There are thousands of Meta ads creative ideas you could test. But I’d start with these seven–I’ve seen them scale for dozens of brands.
This content was originally published in the No Best Practices newsletter on 08.25.2024.
You want to launch a brand on Meta–what ad creative should you test? There are almost too many options to count.
This week, I’m going to help you narrow down those options and develop winning ads with fewer rounds of testing. If you missed the last newsletter, I talked about the best media buying strategies for launching on Meta–you can click here to read that one and catch up.
If you like this week’s topic, you should click here and sign up for the Motion Creative Strategy Summit. It’s happening virtually on Thursday, Sept. 19th and Friday, Sept. 20th, and it’s 100% free.
I love these virtual summits because you can drop in on the topics that interest you most, but they send you a link to the recordings of all the talks so you can catch up at your own pace.
This year’s Motion Creative Strategy Summit is going to feature talks from marketers at brands like Ridge, Hexclad, Jones Road Beauty and True Classic. I’m going to share my recs for the best talks at the Summit at the end of this newsletter.
But seriously, click to sign up for the summit before we get started–I’ll be there too!
Before we begin–this advice doesn’t apply to fashion brands. If you want creative strategy advice specifically for fashion brands, you should subscribe to my other newsletter: DTC (fashion) Decoded.
Winning Ad Creative First Principles
Before you start designing ads, you have to answer the question “why are people buying this brand?” People typically buy things for a few reasons:
- It makes them feel good (treat ‘yo self)
- It solves a problem they’re having
- They literally need it/can’t live without it
- They want to status signal
- Emotional and irrational impulse
Some of these reasons are more predictable than others, and easier to influence as a marketer. Your product might fall into several of these buckets, and you can leverage all of them in your ads (but probably not at the same time).
Most consumer categories in the US are fairly mature, so you also have to answer the question “why is my product better than the alternative(s)?”
The alternatives are your direct competitors–you’re selling cat food, and so is Fancy Feast–but you’re also up against parallel solutions–collagen powder vs Botox–and doing nothing at all.
The higher the stakes–higher AOV, something you put in/on your body or hair–the less you can lean on impulse and emotion. You can’t just present the product and say “hey, doesn’t this look cool?” You have to earn peoples’ trust.
If you’re speaking to an underserved niche, you can focus less on engineering a truly differentiated product. If you’re speaking to a broad swath of the market, your product needs to be better than and differentiated from the alternatives.
For example, a shampoo might choose to position itself as formulated specifically for women with wavy hair (believe me, this market is underserved) OR it might choose to position itself as the best dandruff shampoo on the market.
Your product might be special for a number of reasons, but there are going to be one or two major pain points that a specific market segment cares about. When you ID those pain points and communicate them clearly, with proof, that’s how you get a “banger ad”.
Laying The Groundwork
Two big challenges with this process: you don’t know exactly what your target market cares about when you set out to design/formulate your product. You also don’t know exactly how big the market is for a specific pain point.
This is why founders who have experience in the category are often so successful, and it’s also why big corporations often invest six figures in market research before launching new products.
It’s ALSO ALSO why positioning is so critical to success on Meta. Sinking a load of cash into product development without research or validation is incredibly risky. Whether you have a product already or you’re trying to think up a new idea, here are some things you can do to sharpen your positioning:
Laddering
A strong product stands in opposition to everything that has come before it. Each feature is a response to the shortcomings of the existing options. Laddering helps you clarify this positioning.
Laddering is essentially: THEY are this, but/so WE are that.
THEY are “big food”, WE are made in small, artisanal batches.
THEY use the cheapest ingredients, WE source high quality ingredients.
THEY offer dumbed-down flavors to reach the masses, WE offer sophisticated flavors you won’t find anywhere else.
WHY do we do this? Because we care about your health and our product quality more than we care about our share price. In fact, we don’t have a share price because we’re a cooperative.
BOOM: wasn’t that POWERFUL? Don’t you feel FIRED UP?!
You wouldn’t necessarily take that copy and run it as an ad (although you could), but you can iterate from it in dozens of ways. Borrow that POWER and imbue your ads with it.
Snooping Reviews & Doing Research
Research the 1- and 2-star reviews from your direct competitors and your nearest alternatives. Are there themes that customers complain about frequently? You can address those in your ads or build your product to address them.
You can also find underserved niches here. For example, a popular shampoo might have a consistent stream of bad reviews from women with curly hair. Figure out why and formulate an alternative.
