The Unstoppable Marketer®
Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhardt bring you quick marketing and entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and trends for DTC business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. These are lessons they've learned through the years of being right in the thick of scaling dozens of businesses. Whether you have an established business looking to grow, just starting your business journey, or trying to become a digital marketer, this marketing podcast will not let you down.
The Unstoppable Marketer®
EP. 115 Stop Sleeping On The Power Of Static Ads
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In this episode of the Unstoppable Marketer podcast, Trevor and Mark discuss the benefits of using static imagery in advertising, especially for businesses on a budget. They explore how static ads can help test messaging and value propositions more efficiently than video content. They also provide practical tips for creating effective static ads and leveraging customer feedback to refine marketing messages.
Intro and Podcaster Banter
Speaker 1Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast. With me, as always, is Mark Goldheart. Mark Goldheart, how are you doing Good, how are you doing Wonderful? How was? Uh, we had a good night last night, you and I. Yeah, that deserves a little more explanation.
Speaker 2But yeah, yeah, mark and I went on a double date. Yeah, we did have a nice night.
Speaker 1Yeah, thank you to our kind guests. Yeah, we had a client take us to a jazz game Floor seats.
Speaker 2Floor seats yeah.
Speaker 1It was the first time I'd ever sat at floor seats.
Speaker 2I felt way more important than I am.
Speaker 1Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 2That's how you feel.
Speaker 1It's different to see these giant of men play basketball, like they look so normal on the TV and Then when you're on the floor you're like these guys are like oh, that guy does have a seven-foot wingspan. Yeah, these guys are like that is crazy. Point zero, zero, zero. One percent of the population.
Speaker 2Yeah, nba players are just aliens, freaks of nature like I can't a good way, yeah, yeah not in a bad way, they're just like. I was watching that one guy I can't even remember his name anymore but His wingspan like he's probably like six. I'd bet he's like six, seven, six, eight. Wingspan of like Seven feet it's crazy and crazy athletic too, you know, like this guy. Yeah, can you like a wingspan of seven feet?
Speaker 1like to pass around that. Yes, it's just crazy, like crazy, that's wild, like to get around that human being. And then that center for portland was oh, he had to been like. Was he like what? Seven four, seven three, yeah, something like that. He didn't have to jump when he dunked.
Speaker 2You're just like and for those who don't know, I'm not a tall guy, I'm only 5'8", 5'9" Like I think. Officially I'm like 5'8 1⁄2".
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Like my wife is taller than me. I think that I'm 5'10", but now I maybe remeasure myself. Yeah, maybe I'm slightly over, maybe I'm slightly under, and I'm not embarrassed by my height or insecure about my height, but like but you, you just standing next to one of those guys, you're like holy cow, these guys are giants benson boone was there as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, he's a new sit right next to us.
Speaker 2He's the new cat on the scene right yeah, everyone's the new cat on the scene right. He's the new Tom.
Speaker 1Cat in the alley, as they say, as the 80-year-olds say the new Tom Cat in the alley?
Speaker 2Yeah, when he walks around, all the girls get a little star-eyed yeah.
Speaker 1I sent a video to my daughters and they were way excited because my 12-year-old loves him. So that was it. That was the uh. There's the explanation. What are we talking about today? What do you want to jam about? Well, it's going to be a shorter episode today guys. We're just letting you know that, but we're going to just talk meat and potatoes Like it's going to be juicy meat and potatoes.
Speaker 2It be a nice little pot roast if you're ready for your easter dinners yeah, exactly or lunches, or brunches or whatever people do now yeah, all the above. What do you do? Do you like to do a nice ham on easter, a honey baked ham?
Speaker 1we usually go to my parents and they, they do something and I just honestly, I can't remember what they do?
Speaker 2They just do stuff. Yeah, I don't think we do anything specific.
Speaker 1That's cool. My kids, though, love Easter more than any other holiday. Really. Yeah, they like, really like. When you ask them like if you ask my like six year old and say what are your favorite holidays, she'll say Easter.
Speaker 2Really she loves the egg hunt over.
Speaker 1Christmas, which is interesting.
Speaker 2Well, it's more fun. It's like springtime you get that first real vitamin D hit from the sun.
Speaker 1Yeah, I always loved Easter as a kid. My parents made Easter really cool, but my parents were really holiday. They were big-time holiday people. Holidays were big in my house and everyone was yeah, I think Christmas was big in my house and that's kind of it.
Speaker 2Easter was fun. Yeah, we were big in my house and everyone was. Yeah, I think Christmas was big in my house and that's kind of it. Like Easter was like fun.
