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The prettier the ad, the worse it performs
We've already shot over a thousand ad creatives and run more than three hundred campaigns since the company started. And the pattern repeats every time: the more produced it is, better camera, more studio, the less attention the ad gets, and the higher our customer acquisition cost climbs.
One of the best performing ads to this day is a simple one: an old guy inside a car, talking about a hoodie. It came out to eight dollars per customer. The second best performer is me, in a regular shirt or hoodie, shooting in the office with my phone's front camera.
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1,000+
ad creatives shot
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300+
campaigns run
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$8
cost per customer on the simplest ad
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Simplicity works because our audience is people who spend their money on a Dodge RAM, a Silverado, a family trip, a boat, a trailer. A polished Instagram feed doesn't speak that audience's language. In a room full of insurance people in suits, I show up in a hoodie, because the person I need to convince is the customer, not the insurer.
In the end, it's about adjusting for your customer. Their satisfaction comes before anything else. But a lot of people flip that order: they chase the prettiest look for their company and forget about the customer, forget about the structure that actually holds a business up, which is processes and people.
That's the mistake I see in a lot of business owners: caring more about how the company looks from the outside than about what's happening on the inside.
A nice uniform, a polished logo, smooth production, all of that is polish, and polish has its place. It just comes later. First comes the process, the fast response, the ad that actually converts.
Learn to drive the beat-up car first: the one that gets you from A to B without breaking down. Then you upgrade.
Reply to this email: does your business invest more in how it looks from the outside, or in what holds it up on the inside?
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