Subscription Box Answers

The Biggest Opportunity On Meta In 2025 Is Reels..

• Liam Brennan

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Last week, myself and the two other BusterBox co-founders were invited into Meta HQ in Dublin for a full day of marketing strategy sessions focused on 2025.

We got a behind-the-scenes look at what’s working right now—and the biggest opportunity to lower customer acquisition costs in 2025 is clear: Reels.

In this episode, I break down exactly what we learned, how to take advantage of this shift, and what you should start doing now to get ahead of the curve.

If you’ve got a question you’d like answered on the show, head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com, join the FREE Facebook group, and drop your question in there!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the questions you ask the questions. You ask the questions, liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to another episode of Subscription Box Answers. As always, I hope you're having a really good day and I hope business is going well for you so far in 2025. On today's episode, I'm back talking about paid traffic on Meta Facebook and Instagram ads. Yesterday, myself and my two business partners spent the day in Meta. Meta is European headquarters in Dublin. We're obviously from Ireland, so this place isn't too far away from us and our rep kindly invited us to come in and spend the day in there. We got to network and we got to ask questions and discuss advertising strategies for 2025 and beyond.

Speaker 2:

We attended a workshop all around Reels and on today's podcast, I'm going to share some takeaways from that in the hope it will help you improve your advertising for 2025 and beyond. It was actually a really good day. It was a really, really good day. We headed in, we were literally in there all day and then, after they actually picked us up outside, they transport arranged and they brought us to a really nice venue and there was a free bar and free food for the evening. It was really good. There was advertisers flying in from all over the world and, yeah, it was great to network with a lot of different companies and discuss what's working now and what isn't working.

Speaker 2:

But anyway, let me jump into my main takeaways from yesterday. So the biggest opportunity at the minute on Facebook and Instagram is Reels. Okay, there's massive opportunity with Reels. You can seriously lower your customer acquisition cost by getting this right now. What I found quite crazy is 50 of the time spent on instagram these days is spent on reels. So there's obviously a big opportunity there and brands aren't utilizing this opportunity fully yet.

Speaker 2:

Now we obviously run Rails ads in BustlerBox, but it's just a placement we're turning on. We're not focusing a lot of time and effort on making unique Rails, and that's going to change. We going to put, um, some effort into this. So when you're setting up your ad sets, the best practice nowadays okay, so we've been told is to have at least three different kinds of ads. So that would be a normal image ad, it would be a video ad and then it would be a Reels ad with audio and sound turned on. You're setting them up now and there's a safe zone which you need to be wary of, because you don't want to block out any text in your video. You don't want to block out any uh brand assets like your logo or anything in the video, and when you're setting it up now, the safe zone will be there so you can basically see where the text and images are going to be, and just be wary of that. They stress it over and over again. A big mistake brands are making is they're not paying attention to this and then the real ads go out and they don't fit properly on the screen. So you definitely want to avoid that.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to placements, okay, advantage plus. Placements are recommended. Okay, advantage, uh, placements. You just leave everything on and you leave meta to do its job and find your ideal customers. If you want to test manual, they highly recommend using six placements as a recommendation, including reels. Okay, found that quite interesting because obviously, a few years ago, if you're going manual and a lot of people used to just go with the facebook feed and instagram, but that's changed a bit and all the stuff that I'm sharing with you is stuff that I've been told is best practice. But obviously there's nuances in people's accounts and even with our own account, there's things that I heard that isn't exactly what's happening in our account, so just be wary of that. Take all this information and test it, but you're going to know your business and your account better than anybody.

Speaker 2:

More diverse, creative can drive more value. So this was really this was really really highlighted right. The brands that create the most creative usually win. Okay, they get the lowest customer acquisition cost and they can attract different customers from different audiences. Creative is the main lever you can pull in 2025 when it comes to advertising.

Speaker 2:

On meta, with subscription boxes, I'd also argue the offer is a big lever you can pull in 2025 when it comes to advertising. It always was, but I think it's even more important now, and I can't stress this enough. The days of testing so many different audiences and being an expert at the mechanical side of Facebook ads are being phased out. They want to make running ads so easy okay, they want to handle all of the targeting and they want the marketer to spend their time focusing on the creative. Creative helps the targeting as well. Targeting now is actually done through the creative. Now. I don't think we're 100 there yet, and there's plenty of examples of companies that do need to test different audiences, especially if you're in a very tight niche, but it's something to definitely be aware of. That's where we're heading, like I remember back in the day, it was all about um, all these hacks look like audiences, like all that stuff still does work and it's relevant, but we're moving away from it and in 2025, now to take advantage of the liquidity in the platform, go with advantage placements, like I said, and the reason why they recommend this is the algorithm will find the best opportunities to put your ads in front of the right people at the right time and who are actually ready to convert, so you're better to trust. The algorithm will hone in on any possible cheap opportunities to acquire customers.