Speaker 1Yeah, we were big, we went big on everything. Yeah, we were not that. But anyways.
Speaker 2well, we have had some questions that we've seen through clients and you know, I think we've seen from people that listen how do you do some tactics on a budget? How?
Speaker 1do you do tactics on a budget? Yeah, because you.
Speaker 2Because sometimes we talk about, like, content creation. It's like, okay, that's videos, okay, like we need a videographer, or sure I can film it on my iPhone, but maybe that doesn't cost a lot of money, but that's a lot of time. Sometimes you're trying to script things out. Maybe you have never script something out, so it's yeah Right. Like think about how long it took you to make your first video.
Our Memorable Double Date Experience
Speaker 1Well, I mean even still to this day like just about any TikTok video that I create takes me at least an hour at least for the filming and it's not. No, probably for everything. No, no, I take that back. I bet that every one of my TikTok videos, or Instagram videos, like reels, take me between an hour and two hours. Okay, between scripting Now.
Speaker 2Yeah now, but at the beginning, like because a lot of people don't have experience creating.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's just a lot of.
Speaker 2Probably three hours.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, I mean I am trying to do things a little higher. When I say higher quality, I don't mean higher quality like production.
Speaker 2I mean just trying to cut it. Better information.
Speaker 1Versus, like sometimes I used to just pull out my phone and say my thoughts and and that would take me 30 minutes and then 15 minutes to edit, but nonetheless the point you're making is sometimes just even editing a video is can seem overwhelming. Yeah, whether you have the budget or not, yeah for it, you know.
Speaker 2So there's a time cost there and a very nice avenue to explore some creative possibilities. That sometimes gets overlooked, kind of like a you know the redheaded stepchild Of creative.
Speaker 1Of creative. I think there's a big what we're kind of trying to get at here is. I can say that my wife's redheaded, so it's not what we're trying to say here is we talk a lot about video, and everyone talks a lot about video, and for a good reason yeah, obviously there's a good reason but I think that by doing that, not just us but other people who just talk about the things that work the best, do disservice to static imagery and static ads and static content. Yes, that can also do very well.
Speaker 2Like for example, we do have ad accounts where the best performing creative and you know everyone will be like that's bottom funnel, it's like no, actually it's not, it's but static. Yeah, you still, we still have a lot of video happening, but yeah I think sometimes people just forget that.
Speaker 2Hey, static is an avenue, and the reason why we want to talk static is because I think static also helps you hone in certain value propositions and add copy and messages in a way that's a little more clear for you to conceptualize. In a way that's a little more clear for you to conceptualize, I think sometimes if you're getting going on a low budget, like if you're trying to come up with a script, there's a lot of, there's just so many more moving parts to a video, literally Totally, that it's harder to maintain. Like, okay, here's a, here's my, my hook, here's the, the message, here's like what, what?
Speaker 2would be considered like the hero content, or the call to action, or here's the body. How do you mix and mingle all of it together? Well, a static doesn't have a lot of those components to it, right like it's literally just an image, and you're going to have, generally, what's the main benefit?
Speaker 1yeah, you kind of have the feature. You kind of have to tie the, the hook and the message in at the same time, whereas and you distill it down to a very easy to understand, very digestible yeah, where's the video where's the video? You don't have to do that oftentimes.
Speaker 1And so if you go at like average watch time of ads, sometimes people don't even get to the message, right, they might yeah, most people don't. Yeah, things might be interesting enough for them to click on it, but they may not totally understand the benefit that they're calling out or the problem that it's solving, or whatever, because they only got through the first six seconds of the video, correct.
Speaker 2And so, yeah, I think making a video, um, in theory, is not like that complicated of a process, but there's just a lot more to it than saying hey, here is a static. I mean, for a great example is we have some ad accounts where a DPA like a dynamic product ad or they used to be known as just catalog ads Yep, and we have our own things that we do to these dynamic ads. But there's dynamic ads that perform incredibly well with the right imagery and the right message yeah, and the right segments and the right message, yeah, and the right segments. Obviously, yeah, right, there's retargeting, but there's also prospecting ads that do really well from a catalog perspective, if you have the right imagery in your catalog or if you're creating, like a separate catalog, which are some tactics, but if you know who your customer is, I think static and this is we talk about testing all the time Like static is so much easier to test.
