Why does one hook work and another flops?

Why does one offer get customers clicking and buying and another offer get’s only a shrug?

How can you know BEFORE you spend money on an ad if it’s likely to convert?

Today’s episode is a recording from a recent talk I gave at Ezra Firestone’s Blue Ribbon Mastermind.

I break down 7 ad tests guaranteed to make ANY ad better.

Follow these tests and your ads will have more stopping power, more engagement, and drive more ACTION.

The visuals do help with this one, so watching on YouTube might be a good idea, but the audio sill captures most of the value.

Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll learn:

• How to tell if your ads differentiate your product ENOUGH from the competition
• A test that great standup comedians use that applies to your ads as well
• A test that’s best illustrated using a cat, and one that’s best identified using a donkey. Any guesses what these tests might be about?
• How to handle lingering objections
• How to tell if your ad has the power to motivate your prospects to take action
• Plus more!

This presentation was super fun for me. Hopefully you’ll find it entertaining and helpful!

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And if you've been in this industry for any time at all, you've wrestled with questions like, why did this hook crush it and this hook completely flop? Or why did this ad scale to the moon and this other ad that seemingly was similar, completely fizzled out? And what if you could know ahead of time if an ad was likely to work or not? And so this episode is a recording from a recent talk I gave at Ezra Firestone's Blue Ribbon Mastermind where I talk about seven ad tests to run before you spend money on your ads. Another way to look at this is seven ways to supercharge any ad. It's a ton of fun. Hopefully it'll be entertaining and engaging as well. And I think whether you're running display ads, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, TikTok ads, this will apply and help make all of those better. So please enjoy my presentation on Seven Ways to Supercharge Any Ad

Brett:

Thanks to Jeremiah and thanks to Chat GPT as well. That was interesting. So fully embrace that, whether it's scaling a business or scaling a family, I'm comfortable with both. So you got questions about either I'm your guy, we can dive right in. So really excited about this presentation and I'm excited about it because we're going to be talking about the part of marketing that I love the most and really the reason why I got into marketing. Now for most of my career, I've done really nerdy stuff. SEO, PPC, feed optimization stuff that will literally put you to sleep. But we're going to talk about today, the fun stuff. So we're going to get into the psychology behind marketing, and I think these seven, Molly Pitman's excited who here likes, who legitimately likes the psychology of marketing. White people buy white people click on one ad and not another ad.

Why do people laugh at one joke and they don't laugh at another joke? And so we're going to dive into that, and I think this is super important for a couple of reasons. But first, how many of you guys are writing your own copy? I bet it's actually not very many, but curious. Okay, that's a decent amount. That's actually surprisingly more than I thought. So I do think over time you guys will probably, as you scale, you'll write less of your own copy, right? You'll hire a team, you'll utilize chat, G p t some. How many of you think though the chat G p t could write like a killer video script right now? Yeah. Okay, that's so few of you. I think it could be like okay-ish, right? And it's probably going to get there. But whether you lean on ai, lean on your own team, lean on freelancers, whatever the case may be, I think these seven tests will help.

Does this ad have the power to stop someone in their tracks to get them interested, to get them to say maybe to get them to click? I also think some of these tips apply beyond marketing, even to presentations and speaking in front of groups. And so hopefully we'll have some fun and we'll dive in. We'll maybe do some q and a at the end as well. And then this will be slightly nerdy, but I'll go pretty quick. So if you'd want to skip the nerdy stuff, it'll be over before you know it. But five growth tips you're likely missing from Google Ads. So we'll dive into this. And also this will be a great teaser because on May 22nd, I believe May 22nd is the big day smart Google Ads is going to be released. I know Victor's excited, Molly's excited. So my team and I, two members of my team and myself, we crafted really a full Google Ads course, search Performance Max, YouTube, we lay it all out, it's available to you as a Blue Ribbon member.

So that launches on the 22nd, and this will be kind of a good precursor, warm you up, gets you excited about that course. Now I have had the privilege of working with some pretty awesome brands like Native and Boom and Overtone. And so we run all the Google, YouTube, Amazon for boom and Overtone. We spend about a hundred million dollars a year on ads across platforms. And so I've got this unique perspective where I'm not writing a lot of copy either. I'm still working on strategy a little bit for some of our bigger clients, but I can see lots and lots of data. What video ads have the best view rates, what ads have the best conversion rates, what landing pages work? And I think these tests will work on landing pages as well. We do have a team of 73. We're in the top couple percent of Google ad agencies and same on Amazon.

