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The Unstoppable Marketer®
Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhardt bring you quick marketing and entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and trends for DTC business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. These are lessons they've learned through the years of being right in the thick of scaling dozens of businesses. Whether you have an established business looking to grow, just starting your business journey, or trying to become a digital marketer, this marketing podcast will not let you down.
The Unstoppable Marketer®
Ep.139 Diversity or Die: Why Your Ad Creative Needs a Makeover
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Join us as Mark Goldhart and Trevor Crump explore the critical importance of creative velocity and diversity in digital advertising. They dive into how uploading varied content more frequently can lead to lower CPMs and better overall ad performance. The duo shares insights on leveraging user-generated content, the value of static ads, and why aiming for "lightning in a bottle" isn't a sustainable strategy. They also touch on the Pareto principle in advertising and draw parallels with sports to illustrate the need for consistent, predictable outcomes in marketing.
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Intro and Food Curiosities
Speaker 1It's hard to have a legitimate process around just like. Oh, I'm just gonna hone in on, like, making four perfect ads. Okay, good luck. Lightning in a bottle is not a predictable outcome, right, it's just not.
Speaker 2Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. With me, as always, is Mark Goldhart, and as always, he is on his phone looking at something. How are you? Oh, I'm doing well. Do you do it on purpose now, because I call it out? No, I don't, because he's not on his phone always throughout the podcast. It's just it'll fall down in maybe 12 seconds He'll put it down.
Speaker 1Well, now I'm going to have to hold it on for longer than that 13 seconds. No, I don't do it on purpose.
Speaker 2I'm not mad about it, but um become a part of your brand now I learned something new this week.
Speaker 1I learned that I never knew what a truffle actually was do you know what a truffle is?
Speaker 2isn't a truffle some sort of fungus?
Speaker 1yeah, yeah, I didn't know what it was. Yeah, because there's chocolate truffles. Yes, but it's made out of some sort of it's a fungus, fungus Found at the base of trees. Yeah, like a mushroom.
Speaker 2But is it, but not?
Speaker 1Not a mushroom, it's not a mushroom, not a mushroom, and my parents brought back some honey and truffles from Italy. Okay, so it's like a jar of honey with truffles, like a little truffle mixed in. Yeah, I honestly didn't know what I was expecting, but it had the most bizarre smell ever.
Speaker 1Yeah, like a little stinky Like almost peppery and oniony. Yeah, and I didn't know what it was like. I honestly have never had a truffle. So that's fun. And was it good? It was good. It's just so unique beyond what my palate is used to. Yeah, it was pretty.
Speaker 2Uh, you just exploring diversifying, culturing yourself, I get yeah, I don't know where you get truffles.
Speaker 1I don't know who. Do people just get them and cook with them regularly? I don't think so.
Speaker 2No, they're kind of a delicacy, I mean, you have like yeah, I think truffles themselves right, but then you have like sauces that have like that are like a truffle sauce.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2You know that you can buy Like we have like a truffle balsamic vinaigrette. That is really tasty, right? You know like. So I know that yeah.
Speaker 1But like the sauces and stuff, but I never knew what an actual truffle.
Speaker 2And my guess is some of those sauces are probably like, manufactured Like. Did you know? Here's something Did Like did you know here's something Did you know that Sourdough?
Speaker 1Hey, yes, I did. Have we talked about this before? I don't know, but I know that's where you're going Sourdough.
Speaker 290% of the sourdough bread that you buy and eat is not sourdough.
Speaker 1What is that it's?
Speaker 2white bread with vinegar in it. It's like that was like the most shocking thing in the world.
Speaker 1It does not actually have the sourdough starter or the fungus or whatever it's probably more than 95%. That's true.
Speaker 2And I don't know what the ruling is behind being able to say.
Speaker 1I know that because my wife has told me that a hundred times over the last two years.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I think I found it out by my wife a couple of years ago. I was like let's get some sourdough bread, cause I love the taste of it, and so I like get sourdough. And I come, like I came back home and she like immediately grabs the ingredients. I'm like listen, I know I got the good stuff. It says it's organic. It says it's organic bread, just not real sourdough. And and I was like that seems like the most Devious, dishonest thing in the entire world. Sourdough bread is not Sourdough bread, it's vinegar bread.
Speaker 1Oh dude.
Speaker 2Which makes it sound even more disgusting. I do love vinegar, though, so I actually do as well, but there's Not like salt and vinegar chips man, is there anything better?
Speaker 1You want to hear a funny, not Like salt and vinegar chips. Man, is there anything better? You want to hear a funny story about vinegar, salt and vinegar?
