🥗 2x More Efficient Ads; Here's how

Hey there,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

Before we jump into today’s newsletter, we want to take a brief moment to send our prayers to all the dead, wounded, and hurt by the war currently happening in Israel.

It’s truly saddening to see and read about everything that’s going on in the world right now.

To all our Israeli friends and partners; We’re here for you if you need anything. Our prayers are with you, and we hope you all stay safe!

Now, that being said.

Let’s get into todays newsletter.

In this week’s newsletter, we’ll talk about ad creatives…

Most of the industry knows about the importance of creatives, but very few talk about tactical ways to increasing the efficiency of those creatives.

So…

Today, we’ll talk to you about one of the most cost and time-efficient ways to improve the efficiency of your ad creatives…

…And NO it's not your account structure or what bidding strategy you use on Meta.

But before we jump into this fully loaded newsletter, we'd like to share a few things with you:

1) Last week, we released a bonus episode about everything we’re doing to prepare for BFCM. Check it out here if you want to crush your BFCM goals

2). We’re soon launching a new podcast called “Chew On CRO”, which will be focused around everything-CRO only. So stay tuned for that!

Without further ado,

Let’s get into today’s newsletter

How to get 2x more efficiency out of your ads

David Ogilvy once said, "When you have written your headline, you've spent $0.80 out of your dollar".

Now, of course, David Ogilvy knows what he's talking about.

But you might ask, "What's a headline got to do with ad creatives on Meta?"

Great question! David Ogilvy said that when some of the only paid media channels was newspapers and TV ads.

But the same thing applies to Meta ad creatives in the form of "hooks".

First, let us break down what a "hook" really is.

A "hook" is the first frame of a clip or even an image that someone watches/sees when they're scrolling on their feed.

A great hook is able to stop a larger amount of people than a bad hook.

Think about it like this: If we're able to stop 2x more people from watching our video, what's the likelihood that we'll be able to 2x our conversion? Quite a lot!

Now, of course, this is not guaranteed, and like many things in life, it has its own nuances.

For example;

The hook should also speak/resonate with the right audience.

The traffic should be directed to the right landing page

… and of course, the copy on the landing page should resonate with the reader.

If all of these criteria is met; then we can confidently say…

The more eyeballs you get on your ads, the higher the number of conversions you’ll get.

That's why we, at Obvi, test heavily on hooks (the first 3 seconds of a video) and the headline callouts in the first 3 seconds.

Again, it’s honestly the cheapest and the easiest way to maximize the efficiency of a concept that we're trying to test.

For each new concept, we always have 4 different variations of hooks and headlines to completely juice out that concept.

Keep in mind though, that the concept is the exact same; the only change is the hook.

Another way we test concepts is keeping the angle/concept the same but changing the way you portray it in the first 3 seconds.

For example: "Tummy tuck vs Liposuction."

The angle is pretty much the same, but the “unique mechanism” is different

What makes a good hook?

Now that you've understood the importance of testing hooks, let's get into what makes a good hook.

There are 4 categories that we bucket hooks into:

1). Satisfying visual

2). Brain-numbing visuals

3). Calling out the main desire of the target demo

4). Calling out the main point of the target demo

1). Satisfying visuals: As the name suggests, they mainly have some "satisfying" element to them.

For instance, this creative from Jones Road Beauty has a satisfying hook to it, where someone's playing with the makeup.

2). Brain-numbing visuals: These mainly consist of some kind of a reverse shot/super closeup weird shot, which makes the brain get more intrigued to perceive it.

For instance, One of our top hooks was a reverse shot of the pills coming out of the container.

We could have gone with just a normal shot, but the reverse shot makes it more intriguing.

Another example is this ad from DRMTLGY, which has a doll with lotion over its face as a hook.

Now, this is not a reverse shot, but it is still a really weird visual which makes your brain think twice.

You can get really creative here!

3). Calling out the main desire: Now, this usually has a really simple visual, but the headline does the main talking.

For instance, this creative from True Classic has a really simple visual of a jacked dude showing off the tee, but the headline calls out the main desire, "The most attractive shirts to women" aka women being attracted to men.