So let's get started. Test number one, I think this is one of the most important, and this applies to videos, emails, landing pages, I think presentations, you name it. So this is the Scratch Out write in test. So this is how you know your ad fails this test. If you can take your ad as it is, remove your name and your branding, add in a competitor's name or branding. If the ad still works, it's not a good ad. If you can take the ad just like it is, remove your name, add a competitor name. If the ad still works, it's not a good ad. So the ad really needs to work for you and only you. So this is not like every individual element of the ad, but this is the ad in its entirety. So this ad should really communicate why you are unique.

So a couple of good examples. So this is native, native deodorant. This is an ad that's a couple years old now, but 50,005 star reviews. So lots of other natural deodorant companies, especially at this time, but very few could make that claim. 50,005 star reviews and growing. So they had a lot of the same benefits, a lot of the same features, a lot of the same things going on, but this social proof element was really unique to them. Nobody else could claim that amount of social proof. We all know Purple Mattress. What are just the most iconic video ads made by the Harmon brothers? So this whole ad, how many of you guys have seen the raw egg test ad, the purple raw egg test ad? That's actually fewer than I thought. Okay, so five seconds. Basically they're proving the comfort of the mattress that it will cradle your pressure points.

And the way they prove that is this 300 pound sheet of glass drops onto the mattress, raw eggs are underneath it, and the mattress cradles the eggs. The eggs do not break, proves the mattresses next level. So the whole ad is built around. This is a mattress unlike any other. Every other mattress fails this test. So this definitely passes the scratch out, right in test. Really no other mattress company, at least we're led to believe no other mattress company could pass this test. Now here's another example and I already have a thumbs down on it, but how do you feel about this ad? Our science, your comfort? Does that ad pass the scratch out right in test? Could another mattress company run that same ad? Could another brand like a chair company or almost any other brand related to or product company that you sit in or feels comfortable, maybe even apparel could run this right now.

I will say if that ad is used for remarketing, if it's used to remind if it's used, it's targeting someone that we know has seen the raw egg ad and now we're just reminding them and getting them back in, then maybe it's okay. So another principle that's really important is as we look at these seven tests, we either want our ad to pass the test or there needs to be a strategic reason why it's okay that it doesn't, why? And so we need to be thoughtful about why the ad doesn't pass the test. So this ad doesn't pass the test, but like I said, for remarketing, or in some situations it may be okay, alright, we're not going to watch the video. This is boom. So three sticks is all you need. So this is the boom stick trio, and essentially this will replace your whole makeup bag.

So does that pass the scratch out, right end test or does that fail the test? How many think it passes? Hands up for passes? How many of you think it fails? Yeah, so it passes, right? Because I don't know any other brand that I've never seen this before. Three sticks to replace your whole makeup bag, three sticks of this unique product. And if you have those, that's all you need. So passes the scratch out, right in test. Let's talk about this one. This is the align. This is a probiotic gut health probiotic. So welcome to an Align gut. You got a lady relaxing in a pool, she's living in bliss here. Number one, doctor recommended probiotic brand. So first of all, how many of you, if you saw that ad, how many think you would click that ad? Yeah, nobody. Anybody here an avid probiotic user?

How many of you guys are using Rocking the Probiotics? Okay, that's a pretty fair number. Do you think this ad passes the test? Does this ad pass the scratch out right in test? How do you think it passes? Monica's like, I'm going to scratch the back of my head. I don't know, maybe I'll be ready. So nope, nobody's feeling good about this ad. I think this ad is maybe close, right? The headline, anybody could say that, right? You drop the line, you throw in any other probiotic brand and you can say welcome to the whatever gut. Now the number one recommended probiotic brand by doctors, that is potentially unique. I don't know how much we believe it, but it's potentially unique. So what would be better is maybe to key in on that, right? That headline is sort of a throwaway headline. The graphic is sort of a throwaway graphic in my opinion.

How could you bring number one recommended to life? And how could you uncover why? Why is it the number one recommended brand? Is it gentler on the stomach? Is it easy? Does it work? Is it more efficient? Why is it more doctor recommended? But I would lead with that as opposed to picture. And welcome to the Align gut. So scratch out right in test test number two, the shrug test. We've all heard it said that the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. And the worst ads are not the ads we hate. The worst ads are the ads that we never see, the ads that we never pay attention to that never make us give it a second look or a second thought or anything. So looking at your headline subject line, the top of your product detail page, does it pass the eh, I don't know.