Speaker 2Statics, in my opinion, because A it forces you to condense what you're saying into a very clear message, where sometimes with videos, it's a lot easier to ramble or get kind of caught in the weeds or thinking you can explain a lot, sure. So we want to focus in on statics for this reason, not only because they're they're low cost, you can test a lot of variations with it, but it does help you distill a lot of this message into a clear voice. Yeah, there's videos. I don't. Sometimes, if you're just getting going, videos are really hard to do that with.
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Speaker 1Yeah, statics are a great way to craft the right or to test the budgets and the right. And when we say statics, this is probably self-explanatory. It's just essentially imagery. Imagery just for those people who it's. It's a, an image that is not, you know, moving, okay, um you have the ability and for the sake of this conversation.
Speaker 2A gif is still a static in our mind yeah, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1Um, you have the ability to take five to 10 different messages, put them on the same static image to narrow in on what your audience reacts to the best.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And then you can very easily say, uh, okay, hey, let's say, let let's say this I think we brought this, this up before with a swimwear brand that we've, that we've worked with in the past, who and as they drop new swimwear for kids, they started calling out the bright colors and how that was a safety feature. Like, hey, hey, neon colors, so you can spot your kids anywhere on a beach or in a pool. Right, like that's a very unique benefit. But you also could say like, hey, like the most trending colors ever. Hey, have your, you know, best looking kids on the beach. You know, like there's, you know.
Speaker 1Or, or uh, it's a testimonial that says like, oh, I love this brand. They have the highest quality swim trunks for my kids. Right, those are four different messages that you can put on the same imagery and very quickly you can start to understand what's working. And then you can take that information and give it to the video team to say, hey, you know what landed the best was the spotting your kids fast and in a safe manner. Let's go create a bunch of video content there, and so it's a. It's a quicker way to test and get to that kind of conclusions, right.
Speaker 2Exactly, and it's a great way of just like testing out I don't know if you'd call it like riskier messaging, but it's just, it's easy ways to test out what messages actually resonate with your audience. Right, like, for an example I don't know, let's take, just cause I saw a company that does this recently. Let's take, like, maybe a men's testosterone supplement brand you can start playing as a as a company. Right, as a marketing team or your branding team. You can start playing around with like okay, like, how do we, how do we like make this relatable to people? But also, maybe that's not so bland and boring. Yeah, so a lot of people would jump straight to a video, but a static ad. Right, like, you could have something that has almost nothing to do with your product. Like you could just have like Two peanuts and say something like Low T busting your balls.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2With an asterisk when it says balls.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Where everyone knows that phrase, right that idiom.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Like, and so that that's how you can kind of throw together an ad that literally that's all stock.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Like you don't even need imagery for that, Like you can literally just throw that on an ad. Yeah, Start playing around with these ideas that might be a little bit quote, more edgy, and just see if that resonates with people. Totally Right. And then you can start honing in on what the actual pain points are of of your customers. Right? Like if you're selling a supplement that's dealing with testosterone replacement or boosting testosterone, there's probably a pain point. You know there's studies out with people who our generation has like the lowest T ever.
Speaker 2I guess, compared to our father's generation. So there's, like this, this pain point here that you can start playing with. Like hey, like maybe men aren't feeling quite up to like their father's standard, like you can kind of almost start joking around. Like, maybe that dynamic of like reaching your father's quote expectations, you can start playing around with the idea of, hey, t is a huge part of, like men's health. So, like, how do we start talking about? Like ben probably don't feel as good, yeah, and this is why, right, like this hidden energy thing that like they might be eating, right, they might do everything right, but they're still feeling like a lag in their life. Yeah, so, like, what pain points can we like start playing with in?
Speaker 2our messaging yeah and distilling that down into one-liners. Yeah, and that's really hard to do, right? Like comedians. I think if you watch a comedian, what they do so well is they distill these like everyday experiences into like one liners. Yeah, and that's what makes a comedian a genius is the fact that they can take these experiences that we can all relate to, but then they're distilling it into these like little one-liners and these little like you know.
Speaker 2Obviously it's a moving thing with a comedian, but that's what they do, like these one-liners that they create. Their punchlines is what they're called. Yeah, is that distilling effect of that everyday experience? But like you don't have to do every day. You're not trying to find everything unique, you're just honing in on your audience. Hey, what Sucks about their experience, and how do we make it better?
Speaker 1Yeah, another cool example like that I saw recently of exactly kind of what you're saying into this, like low-t. You know, hymns is a huge brand right now. Right, they had the big Super Bowl Commercial that was like kind of controversial. But I saw two different ads for HIMS and, like you said, I'm in this world of, I think men our age are experiencing the lowest T imaginable.
Speaker 2So I see, I think the stat is like our age group is 50 percent lower than our father's age group in testosterone at the same age.
