Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the eCommerce impact podcast today. I am super, super excited to have Sarah LA actually, how do I say your name?

Sarah lave. Oh, that would be a cool way to say it. Veng. That would be like, sort of An Avenger, like a superhero. I'd be cool with that. It's pronounced Levenger yeah. Leng. Everybody says LNG ger, which is yeah. You know? Okay too I'll take her. Yeah. Veer. So we have Sarah Levenger on the podcast and Sarah, I'm so excited to have you here because I've been following Sarah, Sarah for a while on Twitter. And we got to know each other over there. She shares a ton of like incredible content about how you can use psychology to improve the performance of your ads. So Sarah is a creative strategist and performance creative consultant, and she's got over 15 years of industry experience and her main kind of role now is she helps DC brands improve the, a, the ROI of the advertising with psychology based creative.

So welcome to the show, Sarah. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. It's it's gonna be fun to talk about this. With you, especially because I'm obviously on the opposite side of the world for you. yeah, exactly. In the, that we we're both in kind of mountain mountainous places, but you're in the summer and I'm in the winter here, so so yeah, so I would love to hear from you, what do you think are the kind of main trends or what kind of changes or trends are using at the moment in terms of creative of what's working and what techniques brands are using effectively?

To drive better performance. Yeah. So I, it's interesting that you ask this because about three months ago, I would've had a totally different answer and I feel like that's e-com in general. Yeah. Changes three months, something else changes. And we have a totally different set of things that we're working from three months ago.

I would've said a hundred percent UGC. I think that's probably working the best right now. I've seen it across the board. Lots of brands are saying the same. Now I'm slowly starting to see the decline of the summer is actually changing a lot of the consumer behavior. And so we, we are also seeing kind of a saturation of UGC in the industry, and that happened by default.

Anytime you have something that's exciting, people really wanna jump on board quick. And there was a lot of UGC creators that came in very, very quickly, especially in the states mm-hmm . And so we had a lot of good. Just dumping content into the system. Mm-hmm , which I, I never think is a bad thing, but for UGC, it was troublesome because there's so much of it now.

And there's so many creators that I think the consumers are a little tired exactly. And just, and consuming so much of it that we forgetting. Cut. Cause that's what drives it. Isn't it. So that's where a trend. Like go through a platform. That's the consumer's reaction to the ads and the and they're kind of boredom with, you know, something that's being overused that then forces us as brands or media buyers to change what we are doing to make it interesting to them so that they react again.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So what, how, just for the audience, like, how would you define UGC when you are talking about it? Because like the original kind of UGC for me was just like, someone's record. A lofi way like a testimonial, but I feel like we've come a long way from that being the definition of UGC. So do you wanna talk to the audience before we go on to like what's changed and what you're seeing now as the trend?

Like, just so like, how do you see UGC and where it's at and what it, what it kind of looks like at the moment? . Yeah. So something that I did probably about probably three or four months ago might be a little longer than that. I, I actually created a group with another us based creator, Kristin, and we have UGC creator group that just houses about 140 some people in there now.

Yeah. And so it was interesting to watch how things change. So originally UGC was made specifically and only by the users themselves. UGC stands for user generated content. Yeah. So originally it was only supposed to be from customers yeah. Or potential customers or somebody that pertained to your industry.

Yeah. I think marketers started seeing that this was a viable way to market somewhere. It's actually been around a lot longer than people think it has. It's been around for about three or four years, basically since the inception of TikTok mm-hmm , but marketers started noticing it was very viable for advertising

sometime early last year in the summer, spring and summer. And it just kind of exploded through last year. So there's different terms for it. Now, UGC is, is one I hear a lot. And user generated content has kind of been a blanket term for any sort of content that's created to look like it's been generated by a user.

Yeah. I have heard the term CGC, which is creator generated content mm-hmm which technically is more accurate yeah. Generated by someone who's an actor, basically a paid actor. And then there's another term I've seen floating around. I GC, which is influencer generated content. Mm-hmm I think the industry's trying to label it so that we can understand it better.

