$0 - $2.4 Million in 20 Months.

Sharing a case study as we’ve been battling some turbulent times ourselves, so sharing what we’ve done to pull out of a slump should help some of you as well. 

Not the biggest numbers out there but a strong run considering inventory issues, account bans, etc.

We can’t take all the credit, great brand, good products, good team, but we’ve been on the ad account since launch and we’ve seen the ups, downs, covid, ios, blah blah blah.

Some Brand Details: 

AOV: $60

1 product store (more coming soon)

Average Monthly Spend: $40k

Average Monthly ROAS: 2.67

Traffic Channels: FB/IG, Google Search/Shopping, Snapchat

Most of what we focus on comes down to 2 key things:

1. Cost of driving traffic

2. Conversion Rate Optimization

The ad structure and setup is pretty simple TBH, which we’ll get into as well but the fact is, if you simply take things back to the basics, you need as much traffic as possible for as cheap as possible and you also need to be able to convert x% of that traffic to scale profitably.

Our Philosophy: We focus MOST of our energy on dialing in your top-of-funnel creatives until we have something well within your KPIs (for CPC and CTR). It helps lift performance on all your other marketing (both paid and organic). 

Once we’ve dialed in click-through rates, we look at the website to break down any issues causing friction. I’ll cover how we’re lowering cost per click and increasing click-through rates first:

How we slashed CPC by 70% for this brand:

In April we made 30 assets for this brand. NONE were scaled significantly. 

We looked through what we did with a fine-tooth comb and realized we made 30 assets that are unreal for retargeting MOF and BOF, but nothing that really followed a true winning formula for TOF. We audited 10 brands for creatives last week and we’re seeing a lot of the same trends. 

Start of May we told the brand we wanted to make 3 creatives and put all our energy into those. ? of those were scaled to 6-figs in revenue over the past 3-4 weeks. The difference was we followed a systemized structure. 

Takeaway: Good videography is NOT needed to have an extremely effective ad. Focusing on branding/aesthetics over consumer behavior/psychology can handcuff performance.  

Here’s the structure we almost always follow for TOF creatives: 

Hook

Problem

Problem Exaggerated

Solution

Proof

Benefits

Social Proof Backing Benefits

Features

Summary of solution/Soft CTA

Testimonial

Guarantee

Hard CTA

Before we write ads, we look at the core reasons people buy products and try to associate those primitive desires to our advertising. Many good books on consumer psychology but basically there are desires which virtually every single human on earth shares including:

1. Survival (duh)

2. Comfort (avoiding pain)

3. Satisfaction of hunger/thirst 

4. Sex Drive 

5. Superiority

5. Care and Protection of Family/Friends

6. Social Approval 

Keep these in mind as your writing your ads as it can help spark some ideas if/when you're stuck. You don’t need to hit all of them but you should hit at least one, even if it’s only implied through your messaging. 

ALSO… another side note when writing ads. In the book “Influence”, Robert Cialdini talks about the 6 main factors that influence people's decisions… They are:

Reciprocation; Commitment & Consistency; Social Proof; Authority; Liking; Scarcity

We’ll touch on how they play into our writing process but if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. All these concepts play into both pre-click and post-click experience in influencing people to become your customers. 

Here’s how we look at each of the section of the winning video structure:

Hook: Your hook has one job… and that’s to get people to see the problem. Sometimes, we’ll combine the hook and the problem if it makes sense, but the whole idea is to get ATTENTION. You do this by showing viewers things that they aren’t used to seeing in their feed OR by showing them something that’s shocking/satisfying. You should always test 2-3 hooks for each creative because if you miss on the hook, the rest of your creative doesn’t really matter. 

Problem: It’s important to be RELATABLE. If you introduce a problem that’s so over-exaggerated it’s unrealistic, people are going to scream bullshit. Instead, try being more subtle and show what the problem actually looks like. A little exaggeration is ok, but don’t overdo it. 

Problem Exaggerated: It’s easy for this section to go against what I mentioned in the “problem” section, but my point still stands. The point of this section is to become MORE relatable. Showing the problem from a different point of view/perspective, and even introducing a related but different problem will help your ads be relevant to more groups of people and thus, more effective. 

Product Intro/Solution: This is where you introduce your product as the solution to the problem. Ideally this comes within the first 4-6 seconds of your ad.