It's the shrug test, right? It's the meh test. So we'll look at a couple of these. I was served this ad recently, mother's Day, which is cool. Anybody here need the reminder that Sunday is Mother's Day? Because yeah, me too, Matt. I was really glad this was a terrible ad, but it did serve as a good reminder that, oh crap, I need to buy a Mother's Day gift in Pronto. So I don't even know what this ad means, but the gift, it's her. Okay, I'm going to tell that to my wife. I'm like, Hey, you are the gift, babe. So seriously, I didn't buy one. You are one. And so the gift, it's her. And to the almost perfect moms, I don't know what this is. I don't know if we're buying the necklace that's on a cake. Is that an earring? Is that a cake decoration?

I don't know. And I only looked at this ad longer because of this talk. If it hadn't been for this talk, I would've just blown by this ad and kept on going. So this is kind of like a, I'm shrugging because I'm confused, right? Sometimes you shrug because you don't care and then sometimes you shrug because you're like, I don't want to work to figure out what you're trying to tell me. So the shrug test, this is also a kind of related piece, is the, well, I would hope so, right? You make a claim, you say something. This would be like a restaurant saying, Hey, we're not going to serve you cold food when the food shows up on the table, it will not be cold mean's the least you could do. That's what I expect. Well, I would hope so. Or kind related as things like fair, honest, reliable, some of those things that we're probably not going to give any credence to initially until we know you.

And so better just not to say it. So the shrug test, does this make someone shrug or just they miss it all together or does it make them say, well, I would hope so. Next test. Love this one. The authenticity test. And this is really important and this is one where you probably need to get opinions from a few different people if you're running a big campaign or something. I do think, and a quick side note, sometimes it's good just to test ads. You need to, speed is important. So we're testing headlines, we're testing copy, we're testing subject lines, we're testing display ads. But for bigger campaigns, you're making a big investment, you're making a big push. You need to really think about this stuff. Or at least as you're analyzing later, look at maybe why something did or did not work. But the authenticity test.

So this is where we're asking do I really believe that? So you said that I'm seeing this in the ad, I'm watching the video, but do I believe it? Do you seem and feel authentic? How many of you guys feel like you got a really good BSS meter? Your gut on someone else is really quick. So how many you guys are involved in hiring for your company? How many of you know in the first two minutes I don't trust this person? And they haven't even said, yeah, it happens. And we even had this recently in our company, we're like, oh no about this one. But we kind of played it out and it turns out the gut was right, right? We are usually pretty good. Our BSS meter, our trust meter, our authenticity meter is pretty highly tuned and we need the trust of more.

And so just know your prospects. Your customers probably aren't thinking about it, they're not thinking about you anyway. They never were, right? They're not thinking about your ads, they don't care about your company. So they're not thinking about believing your claim unless you really do some of the things we're going to talk about here. So do I believe it? I want to throw some props to ridge wallets. You're going to get to hear from Sean Frank in just a little bit. But as we look at this, especially now, it's really hard in my opinion, to create a good display ad, right? A display ad that actually gets someone to stop and pay attention and stirs up some emotion and convince us and stuff like that. It's pretty difficult to do. But this ad, the wallet redefined and you guys were the first in this category, or at least the leader titanium wallets, R F I D, blocking indestructible lifetime warranty.

So the wallet redefined, we see this wallet. This is the opposite of the, do you guys remember the George Costanza wallet? How many Seinfeld fans do we have in the crowd still? Like the best show ever? Yeah, Jacque's with me on that. So this is the opposite of the George Costanza wallet, right? The big fat thing throws your hips and your back out when you use it. And so the wallet redefined three colors or three materials, 10 plus colors, lifetime guarantee. I think that feels authentic, especially if you are in the market wanting to take a look at it. I believe that at least enough to look a little further, I believe in enough to say, okay, I'll take a closer look. Simply safe. I loved when these guys first launched. Anybody here listening to Sports talk? How many sports talk radio fans do I have?

