th grade level, are illiterate, or are functionally illiterate. ~85% of Americans use at least one social media platform (inclusive of YouTube). Put those two facts together, and you’re left with a single conclusion: a substantial segment of your audience likely struggles to understand moderately complex language.
The solution? Write simply. Be direct. Show, don’t tell. Avoid overly complex sentences. A good rule of thumb: if a drunk person can’t understand what you’re selling in less than 3 seconds, it’s too complicated (and yes, there are actually people who will get drunk + review your copy or ads).
Clear + Simple = Understanding
Understanding + Surplus Value = Sales
It’s quite simple. Once your audience understands your product/service, and they grasp how it can improve their lives, then the only question remaining is whether or not the value of what it is you’re offering exceeds the cost. If it does, they’ll buy.
Too many brands focus only on the “Surplus Value” section of the equation – but remember, the lower your audience’s understanding of the value your product/service creates for them, the higher their perception of surplus value must be to trigger a purchase/conversion.
Lesson #2: The Best Ads Aren’t Ads
Lesson #2 comes with a hard truth: most consumers hate ads. There’s a reason most of us hover our cursor over the lower-right corner of a YouTube video, waiting to smash that “Skip” button the instant it appears: watching boring, canned ads is miserable.
But every once in a while, we (often inadvertently) watch an ad – and don’t realize it for far longer than we care to admit.
Anyone who spends some level of time on social media - whether it’s Meta, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn - has come across an “anti-ad” (or 2, or 10) – these are the ads that are nearly indistinguishable from organic content. They’re not perfect or polished; they’re not shot in 4K, the lighting isn’t just so and the script isn’t perfectly edited to just the right cadence.
Anti Ads, Ugly Ads, whatever you call them - they’re authentic, real and relatable. And (surprise) they work – because they’re made to appeal to your actual audience, not your creative team.
My best advice: before you make your next round of ads, spend time curating a feed that resembles what your target audience might have – follow the pages they follow, read the comments they post, browse the websites, hashtags and groups they’re likely to be interested in (if you’re not sure what those are, go get SparkToro, then get to work).
Then make ads that look, feel and sound like the content you’ve just consumed. Don’t be afraid to leave the “best practices” behind – after all, to achieve what no one else has, you must be willing to do what no one else does.
Lesson #3: The Hook Is 80% of the Ballgame
I was recently with a creative team that had spent nearly a week revising the final third of a ~1 minute ad set to roll out across YouTube + Meta. Like so many other ads, this one had a heavily-branded opening frame and a roller-coaster narrative arc (relatively slow build up, a lot of action in the middle, and a relatively weak close).
Let’s not mince words: this ad sucked.
It didn’t suck because the footage was bad, or the message wasn’t data-informed and dialed in, or the talent wasn’t properly representative of the audience; it sucked because virtually no effort had been put into the hook. And the hook is the ballgame. If your hook sucks, it doesn’t matter how brilliant the rest of the ad is, because 80%+ of your audience is already gone. And even if you capture + convert that remaining 80% at a sky-high rate (25%+ CTRs + CVRs) – that’s still not good enough to compensate for losing the 80%.
80% of your effort should go into the first 10 seconds of your ad. Obsess about the hook. Script 5, 10, 15 or more variants. Use the research from Lesson #2 to inform different types of hooks – whether it’s immediate action, result-and-rewind, secrets, stories, bold statements, before-and-after, hopeless-until-solution, whatever - and execute as many as you can.
Once you’ve nailed the hook, assembling the rest of the ad is straightforward - the successful hook will likely restrict your set of possibilities in the middle and end of the ad, while defining what style those possibilities should take (direct, conversational, formal, causal, etc.).
Think of it like chess: the opening has a massive impact in shaping the middle and end game. A strong opening allows you to press the advantage into the midgame and dictate the endgame; weak opening requires disproportionately better play in the middle just to make it to the endgame (let alone win). That doesn’t mean that a brilliant hook will always lead to a brilliant ad (just as a strong opening doesn’t always lead to a victory) – but it sure does improve the odds.
Lesson #4: Make More Ads
The #1 mistake in digital advertising today is the belief that quality trumps quantity – that somehow curation or expertise or “creative know-how” will overcome raw creative production over any reasonable time horizon.
It isn’t just wrong, it’s dangerous.
The undisputed reality, across millions of ads, is that a small minority of ads (1% to 10%, depending on the account) account for 80%-95% of the spend + results. Across the board, creative performance tends to follow a normal distribution: ~95% of ads perform within 2 standard deviations of the mean (and that mean is rarely, if ever, good enough).
Fortunately, there’s a single, rational way to navigate this reality:
- Solve for Volume. The more creatives you put into your ad account, the higher the probability that you’ll find winners.
- Accept Small Losses. Accept small losses as perfectly fine - if you spend 0.25% of your monthly budget on an ad and it bombs, that’s a perfectly acceptable outcome. Remember: the vast majority of your total return will be produced by a handful of ads.