Proof: We almost always back up our solution or “claim” with proof, because...well.. Advertisers are known to bullshit. By adding proof right after the claim, you can start to build trust BEFORE you get into the other benefits and features of the product. Getting micro, subconscious transactions of trust are crucial for building authority and boosting conversion rates. 

Benefits: Although your creativites are likely attacking one main angle/problem, there are likely many other “side benefits” that help you stand out from the competition. This should be top of mind when writing your ads. 

Features: Much less important than benefits but any features you have that will differentiate you from your competitors is a huge bonus. This is a great time to mention things like “cruelty-free, non-gmo, industrial strength suction, support Xlbs of weight” etc. These aren’t part of the core human desires, although they can be part of someone’s identity, and thus, the factor of consistency/commitment come into play. 

Summary of solution/Soft CTA: This is one section we’ll sometimes leave out depending on the length of the creative but when we include this section it is a benefit focused CTA, that looks something along the lines of “For better X, try [Brand/product]”

Testimonial: We use this section to build trust with the brand and to talk about their experience of what life with your product is like. The reason reviews are so powerful is because people make decisions based on other people's decisions & experiences. It’s EXTREMELY important to build social proof into your ads to influence the perception people have of your product/brand, even before they land on the product page.

Offer: Offers are obviously important for paid traffic, but not everyone is down to provide discounts. If this is the case for you, you need to get creative in packaging an offer that’s hard to refuse. If your offer is NOT based on price, there are still ways to value stack. I’ll touch on some things you can do shortly.

Guarantee: You should have some sort of guarantee backing your product to show how confident you are that the decision to buy is the RIGHT decision. Some examples of guarantees are money back, trials, etc.

Hard CTA: This is where we tell the viewer what to do next. Simple, to the point, and impossible to mess up. Example: “Click shop now to order yours today”.

Other Notes:

Optimize videos for attention rates (25%+), CTR, and AVG watch time. 

Create 2-3 variations of each creative (only changing leading clip, optimize for attention rate).

Test Thumbnails - funny story about thumbnails, a brand we’re working with had click-through rates double by only changing the thumbnail. From reading the comments, it turns out that a lot of people thought it was a sex toy… The moral of the story, your thumbnails can/do make a difference. Also, sex sells lol.

Other things to keep in mind for creatives:

We try and keep things to 25-35 ish seconds for TOF if possible. A lot to get in, so rather than breaking it down completely shot-by-shot I decided to just share examples we’ve done.

You'll notice these creatives don't follow the structure exactly, sometimes we'll modify for length or flow purposes. 

These TOF creatives have one job. Drive as much traffic as possible for as cheap as possible. 

Once people enter the retargeting funnel, they’re then shown more branded, better “quality” creatives to build more authority through production quality.

FOCUS ON PERFORMANCE OVER BRANDING FOR PROSPECTING. 

Increasing Conversion Rate's & AOV:

Now that we’ve got creatives and traffic dialed in, we want to make sure we’re capitalizing on the traffic as much as possible.

We can talk about ads all day long but the fact is, not nearly enough people talk about CRO or increasing AOV. 

It’s MUCH easier to increase AOV by 25% than it is to decrease CPA by 25%. 

Here are some essentials you should have on your landing page:

High Quality Images (product AND lifestyle)

Offer

Benefits

Features

Competitor Comparison

Reviews/Testimonials

Urgency/Scarcity

Trust Factors

We’ve seen a massive boost in conversion rates by including benefits in the “buy box”, along with a testimonial from a customer.

Basically, we want what’s seen on the landing page without scrolling (above the fold), to trigger a response that drives web visitors to keep scrolling and read more. If you use any software to record sessions and create heat maps (we use Lucky Orange), you’ll notice that a lot of website visitors abandon the session without scrolling. 

Just like with email marketing how the subject line is responsible for the click, your content “above the fold” is responsible for getting viewers to scroll down the page. 

Branding Your Landing Page:

Earlier I mentioned how the creatives used in the top of the funnel should be created/optimized for performance and not necessarily branding. In my opinion, the same goes for your landing page, HOWEVER, it’s important to have a brand voice. 

If you look at the top competitors in your space, you’ll notice that they speak in a certain way that (should) remain consistent throughout the website. You should do the same to help you stand out. It helps to create a profile for your target customer and speak in a way that will relate to them.