Wow, me and Craig Hilly. Okay, a couple guys. All right, good, good, good. I remember for a while they were like Dan Patrick, a lot of the other sports talk hosts and they were saying things like, Hey, you set this up yourself so you get the shipment, you set up the system yourself. No long-term contracts, easy security. And that was the real pitch. And in my opinion, I actually did some work in the security business a long time ago. That was the differentiator, right? You choose a d t or somebody else, they come in and they install stuff, it's expensive. You sign like a two year contract. It so simply say, well hey, you set it up in 15 minutes and no long-term contracts. Now as you look at this, what are your thoughts? Do you believe these claims faster? Emergency response. Do you believe that?

Not believe that or not care? How many of you say you believe that A little too good to be true? Yeah. And also how many, and let's talk about this. What do you think are the reasons someone buys a security system? Why is somebody buying a system to put in their home? Yeah, maybe something just happened, neighbor had a break in, they had a break in peace of mind. I want the security. We're traveling, kids are home. We want to make sure that they're safe. Maybe, but is that the security system? Is that why you're buying the security system, right? I want to choose the system that gets the cops to show up quick. I don't know. I would argue that's not why people buy a security system. People buy a security system because they want to feel peace of mind. And something just happened recently.

And so you're almost creating doubt with this headline. You're almost like raising some other objections that maybe aren't even there that where I'm pitching that the cops or the fire department will show up quicker when I was like, oh yeah, maybe they won't show up. Maybe that is a problem. I should have thought of that, right? Where really the pitch of this thing is you install it yourself. No long-term contracts, easy protection done. You don't have some slick salesperson coming out and people drilling holes in the wall to put up the touch pad. It's easy, but that's not what this says. And really under a dollar a day isn't very impressive either because most security companies are 30 bucks a month or thereabouts. So I think this ad misses the mark. I don't know that I really believe it and actually it kind of creates a little bit of doubt in my mind.

Test number four, the curiosity test or the tell me more test. Now the reason I like this, so two ways to think about this. You can run an ad that's strictly a curiosity play where you're telling very few details. You're really just trying to stir something up and get them to click to find out what's up. But there's another point too, where you're kind of just leaving the prospect wanting more. And that's a good bit of advice if you're performing or singing or whatever. You want to leave the audience wanting more so they come back for more. Because really the goal of an ad is to get someone to say maybe to get them to look at your ad, to consume it and to say, maybe this is worth my time. Maybe I should click it. Maybe I should check out, maybe I should sign up for the email funnel.

Maybe this is what I need that will solve my problem. So the tell me more or the curiosity test. Couple of good examples. I'm always blown away by native ads. We're actually doing, we're running native ads as kind of an alpha test right now. We'll see how it goes. I was blown away by the randomness of the picture. Anybody ever scroll to the bottom of a Yahoo article and you're like, what? Are these pictures related to these headlines? I don't get it, but this one I've seen a lot. So that's kind of a sign that it must be working, but don't borrow money if you own a home, do this instead. In parentheses, it's genius. And that little parenthetical phrase, it's genius. You're like, well, if it's genius, I want to know. And I do buy and I do own a home and maybe I do want to borrow some money.

So now I'm going to click. I don't understand this picture. That dude looks angry and she looks like she's not concerned about financing. She's interested in something else. If I was to make an assessment, but this is purely a curiosity play, right? You see this and you're like, okay, I just got to know. I know what your little genius trick is here, so show me. And so this will likely get clicks. I love this ad Zipify pages. Shout out to Lauren, represent Kevin. Yes, sir. So eight easy fixes to improve your Shopify product pages. How many of you would look at that? I'd be like, okay, I kind of want to know how many of you want to know what the eight tips are? You see that and you want to know what the eight tips are. Anybody here? I don't care about these. A lot of you don't want to raise your, so you look at that and you're like, yeah, I would like to know.

I would like to know what these eight tips are so that I can apply them to my business. Has this ad been pretty successful, Lauren, or do you know? Yes, I've seen it quite a bit. And Jeff just, he's got a funny look on his face and it's all pointing to the headline. It just works. I like that ad a lot. I see these guys a decent amount of Fisher Investments. Blunder number 10, mismanaging retirement withdrawals. And so this was looking at, hey, if you've got over $500,000 to invest, we are your group, we're the solution for you. And so has anybody ever seen these ads before anybody been served? Fisher Investments? Yeah, I see 'em a decent amount as well. And so if you click and I always click on good ads just to kind of see where I go from there. Their landing pages are great.