Speaker 1So, whether you have it or not, I see ed ads all the time, like all the time, and though I saw this very distinct ab version even more now, because health and wellness doesn't have the same targeting.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1And the first ad, and if my son's listening to this, just plug yours for a second. The first ad says for the best sex of your life, and then it's just hymns and the pill.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Right. And then the other ad is the exact same ad, but the but, the caption, and this is these are statics. The caption was for the best sex of her life, and so it's like it's two completely Same message, a very similar messages, but but two viewpoints, two different viewpoints. Now, if you had to create two different videos, now, if you had to create Two different videos, that's so much more additional work To understand which of those Is going to land better.
Speaker 2And then there's also Do you include in one video two people?
Understanding Easter Traditions
Speaker 1Yeah, is it from? Is it the man's point of view? Like hey, I used to Sex, used to suck for me, and now it's awesome. Versus like From the females perspective of like it was really hard for us to do it's awesome. Versus like it's from the female's perspective of like it was really hard for us to do it and now there's radio ads that do this all the time.
Speaker 2Never been better. You know what I mean. Hey, my husband had this issue, yeah so it's like what now?
Speaker 1what like I? You know what is going to be better? Am I as, as the consumer? Am I going to be more interested in the selfishness of me? I want this better for me.
Speaker 1Yeah, the pain point versus like I feel like I'm letting them down or I don't like my experience yeah, and what an, what an awesome ad from hims, because it was literally like it's just one word best for me versus best for her. The ad was identical. I should have taken an image of it, but it happened within like the same day that I saw both of these and it was like, hey, that was. That was very genius. And now, depending on which is the winner. This goes back to messaging and voice right, because they obviously know who their customer, their target audience is man, you know, it's probably between the ages of 30 and 50 you know, I mean, obviously that goes much older, but their branding is much more to like the 30 to 50 year olds.
Speaker 1And so now what's really cool is they, as they really start to see the winner on the statics one. They can go, then double down and create video content, but then you can take that same stuff and now you're in a plaster. Let's say, let's say, the pleasure for her is better than the pleasure for him.
Speaker 2That's probably going to be their hero message on their home page yeah, it's a way to test the hero message on your home page. And then it's also the way to say hey, this is if this is working. Maybe that gives you more ammo to say this is the video. This is the pain point that actually matters to them, yeah, and of course, you're going to have some success with both.
Speaker 1Yeah, now, a brand like HIMSS has probably unreal amounts of investing. Well, they're putting more money into everything.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1So they've raised funds. But these brands that are listening, who are at this?
Speaker 2well, hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1Forget this all million dollar, even ten million dollar, right where putting a production together that's gonna cost you twenty thousand dollars, or some people you know we're working with brands right now who are putting productions together that are two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You want it like. You don't want to just like a. Do that based off of 100% trust in the creative agency that you're working with. You would like to have a little bit of data to say this is what works best.
Speaker 2These are the pain points that we know have had success.
Speaker 1So when money's limited and you only have $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000, how do you invest that into the ride? Or when you don't have any money and You're a founder who's wearing multiple hats, time is your money, so how do you make sure that you're putting your time into the right creative pieces and statics?
Speaker 2are Awesome. Awesome for that, yeah, and everyone forgets it too, because you're just talking about, I mean, there's some, there's some statics that we have seen that are literally, like we just mentioned, a stock image of something, yeah, and a one-liner with a low and most companies don't even have one-liners.
Speaker 2Yeah Right, it's. Hey, come by from us like this is what we do, but there's nothing clever, there's nothing interesting about the one-liner, but there's a reason why some of the most viral ads have been billboards. Yeah, like, if you do a billboard the right way, that gets attention, like that's funny, that catches the the eye. I mean, a billboard is just a physical, static ad, yeah, and so I like looking at billboards because sometimes billboards are really underappreciated for just their creativity, totally. And there's really bad billboards.
Speaker 2Yeah and then there's billboards that obviously are a the more personal RIP Julia Regan. But oh yeah, the three stages of grief for Julia Regan are who is Julia? What is Julia? And now it's. I miss her too.
Speaker 1That's a Utah billboard company.
Speaker 2Three is where you just accept it. Yeah, I miss Julia.
Speaker 1I've even seen some billboards that like, or some static ads, that they take a picture of their billboard Because their billboards are so catchy.
Speaker 2We've done it. Actually, what we've done is we have created fake ones Created fake billboards For people.
Speaker 2Like fake billboard images and then run them as ads and they've done really well.