Yeah. But so far UGC, just blanket like a term. Yeah. So UGC would include stuff that's being paid for and created by someone who's quite an experienced creator or an actor. Yeah. Mm-hmm right down to like something that's just like a review. Okay. So that was the three months ago. You would've said that is.

Type of creative that's working and that's what, you know, you would advisor brand to do. And what are you saying now? Now it's very interesting because I think people want a specific type. Is it a static? Is it a meme? Is it gifts? Is it carousel what's working? From my standpoint, I, I always believe that psychology is what works best.

Mm-hmm . So for my clients and the people that work with me, I, I push forward that message of the best. Is working today and what will probably work from now until the next 25 to 50 years is always consumer psychology. Yeah. If you can put some emotion behind your ad, it works a lot better than if you just paid someone to pretend that they purchase your product and are doing a review yeah.

Yeah. It's not a bad way to do it. UGC is a really good way to get a little bit of traction. Yeah. But I, I always wanna see people trying to put a little bit more empathy and emotion into. Mm-hmm so it's like use the format that we know is working, which is like a more organic style of ad. That's more authentic.

That's not necessarily polished and, and made by videographers and cameramen and all of that, but use it in a way that's more clever than just the creator saying that the product is good, actually tap into like, what are the emotions we want to. What is the kind of who is the people we're talking to as well?

Like, do you wanna talk to me about that? Cause I know you've got, you've done some really interesting work around like, you know, what generation your customer's from, whether they're like more of a family based kind of a person or more of a friend based person. Like, tell me about how you kind of, how you change the ads based on the audience and how you go about that.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and to your point, this is fantastic point. The type of the ad doesn't necessarily matter. It doesn't have to be professionally produced. It doesn't have to be a static, a carousel. It doesn't have to be a gift. It, the type of the ad doesn't really make too much of a difference. I mm-hmm I preface that with too much.

because there's certain like types of, of like psychology that you can use to help people move forward in your ads, specifically random things. Like for some reason they've done studies and the human eye really enjoys blinking. Soft light white ones in particular. So gifts are a great way to get people attention.

If you're using something that kind of looks like a Christmas light in your ad, just because people really like those soft lights, like fireflies, for some reason, we're really into those type of lights. Yeah. Which I think is why people love Christmas. cause it's all that yeah. That time. But if you could use these type of things that it just helps people stop scroll.

So yeah, I say that was like a, a little bit of give, so the type doesn't really matter, but it. Yeah. From like a deep standpoint, though, from foundational standpoints, I wanna go beyond just what type of marketing are you using? cause everybody likes to branch out into, are you using direct response marketing?

Are you doing traditional marketing? Are you doing copywriting based marketing? What type of marketing are you doing? I like those frameworks because they help us kind of build a structure around how we're testing, but we need to go way, way deeper than just what's the framework of marketing that we. I, I really think the majority of marketing is shifting towards this anyways, but the psychology of humans is gonna come into play a lot because we have lost so much targeting over the last six, eight months to a year.

We're getting to the point now where there's not gonna be a great way to qualify our customers without deep research into who they are. Mm-hmm . So my business starts with the research. We go in and do comment aggregation. So I'm pulling comments from absolutely everywhere. , mm-hmm anywhere I can find them.

The majority of them are coming off of the actual ads themselves, that the brands are running or TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. We'll take 'em, we'll pull 'em in and actually put 'em in a spreadsheet. I was doing this by hand for quite a while, but it, it it's now to the point where I'm starting to develop an actual AI program that will do this.

Yeah. Cause it took me a while to get these. but I'll take a minute. I'll actually pull out specific word phrases and emotional types. So for example, I had a brand that I was working with and I just actually finished up with them about a month ago. They have basically like a non-alcoholic tea that they put hops into.

So it's not beer. It's like a non-alcoholic tea is the only way to describe it. It's really good. It sounds like it would be the strangest thing you've ever tasted. Delicious. I've had quite a few now and they're really good. So they came to me and said, we, we want more information about who our customers are and what they want out of this product.

Our retention is fantastic. We're just struggling with acquisition, cause it's so expensive to promote on Facebook or anywhere else. Yeah. And so I went and did the research and we found a couple of things. One, their customers were using phrases like this product saved my life or I couldn't have done it without this brand.

