Write ads and gather proof 26 of 26 in this group
SOP 212
Make better ad creative with hooks, permutations and assembly
What this page is for. Use it once you are making enough ads and want the ones you make to do better, or when raising your ad spend only raises what your leads cost you. It covers why the hook comes first, how to turn a winning ad into many versions, where to look for ideas and one routine to follow before a round of ads, why a campaign stalls at a ceiling and how hooks for the less aware stages get past it, and a way of assembling ads from parts, with everything except the message changed once the message works. It is the better-creative bucket in the menu on SOP 209 — Pick a lead bucket, starting with the offer and lead magnet.
SOP-212-Make-better-ad-creative-with-hooks-permutations-and-assembly.md
1. The hook carries most of the weight
With more ads made, the next question is how to make them better, and the answer here starts with the hook. The view here is that the hook is still 80 percent of the fight: hard to overstate, and, in this view, everything.
The evidence offered is two companies that spent very heavily on ads for many years. Across that whole stretch, reportedly, basically three or four hooks did the work.
This runs against a common assumption, that new hooks need to be created. If anything, in this view, the hook is the hardest piece to work out for the right avatar. Everything else in the ad is what you end up replacing, time and again, over the years, while a good hook can keep going for a very long time.
The 80 percent here is about how much of the fight the hook is. The same weight turns into a share of your time on SOP 121 — Write a hook, section 2, and into a share of preparation on SOP 119, section 2.
2. Turn one winner into a hundred versions
One practice here is to take a working ad and ask how many permutations of it you can produce. The questions to run through:
- Can the color change?
- Can the font change?
- Can the actor change?
- Can the clothing change?
- Can the background change?
- Can the speed change?
That single move, it is claimed, will squeeze 5x, 10x more from the ad set you already have; in one example, realizing it changed how an advertiser worked. Many people may assume that a big advertiser simply runs a great many different ads. That is reportedly so, but what such advertisers do is find the winners and then try to turn each winner into a hundred different versions. When the raw pieces of a winner are in hand, get everything you can out of them.
This list mixes changes that SOP 113 — Remix and remake a proven ad sorts into remixes and remakes: color, font, background and speed can be edited from footage you already have, while a new actor or new clothing means recording again. That page orders each kind from easiest to hardest.
3. Where to find ideas, and a routine before a round
The tools. Four sets of tools for finding strong ads are offered. Among those named: a low-cost site rated very good for packaging and hooks; Facebook Ads Library; the TikTok Creative Center; SimilarWeb; and further tools. All of them are called good places to look for ad inspiration. Two of them are free, the TikTok Creative Center as well as Facebook Ads Library, so you can browse both at no cost.
A swipe file. One practice here is to save ads in spare time: anything interesting goes in. When it is time to switch into making ads, in something like a creative flow, the swipe file comes out: the ads come across lately, from any industry, that caught the eye for whatever reason.
A routine. One practitioner's process for making ads, stressed as one really followed: rewatch the top winners, then look through the week's new inspiration, then make more ads. This is offered as one practitioner's habit. The places to look for winning hooks, saved ads and the platforms' ad libraries among them, are listed in section 3 of SOP 119 — Assemble hook, meat and call to action.
4. The ceiling, and the stages of awareness behind it
The symptom. Some of you get stuck with ads: you would spend more but cannot, because you are just not making enough; it gets too expensive. An ad works at the budget you have; you double the spend, and all that changes is that getting leads now costs twice as much. This point deserves close attention.
What is really going on. For many of you, most of you even, a ceiling does not mean you have used up your small market. There are a lot more people out there; your current messaging just does not reach them. If you keep running into this wall, it is because you are aiming only at your most aware people, or sometimes the product-aware ones, and not getting through to the solution-aware or the problem-aware.
The five stages. The five stages of awareness come from a copywriter's classic book: most aware, product-aware, solution-aware, problem-aware and unaware. What people at each stage know is set out in section 2 of SOP 118 — Write hooks for each level of awareness. This passage adds an illustration for the solution-aware: people who know they need more leads but not whether SEO, more organic posting, paid ads or outreach is the way to get them.
The shape of it. Leading with an offer, a plain go-buy-my-thing, does make money: it brings the best return you will get, but from the fewest people. An offer hook exists to tip people on the fence into acting, and it only works for so many people. Sales per viewer are most concentrated at the bottom, among the most aware; there are far more people further up.
The money model has to move with you. As you reach colder and colder audiences, each new segment you break into costs more per customer won, so the money model needs to evolve if you are still to make money there.
The hook each stage typically answers to. In this breakdown, most-aware hooks are offer-driven, and for many of you that is typically where your hooks already sit. Product-aware hooks can typically lead with proof. Solution-aware ones are typically led by a promise. Problem-aware ones lean more on pain, and for the completely unaware, curiosity drives the hook. The same kinds, with a template for each and worked examples for a consumer product and a business service, are on SOP 118, sections 4 and 5.