Now, c'mon, who wouldn't want this tee?!

But do you see how simple this is?

There's a small nuance here, though they don't just call out the main desire, but they over-dramatize it, which is key here.

You have to make it dramatic enough (but not clickbaity) for people to stop, but also appealing to the main desires/outcome they're looking for.

4). Calling out the main pain point: Similar to the 3rd one, this also usually has a simple visual (as simple as even a talking head), but the headline directly calls out the main pain point.

For instance, this creative from Dr.Squatch calls out the main pain point of the target demo: "My boyfriend's hygiene was terrible, so I told him…"

Now you will see it's a major pain point since it's coming from a female perspective (even though it's a men's product) that her partner smells bad.

Which man would want that? No one!

Again the key is to make it dramatic enough and also be really creative here and think deeply about what's actually a major pain point for the customers.

The beauty about all of these four categories is that you can have a combination of them in your hooks.

For instance, you can combine "Satisfying visual" with "Calling out the main desire" which may make a killer hook.

The key here is to test a ton and then double down on what works!

At least, this is a framework that's worked for us here at Obvi.

How to create killer hooks

You may ask, "We know hooks are really important, and what makes a good hook? But how do we create a good hook?"

Great question! Here's a 4 step process that we usually recommend to all brand owners (whether you're just starting out or already reached 8/9/10 figures):

1). Go through all the reviews of your customers on Amazon, website and even ad comments to see what people are usually talking about.

This is a way to get really deep into your customer's minds so you can understand what their main desires and pain points are.

You can leverage this information to create killer headlines for #3 and #4 (category of hooks).

Remember, the better you understand your customers, the better you will be able to speak to them, and better they will resonate with your message.

2). Create a doc/library of all the hooks that your competitors are using and look at the number of days the ad's been running.

The greater the number of days an ad is running, the greater the likelihood that the ad's working (unless the brand likes to burn money… which some brands do tbh).

This will give you an idea of what kind of hooks are working on your demographic so you can categorize them into the respective buckets.

We wouldn't only restrict myself to the competitors but also study all the top-tier brands like True Classic and Dr Squatch, which have a great library of ad content.

But to not make it super overwhelming, it's best to start with your competitors.

3). Once you have the library prepared and have a deep understanding of your customers, start thinking about what category of hooks you want to start with (ideally, start with what's working for your competitors).

4). Once you have that figured out, start TESTING!

We can’t emphasize this enough, but testing is one of the key steps to figuring out what hook works best.

If some hook doesn't work as you expected, go back to the drawing board. Eventually, you will figure it out! It's purely a numbers game.

You just have to be open to data-driven feedback.

The metric to look out for when analyzing your hook is the thumb-stop ratio, which is a custom metric you can set up in Meta Ads Manager by dividing the 3-second views with the total number of impressions.

Tool of the week

Okay, okay, okay, okay…

We know we said there isn’t a fancy audience or bidding strategy in Meta that’ll make your ads more efficient.

But, that’s actually not true.

In fact, THERE IS an audience that is virtually guaranteed to perform better than anything you’re currently running.

… and that is Proxima’s AI audiences.

Now look,

We didn’t really believe it to be true, when Alex from Proxima told us with 10,000% confidence that his AI audience would perform better than a standard broad audience on Meta.

But…

We put it to a test, and it sure as hell did perform better than anything else in our account

Here are the results;

- Our NC-CPA dropped by 6.2%

- Our NC-ROAS increased by 7.5%

Now - the obvious follow-up question is: Does it scale?

… and yes, it definitely does!

Right now - Proxima’s AI audiences are taking 30% of our entire Meta Spend… which is a good chunk of money.

Anyway - we’d strongly recommend you to give Proxima a try if you want a quick, easy, and reliable way to increase the efficiency of your ads.

#ProudPartner

Thanks for reading along

As always,

Thanks for reading along. We appreciate you and look forward to serving you again on Wednesday.

All the best,

Ron and Ash

PS:
If you want more content from us…

Remember to follow us on Twitter, Ronak Shah & Ashvin Melwani