Speaker 2:

The next point, which I found really interesting remember the tiktok creator marketplace. I done a lot on this. A few years ago, we done a lot on the tiktok creator marketplace and buster box. We hired a lot of creators. We got a lot of people signed up at the time and it was massively underpriced in the UK anyway. We were hiring people that had over a million followers, in some cases for only a couple hundred pounds. They were making videos for us. It was driving and a lot of sales. We were turning those videos into spark ads. If you don't know what spark ads are, it's when you get a creator to do a video for you on tiktok. You can then and get permission off that creator to put some budget behind it and get it out to more people. It was really, really powerful at the time and I actually spoke about that at sub summit a couple of years back.

Speaker 2:

I've done a presentation on it and I believe there's actually a podcast episode on it too. So if you're curious about it, I definitely recommend um searching through subscription box answers and you will find the podcast. But yeah, oh, just before I move on, actually a few people were asking me about sub summit. Will I be there this year? Oh, you remember it because I brought it up there. No, unfortunately I will not make sub summit this year because I am attending a friend's wedding at very close to sub summit and I have a lot of other things on around the same time as well. So I won't be there this year, but hopefully I will be back next year. And if you are thinking of going to Sub Summit this year, I recommend doing it. It's a great networking event and I was looking at the lineup and they have some really great speakers. Again this year I believe they are doing the hosted Buyers Program again and it can really help you with the cost of travel and the ticket. So definitely check that out if you're thinking about going.

Speaker 2:

But anyway, yeah, what I found really interesting was there's now the Instagram creator marketplace, which works basically the same as the TikTok creator marketplace. Now, the only thing is this is not rolled out in all regions yet. I understand it will eventually be rolled out in all regions, but it's not available yet. I obviously came home and I looked into it and it doesn't appear to be out in Ireland just yet. But I definitely recommend having a look at it because it appears to work very similar to the TikTok creator marketplace and they make it really easy to work with creators. You can search creators, you can look at different metrics to see if they'd be right for your business and you can actually pay the creators through the platform the same as the TikTok creator marketplace. And if you're leaning heavily into Reels ads, which they highly recommended this can make that process very easy, because you can obviously find good creators that are talented at making reels. That's something we definitely have to work on, because we're definitely not too talented at putting together reels and we will probably outsource this. Obviously, you come up with some ideas, but we'd want to get the right people actually um, making them. But, yeah, the instagram creator marketplace will make that easier, so definitely check it out.

Speaker 2:

Then a lot of the talk was focused on hooks. Okay, what makes a good hook and what makes a good reel? So they I'm going to break both of these things down. So this is, first of all, this is the formula for the perfect reel. Okay, zero to three seconds. You hit them with a hook. What? Why three to 15 seconds? You want to break resistance by showcasing and pitching the product and sharing any relevant or valuable info. 15 to 80 18 seconds building trust through social proof. 18 to 20 seconds reward attention via a call to action or inviting them to sign up to your offer. That's how they told us to structure our reels. They obviously have a lot of data on the best performing reels and this is a simple formula that you can use.

Speaker 2:

Now, what I found really interesting as well is they recommended testing and finding the body of a reel which converts really well, okay, and then editing it with loads of different hooks. Okay, it with loads of different hooks. Okay, so it's the same body, but the start of the ad, aka the hook, will be different. Okay, so you could use the body on like 20 different ads and then just have 20 different hooks at the start, and what will happen if you do that? Okay, you're obviously going to be testing a lot so you find out what actually works for your brand, but you will attract different customers to your product because different customers sign up to your product for different reasons and the hook is the thing which hooks the main. So, if you have a hook focusing on price, you will get the people that are very price sensitive. If you have a hook focusing on price, you will get the people that are very price sensitive. If you have a hook focusing on the pain point your product solves, you are going to hook those people in, and so on and so on. And they actually went through a lot of different hooks and it was really, really interesting and we obviously need to work out how we can repurpose some of these for a dog subscription box, and you would obviously need to do the same.

Speaker 2:

But what I'm going to do now is I am going to bring you through some of these hooks and discuss them, but first here's an exercise around hooks that they recommend and they actually recommend that you use ai for this. And so, number one come up with the motivators for someone to buy your products. I'm always talking about this logical and emotional triggers. It's the same thing, pretty much. Number two use those different motivators to create different hooks in the 18 categories that work. And number three test these different hooks at the start of your reels. So here are the 18 different categories.

Speaker 2:

So, number one dramatize the problem. Now, some of these will be highly relevant for your product and some of them won't, but let's go through them anyway. Number one dramatize the problem. Dramatize the pain of your product's absence. Highly exaggerate this, okay. Example the problem with the internet is that consumers are distracted.

