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People often ask me, “How does your Team create ad creative that converts? Can you share your template?”

Now, if you’ve been following along with me for a hot minute you know… #1. TEMPLATES DON’T WORK. And #2. My team of experts is trained in the innovation of testing new creative – on the daily.

And yes, you can do this, too!

In this episode, I’m sharing the “how to” of creating ad copy with strategy and INTUITION (i.e. you have to think like *your* Ideal Client, not mine!).

You’ll get clarity around…

How to emulate successful marketing techniques – without the “cookie cutter”
Why you need 3+ angles to your messaging and a VARIETY of copy
The importance (and the ART!) of attracting who you want + repelling who you don’t

Listen in for quick, actionable steps to uplevel your marketing. And then share your takeaways over on IG stories (tag @emilyhirsh with questions and I’m happy to give you some tips!).

NOTE: Listen to episode 57, “Hirsh Process Sandbox Testing with Senior Strategist Roger,” for a deep dive “How To” and Roger’s formula for what to include in your ad copy.

Key Points:
[2:41] A lot of people are testing the wrong things
[4:20] How my company tests our own messaging
[5:53] “It’s not enough to test short + long copy from the same angle!”
[7:18] Know who IS and who IS NOT your Ideal Client
[8:58] Have you said this before? I know I have – and it’s wrong.

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Episode Transcripts:  

In today’s episode, I’m going to talk all about messaging in your ads. So mostly your ad copy, and your headlines, and how you are appearing in the feed, and connecting with your ideal customer.

The reason I want to talk about this is actually, just a little side note funny story is, I obviously run my company now. And so, I spend of my day doing team building and managing my team, putting out fires there, and being the leader that I need to be. And I actually don’t spend any time in the ads manager myself, anymore. But I obviously deliver content to you through this channel, and then we have our Hirsh Marketing Report, and various ways that I speak. And I need to still know the information of what my team is doing in the backend to be able to do things like this.

And I was like, man if I don’t get some inspiration, my podcast is going to turn into a podcast about team building, because that’s what I spend all my time, really solving problems and growing my company… which is what I should be doing, but it was interesting.

So what we did after one of our huddles, because obviously my team is knee-deep in ads all the time… We have over 70 clients on our roster, and we have so much data and so many things we see behind the scenes. Arguably, we have the biggest marketing company in the influencer space. So, after one of our huddles, I just said, “Hey guys, I need ten minutes of your time. I want you guys to just dump on me what worked and didn’t work in the last month.”

And so, I got a ton of information from my ads managers, so they actually used some of… for last month’s Hirsh Marketing Report. And one of the things that stood out is what we’re going to talk about today. And that is, how to test your messaging in your ads. And I think a lot of people are doing this wrong, and it’s something we’ve put a lot of emphasis into lately. So I’m going to share with you what we’re doing and we’re seeing.

One of the things an ads manager on my team said was, he said, you know, “The biggest thing I’m noticing is cookie cutter copy and messaging is so long over, not working any more. It’s so long gone, trying to take a template.” And I actually had somebody else ask me a couple of weeks ago if I have any templates and how we write ad copy and if I train my team with templates. And I was like, “No, we don’t have any templates, because you can’t really … you shouldn’t really … templatize your messaging necessarily. Your ad copy has to be specific to who you’re talking to and also it has to be really unique and stand out and just really stop the scroll, but connect with people on a deep level.”

So that’s why cookie cutter messaging doesn’t work any more.

Here’s what is working. The first part is that it’s really important that you’re not doing any type of cookie cutter messaging. And as I always talk about with marketing, I hate cookie cutter marketing, and so, take what anybody’s teaching or what you see from another company or on another ad from your competitor or whatever it is, and make it your own, that speaks to your ideal client and talks to your person about your product or your offering or your webinar. And make sure you don’t lose that in translation of trying to figure out how to copy so-and-so because they were successful.

One thing that somebody does is they’ll take the same … so, there’s different ways that you can take messaging. Oftentimes, people will do the same kind of angle play on their messaging and just do a short and a long version of copy. But here’s the key. You should have different angles that are going to appeal to different people. We usually choose three, three different angles. One that’s going to appeal to maybe an emotional response in people, and be a deep level story or something. One that’s for those fast action takers who need will see something and like, “Yeah, that’s what I want!” Click buy. Or click and opt in, whatever it is. So fast action people. And then one who’s maybe like those fact finder, number-oriented, detail people.

So those are three different angles. Or you could say, let me take one that’s … I’m trying to think of one that, we just did this for our company that was like … we did a story. We were trying to test three different angles with client stories. So one we did an image of all of our famous client’s faces, because that would be for the visual person. And then we had short copy that went with that.

And then another one we had a long emotional story from a testimonial and her picture. And then another one was very numbers-oriented with how much ad spend we’ve managed and how much we’ve made.

So that’s what I mean by three different angles. Not necessarily three different versions of the different angles. So you want to have different angles that you test, because you don’t know what’s going to work the best. And, as I talked about in our previous episode with Roger on my team, he’s like, “You test things, and all three could work and that’s great. Or two work, or one works, or none and you have to go back to the drawing board.” But basically, you test different things and then you take whatever’s working and you scale that, and you amplify that.