A couple additional notes:

Urgency/Scarcity:

Countdown timers have taken some heat for being spammy and I agree, they are overused. 

That being said, I think there’s a time and a place. Having a fake countdown timer for a promo that’s not legit is spammy. Using a countdown timer for legitimate promos that have an actual deadline is not, and its extremely effective. We recommend running promos every 6-8 weeks, but I understand some brands don’t ever run discounts. 

* You should split test having countdowns on your promos vs. not. Sometimes not having one works better (counterintuitive but sometimes not knowing when something ends creates more urgency).

**If you have Shopify Plus, you can add a countdown timer at checkout with a “Your order is reserved for: x minutes” countdown timer with is EXTREMELY effective at decreasing abandoned checkouts. 

If your brand DOES NOT run regular promotions, there are still ways to build scarcity/urgency into your offer. Here are a few:

1. “Order now to receive by:” - I don’t know the number but imagine how much Amazon has invested into CRO. The number would be mind-boggling. Clearly, the “Order now and receive on:” has been extremely effective for them and we’ve seen it boost conversion rates as well. 

It’s a simple way to answer the question in every customer's mind of how long shipping will take, without having them leave the product page (or scroll for that matter). We’ve used the “Order Deadline - Delivery Date” app and saw an average increase in conversion rate of 0.4% across 3 separate brands. You can also include a countdown timer for same day delivery (if possible) or “Order in the next X hours to receive by:”

2. Use urgency-based copy - it’s important not to overdo it with this type of copy but you should always write your copy in a way that drives people to act now. Here’s an example for a hypothetical fitness product during lockdowns.

“Every day the gyms are closed is a day taking you further away from your fitness goals. We’re on a mission to help you stay healthy and on track, despite the lockdowns that are plaguing the fitness industry. Order your X today and take back control of your fitness goals.”

Obviously, this copy isn't great, but you get the idea. 

Trust Factors:

1. Phone number

2. Payment icons

3. Money back guarantee

4. AUTHENTIC Reviews

5. Founder’s face/story

6. Order Tracking 

The first 3 would be considered “common practice” but #’s 4,5 & 6 are also extremely important. Obviously, having real reviews is the best case scenario but it can take some time to collect. Regardless, the reviews should sound authentic, because people can smell fake reviews and it’ll hurt you more than it will help. 

#5) Founders face/story - this is something that a lot of people aren’t doing. People buy from people they like, know and trust (not just a cliché), so it’s important to give customers a chance to get to know you and your team. Having a short video from you (the founder) and/or your team can help be extremely effective. We just added this to a product page for one of our brands and saw an increase of 0.5% conversion rate.

Increasing Value & AOV:

There’re many ways to do this, depending on your business. If you sell multiple products, obviously this can be done by upselling/cross-selling other products from your website. But there’s another way which has very little long-term costs and almost 100% profit margins, which is digital products. 

This is something that not many people do, but it’s extremely effective at increasing aov/profitability, with virtually zero ongoing effort. 

Let’s say you’re selling a teeth whitening product, you can write (or have someone else write) an ebook on “The Top 5 Things Dentists Recommend For Getting Rid of Bad Breath”, or “Dr. X’s Guide to Dentist-Level Oral Care, From the Comfort of Your Own Home”.

You can offer this as an upsell for $5-$10 at checkout to optimize the product for conversion rates. There’s barely any cost to manage these types of products and it’s typically a one-time investment. 

Additionally, you could also offer this product for free and do a cost-analysis of what's better between an increased conversion rate (when offering for free) and average profit increase (when charging). And while we’re on the subject here’s a couple other things you can do to value stack your offer:

1. Offer customization/VIP products - an example would be Snow Teeth Whitening’s upsell to their “Limited Series” red version of the wireless whitening kit (don’t quote me on this, but I believe they’re doing this lol). 

Regardless, this will do 2 things, first, it will increase AOV and second, it will give people a more expensive option, which will psychologically make the original cost seem more justifiable.  

2. Build a private FB group for customers - this is something we’re working on for one of our brands. The idea is to build a community and provide additional value to your customers. Just make sure you can provide real value and you have someone that can be actively managing the group. In our case, the brand is bringing on a health professional part-time to answer customer’s questions in the group. 

This is a great way to value stack in the customer buyer’s journey and increase perceived value. Obviously, in our case, there will be a cost associated with this, but there doesn’t need to be a big upfront cost while you gauge the impact on conversion rates.  

