Ep 438: How To Garner Attention & Stand Out From The Noise – Behind the Scenes Day 3

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Emily Hirsh:

Attention is currency today. And how do we garner attention while we have valuable content? We have valuable things to say, but it’s from copying creative and finding that unique voice, finding that unique edge, and really sitting with the question. What makes you and your business different?

You are listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers podcast episode number 438.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast and this series, we are on episode three in my behind the scenes series, showing you all the components that you need in your marketing strategy, but really going deep on that. Like, I definitely pulled them out in a more micro way this time around and tying that to how I deliver in my agency and how I have built this new elite agency offer, which is definitely based off of our higher level profit package, but a few things taken out and structured a little bit differently to make it super accessible and affordable. So that’s what we’re focusing on. And we have on-boarded over 20 clients in 60 days, I’ve done all their custom strategies. I’ve onboarded them. They’re getting incredible results and so much like less ad cost in for their business because they let experts come in and take over, which is super exciting.

So this is episode three of six. And today we’re gonna talk about the next component. So we’ve talked about strategy and we’ve talked about the secret to attracting your buyers is your messaging. That was the last two episodes. And that was really like our onboarding process in elite. Like how we get those things. Those two things nailed down. And now we’re gonna talk about this, how to garner our attention, how to stand up from the noise. And that really comes down to your copy and your creative. And we can talk specifically about ads here, because that is what we normally focus on. We do some funnel work. That’s an option that we can do or we’ll at least audit the funnel work, but this is relevant to everything you do related to copy and creative, right? Because how do you stand out? It’s those two things?

And I would say this is one of the biggest differentiating factors of Hersh marketing compared to other agencies is the quality of our copy and creative. I have three full-time copywriters and about one and a half designers. I have one in one part-time, and then I have a creative manager. So I have like an entire creative team. And what that means is we can handle a lot of volume. It also means that they collaborate with each other and they make everybody’s creative better because we have ideas coming and we’re able to create that really innovative creative. We also have a lot of data about what’s working and what’s not working. And so here are some of my top tips on having that really strong, really powerful copy and creative. So first of all, number one is throw away the templates. I think templates are okay to start with.

There’s definitely best practices with your ads and with your copy with your creative. But one of the most important things when creating really good copy and creative is that it’s yours, is that it represents your brand voice. It represents your values. It represents the way you would speak to your ideal customers and the way they wanna be spoken to. And that it doesn’t sound like everything else out there. And there’s sometimes that this is harder than others because it depends on your industry, but there’s definitely, sometimes we get an elite client in and I talk to my creative manager and I’m like, we gotta make sure we can come up with some angle. So this stands out cuz there’s a lot of noise in, in whatever that industry is. And so this starts with kind of what I talked about in the previous episode, which is that messaging call, that everybody gets with our creative manager.

From there, we create a creative direction document that maps out and lists out everything that we can utilize in terms of unique selling position, different angles for their copy and creative and just kind of like a home base for our designers and our copywriters to leverage when they go to actually write the copy. So the first thing is to throw away the templates. The reason we create a custom creative direction document for every single client is because when done right, every single business should have a unique voice and a unique way that they show up. The next piece is making sure you stand out. And so if you look at your copy or you look at your graphic or your image or your real or whatever you created or your video, and you’re like, this looks like 19 other things that I just saw in my Facebook feed, that’s not gonna cut it.

Right. You have to be able to stand out. Attention is currency today. And how do we garner attention while we have valuable content? We have valuable things to say, but it’s from copying creative and finding that unique voice, finding that unique edge and really sitting with the question, what makes you and your business different? Like if I was sitting there talking to you and I just asked you that question and I was like, why should I listen to you compared to the other people out there in your industry? What would your answer be to me? And is that coming through in your copy and creative, is that coming through very strongly in what you put out there? The next piece to this that’s really important. And I feel like I’m saying this in every episode, you don’t wanna complicate it like overcomplicated copy where you’re trying to maybe be unique, but it almost makes it so like you’re trying so hard that now the copy’s not very clear, that is not gonna get us what we want.

Oftentimes we see that the most simple, the most straightforward, the most to the point, the most clear copy does by far the best, which that’s because most of the time when people read an ad or they go to a landing page or they see, you know, a video they’re half paying attention, right? Like we live in such a distracted world, they’re driving or sitting at a doctor’s appointment or waiting to get their kid in the pickup line or laying in bed with the TV on like, they’re not fully paying attention. They’re not gonna read every single word they’re gonna skim. And so with an ad, the headline and the creative is usually what stops this scroll. And the copy is most likely by most people skimmed. And so keeping it very simple, very straightforward. That doesn’t mean it has to be one line. You can definitely test longer copy, but not over complicating it, not making massive paragraphs, having that white space.