Speaker 2chips are great, I agree.
Speaker 1I can't remember what brand it is. It's one of the avocado oil type brands. Yep, I know exactly what you're talking about and it's pretty spicy. Yeah, it has a kick to it. There's salt and vinegar.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 1But man, it's so good Is it the Siesta one. Yeah, the Siesta one.
Speaker 2Those are the ones we get Funny story about vinegar. So one of my I shouldn't say this is a funny story because there's some sadness to it but one of my best friends growing up became addicted to Oxycontin and him and I were chatting.
Speaker 1And this is coming back to us.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, it's coming back to me.
Speaker 2I promise he's addicted and I mean he's down like a dark and dreary road and this is this is in like 10th grade, you know, and he, uh, like he used to spend like he has. He said that in order to um curb his habit, he had to come up with $250 a day to curb his habit. So he's like stealing from parents, grandparents, girlfriends, grandparents I mean he was super dark place. Anyways, he comes to school, shows up to school one day completely hairless, like like big waxed bald head, no eyelashes, no eyebrows, no hair, completely hairless. Looks like a psychopath and I'm like I'm going to call him Steve His name is not Steve, just for the sake of anonymity, not that anyone's probably listening that I went to high school with and I do not know where this man is today.
Speaker 2Hopefully he's alive, but he, I'm like Steve what happened? And he's like, oh, dude, and he was kind of known to be like an airhead. He's like I was high and I had a drug test for parole and they're random and I didn't know that it was happening. And you find out like a couple hours before and they say there's like very few things that you can do to get rid of, like get the drugs out of your system. And he said that somebody told him that if he drank like like a liter of vinegar that it would flush his system out. Oh, and so he did it and had just this bodily reaction and all of his hair fell out.
Speaker 1Oh, don't do drugs, kids, don't do drugs.
Speaker 2Ladies and gentlemen, so sad but funny story. I actually think his life is good, that one I do know. He is, I think, on a better path to life. Good, but yeah.
Speaker 1That's what vinegar is Vinegar.
Speaker 2It's got the power to clean just about anything. Apple cider vinegar though is but like a tablespoon of it.
Speaker 1Or two.
Speaker 2Yeah, a couple tablespoons a day keeps the doctor away.
Speaker 1That kicks. But Any stomach issue you've got. Go get some apple cider vinegar.
Speaker 2My grandpa swears by it. He's been doing it for the last four years.
Speaker 1It helps with everything.
Speaker 2Everything. It's the most nasty thing in the world. It tastes terrible.
Speaker 1But why is that? Why are all the good things in life gross? When I say good things in life, the things that are good for you?
Speaker 2are the hardest things to do why is that a universal law?
Speaker 1metaphor of life why, wouldn't our evolution, though, actually make us crave the stuff that we don't want because it's good for us. Like, why don't I crave kale and spinach?
Speaker 2I do oh, maybe, maybe not kale and spinach specifically, but I like, I, I crave, like greens every single morning.
Speaker 1I would say 90% of people don't crave greens.
Speaker 2I crave like that Redmond salt relight.
Speaker 1That's because it's flavored and it tastes good.
Speaker 2No, even though we have the unflavored, I just like my body craves it.
Speaker 1The salt yeah, I don't know. Anyways, speaking of why is all the good stuff across a hard line marketing? Nice it is getting harder.
Speaker 2Always is.
Speaker 1But the good stuff is across lines of being uncomfortable and lines of hard to do.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1So one thing we we just wanted to give everybody a few updates of what we're seeing.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1We have access to quite a few accounts. We look at them, we've audited accounts, we run accounts, yeah.
Speaker 2We have access to dozens and dozens and that doesn't mean we're. The fun thing is when you have an ad agency like us, even though we're not working with people, like maybe if we audited somebody's account or yeah, so we still get to see accounts. You still can aggregate and see, because very few people take you out of it. So take your old agencies out if you don't want them in there. Not us, though. Don't take us out, because we want to look at data.
Speaker 1Sorry, proceed. So, anyways, what we're seeing across the board is there's a few things that matter. One is and you've probably heard these terms it's just creative velocity.
Speaker 2so velocity is what we deem as how often you're uploading creative and creative diversity which means meaning how different is your creative from each other and that could be two different things. I'm thinking of that could be format wise video versus versus static.
Speaker 1Well, I think people think of it as a format, yeah, but what it really is is context. So a testimonial ad versus a piece of UGC versus Versus an old woman versus a young woman versus a yeah. Content type yeah Versus a unboxing yes. Content type yeah Versus a unboxing yes. In a house versus a product usage on a picnic table Versus branded content from an influencer or whatever.