You're basically just getting some free reports and basically like this is blunder number 10. What are the other blunders? What are blunders one through nine? What are blunders 10 through 20? If there are those blunders? So you're left with some curiosity and you want to click and you want to find out more. So passes the curiosity test. So next one, this is really important. So this is where you got to think about, hey, what are all the reasons someone says no to my product? Why do people not buy what I'm looking for? And actually I heard a great way to discover this. Who's using post-purchase, post checkout surveys or post-purchase surveys? Jeremiah has got a few people here. You can find some amazing information there. One of my favorite questions that I can't remember who told me about this, but the question is why did you almost not buy today?

So someone purchases and you ask them, Hey, why you weren't going to buy? What would've kept you from buying? And you'll likely get some key objections there that you can then better overcome in your ad copy and your videos, things like that on your landing pages. So lingering objections, if there are still objections that are hanging out, people will not fully take action. So let's look at some examples. So look at all the reasons why someone would say no to buying our product. And then let's address each one and overcome those. This ad does have a lot going on, but there's some really positive elements. This is Huel pasta versus instant noodles. This is targeting health conscious, busy people, likely busy professionals. So both of these are same prep time. How many of you guys grew up on ramen? Either ramen in college or ramen as a kid?

Dude, I used to love that stuff. Drop an egg in that and it's pretty fantastic. I do want to live past my sixties, so I don't consume it anymore, but it's pretty good. But this fuel pasta, it takes the same five minutes, but it's got 25 grams of protein, vitamins a lot. I kind of like that sometimes. One of the ways to make you feel more authentic rather than trying to prove things more. So there's a couple Legos you can take. You want to be authentic and you want to prove something. You can either go deep on the science or you can actually just kind of crack a joke about it and you can kind of be funny. You need to still back it up with something. But I actually like this vitamins rather than listing it all out. They just are like, it's a lot of vitamins, too many to talk about in this ad.

And then it also talks about, hey, 21 meals for only $3 and 76 cents per meal. So it's not the 10 cents that ramen noodles provides you, but you're getting actual nutrition. It's a good meal, you're going to feel better, your body's going to thank you and that type of thing. So it's got the ideal amount of protein, fats, carbs, fiber in all 27 episode. So this ad is really aimed at let's overcome objections. What are the reasons someone would not buy this? And let's overcome those and get the click. Also like this weighted blankets. Who here likes weighted blankets? Who here hates weighted blankets? I am with you. I don't understand. I got to kick the sheets at a hotel Untucking stuff. I want light pressure on my body. I like one leg out. Sometimes weighted blankets. Sounds awful, sounds horrible, but it's a trend. It's the thing.

I know a lot of people that love weighted blanket, but I have heard they are hot. I will never know because I will never try. But this says, Hey, are you a hot sleeper? Try our cool max weighted blanket, right? So is, I don't really know what cool max means, but it's trademarked, it's got a special name. It talks about me being a hot sleeper. I would like to find out more and you overcome maybe my number one objection to buying a weighted blanket, the fact that they are hot, okay, the physical reaction test. I love this one. I think this is one that you need to think about in all aspects of communication. This will make you better. So how many fans of the office do we have? So BJ Novak, what was his character? I just totally lost it. Yeah, Ryan, of course.

So he was one of the primary writers of the show. I dunno if you guys know that, but I heard him on a podcast and he said, and he did a lot of standup and stuff. He said, good standup causes a physical reaction. And this is something that comedians are watching all the time. I know the guys at Raindrop work with comedians a lot comedians are watching the room and they're watching, Hey, when I say this, when I deliver this joke in this way or at this time, do people move? They have a little lean in or some kind of physical reaction. If not, we got to work on it. So one of my favorite jokes, I actually use this on my kids, they didn't like it. So I have eight kids. So anybody here like Jim Gaffigan, the comedian, love that guy. So he's got five kids and he said when they knew they were going to have their fifth, he sat his other four down and he said, listen, we're going to have another baby.

And I just want you to know, this does not mean that I will love any of you any less, but I'm going to have to let one of you go. It's just one of those. I remember hearing it and I totally had the same reaction, totally leaned in and lost it. My kids did not think that was funny, but I keep telling it, I like it, but it needs to have a physical reaction. So I remember I had this friend once and you would say something and he would look at you with a deadpan and be like, oh, that's funny. Like I don't think you think it's funny because I'm looking at you right now and you're not reacting. You are not showing me any signs that you think this is funny. So a physical reaction. A couple of examples actually, I knew the Raindrop guys were going to be talking a little bit.