All of that’s really important when you consider that most people who see your ad, see your landing page, see any of your marketing assets, they’re distracted with, they see it. They’re giving you half their attention already and you just wanna maintain that. Okay. The next thing with this is kind of like pivoting a little bit, but I really wanna address it. I see so much business owners trying to do their copy and creative, like trying to write their ad copy and trying to create creative in Canva. And it just sucks. Like they, if I was to make my graphics, they would suck because I’m not a graphic designer. And if I was to write ad copy, I can do it, but I’m not cutting. When I write something that’s like a, a full post or a full version of copy. It takes me like an hour.

So if I had to write, you know, four versions of copy, it’s gonna take me four hours to do that. That is not a good use of my time. And if I was to create my graphics, they’re gonna be 25% as good as what my designer could do or even less. And so really pushing to try to do your own copy and creative because you refuse to outsource it is truly hurting your business. Unless like for some reason you naturally have that skill. Like they’re definitely our business owners who are just like really amazing at writing copy, or they have a graphics design background or a design background. That’s awesome. But still is that how you should be spending your time as a CEO? And the thing with ads is one of the secrets to garnering attention and standing out is you have to refresh your copy and creative so frequently and so much.

And you have to, it’s almost like feeding a machine, copying creative on Facebook. Like the second cost starts to go up, click through rate, starts to go down. Our team is going to our copywriters, going to our designers and getting a refresh for a client and turning around in two or three days and, and has something ready before the ads even start to go down. And that’s not normally possible for a CEO to do that. One of the first things I outsourced my business when I was starting, it is my copy. And the, that was one of the first hires I made when I was running my agency, doing everything. I was running the copy. I was running the ads. I was doing everything. And one of the very first things I did actually, the very first help I hired was a graphics designer and a copywriter.

And I still have contact with that copywriter. And she ended up writing for so many of our clients, but then I brought it in house, but those were the two first things that I actually outsourced because they take the most time and they require such a specific skill set. Like creative is so different than strategy. And it’s so different than ads management and optimization. And if you don’t have that skill on your team in some capacity, a contractor or an agency, and this is when I realized it was about, you know, five, six years ago, when I started building my team, I was like, oh, I can’t just hire one person to help me. Like, I can’t just hire an ads manager. I have to get strategy help. I have to get ads management help. I have to get copy, help and creative help. That’s four different people, four different brains, four different skill sets and zones of geniuses.

And most businesses can’t go afford to hire all four of those things in their business. One by one, which is where working with an agency. I know that I’m biased, but I’m biased because I know it can help people. That’s where that really comes in handy because you don’t need those people full time. They’re also hard to find, like I have a full time person who hires for us. I put money into finding really good talent and that takes time and it takes, you know, investment in doing that. So I think it’s one of the first things to start outsourcing in your business. And it’s not cheap if you were to go hire copy, but working with an agency does make it more affordable because you can’t spend all your time on those things. So really think about that. If that’s where you’re currently at, because I can’t tell you how many clients, I cannot tell you how many come to us.

And they’re like, yeah, like I’m running ads. They’re really expensive. I need help. But I haven’t redone my copying creative in like six weeks. And I’m like, well, that’s why they’re so expensive. Like we can help with this, but that’s why. And so you’ve been basically paying more for your marketing, getting less results because you didn’t outsource it. And how many months have you been doing it like that? Okay. All right. A couple other things that are really important to keep in mind with copy and creative is testing. I get asked all the time, like what’s the top copy, you know, format short form, long form, medium. What’s the best? Is it video? Is it real? Is it carousel? What is it? Is it gifts? And it’s really interesting in every account we have different results. Like there’s some accounts where single images do better than video.

There’s some accounts where reals do really well. And there’s some that don’t, there’s some accounts where carousel do really well and then others where they just don’t, they don’t work. And so pretty much for our team. One of the things we do is as a part of the onboarding and adds manager, if the client has historical data, goes into the ad account and figures out what creative in the past did well. We have clients who come to us at all different ranges. Like some have never run ads, their ad account’s brand new. They’re obviously not gonna have historical data. We have some who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the ad account. And even if you spent three, 4,000 there’s data in there that you may not know how to pull out, but our team does. And so what you need to do is figure out like what type of creative is top performing in your account.