Strategies for Low
Speaker 2So, yeah, nonetheless, if you're having trouble with curating a funnel approach or just a path for your customer and you feel like, hey, I'm trying these things, I'm not really getting like a ton of traction, a good creative reset and this is something we do in house too is if we feel like we're not really nailing the message, the best thing to do is go back and start doing statics to hone in what your message should be.
Speaker 2Yeah, and then from there you can start creating better videos and cutting up better, better videos. But often people jump into the I'm trying to say everything all at once, and even if you might just be saying a few things in a video, but if you don't say the right thing at the right time, right or in the right way, yeah, it's hard to get a video to be as successful as it can be, whether it where, if you know what the message is. So figure out what the pain points are of your customers, right, like, if you are a, I don't know, let's just take a, an apparel brand, and I want to use an apparel brand because, like, it's so benign whatever the pain point is going to be.
Speaker 2But guess what Comfort did?
Speaker 1You did a video on Comfort, the hoodie brand yep.
Speaker 2Their hoodie brand. I have not done a ton of research into the quality of Comfort, Sure, yeah, but they're a hoodie brand. But what they did is they honed in on a very specific pain point and that's what they started going at all the time right. So, what was their pain point?
Speaker 1Pain point was like mental health, right, yeah, yeah, like there's a mental health pandemic right now, epidemic epidemic. And so they created this hoodie. But they made it, I don't know, 15 ounces or 20 ounces heavier enough to say, hey, this is weighted, and there are studies that suggest that weighted things like weighted blankets and weighted clothing can reduce anxiety and therefore help your mental health everyone can say their clothing is comfortable and high quality and high quality.
Speaker 2So like that's not really a message that's going to resonate now. Yes, you can. They do a ton of ugc, which helps, but again, maybe you're not in a position where you can start seeding that much whatever amount of product they're seeding a month, which is probably a lot.
Speaker 2Yeah, we have our guesses, but we won't go into that now. Um, but they did hone in on this idea. Like you go to their website. It's about relieving anxiety. It's about this comfort that actually helps you. Yep, not comfort for comfort's sake all the time. It's hey, we're going to relieve stress. We're going to give you this like mental health benefit outlet, whatever you call it. So like, it's almost like creating a mental cue as well. Right, like, hey, I'm putting this on and I feel better because of the weight.
Speaker 1But now they've already reached probably escape velocity where they don't have to talk about that message as much, because most people know who they are yeah so again, you're not in that space yet, but in the beginning that's what they honed in on yeah, and one some people I've recognized have a hard time coming up with the ideas right, like, hey, what is the message here? One way you can do this is we use post-purchase surveys all the time to ask the one question just what motivated you to buy, like, why did you buy from us, why did you buy this product? And you can just leave that as an open-ended question and you will just start to get trends of people saying, oh, I bought this because it helped with my anxiety. You know, I bought this because the oversized hood I'm just making something up Right. And then you start to, you know, see things where you're like oh, we didn't, we didn't really recognize this.
Speaker 1Let's start having that. Let's test that message in paid ads Yep, right, so's start having that. Let's test that message in paid ads, yep, right. So that's another way. Like one yes, you can get creative. You can use chat GPT to help you come up with some of those creative ideas. But you can also just ask your customers what they think and start incorporating those messaging, that messaging, into your static ads, into your video ads as well.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's something we love doing.
Speaker 1Absolutely, it is. Yeah, that's a little cheat code.
Speaker 2Now, statics probably aren't going to work well on your feed, like from an organic perspective. So this is very much like an ads. Yes, usually going to be an ads play. Yes, just so everyone knows we're not advocating to go start putting your only static imagery in your feed.
Speaker 1Which is what you're all already doing anyways. Yeah, but which? Is what you're all already doing anyways.
Speaker 2Yeah, but out of no disrespect but figure out and don't sleep on statics.
Speaker 1Yeah, people don't talk about it enough.
Speaker 2Get creative, get funny, like they disappear so fast too, right? So like you can test messaging there that you might be like I don't know if this is totally on brand, go test it on a static, yeah yeah. And if I don't know if this is totally, on brand.
Speaker 1Go test it on a static, yeah, yeah, and if people don't like it and people get offended and you're seeing comments that you don't want, like, just take it down. Boom, not easy. Easy is that? Don't be scared. Okay, that's it. I like it, ciao, ciao. Everyone simple, quick and actionable, yeah, yeah. Everyone. Simple, quick and actionable, yeah, yeah, okay, all right, everybody. Thank you so much. Sorry it was so short, but we'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast, whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.