This is a Dr. Squat commercial. Anybody seen this one? This is for the Dr Squat cologne ad. And so they're saying Cologne ads are, I'm using an example here from Raindrop. So I had a physical reaction when I saw this part of the ad, so we can play it later, but this is an ad for Dr. Squash and they're talking about how aren't cologne ads weird? And it's showing this man doing all this great and then he just eats raw mayonnaise, just plain mayonnaise. And you have a reaction to that visual, right? You kind of wince or you lean in, you're like, ah, what's going? And then you can't stop watching after that point, after you have the physical reaction, you can't stop watching the ad. And so one thing that we like to do, this isn't always easier, always possible, but I like to show ads and then watch people's reactions.

And so we've done this before where have people in a conference room just play the ad, don't say anything and just watch people. When do they lean in? When if it's a joke, do they actually make some kind of movement? Do they wince? Do they move? When are they reaching for their phone? You can kind do this yourself too. I like to just try to be aware of where I am as I'm watching a video. When do I start thinking about something else? At what point in the video do I start daydreaming or think about, oh, I got to actually check this email, I got to do this thing. Like, oh, okay, that we got to fix that part of the ad, it lost me and this is my ad, right? This is for our company or whatever. And I started to drift in this part.

So your ads should cause a physical reaction because without emotion we don't take action. Without emotion, you really can't get someone's attention and then they for sure won't take action. So you've got to stir up some emotion. And the physical reaction test is a good one. Alright, number seven, the Missouri test. What's actually crazy? So the longest time Brewer and I at Chris Brewer, my business partner, co-founder of O M G, we were the only Missouri peeps in blue ribbon. And then I'm hanging out with the folks at this table, Amber and Ben and Emma, and they like, where are you guys from? They said Branson, Missouri. That's like 45 minutes from where we live. Crazy small world. We know a lot of the same people, it's wild. But Missouri is a unique place. We are the show me state and also our state animal is the mule, which is super, super charming and something we're all very, very proud of.

The jackass is the state animal of Missouri. So the show me test though is this is where any kind of claim you're making, anything you're saying you really want to show it rather than just tell it. So if you don't show me, I probably won't believe you. That's the idea behind this test. So when it comes to claims, you got to show us. So great ads show rather than tell before and afters are great. So this is one from a lawn care company. This is actually Sunday I think. And this actually is a display ad, but it's a video ad and you've got this guy who looks kind of like the sham wow infomercial pitchman up in the upper left corner. It's got the before and after, it's showing old Batman words like bang, pow or popping up as it's showing the before and after.

But it's really showing the results, right? Showing the before and after, which is super powerful. I think you can also, and I wanted to use display examples. One because they're easier to show and they're faster to show, but also I think it's harder to show something in action in an image ad than it is in video. But these are some really great examples. So here's awesome shoe company, but what better way to show this is waterproof, wear it anywhere and then just show it actually in water. And maybe I've even seen some of their ads where part of the shoe is fully submerged, the water goes up to half of the shoe. And so you're saying, Hey, I see that this is a waterproof shoe, I like this one too. So stuff like socks, how do you show socks in motion or how do you show that you got a wide variety of socks or how they fit or how they look or the fact that they're stylish.

I really like this. It's laying out various colors, but you also got to do a foot model as it were here showing off the socks. So this was pretty great. There was this one company we did some ads for and they were actually a lawn care company as well. And so with this company, I was convinced that before and afters would be the winner. So this was another lawn care company showed the lawn before the product showed the lawn after the product. But actually that is not the image that won almost ever. And we did this test and the ad that won was an ad of a dude's hand with the product attached to the end of a hose and he was spraying. So that image worked better than before and after images almost every time. Now I just said that before and afters are great, and I just said that showing is important.

Does anybody have any theories? We've got a theory, and I think this was proved out as we ran some tests, but any thoughts as to what that image was showing that maybe the other one wasn't? Why would an image of just a dude holding a bottle in a garden hose, why would that work versus before and after? So there likely was some confusion, and we actually heard this from a few people. If you show before and after, it could be a service like, oh, I need to hire a lawn guy, right? Yeah, Jacques, it looks like guns are cool. Guns always make, yeah. So I agree with, I never thought the gun thing, but I like that it does look like a gun. But that's what we're convinced of as we started looking at other ad copy and combination things that were working, is it communicated that it was easy?