Speaker 2So Point is made.
Speaker 1Yeah, everything is just different context of the creative and we'll go into how we frame that and how we like to manage it now. But yeah, I think and that's hard, it's hard to do because everybody is busy and now it's expected that more ads are being uploaded yeah, I think.
Speaker 2I think one thing to note, and this is just like a universal thing that we have recognized, as we've worked with brands that are small, um, and as we've worked with brands that are, you know so, brands spending 30, 40 000 a month in ads, compared to brands spending 500 000, you know dollars, a month in ad spend, or more.
Speaker 1Each one of these brands struggle with the same issue, which is constantly refueling their content engines yes, because, and part of the reason, there's two reasons for this happening, but the main reason is just user behavior on the platform. So I know we like to blame the algorithm and, yes, I I'm not a big fan of some of the changes that meta makes, yep, but the reality is that users are driving a lot of these changes. So what is the user behavior that has changed? Well, in the last five years, they have gone from feed base to story base, to reels base yep, if we're talking instagram, okay, and even, and then facebook is more community driven and like there's maybe a little more feed aspect there but you they have the same, but people operate on facebook differently than they operate on like an instagram.
Speaker 1And then you have tiktok, which is, you know, a mere version of that story, slash real type content. And so what's the difference between feed versus stories, versus reels is, well, attention span. That's what's like. That's what's changing, right? Like people, when they were going through the feed, it was first chronological, so people were engaging with what they knew and who they knew.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Stories continued that trend, but it was more of a hey, you got 30 seconds, Like a story was 30 seconds it was just like snippets.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Okay, and then reels, which, yes, they can be long, but the point with the reels and TikTok TOK is the consumer behavior on there is very uh, it's quick, it's, but it's also just like it's just a distraction, like they're just doom scrolling.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1In a way that they weren't with just the Instagram feed back in the day.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Right, because now it's they the day. Yeah right, because now it's they're getting hit with, just like what's the most entertaining thing. They're just looking for pure entertainment, not necessarily getting entertained by the people yeah, like how do I get dopamine as quick as possible?
Creative Velocity and Diversity Explained
Speaker 1yeah, yeah, and for that's. I mean, that's the psychological side of it, for sure. But so that's changed the way they're consuming, which means they get sick of things quicker, like they're looking for new things faster, and you have to change up the type of ads and placements or else you know they're just swiping right through. So standing out this is just a continuation of what we talked about. Standing out is, if you just really make it simple, it's frequency too. Like standing out isn't just how great your one ad is, it's also how frequently you're showing up in somebody's life so that they're associating you with oh, this is a real thing, this is interesting. Oh, it must be a good product, whatever you're trying to achieve with that frequency. So how do you get the frequency? Like we've talked about frequency today, we want to talk about how you actually and the right kind of uh kpis in in meta.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's arguments out there around what kpis you should be looking forward or looking to and optimizing for. Some people say it's purchase period. Some people say you should still be looking at hook rates and click through rates. We think you should look at all of them. Obviously, purchase is. Purchase is the most important.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And ROAS, and you know not ROAS, roas is a lie. Sure, but making sure your business result is being achieved, right, sure, yeah, yeah. But you have to be looking at these engagement metrics. But what we have noticed is, as you load, more diversity and you have more velocity. One thing that we have seen is CPMs in these accounts generally drop. Yeah, right, the algorithm is rewarding the amount and the differentiation, yep, so not only are you getting better reach, which is what you're trying to do, you're also getting better CPMs.
Speaker 1Yep and better CPMs elicit generally lower cost per clicks, which is what which generally can convert into better cost per purchase.
Speaker 2Yeah. So I think there's a, I think there's this big. Let's start with this and then we can dive into how to get good frequency in some of these things. But I just want to make a point which is one of the big resistance that we see clients and brands, like I said, small versus large is they're feeling like I have enough content already. I don't need to continue to get more, right?
Speaker 1So either, which is often true at the beginning.
Speaker 2Yes, but the problem with that is, depending on a buyer's life cycle and how much money you spend, you can go through content relatively quick and the creative life cycle, exactly, yep so. And then I know you can kind of piece. You know you can take two different ads and you can put them together to have three. Right, like that kind of stuff can happen. But I think what will happen a lot of times is brands will get a good amount of content in their content repository and they'll kind of just whether they put a complete pause on it or they, rather than being at 100, you know, going 100 miles an hour, maybe they're only going 20 miles an hour, so they're just like kind of slowly getting stuff in.