Things that you would only say if you were talking to a really close friend and I, I was really interested by that because the way you phrase things and the order, which you put the words in changes, the meaning of the, of the actual language you're using mm-hmm . So that was one of the things we pulled out is for some reason, they're like making a friend relationship with the brand, which is pretty intense for a brand that.

You know, just a product, it's just a CPG product. So on top of that, we pulled out a couple different life events that were happening. So one, obviously somebody who's sober needs a non-alcoholic product. Somebody who recently went like alcohol free for their health. These are the two that we know already.

And we have been running ads to for a while, but one of the ones that we pulled out that was very strange was breastfeeding and pregnant mums ah, and I was like, I would've never thought of that. Cause you, you don't equate breastfeeding and pregnant moms with alcohol that doesn't really, especially in the states.

That's just not something that's very common over here. So it's interesting because these particular moms kept using that phrase over and over. Like, I'm so glad you made this. Like it made my life so much easier. I can't drink alcohol because I'm breastfeeding or because I'm pregnant and this just made it easier to stay social.

So all of the beginning. Started with, okay, who are we talking to? What are they doing in life? Like what emotions are they feeling? But it ends with the deeper core thing that they're trying to solve. So usually everybody starts with the core needs as children, security, community engagement. They don't really outgrow those.

They just get worse as you get older. And as you get older, if you found one in your childhood that doesn't really get solved, it just kind of balloons. So for this particular crowd, they really valued their social time. They really missed being a part of the alcoholic crowd. Mm-hmm , that was a big deal to them.

And so we pulled that outta the research and I went back to the brand and said, I think your crowd wants a message of inclusivity. They would like to be included, which is so weird, cause that's not what the brand was really pointing. They were just pointing out functional, right? Where you need an non-alcoholic beer.

Here is one . Yeah. this is why the research is so important because we pulled out an emotional driver that's way bigger than just you need an non-alcoholic beer. So I told them a hundred percent through your entire brand. I always wanna see you pushing and driving acceptance and support cause these people really wanna feel supported in their journey of I'm not drinking anymore, but I still wanna be a part of the alcoholic crowd.

Mm. That's a synopsis of kind of how the research works, but then we'll dive into creative audit, take a look at what's happening in the actual account. And then we drive all of that research and all of the bulk of the audit into strategy. So how do you take that research and use it? Usually I will take that and, and do a whole bunch of analysis on what type of imagery do you need to see to feel what you want to feel?

Mm-hmm and, and also on the copy side, what kind of copy do you need to read, to feel what you need to feel? Mm. Super important going forward nowadays, because we cannot make connections with people just based upon lever lifting in the ad accounts anymore. It's all creative based. Yeah. Completely. Yeah. So you're identifying that core underlying kind of human need or emotion first mm-hmm and then you're figuring out creatively how to, how to communicate that and push that, that button so that the people that you want to talk to respond.

Right. Exactly. So interesting. And what, what would you do if you, I mean, I don't know, maybe you don't work with startups, but what would you do if you were working with a brand new brand that didn't have comments, would you look at like their competitor's comments or how would you go about doing research in that case?

Yeah, this is a tricky one because without comments, we can't tell who's already in their market base. And I, I struggle with going towards a competitor. Even if you're in the same industry and you think you have the same customers, depending on what messaging you're putting out, you actually have completely different ones.

mm-hmm so they might all have the same need, but it's a very different type of person you're drawing in. Yeah. So for new brands or for service based businesses who don't have a whole lot of like product comments, I would say surveys are the only way you're gonna be able to understand who and why you're market.

Yeah. And so I, I used to provide a whole lot of customer insight surveys. I don't do it as much anymore because it's, it's difficult work yeah. It's hard to get people on the phone, especially nowadays. So, but if you can, even, even some sort of written survey would be better than nothing at this point.

It's a little bit difficult too, to do written surveys because how you phrase questions will change the way the answer comes back. So if I asked you, is your favorite color blue or green, you would think about it. . But if I asked you, is your favorite color blue or Ew green, then you'd probably be like, well, she doesn't like green.