The widest ads. The outlandish ads you may have seen on Taboola or in the side panels of websites are chasing the widest traffic there is, the coldest and largest part of the audience. If the money can be made to work, such an ad will go on scaling for a long, long time, since many more people sit at the top than at the bottom.
Hooks decide who comes in. The reason you keep hitting the wall is that all of your hooks are aimed at a very specific avatar, or at people at a particular point in the buying cycle. Change the hooks and you change who the ad reaches and draws in. The same is said to hold for businesses selling to other businesses.
For a different account of why ads stop scaling, see section 5 of SOP 34 — Front-load the opening seconds.
5. Assemble ads from parts
One process. It is called very simple, and described as one really used: write out 50-plus hooks, and three to five meats are made. A meat, as the word is used here, is one of your three to five really valuable points, or ideas that break a false belief. Then comes a call to action, and that is all.
How long it has been used. People, it is thought, somehow imagine there is a magic bullet. This process has reportedly just been kept for something like seven or eight years, many years; exactly how long is not even certain.
Why build ads from parts. In one example, an owner made each ad all together in an earlier business. Later, having learned to advertise a little better, the owner kept the hooks separate from the meats and the calls to action. The belief had been that making an ad in one take would make it better. What they found was zero effect whatsoever on the output. So you can assemble ads instead of trying to write each one whole, which is said to make life a hundred times easier for you.
What it yields. From this small combination, it is claimed, you can get 150 to 750 ads a week. Volume, in this view, should never be your concern.
The weekly ad day built on the same parts is SOP 119, and it gives its own account of what making ads in parts did. The body formats are SOP 120 — Use the five ad meat formats, and recording hooks apart from the value is section 3 of SOP 34.
6. Keep a working message; vary everything around it
What you are testing with all these combinations is messaging angles. Around them you then want variety: different visual hooks, background effects, actors and the rest.
Once the messaging is right, it rarely needs to change. That was once missed here: the question used to be what the new angle was. No fresh angle is needed, in this view; the one you have works. Change the spokesperson, the background, the color, the pacing, the fonts. Once a message works, the job is changing everything around it.
These are offered as some of the quick and dirty ways of thinking through better creative.
7. What this page does not decide for you
- How the tools make four sets. Four sets of tools are mentioned, and more tools than that are named. How they group is not established on this page.
- How the top of the weekly range is reached. At fifty hooks with a single call to action, three meats give 150 ads and five give 250. The top figure is 750; how it is reached is not established on this page. SOP 119, section 1, reaches the same range by multiplying in its calls to action as well.
8. The checklist
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Put the hook first; a good hook can last a very long time, so keep it and swap the rest |
| 2 | Take each winner and ask what can change: color, font, actor, clothing, background, speed |
| 3 | Try for a hundred versions of one winner, as big advertisers reportedly do |
| 4 | Save interesting ads from any industry into a swipe file, as one practice here |
| 5 | Before a round, as one practitioner's routine: go back over your best-performing ads, then this week's saved ideas, then produce more |
| 6 | If doubling spend only doubles what leads cost, check which stages your hooks reach |
| 7 | Aim hooks at the solution-aware, the problem-aware and the unaware as well, not only the most aware |
| 8 | Expect colder segments to cost more per customer, and evolve the money model to match |
| 9 | As one process, write 50-plus hooks, three to five meats and a call to action; put the ads together from those parts |
| 10 | Once the message works, keep it and change the spokesperson, background, color, pacing and fonts |
9. What this page does not cover
- Targeting and bidding are SOP 213 — Fix ad targeting and bid for return, not cheap leads.
- Making more ads, and finding the ones you already have, is SOP 210 — Set ad volume and harvest the ads you already have.
Changing the money model and pricing for colder audiences are not covered on this page.
Terms defined on this page
- Ad assembly line
- Building ads from separate parts instead of in one piece: fifty hooks, one to three calls to action and three to five meats, mixed into 150 to 750 ads a week.
- Ad wall
- The spend level past which more money only loses money or stops converting. The view here is that the cause is usually weak or too-narrow ads, not a used-up market or a platform limit; the way to better ads is to make far more of them.
- Meat
- The body of an ad, between the hook and the call to action: one of your three to five really valuable points or ideas that break a belief, more or less another way of stating the offer. Fewer people reach it, so it gets less preparation and wears out less often than hooks.
- Permutations
- Versions of a winning ad made by changing its parts, such as color, font, actor, clothes, background or speed. Big advertisers reportedly try for a hundred versions of one winner.
- Stages of awareness
- Another name for the levels of awareness; see that entry.
- Swipe file
- A saved collection of ads from any industry that caught your eye, reviewed before making a new round.