Speaker 2I think that that's the problem is because they can have early velocity and eventually they start to hit a period of time where they're running out of the right amount of content, and so part of the reason brands do this is because there's a budgetary constraint. Right, it costs money to get to get creative, and a lot of times brands have a hard time tying dollars and cents to the creative that they're getting right now, in this very second. But what mark has just said and what he's laid out is like it is a very common pattern for us, when we upload a high amount of content diversity that we see cpms lower, and if you lower your cps from $16 to $14, that's an insane. It doesn't seem like a big drop. But on the back end when I say back end, I mean what your cost per clicks end up being to, then what your cost per purchases end up being as long as you know, website performance stays similar it's actually a crazy big dip in efficiency savings, which pays for the cost of the creative and maybe even more.
Speaker 1Yes, it does, and you might be wondering well, how does it lower CPMs? It's because when you have diversity and velocity, the algorithm rewards you with oh, we need to find the right people that match this. It's trying to match your ads. You are creative with the people, so you have to hone in on the message, the content and the context. So how do you get so?
Speaker 1velocity is just more so I don't know, I don't think we have to go into that right now. We'll explain how you can do that with product seeding after we explain diversity. So how do you get product? Or, I'm sorry, how do you get creative diversity? So A we like to think in an umbrella of context first. So who, what, why and where? Who, what, why, where, Like that's your context. Who's in the ad, what's in the ad, where it is in the ad and why? Yep, and the why is always going to go back to the customer's why.
Speaker 2Sure.
Speaker 1So we don't need to go into that. I think everyone talks about that. Yep. So very simple. We all learn that, right? What's the subject of any sentence? You know so like who, what, where, why? Yep, so find that out, that's your context, and then you start grouping it. So who? Sometimes there's nobody. Yeah, sometimes it's just a product. Yeah. Or it's a 18 to 25 year old woman or man, or it's a pregnant lady family, or it's a 18 to 25 year old woman or man or it's a pregnant lady.
Speaker 1What a family or it's a baby, or it's like who is who's in the ad, who's being featured? Mm-hmm okay, it's like who is in it? Okay, what is in it? What product? Right, where is it? What's the context like? Is it in the house, is it outside? Is it? What's the context Like? Is it in the house, is it outside? Is it in a studio? Is it? You know, vice versa? And then why?
Speaker 2Yeah, so, that's the easiest way to do it. Like the, the message behind what they're selling yes, yeah.
Speaker 1Why? What's the unique selling point that we're actually going for? Is it because it's a comfortable sweatshirt? Is it because it's a durable sweatshirt yeah. Is it because it's a we're trying to help people aspire to some kind of fashion aesthetic yeah. Or is it because we're going after features, right, like, is it a feature ad?
Speaker 2And oftentimes can I say something the why oftentimes ties back to the who right Like your, why, your message, your unique selling point. For example, if you have a pregnant woman in an ad and you're selling a diaper bag to them, you can talk about like you know best mother recommended diaper bag right. So the message can also tie into the what which is a if you're a supplement brand.
Speaker 1You might want to show someone who's in shape and someone who's aspiring to get into shape yeah, and both of those could be a spy. I quote aspiring ads yeah, but you could say, hey, this is how people want to see themselves. Yep, which is somebody who's already made it to the point they want to go. Or you might want to try someone who's on the journey right of their in their fitness. Yep, so very two different people or who's would be in that. Yeah, but the why, the why might be the same. Yeah, so that you know what I mean. So that's what he's saying is yep, it's going to tie back to the who, always, but the who's can change too. Like you can have the same wise with three different types of people.
Speaker 1Totally. And then where, like, maybe the woman's at the gym, maybe the man's at home, and you know you can just change those up or studio shot, yeah, um, so that's how you start. And then statics and videos are very different. So when you're, when you're looking at your statics, you're looking at what is the, the message? Yeah, you're going to analyze the message, because there's always going to be some kind of catch line, or is it the imagery? So you want to start categorizing that and that's always going to go back to the. Usually the why is going to be mostly associated with. Okay, we're going after this feature. What's a clever way to showcase this feature? How do you do that?
Speaker 1yeah right here's. We're going to analyze big text for small text or feature point outs versus gif yeah so you start categorizing these and then in videos. The same way we like to analyze videos, though, is as basically hook, body and outro. Yeah, because your hooks can always be, and when this goes with velocity, you can have one video be five videos yeah by interchanging the parts of the video yeah you.
Speaker 1Okay, I want to try this hook that has nothing to do like maybe it's a. Try this hook that has nothing to do like, maybe it's a. You know, we sometimes we play around with ideas of, uh, something silly, like someone doing a backflip, some sort of meme-ish meme-ish like backflip.