Like, oh, I can stick something on the end of the hose and go stand out in the yard. I can do that. I don't know what they had to do to get that before and after. Or was that like you hire a gardener, you spread seed, you do all these things, what kind of work did that take? But the image of just the dude holding the spray bottle, it worked. And so you do have to show, and that goes back to the objections. What are those hidden objections? They're going to keep someone from clicking. Are they confused? Are they shrugging? Are they not caring? And then how do we show the real benefit and how do we show someone why they should take action? And so we really do like this too. We like testing, and I showed this at the last blue ribbon, a mix of unpolished U G C cut for length, like cut.

So it's real punchy and just shows the benefit, but they'll also showing that with polished photography and videography, that works really well. So let's dive in really quickly. So we got about 10 minutes. I'm going to go rapid fire through five growth opportunities that I bet you're missing on Google and YouTube. So maybe you're doing some of these, but I bet you there's at least one that you could be using that you're not. So let's dive in right now. Number one, Google ads to Amazon. How many you guys are selling on Amazon right now? Amazon Business. How many of you? Amazon is more than 30% of your total sales? More than 50? It's a few. Okay, cool. So here's crazy, and this did not make sense to me when I first heard it. When I first saw it, I had to look at the data to believe it, but there are a ton of people who want to buy on Amazon.

Their plan is to buy on Amazon, but they still begin their journey on Google. And so for some people, maybe your parents, the internet starts with Google. That's where everybody starts their search. So we've looked at this now several categories, millions of searches a month of people on Google typing keyword on Amazon. So bedsheets on Amazon comforters, Amazon water filter, Amazon, but they're starting on Google, which is crazy. And so the interesting thing about running Google ads to Amazon, and it's also one of the sneaky things that Amazon does. Amazon runs ads too, right? And Amazon's number one source of traffic is Google, right? Amazon gets more traffic from Google than anywhere else, and Amazon is the number one advertiser on Google. So no one spends more money on Google p p C than Amazon. But here's what happens. So if Amazon is running an ad for let's say water filters, someone's searching on Google for water filters, Amazon, you click on Amazon's ad, it leads you to a category page that is full of Amazon's ads, right?

Ads that Amazon is charging other sellers. So Amazon is really playing some arbitrage here where you click on an ad on a Google ad that Amazon posted, they're paying Google for that, but then when you land on a page, you're almost certain to click on one of Amazon's ads and now they're making that money back. And so what we found is we've got some advertisers that are spending a thousand, $2,000 a month driving traffic from Google but bypassing all their competitors and going straight to their product detail page or their storefront. But we've seen companies spending a couple hundred thousand a month on Google ads to Amazon. And so this isn't the key to growth on Amazon, but this is something that likely your competitors are not doing and it's something that can add a little boost to your Amazon business, but it's a way to leverage Google.

So Google to Amazon ads, I really like that strategy. It's something we can talk more about if you are interested in knowing more. Also love this. So we work with bigger brands and I really think the trend right now is going omnichannel. And that seems weird to say because omnichannel was a phrase thrown out in the early two thousands I feel like. But most of the bigger brands we work with are D two C, Amazon and other marketplaces, and now trying to go retail. So trying to get into retail stores. So YouTube actually has some pretty unique opportunities for you trying to drive sales to retail stores. We did this with Native first when they were rolling out into Target and then into C V s where we picked some key markets, do some geographically focused YouTube campaigns, and you can run those to display on mobile and on desktop and also on TVs.

And then they've even got a few tools, they're not necessarily great, but a few tools to show how many people actually show up in a store after seeing an ad. But you can also just measure things like store sell through, but using YouTube to drive in-store purchases likely something you're missing. And if you're selling in physical stores, could be valuable Shorts for remarketing. Okay, I'm very bullish on YouTube shorts. How many YouTube shorts fans do I have just as a viewer? Are you watching YouTube shorts? They're pretty great. And so we've been wondering what kind of ads are going to work on YouTube shorts? Is it the traditional longer form video ads we see typically working on YouTube or is it something different? YouTube shorts have to be a minute or less. What we're finding is that ads on YouTube shorts are fantastic for remarketing and the style of ads that are working are more like TikTok style, Instagram reel style, a lot of influencer content still want to cut it up so that it's really hitting on all the high points, all the top points.