Should I not choose green? Like it, it changes the way you, the way that you answer. So if you're gonna do surveys, be very careful about how you frame those questions. But yeah, if you've got nowhere else to go talk to your customers, go find a customer, sit down with coffee and just talk to them or let even better.

Let them talk to you. . It's so interesting. It's amazing how many brands will go through, you know, quite a few life cycles before they've even talked to a customer. That's insane. It's amazing how, and it's amazing how far they can get without talking to a customer. Really I'm kind. I impressed. Yeah. Eventually you hit a ceiling though.

I've, I've met thousands of brands at this point that are like, well, we, we can't grow past this point. I'm like, well, should probably talk to your customers. yeah, that's not. So with a brand like this, is it a tea? Is it a tea? Did you say? Yeah, it's like happy tea. Yeah. Sounds so cool. I mean, I, cause I drink, it's a drink, so, and I'm always looking, I'm really sociable.

I'm always looking for, so I'm, I'm the customer basically. yeah, you get it. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if they shipped to New Zealand? They probably do. They're based in Boulder, Colorado, so, oh. They're like in my backyard. So. So if in the case of that customer, how do you then, like, I'd love to hear kind of on a practical level, how that then turns into a brief, if you are then still using UGC creators to actually create the content, like how does it then translate?

Yes. This is a great question. So most brands I. Work with beforehand. Before doing all of this research because I, I, I used to be in beta buyer a long time ago. Obviously. That's how I got into this game. When I was doing the brief for them trying to create UGC without any sort of research, I was basically deciding what the UGC creator should say.

So we would either send a script, like say this exact thing. We want you to hit our benefits. You want hit our highlights, our features, please say our USP and then do a call to action. Yeah. So I was basically trying to teach direct response marketing. Whereas now I give the creators more creative freedom.

So I don't wanna give them any sort of like, this is what you have to say because for UGC creators, I think it's very, I used to be one, so it's very difficult for us to take a. And say it in a way that would make it sound natural to us. Yeah, because the script was written by a specific person, so that person's voice is coming through the script.

Yeah. So it's better. If you can get, let your UGC creators just say what they need to say. Mm-hmm that's tip number one, tip number two. I would give your UGC creators a persona, a character to put on. Yeah. Not necessarily a specific thing to. Yeah, I wouldn't even give them any sort of like functional system.

I mean, most of the UGC creators nowadays understand direct button marketing so they understand how to lead into the call to action, which is nice. Yeah. But if you can give them a, a character to play that's way easier. So the last person that I actually did this with was a UGC creator. She's super, super talented Brent shout out to BR , but she, she was one of the people I was working with on this particular tea.

And when I sent her the brief, I said, okay, here is the highlights of the, the customer that we are looking for. So I gave her the report and just said, this is the customer. This is what they're feeling. Can you play the character of a breastfeeding mom who maybe wants to go out with her friends this Friday, but is worried that she's not gonna be accepted because she can't drink.

Can you play that person? And she was like, yeah. I mean, that makes way more sense to me, a hundred percent. I can play that person. We need to stop thinking of our UGC creators as content creators, and start thinking of them as actors, cause that's what they are. And you would never go to Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or like any of the big players, you know, Chris Pratt, you would never go to Chris Pratt and be like, say this only this way, they give him a script and then they say you iterate how you would say it.

cause you're the actor. Right? Mm-hmm mm-hmm so I preface that too. Like obviously he gets a script and I just said, don't give. but he's given a character to play first. He understands who the character is. So the UGC creator should get the same. Yeah. They are actors. Give them a character to play. I love this.

It's so cool. And so you're gonna select your UGC creator. Who's somewhat similar to the, to the persona, right? You're not gonna yes. Yeah. Like age kind of lifestyle, that kind of thing. So that must be the first thing is like making sure the. from the get go is working with creators that are a really good fit for their audience.