So let’s say we test three different messaging angles. One angle works super well. Another works okay, but it’s still converting. And one doesn’t work. Now we know, okay, the emotional type of copy and connection with these people is working the best. So let’s amplify that, let’s get a few more versions, let’s test some headlines there. Let’s test different imagery there. But all kind of speaking to that emotional messaging.

And then, let’s say the very short, to the point, for those fast action quick start people is also working okay. Let’s amplify that. But, maybe the super numbers and data driven oriented one is not working.

And I’m just throwing things out there, guys. You need to look at, “What are the three angles that I can create for my ideal customer and my ideal client?” So you need to have those different angles. But the key here that I want you to take away is, you’re not necessarily just testing short versus long copy. You’re actually testing different angles and different messaging. And that is what is important.

The last thing I want to point out here that my team said that’s so key, and I think everybody needs to come back to this, and I’ve had this conversation in many different forms recently… But your messaging in your ads should actually repel the people that you don’t want to serve. So your messaging should repel the people who are not your people. And you should have people who are not your people, right?

For example, for me, my people are ones who see the long game. They understand the value in building a business over a year and seeing a return over a long period of time. My people are not people who want results in 30 days with a couple thousand dollars of ad spend, fast results, quick… Not to say you wouldn’t get that, but for me, people who only can see into the next month of clients, I don’t want to work with them. So my messaging, personally, should be repelling those people. Making them know “Okay, Hirsh Marketing, they’re not ones who are going to be about getting the quickest result, six figures in six days,” like, over promise like a lot of companies are out there, “These guys are going to be my partners for years. That’s who they’re going after.” If somebody else wants that, they will be attracted to us, but if they don’t, I want to repel them.

If they want to go and sign up for those $1500 a month agencies who are just taking on mass amount of clients and not able to serve them or they’re not weeding them through and putting them through an application process, those are not my people.

I was just on a call, actually last month, with a client, and we were talking about what are the … I was on a high profile client call. I don’t normally go on client calls, but I was on this one. And she is a very high profile client, and I wanted to be on it and just observe my team. And she was talking to my creative director around the messaging. She was answering the question about why wouldn’t somebody purchase this product that [she’s] selling. And my creative director was trying to get the objection so that she could build out this campaign that we built out, which is three different messaging versions, like I’m talking about.

And one thing this person said was, “I don’t really appeal to the spiritual entrepreneur crowd. My people are people who are very numbers oriented and business oriented and straight to the point, here’s what I need to get done.” She was describing her people, but she said it in a way of like, “You know, I just can’t help the people who are very spiritual focused. I just can’t. I don’t personally attract those people or connect with those people.”

And I said, I had to jump in because I just like, it came to me so fast. And I was like, “Those aren’t your people. That’s good. You don’t want to attract those people. Don’t look at it is as, ‘We have to make it so that all of our messaging speaks to everybody,’ because that’s a mistake.”

And that’s what people do, and it’s easy to do that. It’s easy to think, “Well, you know, so-and-so, like anyone could use this product, or anyone could buy my program. It doesn’t matter what level they’re at in business. It doesn’t matter how much money they’re making or what they’re selling or what type of business they have or what their values are. Anybody could benefit from this.”

Have you ever said that before? Because I know I have. I was like, “Well, we could help everyone!” It’s so common. But you don’t want to do that because you’re not going to stand out. Then you’re just in the ocean with everybody else. Be polarizing. Make your messaging actually stand out and repel the people that you don’t want to be listening. And to do that, you have to know who those people are that you want to be listening and know who those people are that you don’t want to be listening or that you don’t want to attract and that you’re trying to repel.

So, that’s the key with messaging. And I just thought this was so important, because my team, number one, brought it to me as one of the most important things that they saw last month in terms of ads that convert is, strong messaging angles.

Part of our process when working with clients is pulling that out, like I was talking about, in that initial strategy call with my creative director on there and pulling that out. But if you’re creating your own ads or writing your marketing, really think about, “Am I testing different messaging angles? Or am I just doing long and short copy, kind of the same?” And it’s easy to get into the mindset of doing that. Because a lot of times, if you’re writing your copy or you have a team member writing your copy, they have a style and they kind of write from that voice always.

But just remember, there’s different types of people who are going to read what you are writing and are going to connect with the different messaging angles, and you don’t know until you try it, what that’s going to be.

And then finally, as I said, make sure you understand who it is you’re trying to repel. Who are you trying to say “No, we don’t work with those people.” ‘No’ is such a powerful word in business. ‘No’ from actually saying ‘no,’ and then ‘no’ to actually repelling the people that you don’t want and not speaking to everybody. If you can do that and master that, I promise you that you will see so much response. Because the people you are talking to will be like, “Yes, that is my person,” and feel that connection with you.

And at the end of the day with our messaging, we’re trying to connect with our audience, right? If you want custom messaging plans created for you, like I talked about what we do in our initial strategy call, Team Hirsh, we truly are the best out there in terms of combining everything you need from the strategy, to the implementation, to the messaging in your marketing plan and your ads.

Go to HelpMyStrategy.com if you want to apply to work with us today.