So, but step one is you’ve gotta test different creative. You’ve gotta test carousel, you’ve gotta test images. You’ve gotta test videos. You’ve gotta test reels, gotta test animations, test all those things and then go in and figure out what creative does better. And that can drive your next action. Now you’re not wasting time on carousel if they never work in your ad account. Right? So one of the processes that an ad manager goes in and does an audit, if we have the data and communicates that to the creative team of, Hey, here is what has historically done the best in this account. And so we want, you know, this many images and this many videos, and so testing all different types of creative and different forms of copy, really short form or longer form different, you know, angles and headlines is really important. And so we put a lot of time into coming up with angles, coming up with different things we can test.

And then that’s an ongoing process. Like every single month we’re giving back feedback, or maybe even more frequently, like anytime we go task out a refresh of copy and creative, we are giving back that feedback on here is what is doing well in this account. And so now we can make this educated database decision on what to do next. So that’s super important that you test because there is no one size fits all answer. It really depends on you, your brand, your voice, your audience, like the way you create content. I mean, there are some clients out there that video is just not their number one skillset, right? And so we have to compensate for that by creating different creative and copy. So if you’re only testing like barely any types of creative or not a lot of different, you know, angles in your copy, you’ll probably leave you money on the table.

The next thing in this is the amount of refreshes that you need to do is pretty high. I’d say on a bare minimum, we do four to five different versions of copy a month for a client. Like that’s bare minimum. Of course, if things aren’t working or we’re not hitting KPIs, we’re doing more or someone’s launching more. I mean, we’ve gone up to like 30 in an account, different versions of copy. Like how long would it take you to write 30 versions of copy? It would take me all week <laugh> it would take me a long time. Not only coming up with the ideas, but then writing it all. So it depends on the budget, but typically like the minimum amount, when we go do like a copy refresh task is about four versions. And then the higher the budget, we’re getting up to 6, 8, 10, and even higher.

And so it’s usually a higher amount than you think of versions that you need. And the second that your ad costs start to go up, that is one of the levers you can pull. Like people are always like, well, how do I decrease my ad costs? Like, it’s starting to go up, you refresh the copy and creative and you probably have to do it every two weeks. Like really that frequently that’s how much you have to do it. And, and people don’t do that. It used to be years ago. It’s like, you could get an ad and just let it sit for months. I’ve seen that happen a few times. I did have a client. Who’s like, yeah, I haven’t touched my ads in two months. I’m like, well, your cost really is probably higher than, than it will be. Once we start touching the ads and, and improving the ads.

But it, it’s pretty rare. Ad fatigue happens really fast and it doesn’t totally make sense because sometimes these audiences are like a million in size, but I think it’s because the social platforms, and this is true for everyone, not just Facebook and Instagram, they want fresh, they want constant fresh because people have such a short attention span and they need to be fed new things. And when other marketers are feeding and businesses are feeding, basically the machine with more copy and creative, more copy and creative, you’re kind of getting overrun. And so your ads are being shown less. So lots of refreshes. And then the final thing I’ll say, I should have tied this in with like the beginning stuff, but I had this listed on my notes is I think it’s really important to always look at your copy and creative and make sure it’s bringing out emotion.

This is one of my tricks. Whenever I read copy, or I look at a creative version of something for myself or for a client, whether it’s a social post or an ad or an email, I always ask myself, like, I take a step back. And I ask, like, what did I feel when I read that? Did I feel anything? Or did I glaze over? And I barely read it cuz it was like, it just wasn’t hitting. Like when I read something like good copy, you feel it. You’re like, oh yeah, like I can feel the anger. I can feel the desire. I can feel the frustration in that. Like that gets me. And that’s what, what you want your ideal customer to feel, whether it’s a video, whether it’s, you know, text that you put on a video that they captures their attention. Whether it’s the actual ad copy, like you really want, you know, I’ve talked about this in an earlier episode, but marketing is about emotion.

It’s about connection and how we build that connection is we speak to those emotions. We speak to what our audience wants to hear, not what they need to hear, not over complicating the language, but that emotion. So those are my tips on how to stand out, how to have epic copy and creative in your ads. If you’re listening to this and you’re like, I want an entire creative team supporting my business like this. You can go to Hersh marketing.com/elite to look into our elite marketing agency package and book in a call. Otherwise I’ll be back here tomorrow for episode number four.

Thanks for listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support with your marketing head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how Hirsh Marketing can help take your marketing to the next level, no matter where you’re at today. We help our clients scale faster than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies, and help their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with Team Hirsh.

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