So they need to know how their audience is. cause if they're trying to mm-hmm , if they didn't realize that their audience was like boomers and then they had all these 18 year olds in their ads, it's just not gonna work. Is it? Yes. Well, the interesting part is you have to understand what your audience is trying to accomplish, because if you're gonna do an ad with a breastfeeding mom in that ad, you probably don't want to show her.

Going to a friend group full of guys, because most moms that I know at least don't really hang out with like a huge group of G only guy friends. They will hang out with a bunch of other married people cause that, or like couples in general, not necessarily married, but like they'll hang out with a bunch of couples.

So you need to find a group of people instead of just guys on the opposite side, if you have somebody that you need to show specifically who they want to become, instead of who they are say, you're like selling some sort of a workout program or. Then the person in your ad shouldn't show who they want to be.

It shouldn't show who they are now. Right. And then work through the process of showing them who they could become. I see a lot of ads with a very like fit person in front of it. And that works for drawing people in because that's what they want to see, but it doesn't necessarily work for purchasing and actually keeping them in the program because they'll disconnect at some point psychologically with that person.

We need to see people who look and act like me doing the things I want to do. Yeah. It's just, it's a better way to sell. It really is across the board. It's so true. Isn't it? It's, I mean, that's what Israel and boom have done for years, you know, like just actually showing real women of their age and their ADSS and those women feel so seen and that, and that's why he's got a, whatever it is 150 million company.

Exactly. ASRA said fantastic about boom. Figured it out early. Show people that look and feel like you, you don't have to be in the same demographic. It doesn't have to be the exact same ethnicity or even the same sex. It just has to feel like you, it doesn't have to be the exact same gender or any of that.

They just have to feel like me. That's all. Yeah. It's a feeling all the way. And so do you work with brands through that whole process of actually like kind of selecting and auditioning the UGC creators for them? Yeah. Well, and it was really helpful again, that that UGC group kind of happened on accident.

A tweet that I put out one day that was like, does anybody wanna start a group? cause I'm a UTC creator. And I would love to partner with people. And then it just kind of like grew from there. So I I'm lucky enough that I have a ton of really talented creators in my group that I can refer to people.

Yeah. So yeah, it, it, it helps a lot, if you can work with a UGC creator who knows other UGC creators yeah. For. Yeah. So there's a whole, for those who don't realize this, there's kind of a whole world of these people on Twitter, right? Like that's what I noticed when I joined Twitter was like getting followed by UGC creators and hearing them kind of interact with each other and people calling out for looking for UGC creators.

I think it feels very daunting for a brand to try and navigate that and try and figure out who to pick and where to find them. Like, what are your top tips for brands that are delving into this space for the first time and wanting to create UGC. and find the right creators to work with. Yeah. Well, one of the best places to go is Twitter.

I agree. cause there's, there's so many of us over there mm-hmm it is very difficult to vet who is a good creator quote unquote, and who's like just a beginner. Who's still learning those type of things. Yeah. I would say the best way to do it is to follow the greats, like follow the people who have been doing this for a long time and I can give you some people obvious.

Kristen Jones is one of the best I've seen in the industry. She is, she's a marketing director and a UGC creator, so she's got both worlds covered. So she's got good experience with it. She's also just a really good actress in, in the UGC itself. Like she would just be a good actress in general. She wanted to be famous.

I would follow her cause she she's really good. Other people. Iny Brenn is one of my favorite Bran's creative. She's really, really good. She's also. Very talented from like a strategy standpoint. So she's got a lot of good experience as well. Some of the other big, big, talented names in there, 📍 Lauren labels does a lot.

That's actually two girls that I know that do a ton of UGC. Savannah Sanchez is probably one of the biggest in the industry. Although I don't think she does UGC anymore. I think she just manages a bunch of UGC creators. Right. But I will go over to Twitter. And follow these, you know, four or five people and then see which UGC creators they are following.

cause as soon as you find one, you'll be able to network with pretty much all the rest of them. And it's also nice cause you'll get good referrals. It's not that the younger crowd or like the newer UGC creators. Aren't good at what they do. It's it's more about marketing experience. If you're a good UGC creator, you usually have a paid advertising background.