Media Buying Spread:

Creative Testing Structure:

1 Campaign per creative test

3 Creatives Per Test (3 separate campaigns)

2 Variations of each creative (within the same campaign)

CBO ($150/day/creative)

Auto bid

3 Ad sets per campaign (top lla’s stacked, top interests stacked, wide open)

Scale Structure:

Scale phase 1 (Validation Phase):

Once ads have shown to perform in the testing phase we validate that they’re going to perform similarly at a higher budget before turning up the spend into our breakout campaigns. 

CBO ($350/day)

Top Performing Prospecting Ads (all variations)

Auto Bid

3 Ad sets per campaign (top lla’s stacked, top interests stacked, wide open)

Scale Phase 2 (Breakout Phase):

If creatives are still performing well in the validation phase (scale phase 1), we’re generally very confident that they’ll perform with higher budgets and manual bidding. This phase consists of bid testing and then scaling the top-performing bids.

Bid Testing:

To test different cost caps against each other we pick our top 1-2 interests and our top 1-2 lookalikes (intertest stacked in the same adsets, llas stacked in same adsets). We then take our breakeven CPA and test 2 higher cost caps and two lower cost caps. 

We’ll set cost caps in $5 increments (if your break even CPP is over $100, use $10 increments) and test them against each other (each in their own ad set). Let's say our top performing interests are basketball and football and your top performing llas for pur 5% and atc 5% this is how the bid test campaign would look:

Adset 1 - Football/Basketball (Cost Cap $35)

Adset 2 - Football/Basketball (Cost Cap $40)

Adset 3 - Football/Basketball (Cost Cap $45)

Adset 4 - Football/Basketball (Cost Cap $50)

Adset 5 - Football/Basketball (Cost Cap $55)

Adset 6 - Pur 5%/ATC 5% (Cost Cap $35)

Adset 7 - Pur 5%/ATC 5% (Cost Cap $40)

Adset 8 - Pur 5%/ATC 5% (Cost Cap $45)

Adset 9 - Pur 5%/ATC 5% (Cost Cap $50)

Adset 10 - Pur 5%/ATC 5% (Cost Cap $55)

Once we have insights into the top-performing cost cap, we move top-performing creatives/audiences into our breakout campaigns:

Breakout Campaigns:

Top Performing Prospecting Ads (all variations)

Cost Cap Bidding (winning bid)

CBO

$500/day starting budget. 

3 Ad sets per campaign (top lla’s stacked, top interests stacked, wide open)

Scaling the breakout campaigns:

Since the rollout of ios14 and all the tracking/reporting issues we’ve seen, we’ve turned off all automated rules and we’re managing things manually. 

Our scaling system is super simple:

If things are performing, we increase budgets every 1-2 days by 30%

Retargeting Structure:

We like to simplify retargeting because at the end of the day, your structure isn’t nearly as important as the content & messaging (in my opinion). 

We don’t worry too much about frequency, especially on hot traffic, because we introduce fresh creatives on a weekly basis. These creatives are more branded than prospecting ads and we introduce a variety of different creative formats (story ads have been crushing it for retargeting on IG, but prospecting not so much). 

We’ll update every 6-7 days with 5 new creatives mixed between image and video. Here’s the (simple) structure:

Warm:

CBO

2 Ad sets (All IG Engagement 14 days, All Fb Engagement 14 days)

$50/day starting budget

Auto Bid

 Hot:

CBO

5 Ad sets [VC 7 days (excl. Atc), ATC 7 day (excl. IC), IC 7 day (excl. Pur), WV 7 day (excl. VC), WV 40 day (excl. WV 7 day)]

$30/day starting budget

Auto Bid

And that’s it, super simple structure. I know this was a long ass post so if you made it this far, thanks for reading. Again, I just want to emphasize that we’re always looking to simplify as much as possible and systemize everything, even the creative process. 

All you should care about until your scaling profitably is reducing the cost of traffic, and increasing your conversion rate. 

Your creatives will drive down the cost of traffic and your offer/perceived value will drive up your conversion rate. We’ve all seen some ugly creatives scale to millions in revenue and we’ve all seen some massive brands use some pretty basic page designs. 

The success lies in the psychology/understanding consumer behavior… not the ad account structure or white balance of your camera. 

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post, feel free to drop any questions in the comments and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.