The Big Reveal
A lot of products that do big numbers on Meta have some kind of inherent visual hook.
Il Makiage has crazy foundation application videos that look like the creator is being Photoshopped in real time. BlendJet…blends stuff. HiSmile = a mouth full of purple goop.
Think about classic infomercial stuff…ShamWow, the George Foreman Grill, Proactiv…they all had an inherent visual hook or powerful before & after results.
If you can build this into your product it will put you ahead of the pack. You can also try to create audio branding…think about the voice saying “PlayStation” (I bet you just heard that in your head) or the Audi heartbeat (which even plays in the car when you turn it off).
If you work through the exercises in this section and find them hard to complete, it might be a sign that your product isn’t differentiated enough to succeed.
7 Winning Ad Formats
Now we can get into the nitty gritty tactics–the ad formats that (in my experience) do the best job of communicating this information. A few caveats though:
Your ads will work better the more boxes you’re able to check from the first two sections. If you’re trying to sell an undifferentiated product that no one cares about, you’ll struggle.
These formats are not the be-all, end-all. You might have better ideas for communicating what is special about your product–give them a try.
Us vs Them (click for example)
File this one under: corny but it works. Literally a chart comparing your product vs the competition (or alternatives) on one or more dimensions.
When you’re just starting out, try a few versions of this: a multi-point comparison chart and ads that focus on individual points of comparison (like price or a specific feature). You can also try comparing yourself to a single alternative, or several.
Fake (Or Real) Social Proof
This is a post you stage to look like an organic Instagram story where a customer is hyping up how much they love the product.
You can solicit this from real customers, gift influencers, or just shoot it yourself. The benefit to shooting it yourself: you can work in some subtle selling points.
Lo-Fi “This Is What It Is” (click for example)
This ad calls out a key differentiator of the product that might not be obvious at first glance. You can do this in a more “polished” format, but you’re likely to get better performance if you make it look like platform-native content.
Featured Review (click for example)
This is a pull quote from a real customer review paired with a compelling, relevant image. You might have to test a lot of iterations to find one that scales. You can’t make things up here and claim they’re real reviews (or do it, but don’t cry to me when you get fined).
Founder Story (click for example)
This is a video of the founder explaining why the started the brand. This format only works if the founder is (1) charismatic and (2) started the company because of a burning need that they personally experienced.
If your line has a broad range of products, you can also have the founder walk through the “how” and “why” of individual products.
Millennial Infomercial (click for example)
This is my nickname for an ad that is less than two minutes long, follows the hook/ problem/ solution/ meets objections framework, and incorporates creator “testimonials” and/or scripted content with iPhone b-roll.
This is the classic ad you see plastered all over X (Twitter), but it’s hard to get right. You need a strong script, good editing/pacing, and charismatic creators. But when it works, it works very well and can have major staying power.
Video Testimonial (click for example)
These can be incredibly powerful but, like the Millennial Infomercial, hard to get right. The video testimonials have to be charismatic and (ideally) entertaining.
That’s hard to achieve if you’re soliciting them from real customers–who also rarely want their faces blasted all over the internet sharing their most vulnerable moments. But filming fake testimonials with creators is technically illegal. You can figure this one out for yourself.
Organic Content
The best place to look for ads inspiration isn’t other brands’ ads libraries, it’s organic content with high view counts. If you browse content on topics related to your product you’ll often find great visual hooks or “big ideas” that clue you in to what your customers care about.
Looking For More Proven Ideas From Successful DTC Brands?
If you feel like your ad creative skills could use some work, or you wish your hit rate was higher on creative testing, then you should sign up for the FREE Motion Creative Strategy Summit.
These are some of the scheduled talks that I’m most excited about:
Connor Rolain (Hexclad), Connor MacDonald (Ridge), and Cody Plofker (Jones Road Beauty) are going to provide an inside look at their brands’ BFCM/Holiday marketing strategies.
Sarah Levinger is going to build off my “go look at organic content” rec and share advanced strategies for researching and developing new ad ideas.
Matt Duckor (Hexclad) and Fraser Cottrell are going to tell you how to shoot a “millennial infomercial” that actually converts–they won’t call it that though, I made up that term.
Savannah Sanchez (The Social Savannah) is going to break down the anatomy of the perfect ad.
The Motion Creative Strategy Summit is happening virtually on Thursday, Sept. 19th and Friday, Sept. 20th, and it’s 100% free. Click here to grab your spot, it will 100% be worth your time!