Interesting. Other like you, yeah. Yeah. Otherwise you have to learn it which is taking some time. So we're looking a little bit for unicorns people that actually have a strategic marketing background, as well as a love of creating content. Yeah. And then as well as having the right demographic, the right look, the right looking house, all of that stuff.

Yeah. There's a lot you have to pick through, I imagine. Yeah. So I guess with you, it's like you, you kind of, you've got your go-to people for different types of brands, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That must help a. Okay. Interesting. And to what extent, like what proportion of the ads that you see being created that are successful are using a voice?

Cause I know for my UK clients and followers, like there's not as this industry isn't as established in the UK, but we know these kind of ads are probably, it's probably at an earlier stage where they're gonna probably be as effective as they were three or four months ago in the UK, because it's just not as.

Mm-hmm but like, if accent is a problem for the brand, like, do you think you could create, use these creators to create ads that just don't have a voice involved or yeah. Might be too much of a constraint or yeah. Some of the best ads I've ever seen did not have any voiceover at all. Yeah. They had music.

I have seen a few tested with absolute silence that did extremely well. And again, it's interesting cause most people will tell you, well, we don't know why it did well. It just did well. I can usually tell you why it did well. because it's, it's, it's the psychology of what goes into it. If you can track and see where people are dropping off the video, you can tell what's going on psychologically there's pieces in the ad that will pop up and, and basically, you know, wax and.

That people will start to drop off at a particular point, cause it's too much, what's known as cognitive load. It's just too heavy on the brain to process it. This usually happens. I've noticed when you have a lot of busy, crazy stuff in the background and you try and put text on top of it. But as, as far as the voices go, I don't necessarily think you need a voiceover.

Yeah. As long as you are telling a story visually and it's captivating enough that it triggers the subconscious to realize this ad is for. you don't really need someone talking . Yeah, totally. You gave me an example before we started recording of an ad that was like a real mismatch between the emotion the ad wanted to convey and the actual emotion being seen by the, the creator and the ad.

Do you wanna talk to me a bit about that? I found that quite fascinating. Yes. So it's interesting because a lot of the time I'll, I'll find ads in particular that. double standards. , they're trying to put forward a particular message because they think this is what's gonna draw people in what they don't realize though, is the message they're putting forward towards the people who don't know the brand is completely different.

So this particular ad was for a razor company. Pretty big one that I I've noticed, their ads are really nice. Like they've done a great job understanding their customer, but this one in particular was really odd. So it was a picture of a gentleman with a shave and. And the only thing you could see in the ad was a bunch of hands, like probably eight ish hands, like all over his face, just touching everywhere.

And it was interesting, like staying in the, so yes, with his hand, he was like, this is such a creepy ad. This is so weird. And it was interesting cause his face looked, he looked uncomfortable. Like he was a very anxiety, very, just uncomfortable looking face. It just made me uncomfortable looking. and the text on the ad said something to the effect of like a shave is so smooth that people won't stop touching it, something like that.

And it was interesting because I think what the marketer probably thought was, this'll be great. They'll get this message right away that like he's uncomfortable, cause people love touching his face. But the unfortunate part is people are reading the face of the person that they can see in the image, which is this gentleman who looks very uncom.

the other unfortunate part is they're going to equate that anxiety with the brand, whether or not they do it consciously. Yeah. Doesn't matter. They're gonna do it subconsciously anxiety with this particular brand. Now it does not mean that this is gonna stick with the brand forever. Like obviously people are gonna see more and more ads, but we have to be careful about what we put out there because images are processed by the brain 60,000 times, faster than text mm-hmm that's a lot of speed on image recogni.

So, if you're gonna put ads out there, be very careful about what message the image is. Portraying people spend like thousands and thousands of dollars every single month to hire a very good copywriter to make sure the message in a text form is very curated. And then they'll just slack, whatever image they find on top of it.

And I'm like, guys, we gotta, we gotta be more careful than that. yeah. Cause the image is what's being processed first. Not. Yeah. I mean, what's so interesting to me with that example is like, I bet that ad stopped the scroll and I bet it had, like, I probably had a good click through rate, like it grabbed attention.