BFF Creative Sponsor Break
Speaker 1Then it like cuts into to a product randomly, right, yeah. So there's like kind of a random, just crazy type hook. There's product type hook. There's you know, a question type hook. There's a statement yeah, type hook. So you can start categorizing your hooks and as you do that you're going to start realizing, like, what actually gets people to consume the body of the ad instead of just glazing over totally. So that's how you start differentiating and categorizing and testing your hypotheses, yeah.
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The Power of Static Ads
Speaker 2Go check them out right now at bffcreativeco. So I think that one thing that you said that is interesting to me that, I think, is a note. We get a lot of clients and people who are only outputting video, and a lot of people have moved away from static and we've recognized that. Don't get me wrong. Video is super strong and super important, but statics have such a big place in this world, and they oftentimes elicit cheaper costs from what we've found Statics are so underrated for so many reasons, totally.
Speaker 1Talk about it. Well, we've talked about this in past podcasts, but let's talk about it again Video, the production cost of videos and, like I know, you can do some AI stuff, but ultimately videos are just harder to make.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Right More time-consuming. More time-consuming, More expensive oftentimes. But, you can spin up dozens of creative concepts with statics.
Speaker 1For sure that can feed into how you want to approach your videos, yeah, so what we were just talking about, what kind of statements, what kind of what kind of uh taglines are catching people's eyes, like, how do you make someone stop with a static image, in a way that's unique and interesting, and then you can say, okay, this unique selling point, yeah, or this angle is working. We should try that for a hook for our ads go import.
Speaker 2You could literally go download every single review you've ever had and upload it in chat gpt and ask it to find the like top five best sentiment ways. Someone's talked about your product and there you have five different taglines to put over 50 different styles, yeah of imagery, whether it be a blank canvas or, you know, a lifestyle photo or whatever.
Speaker 1So but statics are great for that reason. But then also the diversity. So, for example, we have we have an account that we just started running a couple weeks ago. All video, every ad in the account is a video. Yes, every single ad. Um, we uploaded 10 statics and out of those 10 statics, two of those statics are now the best performing ads in the entire account.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1So does that mean we're going to go all in on static and that's it? No, of course not. Because you need the videos, because there's again we're talking reach the diversity. There's a different kind of placement, that static's going to work versus video, and vice versa.
Speaker 1And videos are going to catch. Maybe the same person in whatever they're doing A video might catch them differently than a static, or a static versus a video, so you need the diversity. But these two statics have by far the best cost-purs and by far the best click-through rates and engagement and the best CPMs. So the question is, why weren't they running any statics before? It's because people preach video, video, video, video video Now.
Speaker 2and don't get me wrong, there are a lot of people who run only statics and have no video too.
Speaker 1But it's hard to do both statics and videos Again, like it's just hard to do it all.
Speaker 2Yeah, but there's like the beauty of let's tackle the. Okay, the static is the easiest part to me, right, like everybody has imagery. Not only that, but like you also could take.
Speaker 1Well, now it's easier than ever to take a, and it's been easy for a while. You can just take a product right, Photoshop it out of whatever it is in. Yeah and place it in a completely different setting. Well, yeah, so you can change the context of the static so much easier than the context of the video yeah, whether you have design experience or you're using chat even canva, you can just do background yes, it's so.
Speaker 2It's so beyond simple, um, but but something that is super overlooked and and I don't know if I'm skipping ahead to maybe some other points you wanted to make, so feel free to cut me off, but like, okay, I'll cut you off one of the one of the things that we see that that's super, super easy and also has had some sort of stigmatism against it, has been on the video side of things. It is hard for brands to get video because a lot of brands are, so they get so worked up, feeling like everything needs to be a little bit higher production, so everything needs to be in a studio, everything needs to have a model, everything needs to have a you know um, a pinterest board storyline of how we're going to shoot this, like that's or the opposite they just go all in and all they have is ugc yeah, yeah, but what I was going to say is the ugc side of things.
Speaker 2It's like that is still such an easy option to be seeding product and to be getting user generated content to fill that engine. Like I said, you just never want to. Even though you might have so much content, you just never want it to deplete, and so that's something that can just always be happening, and it's so inexpensive to be giving away free product. Now there's some some brands like we work with, some brands where they're selling units that cost 150 to make and they sell them for 450. Like that. That's a little bit more expensive, you know, but a lot of times brands like that they won't charge you, or creators like that oftentimes won't charge you because they just want the product so bad as long as it fits within their niche and it ends up being oh, you're getting, actually they're getting a $450 value versus oftentimes they'll pay like it'll charge you like $100 to $200 for a.