Speaker 2:

Number two motion tricks. Write frames, slides with motion effects in mind. Use visual cues and animation to draw attention. Number three start it like it's a podcast. Example today on the show, a woman who quit her nine-to-five to start a mushroom coffee brand. Number four reminder. Write a reminder caption Example it's okay to ignore marketing advice over the holidays. Number five the absurd alternative. Now, actually like this show a absurd alternative to your product. Example how to make your own deodorant from grass. Number six in real life, use a real conversation or interaction Example this is what happened when I told my friends I was launching a sex toy brand.

Speaker 2:

Number seven reaction in action. Use the reaction someone has when using trying your product. The example would be my mom's face when she first saw me do a handstand. Number eight question Pitch your product as the answer to a familiar question. Example how do I know if my child is ready to start solids? Number nine evolution. Create a before, during, after sequence. Example what I looked like when I started running versus now. Number 10, shocking effect Stop the scroll. Capture attention with contrast or unexpected visual. Example my face when I found out what's in conventional shampoo.

Speaker 2:

Number 11, on-trend FOMO. Use something trending to create urgency or relevance. Example if you're building a notion template, now's your moment. Number 12, teaser hook Start like it's a binge-worthy Netflix show. Example this is the story of how I lost 80 grand and gained my first 10 clients. Number 13, emphasize the solution. Create a quick explainer that visualizes your product delivering joy and impact. Example one tiny product that keeps me off my phone. Number 14, this was good.

Speaker 2:

Negative hook Start with a negative hook to build surprise. Example how I ruined my website then fixed it. Number 15, make me laugh. Use humor or a funny observation. Example your brand isn't boring, you're just British. Number 16, satisfying intro. Use an iconic scene to visualise the need or benefit. Example she opened the fridge nothing in it but soda and ketchup. Number 17, destroy, toss, burn. Destruction equals tension. Use audio or visual to destroy and keep it relevant. Example I burnt my business cards. Number 18, skeptical voice. Build a hook that voices what the audience is really thinking. Example I hate being sold to, but I love buying. So there are the 18 different categories that they went through with. Hooks that work really, really well. So my advice to you will be to listen to this a few times, write them down and see how you can make them relevant for your own brand.

Speaker 2:

Now, one thing that I definitely realized as I was leaving here all this stuff is great, right, we obviously depend on these platforms to generate customers, and without them, I don't think, um, a lot of subscription boxes, or maybe a lot of other online businesses as well, would have had this success they've had. But at the end of the day, we don't own these platforms right, and every every few years there's a shift on them. Okay, like I remember a few years ago, it was all about messenger ads and conversations with people, and then, like, obviously it wasn't about ads, but then we were going into the metaphors, and then reels, and then ai, and it's always changing, it's always evolving, okay, and we have no control over any of that, but the one thing we do have control over is our lists. Okay, and it's so important to build your lists because you own them and they cannot ever be taken away from you. Okay, so when you're running your paid traffic, it's obviously very important to get sales, but 100%, like that's the main objective, because we need to keep the lights on. We need to build companies, we need to build revenue that that comes from revenue, like getting people signed up, but a boy product should always be.

Speaker 2:

You're building your list and that's why I'm always banging on about sign up flows and or possibly even using something like wheelio to gamify your website and collect as many leads as you possibly can. You need to be building your list every day. Okay, like it's a non-negotiable. You have to build your list. So when you're advertising and traffic comes to your site, if they don't buy, you need to be collecting a lead at the very bare minimum so you have an opportunity to sell to them in the future. It makes your business more valuable and it makes your customer acquisition cost work in favor of your business because you're not just depending on ads for everything every single day and it's just better for your business.

Speaker 2:

Okay, and I, when I was leaving there, I was really like thinking all this stuff is great, it's great to know all this stuff, but yeah, we we have to keep building our lists every single day. And I was told that there are some pretty big updates coming to the subley sign up flow feature that is obviously based on the BusterBox sign-up flow that has worked so well for us for so many years when it comes to lead collection. So, yeah, definitely check that out if you're on Subli and you want to implement that sign-up flow. Apparently, there's some pretty big updates coming to that soon. So, yeah, I hope, I hope you found this episode helpful.

Speaker 2:

I hope you learned something and take what I covered in this episode and apply it to your marketing and let me know how it goes. If you're doing reels ads already and and they're working for you, let me know. Post in the group or email me at liam at subscriptionboxexpertscom. I'd be really curious to know. We'll be back next week at the exact same time and, as always, if you have a question you want answered on the show, head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom, join the free Facebook group and post your question there. Thanks very much and chat to you next week. Bye-bye.