Use This Social Ad Strategy to Turn Clicks Into Customers

A Social Hour & Social Hour – Speaker Recap

At our social media seminar last week, Whitney Jensen, Director of Marketing at AdShark spoke about creative strategy, sparking new ideas and conversations. If you missed it, don’t worry—I’ll recap her slides below!

Why Most Social Ads Fail

Are you running social ads, and you just can’t seem to figure out how to make them convert? 

Maybe…

• You’re not realizing that creative IS your targeting
• You’re not testing diverse creative
• You’re not spending enough time on strategy

If your strategy is lacking, you’ll waste time making ads that don’t convert, and you’ll waste money testing ads for minor improvements.

The Two Principles To Win At Creative

Whitney broke down winning at creative into two principles: investing time where it matters most, and testing with purpose and speed. Learn more about them below!

Principle #1: Invest Time Where It Matters Most

Build a strategy to find your audience and capture their attention.

Your ingredients for creative are:

1. Benefits
2. Audiences
3. The Message
4. Ad Creative (your execution, informed by strategy)

Once you iron these out, you will find yourself making creative that converts. Whitney also provided us with this template for good strategy:

Principle #2: Test With Purpose & Speed

Find winners fast with diverse, rapid testing. The better you get at testing, the quicker you’ll get profitable ads.

1. Launch 5+ ads at once to find winners fast (recommended 5/ad set)
2. Let Meta test & feed it the right data
3. This works even with small budgets!

Remember, creative diversity isn’t just different ad formats! It’s testing out different benefits, pain points, and emotional drivers.

Spend Time On Your Hook

If your hook fails, nothing else matters, so make sure you spend time on it!

The best way to analyze your hook is by the thumbstop rate. A thumbstop rate is calculated by (3 second video views/impressions) x 100 (aka the hook rate/capture rate).

So, what’s a good thumbstop rate?

Try to aim for anything over 30%. If it falls below that, you should consider revising your hook.

If you need help wondering if your hook is good, use Whitney’s 3-second test:

1. Can I tell who this is for?
2. Can I tell what problem or desire it addresses?
3. Did I give them a reason to keep watching or click the ad?

Let ChatGPT Help You

Whitney shared a helpful prompt when it comes to filling in gaps and providing ideas:

“I’m developing a social ad strategy to flush out what my ad should be about (what to say) and to whom (the audience), then plan how to show it creatively. I need help filling out my 4-column template for [insert product/service here]. I have some initial ideas: my industry is [insert industry here], my product is [insert product/service description & link here], competitors include [insert competitors here], benefits I think are important are [insert guessed benefits here], and unique selling points for the business are [insert USPs here]. Use this starting info to populate my template with:

• Column 1: List of benefits
• Column 2: Audience groups
• Column 3: List of ideas for what the ads could be about
• Column 4: Idea for what the ad could look like

Research further using Reddit posts, Amazon reviews, YouTube/TikTok comments, and online forums to refine my input. Suggest missing benefits, audience groups, ad focus ideas, or visual concepts, and correct any inaccuracies in my initial ideas. Provide the completed template in the 4-column format below, then outside the table, explain your reasoning for any additions, refinements, or removals, citing general sources (e.g., consumer behavior trends, social media insights).”

Recap

Using Whitney’s two principles, you will be able to build a strategy to find your audience and capture their attention, AND find ad winners fast with diverse and rapid testing. Use AI to your advantage, and let ChatGPT help you come up with ad ideas.

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Thanks for reading! The conversation doesn’t end here— Gavin will be rolling out his recap presentations soon, packed with even more insights from our recent social media seminar. Until then, if you have questions or want to talk to the digital marketing pro herself, feel free to reach out to whitney@adshark.com. Toodles!