How To Find Winning Meta Ads For Free

Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. ??

We'll send you weekly emails, every Wednesday, trying our best to deliver great value to your inbox.

In this newsletter, you'll find:

?? How To Find Winning Meta Ads For Free

?? The Importance of Using the Right Tools, the Right Way

?? 6 "Unsexy", But Effective, Actions That Took This Men's Underwear Brand to Success

Before diving into today's newsletter, make sure to subscribe to the email edition to receive it in your inbox: https://thedtcinsider.com/

How To Find Winning Meta Ads For Free

I know some advertisers use some paid tools to "spy" on their competitors' ads to get some inspiration.

Today, I'll show you a free - and very effective - approach to do the same thing.

If you've ever used Meta's Ads Library I think you'd agree that it's not the friendliest place to find ads.

Why?

Most people search for an advertiser. For example: "Lululemon".

And guess what, they only see their ads.

Turning the "inspiration process" into a tedious job, as they need to search for one advertiser at a time to see their ads.

Well, I have a solution for that.

In case you didn't know, you can search for keywords, instead of brands.

But that's not all, you can apply filters to find exactly what you're looking for.

Let's take a look!

In this example, I'm searching for US brands selling dog food. Here's what I did:

Step #1: I search for "dog food"

Which got me 3,600+ results. Not bad.

The thing is, I see good ads, but also creatives that are not related to what I'm looking for, like this one:

Plus, it's not in English.

Not very useful, right?

No worries, there's a solution ??

Step #2: I filter the results

On the right side of the screen, you'll find the "Filters" button:

Once you click on it, you'll see some options, such as:

?? Language

?? Advertiser

?? Platform

?? Media Type

?? Active Status

?? Impressions by date

I chose to filter by language, media type, active status, and date.

Let's take a look at each of these options:

?? Language:

This one is straightforward. In my case, I selected English.

?? Media Type:

Here's the interesting part.

You can filter out things like memes or images, if you're looking for video ads:

I chose "Videos".

? Active Status:

If you want to see what ads other advertisers in the space are currently running, then you'd want to select "Active ads" option.

Otherwise, by default, you'll see both active and inactive ads.

?? Impressions by date:

Now, here's another good option.

Let's say I want to see only ads that have been running during last year's BFCM period.

Or ads running for the last 90 days.

You can do that by choosing the desired dates.

The result?

Relevant video ads that I can use to get some inspiration.

Would you try it?

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The Importance of Using the Right Tools, the Right Way

Many brands are using the RIGHT tools for the WRONG things ??

Last week I had a discovery call with an e-commerce brand.

And they said they needed to properly track their marketing efforts across channels.

Rings the bell? So far, so good.

It's when they mentioned the tool they were using for that matter that I was left with my mouth open.

I thought: "No wonder why they can't track correctly".

It was NOT an attribution tool.

So, why are they using this tool?

For MANY other areas of the company, so they needed to make it for work this one too, as they didn't want to pay for another platform.

And it's not about money for them, it's about thinking that these 1000-in-1 tools can actually serve those 1000 needs properly. In most cases, they can't.

Unfortunately, I know there are many companies in a similar position.

My advice?

The specialized tools (in this case, attribution tools) were created for a reason.

Don't try to overcomplicate it only to save a few bucks.

In the end, I think it's going to backfire.

Thoughts?

6 "Unsexy", But Effective, Actions That Took This Men's Underwear Brand to Success

Last year, Brian Roisentul interviewed Manmade, a men's underwear brand that stands out in a very competitive industry, dominated by big players.

In this episode of The DTC Insider podcast, we'll mention the 6 unconventional strategies they have implemented to succeed.

We discussed:

?? How to stand out as a brand in a very competitive industry

?? Their alternative to using models

?? How do they get real UGC without even paying for it, and with no fancy tools

?? What they do when they call their customers

?? How to get true raving fans for your brand

?? Taking care of your VIP customers

?? Tune in to our latest episode: https://thedtcinsider.com/c/podcast

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