- Suppress Marginal Cost of Production. Relentlessly suppress your marginal cost (financial + time) of creative production - the less you need to spend creating each “shot”, the more shots you can produce per unit time.
- Feed The Bulls. Create a criterion for aggressive “follow-on” investment as soon as you spot a winner.
- Keep Bet Size Constrained. The highest probability of failure comes from over-investing in losers. Until an ad/ad set/campaign actually demonstrates some measure of success, constrain the budget.
- Don’t Interrupt The Compounding. The final boss of this particular game is always the toughest: that very human desire to meddle. To interrupt the compounding. To pull the plug after the first 50 ads all bomb. Resist it. Put your head down and execute.
That’s it. Don’t make it more complicated.
If you’re wondering what ads to make, I’d encourage you to create a “creative idea bank” of some time (we use Google Sheets + Drive): every time you come across an ad that catches your eye, or seems different/creative/interesting, or fools you into thinking it’s an organic post, screenshot it (or download it) and drop it into a Google Sheet along with what you thought about it (i.e., “this ad has a clever hook” or “the narrative arc is different than we’ve seen for this audience” or “this is a clever way to show the benefits of the product/service”). If just 2 members of your team contribute 1 concept per day, and if you can turn each concept into 3 variants, that’s over 180 ad ideas per month.
Lesson #5: Align Ads, Offers + Landers
Over the past month, we’ve been working through an audit for a high-spending brand that was struggling to understand why there was a chasm between the performance they saw in their ad account and the performance of their underlying business. From a high level, their ad account was performing exceptionally well: most “marketing” metrics (CTR, CPC, Top of Page Rate, etc.) were strong, structure was old, but not horrible. In assessing their audience + traffic, everything likewise looked good – they were getting in front of the right people, at the right time.
But something was not working. Conversion rates for paid traffic were far below site averages. There was a grand canyon between the metrics reported by the ad platform and the reality in the CRM.
It was only after we audited their entire experience that we saw the reason: their landing pages had nothing to do with their ad copy. The ad account was sending searchers with local intent to locations over an hour away – was it any wonder why those people weren’t converting?
This is a common issue among accounts we see: the ad, offer and lander aren’t aligned. If you’re mentioning a specific product or offer in your ad, it should be prominently displayed on your landing page. The fact that 20%+ of ad accounts we review have a variant of this problem in 2024 is absolutely bonkers to me. Nothing better epitomizes the definition of an unforced error.
If you’re not sure if this applies to you / your brand, go search! Actually read the ads you’re served, then click on some (yes, you’re going to pay money. Oh no.). Read the landing page from the perspective of a new/unfamiliar user. If something doesn’t make sense, you’ve got a problem:
- Does the ad mention a product/service that isn’t prominently displayed on the landing page?
- Does the ad reference a different location than the landing page?
- Does the ad have a different offer than the landing page?
- Are the models/visuals different between the ad and landing page?
- Does the ad + landing page appear to be targeted to different audience segments (perhaps the FAQs are geared toward a B2B user, but the ad toward a B2C user)?
If any of these are true, then you’re likely artificially suppressing your conversion rate by confusing your audience.
Align every ad, offer & lander - and watch your conversion rate (and your ROAS / Contribution Margin) increase.
Lesson #6: Most Tests Should Be Big Swings
There’s a certain level of reverence in most digital marketing circles for incrementalism - go to enough CRO webinars, and you’ll start believing that if you just change enough button colors, images, copy, fonts and page layouts, you’ll eventually land on something that converts at 25% (or better).
That’s obviously bullshit. Unfortunately, lots of people believe that bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing inherently wrong with incrementalism - it’s wonderful for long-term investing (returning 10% per year for 30 years via a S&P 500 index fund is perhaps the surest path for anyone to become a millionaire), and occasionally quite good for helping already-strong brands improve their marketing performance over time.
The problem is that pesky “time” detail above: incrementalism takes time.
In long-term investing, you have all the time in the world. You’re thinking in decades or quarter centuries or longer.
But if you’re a business trying to capture market share, or establish product-market fit, or push an innovative product to market? Time is a luxury you can’t afford. While - mathematically - step-wise improvements will get you to the summit of the mountain you’re on eventually, that’s not what you should be focused on doing. Instead, I think you should be focused on answering two questions:
- Am I climbing the right mountain?
- How quickly can I get to the top?
As I wrote above - mathematically, given sufficient time, incrementalism will get you to the top of whatever mountain you’re on. If that happens to be Mt. Everest, congratulations. If that’s Cadillac Mountain, uh-oh. The only way to determine if you’re on the right mountain is to take some major detours - something that incrementalism (by definition) doesn’t allow (which is why most modern optimization algorithms force detours).
Second: once you’re on the right mountain, the question shouldn’t be, “Can I get to the top” (yes, eventually) - the question should be: “How do I reach the top as quickly as possible?”
In both cases, big swings are the answer.