Speaker 1YouTube video. Well, just like, yeah, and I was going to say look at the cost per video. Yeah, exactly, and so that's the metric you want to start looking at.
Speaker 2So you could end up getting videos for the price of $150, which ends up being really, really cheap, which is how we like to look at seeding?
Speaker 1Yes, because there's partnership opportunities that arise and some branded content ads and spark ads and all that and that's wonderful, but just baseline when you're seeding and working with people and just getting your product out there. Get creative, yeah, it's. What would I be paying for videos anyways?
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1From for UGC videos Totally.
Speaker 2Yeah, or even in house, if I was creating these myself.
Speaker 1Like what's the time, what's the cost, and you'll find if you, if you do it right, it should come out to cheaper. A hundred percent, it's actually cost effective for content.
Speaker 2And you're talking like you. And can I just add one more thing with ugc and seating is.
Speaker 1It is also a great way to change again the context.
Speaker 1Like I know, it's all ugc yep right, but there's different types of people and if you're seating and doing it right and prospecting the right way, it's a great way of changing the who's totally and the where's, how they talk about it and the whys of those videos. So now you have four videos with two very different types of people and two, three different types or two different types of places. One's always in their kitchen, one's always on their patio outside or one's whatever at a lake.
Product Seeding and UGC Strategy
Speaker 2So it's the easiest way to also start switching up the who's and your ads and the why's and the where's and just giving yourself a bigger diversity of exactly what you're saying. Yeah, and it's super simple, like it's really easy. I shouldn't say it's really easy to do this, but once you kind of get in the rhythm of finding the right people, it starts to become very easy. And then what ends up happening is you start to find people that you can trust and rely on, you, like their content, and now all of a sudden you can start to put these people on retainers to say like, okay, cool, hey, I get two videos from you a month for $200.
Speaker 2And if you get, you know, I don't know, you get, let's get, let's do some quick math here right? You get, you know 15 people, right, you're talking $3,000 for three, 30 to 40 videos a month. Yeah, which is not a lot of money, especially when you're talking about oh, I'm spending $50,000 a month On ads. Now you're going from fifty thousand dollars to fifty three thousand dollars, but your potential decrease in costs is make up the difference for it. So if yes 30.
Speaker 2If fifty thousand dollars in ad spend was getting you a reach of, you know, five, 500,000 people a month, or whatever the number is Right, maybe that reach goes from 500,000 to 625,000, for $3,000 more.
Speaker 1Which we have seen, we've, we've, we have seen this happen, um like. A great example of this is with one company. They have their target demo is probably women, most likely 35 and older, but really probably 45 and older. Right, and so we have. We did product seeding. The quickest batch of UGC that came back from product seeding was the, a younger demographic, like 25 to 35. But then we got a batch of oh, here's another woman, 55. She's very like 55 and older. And then we have another one who's more in that 45 range and all of a sudden you're seeing that 55 and older one take off and the conversion rate is taking off too.
Speaker 2Yeah, and so now you're reaching out to only people in that space and CPMs have dropped.
Speaker 1as we've uploaded different types of ads, cpms have dropped from this vertical's a lot different than most people's verticals, but it did drop dramatically from what it was, by 50%.
Speaker 2Yeah, the big thing is just, it's not just the diversification of content, but it's the fact that you just need to be constantly filling up the bucket. We use we we've used this, this analogy several times for brands, which is like, if you consider a brand, a bucket, and the water is the revenue, and the customer it's the customers, right, and every day there's a hole that's drilled into the revenue and the customer it's the customers right, and every day there's a hole that's drilled into the bucket and customers people are always leaving your brand, whether they're growing out of it or they find another brand that they like more, or or they just forget about you.
Speaker 1They forget about you because there's a deluge of other brands right, honestly.
Speaker 2Probably represents 80% of.
Speaker 1We've talked about this before, but yes, like that's most of what happens.
Speaker 2So you're always having it's not a bad product experience.
Speaker 1It's just simply that you're not top of mind.
Speaker 2Yeah, so you're always having your buckets are always leaking, and then your acquisition is the spout that's pouring the water in, and the goal is that you're pouring more in than you're losing. And you have to look at your content as the same way. As you've got this repository, which is the bucket, and the content is that water, and what's happening is the holes in the bucket are, is your ad team taking the content away from that bucket and using it, and what we know is 80% of the content will never work right. We know it's the Pareto principle right, where it's 20% of the budget is going to get 20%. 20% of your ads is going to end up getting 80% of the budget because the other ones don't work. So you have this bucket and you know immediately that 80% of it, even though you still need it, because you need the creative engine and meta to test it and be the ones to determine it's not good, right, or there are other things that perform better.