But we've seen this now for a couple of bigger brands where we are, you can't exactly target shorts, but you can kind of funnel the traffic there and then you can see if the traffic is truly YouTube shorts. But some of the lowest C P A campaigns we're running for bigger brands are remarketing campaigns using YouTube shorts, mostly beating traditional YouTube when it comes to remarketing. So shorts for remarketing, that is a winner. Discovery ads for reorder. This is something that we audit hundreds of accounts a year and everybody's running remarketing, but almost nobody's doing really well and almost nobody's running good loyalty campaigns. So thinking about when does someone win? Should someone reorder my product and let's run a discovery ad to get them to do that. So discovery, their display ads that show up on YouTube Gmail, mostly just on Google properties. So really great ad inventory and usually very, very effective.

So discovery ads for reorder. Let's talk about, I'm going to throw out a controversial topic and it's okay if we have massive disagreements in this room. We can carry on a debate later. How many of you hate running branded ads? How many of you think bidding for your own and this I promise is not a trick. How many of you think bidding on your own product name is almost criminal and you sort of hate Google for it? Anybody you hate paying for your own branded name? What's that? Oh, you can ask Ryan what he just said a little bit later. So yeah, this was like your brand, right? So why am I paying Google? How many of you view it as like, no, it's a necessary evil, it's good, I'm willing to invest in my own own brand. That's several of you and some of you're like, no, I still think, I think this is a trick, so I'm going to hang out.

So I actually think that both of those are true At the same time, I think that paying for everybody who searches for your brand name and clicks on an ad is nuts, right? If you have to pay for every single click and try to maximize your visibility there for every single person, I think it's kind of crazy because you likely would've gotten some of those clicks organically. But you do need to look at your product detail page or you do need to look at the search results page rather. You may be having lots of competitors creeping on you, and if so, then you have to be a little more aggressive than others. Talked to Peter Goodwin, groove Life. We were looking at a SERP for his brand and he just dominates every conceivable area. He's got videos, he's got five pages, five different listings in the organic.

He's got the knowledge graph, all the Google shopping everywhere, everywhere. There's no other competitor there. He could probably back off a little bit on branded search and be ao, okay, for other brands, I've seen this with some apparel brands where you type in this name and there are competitors everywhere, and I promise you there are some people that see your ad on Facebook or see your ad on YouTube and they're just sort of interested. And if they go to that serp, because that's usually what people do, they see an ad, they go to Google search next. If they see another more attractive competitor, lower price, better offer, better reviews, they are likely to do that. So here's what we like to do. This is where we separate brand campaigns into two main categories, what we call brand N C A or brand new customer acquisition and brand loyalty.

So you can look at anybody that's bought from you before, sign up to your email list, even visited your site before if you want to be that detailed and you can put them into a separate campaign bucket and you can say, Hey, I want to bid for efficiency, or maybe I don't want to bid at all. If somebody has done any of those things before purchased from me in the past, maybe I don't want to bid at all, but if someone has never purchased from me before or if they've never really interacted with my brand, I do want to bid on that shopper because there's no guarantee that they're fully sold on my brand yet. So that's one pretty easy, simple way. Does say a little work to set up, but separating out brand loyalty, repeat customers from new customers who have not purchased yet. So I think that that is a place you can find some efficiency and get better performance from your account if you treat brand a little bit differently. Friendly.

I was going to do q and a and we do not have time for q and a. Do have a couple of free resources though. If you scan that QR code, we got our top YouTube ad examples and guide, got some Amazon guide, some other free resources that will help you grow through Google and YouTube and Amazon and all of that. Also, happy to chat. You want a second look at your account. Want to talk about struggles you're having either on Google, YouTube or Amazon? I'm here. My business partner, Chris Brewer, Flamingo Shirt, can't miss him right here. He is. Happy to chat as well. Couple podcasts, spicy Curry and E-Commerce Evolution. Been doing E-commerce evolution since 2017. I feel like that's a little bit like OG status for as far as podcasts go. So two podcasts, check those out. I'm always looking for really good interviews as well. So if you like the idea of showing up on a podcast, telling your story, I would love to interview you and so we can chat about that. So with that, I'm finished. Thank you so much.

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