Most marketers (and therefore, most brands) are reluctant to try taking those big swings because they’ve been trained (yet another failure of the American education system) to think like scientists: to carefully structure their tests, isolate variables and ensure that results are defensible. And make no mistake: this is a wonderful methodology if you’re working to cure cancer, or develop a room-temperature superconductor).
But we’re not doing that in marketing. We’re trying to win, not to be right.
Here’s the thing: I’ve yet to meet the CEO who gives a single damn about the p-value of your test, or cares to assess your experimental design, or is interested in submitting a paper on your findings to a peer-reviewed journal. They’re interested in winning - whether that’s more sales, more leads, more customers, more users, whatever.
So take bigger swings. Throw out the traditional testing framework. Look for 10x-ers: the changes that will fundamentally revolutionize an aspect of your business such that it performs 10x better than what you have today. Think: going from horses to cars, or cars to airplanes. This might be a new product, or a radically different offer, or a different platform, or brand-new channel.
And yes, those 10x swings should be tempered with 10% tests, too – but far fewer of them (especially if you're a sub-9 figure brand).
Lesson #7: Roll With The Tides
Simultaneously creating demand and urgency is one of the most difficult things to do from a marketing standpoint. It’s near-impossible for all but the biggest, most sophisticated brands on the planet.
Yet most marketers still try.
The solution is simple: lean into a marketing calendar. Identify the periods (minor holidays, business cycle points, back-to-school, etc.) with naturally-occurring demand increases, then focus your efforts on pulling through as much of that naturally-occurring demand as possible then.
Yes, that means you’ll likely have peaks-and-valleys in your sales/lead flow – but that’s OK because it comes with more efficiency and more total volume.
Every brand should have at least six (6) peaks per year – a combination of existing holidays/trigger points (4th of July, BFCM, Mother’s Day / Father’s Day, etc), niche holidays (i.e. National Ice Cream Day), demand periods (i.e. Back to School, July 1 -> start of new fiscals, April home buying seasons, etc.), and self-created triggers (major events, product drops, new product/service launches, etc.).
Push ads aggressively around your peaks, and let your cost caps/bid caps do the rest during the valleys. It’s not only easier, it’s often more profitable. Don’t fight the tide.
Lesson #8: Miss In The Right Spot
The most significant mistakes I made early in my career were all directly attributable to overconfidence (or, perhaps more accurately, to not properly assessing downside risk). It’s the same mistake I see many junior marketers (and far too many more senior marketers, investors and operators) making today.
The best analogy I have for this is golf - a game defined not by the brilliance of your best shots, but rather by the relative acceptability of your worst shots. The best way to score well is to position yourself such that, even if your shot isn’t perfect, it still gives you a viable opportunity to make par.
This is simple, asymmetric upside betting: raise the floor without limiting the ceiling.
While this advice seems intuitive, the reality is that most people don’t follow it. Instead of implementing a strategy with a 90%+ chance of an acceptable-or-better outcome (and maybe 20% of that 90% is a “home run”), most of us choose strategies or ad concepts with a 30% home run, 30% OK and 40% failure rate. Mathematically, that means we accept 300% more risk for 50% more upside.
This often takes the form of strategies that require 2, 3, 4, 5 things to go right in order for something to be successful, or creative that needs to be exponentially better than everything else (because it’s just like everything else) or for users to pay attention to (and understand) subtle points or value propositions. These are low-probability strategies. And unless you’re in the top 1% (or 0.1%) of marketers (and I can prove to all of us that 99% of marketers aren’t in the top 1%), the odds of you consistently executing those strategies to perfection are not in your favor.
Accepting this requires a great deal of humility. But once you do, it becomes a superpower - because you’re not trying to play hero ball. You’re not trying to navigate a tightrope while juggling flaming torches. You’re just trying to do the simple thing and miss in the right spot, and give you (or your client) the best possible chance to make par (or better!).
In practice, this looks like a few things:
- Simple, straightforward account structures with data-informed targets
- Accurate data passed back to platforms
- Ads with high floors and high ceilings
- High volume of ad creative that looks like the content their audience already sees
- Simple, straightforward user experiences that align with those ads
- Clear, simple language throughout the journey
- Sufficient budget + patience to survive the inherent fluctuations of the ad markets and press advantages when they present themselves.
That’s it. There’s nothing flashy here. But the brands that do this out-perform 80% of advertisers, all because they’ve set themselves up to miss in the right spot while still allowing for asymmetric upside when (not if) they hit on a winner.
This is the equivalent of the golfer who hits it 250 yards down the middle on every drive, hits most of their greens in regulation, avoids the hazards (bunkers/lakes/out-of-bounds), and capitalizes on the opportunities they have to score. And while that golfer isn’t flashy (in fact, they’re probably really boring), as the saying goes, “The only story that matters is the one the scorecard tells.”
That’s all for this week! I hope this issue challenges some of your existing beliefs and perspectives, and maybe gives you a new idea (or two) to try.
Enjoy your Sunday + have a great final week of July!
Cheers,
Sam
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