Speaker 1Right.
Content Buckets and Predictable Outcomes
Speaker 2Just know that immediately. 80% of that is going to be no good, right, right, it's taking 20% of that.
Speaker 1And some people might say well, why don't you just focus on the 20% that works?
Speaker 2And the answer is the answer is things change all the time. Number one and number two, you got. You got to have at-bats to figure out what the 20% is.
Speaker 1Right, yeah, but also you have to have the 80% to arrive to the 20% Totally.
Speaker 2A hundred percent.
Speaker 1And so, even though, even if you so, for example, I want to like, I want to paint this picture yeah, if you have 100 ads and 20 are the best performers and you iterate and you're trying to make better ones, you're still going to have another iteration of 100 ads and 20 will end up being the best performers yes even though you got better yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 2Yes, that's the at bats principle, so you have to have the at best performers. Yes, even though you got better. Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 1Yes, that's the at-bats principle. So you have to have the at-bats and it's hard to create a legitimate process around. Only again, you need the at-bats and it's hard to have a legitimate process around, just like oh, I'm just going to hone in on like making four perfect ads. Okay, like, oh, I'm just going to hone in on like making four perfect ads. Okay, good luck. Yeah, like you can try to capture, capture lightning in a bottle and it can work sometimes, but we've seen brands fall into that trap and it fails far more often than it succeeds totally. So if you actually have a process, again like what, what is the point of advertising? What is the point of creating processes?
Speaker 1it's to create predictable outcomes yeah lightning in a bottle is not a predictable outcome. No right, it's just not, and that's what a lot of people fall into you can shoot for those right.
Speaker 2I think everything that's part of yeah, everything you create is meant to do that. London lazarson talks about this all the time, right, like he's always trying to make something go virable, virable virable virable.
Speaker 2He's always trying to make something go viral, but he's got the at bats and guess what, just because he doesn't have something go super viral, he'll have something that will do semi good, that that will be the 20% that's winning for him. And then, every now and then, he has this thing that goes bonkers. It's the same thing with my content, right? I always say this like if my content, my personal brand content, if I can get between five and 10,000 views per video, I'm in a good. That's just like a realm for me, okay.
Speaker 2That just average works for me, and then if I can have three to four videos a month, that gets that 30 to 50,000, I'm in a really good spot. And then maybe once every 45 days I'll get this 300 to a million view, and so you can try to create that way. But you're really trying to figure out what that middle ground world is. That's what I'm trying to work my way up to.
Speaker 1Yeah, I love the analogy of at-bats and there's a lot of sports analogies here, but if you're thinking about just at-bats, your best hitters aren't going out there and just trying to swing for a home run. Yeah right, what are they doing? First, they have very clear like let's take golf, right, when you're golfing, the best golfers in the world they don't go out there and they're not just swinging out of their shoes every time. They are trying to create a consistent, predictable outcome.
Speaker 2Yeah. And that comes from a core foundation of hours upon hours of technique, hours upon hours of technique. Same shot all over the course. Right yeah, same shot, but different spots all over the course.
Speaker 1So when you watch golfers, you know, as someone who's not, I'm not a golfer. I golf at times, but I'm not a golfer. Yeah, what I do know, though, about golf is the professionals know what their height you know the height of their flight of the ball and the distance of the ball for each club, right, or what the range is, okay, my nine iron speed velocity, yeah my nine iron is going to go, however high in the air generally, or and then my distance is usually what?
Speaker 1150 yards or whatever. Yeah, so they know that. So like that's how they're playing the game. They're not just trying to hit the ball as hard as they can every single time because they're trying to get a hole in one. Yeah, it's impossible like they. They know that. So like that's how they're playing the game. They're not just trying to hit the ball as hard as they can every single time because they're trying to get a hole in one.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1It's impossible. Like they, they know the odds of a hole in one or literally approaching zero. Yeah, same thing with that's. Like that's what capturing lightning in a bottle is is Sure, but you have to have that foundation of technique and understand what's actually working in the technique to have predictable outcomes. And that's the same thing with business You're trying to create processes and techniques that have predictable outcomes, because if you have the predictable outcomes, like you, hey, I know, based off of this technique and this methodology, I'm going to get 10 to 20,000 views.
Speaker 1Yeah, but I also know I'm going to get a hole in one every, or a home run or whatever you want to call it every hundred videos, sure, and for whatever reason you know, it takes off Like I'm landing closer to the hole each time and eventually one falls in. Yeah, but guess what? Like you're not going to win a lot of events if you're only trying to get hit it as hard as you can to get a hole in one every single time. Sure, yeah, 100%. Because, good luck getting a hole in one on a par five obviously.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1So it's situational. But, the same thing in business. It's all situational. You got to realize where you actually are as a company and what your production actually is.
Speaker 2Yeah, so the TLDR going back to the whole purpose. We've gone down this analogy path. Mark asked the question well, why not optimize off the top 20? It's like, yes, that's what you're always doing, but you're always going to have a top 20 from the new top 20, you know, from the new hundred ads that you created, and so that optimization process never stops. So back to the main analogy, which was this bucket.
Speaker 1And sometimes your product might suck and you're hitting out of the rough, yeah yeah, so it totally so you just need to understand where you actually are and you need to be filling that bucket of creative.
Speaker 2A really great way to do that is UGC. We like it. The reason why you know it shouldn't be everything. The reason why we like it is because it's other people talking about why your product is good and that, just naturally, even though it's an oversaturated form of ad content, is still a better form of content than me, as the founder, saying. This is why my product's better than yours.
Speaker 1Right, it just is People trust it, although you, as a founder, getting on and saying that is a lot better than.
Speaker 2Not, I guess.
Speaker 1Just showing a product.
Speaker 2Sure, yeah, and you don't have to say this is why my product's the best. It's more of like hey, this is why I built this product, but I would love more founders to do that.
Speaker 1Yeah, talk about why it's the best.
Speaker 2Yeah, this is why I built it and this is all the years and money I've spent to make this product better than the next. So the purpose, the point, is fill your content buckets, create content diversity. Content diversity meaning not just meaning reels, stories, feed, not just meaning videos and statics but, also meaning your, who, what, why?
Speaker 1For example, if you have, if your account has 50 UGC videos and they're all 20 to 25 year old blonde woman talking about your product in very similar ways. That's not diversity. Yeah, and they're all in their kitchen. The algorithm is not going to reward that very strongly totally so when we're talking diversity, yes, it's not just videos versus statics, it's what is actually the content like. What's the actual video about?
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1And who's?
Speaker 2in it and budget for this, right? This is the number one reason people aren't doing it is because, oh, creative costs money and I don't see a direct correlation. And I already have all of this creative. Why can't we just continue to reuse it? And you can.
Speaker 2But we have just seen long enough that, like, just like, content is very similar to products, right. Like I can't tell you how many times we've worked with brands where they'll be like oh, I have so much of this in stock, why can't you go sell more of this? And it's like well, people don't want it, people don't care about that, people don't want it. Like you can't sell something people don't want at maybe at that efficiency ratios you need to in order to not lose money. It's the same thing with content. Oh, I've got all this content, just keep using it. Well, sometimes that content doesn't work, right, so it doesn't matter how much content you have if it's not good. If it doesn't work, then it's not content. You should continue to be creating ads around, because then you're just wasting money. Right, it goes. It's not content. You should continue to be creating ads around, because then you're just wasting money. Right, it goes. It's the same way as as as bad product or product that this is not as good at at acquiring customers.
Speaker 2So, budget it out. Um, I think that you know good budgets for something like you UGC could be anywhere from three to six $7,000 a month, um, depending on how many videos you're trying to get. Um, you know, I think anywhere from the a hundred to $200 cost per video is is not a bad cost, um, for what we've seen. So, yeah, just think about how many. Okay, like what? What am I? What can I output, versus what can I get from other creators.
Speaker 2It's a pretty easy calculation and it's pretty easy for you to sit down and say, okay, cool, I know I can get 30 videos a month from content creators. I'm going to pay $3,250 for that. I know I, as a founder, can put out maybe five videos a month and my team has unlimited static amounts. Boom, you just planned out what a content strategy could look like for a month for you that you could then give to your ad team to start. I mean, that's over 60 ads right there. Yeah, and I can tell you right now, 90% of you are probably not uploading anywhere close to that many ads in a month. If you did, you might start to see your cost, and now is the time you want to see your cost start to dip. As we're getting into Black Friday, it's harder to do.
Speaker 2But no better time to get loyal customers to come repeat by in November yeah, exactly which we need to do a Black Friday episode here so maybe next week, maybe in the next couple weeks we'll have an episode come out Black Friday stay tuned we can talk about maybe best practices, things that have worked really good for the next for the last couple years, and then maybe some predictions on where we feel like black friday opportunities might be and what other brands might be looking to do as well, because it's all about standing out and doing something a little bit different.
Speaker 1Awesome, okay, all right guys velocity and diversity, Jay, everybody.
Closing Thoughts on Black Friday
Speaker 2Yep, all right. See you guys next week. Adios, thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast, whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.