Yeah. You know, it might have had a low cost per click, but did it actually convince people to convert? No, because they arrived at the site feeling icky and they were just curious and they were just kind of weird it out. Yeah. And it was just like the wrong people probably. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. That's super interesting.

Switching tech, then what, who, which brands do you think are doing this super well at the moment? Who do you kind of look to for inspiration ideas? Who do you think's kind of totally nailing it. Yeah. So it's interesting because some of the ads that I follow the most are not doing a whole lot of UGC.

They're doing their own thing, which I think is super smart. So one of the biggest ones I follow that does creative really well is. They're a supplement brand in the United States. And I think they're branching out farther as well, but their ads are always really, really spot on, which is interesting. cause they're highly text, heavy ads.

They're have like just tiny little bits of images in them. But the majority of it is all text based, which I think they do on purpose cause they have a lot of information to convey, but they also do a fantastic job of qualifying the customer really. Through what their ads are, are generated. So a lot of the time I'll see a specific phrase on there.

So stick to your fitness goals or something like that, but then they'll just change it just slightly for the next a and it'll say something like, I don't know, you know, improve your health type of a thing. Mm-hmm, stick to your fitness goals and improve your health. Two totally different customers that they're going after there, but there's, they're working, it's working extremely well and they have a lot of creative.

So they're doing a really good job about qualifying people through a text base. Some of the most beautiful ads I've seen that qualifi people well through an image is probably slumber, kins, I would say does a really good job. They're like what would you call them? They're like, kind of like a kids and parents mental health in just like a book and industry.

So they they're mostly in kind of like a therapeutic. I don't even know what you'd call it, but they have books and they have stuffed animals that will pair together that teach kids concepts about mental health and things like that. Their imagery is really good because they're all stuffed animal based.

And so they only need product on a simple background and they get so many clicks. Like it's just, wow. The amount of stuff that they're selling is amazing. Cause it's simplified. They understand that their audience. Simple, right. Mm-hmm Avi's audience kind of wants that busy, really like heavy lifestyle based slumber Kings understands their customers really well.

They UN they just know they want something a little more simplistic. So I just like those two companies, they have a really good base on who their customers are and what they wanna see from an ad. Cool. Yeah. Well, linked to the ad libraries in the show notes, so we could have a look around. And so, and are they using UGC or are they using more like graphical or a bit of.

it's interesting, cause Lukins is using quite a lot of UGC. One of the most recent ones I found was a picture of this like really fluffy stuffed I think it was an octopus and it said my jelly don't jiggle jiggle, which is amazing to me. cause if you know that trend, like there's a trend on TikTok right now of a rap that just talks about my money.

Don't jiggle, jiggle it folds. As soon as you hear that song, you know what that song is. If you heard it on. So I'm like, oh my gosh, whoever their creative like content person is, is brilliant because they took a trend and put it into an ad. Mm. And it didn't take much, they just took a song and applied it to their product.

And I'm sure that one is just converting. Yeah. Because it's smart. Yeah. It's so clever. It's so interesting. Isn't it? So it's like, you've gotta combine. This is so, I mean, our life just got so hard. You gotta combine, scroll, stopping attention. grabbing Yep. Hitting the right psychological buttons. And then also like the zeitgeist or like what's going on in our culture in our world and making sure that for your audience who understand well, because you've done your research, what are they consuming?

What are they laughing at? What's making them like pay attention at the moment. So if you could combine that three, those three elements. You'll have a winning ad. And it's so funny. Like we have, like in the agency, we have this concept of like the unicorn ad where like we just, we test and test and test ads.

And then we get ad that is like, suddenly just goes crazy. And our clients are like, well, why can't we. Get another ad like that. And we're like, well, why can't we do that all the time? yeah, exactly. But this episode is actually the answer because if we reverse engineer, why that ad performs so well, I can bet you, it probably hits yeah.

These two or three of those pillars. And that's the reason why the algorithm loves it because yeah, we. we have to please the algorithm and the algorithm is pleased when the users are pleased. Right? Yep. So exactly. So yeah, super interesting. Oh, I love all this stuff. I could talk to you for hours. Is there anything else you'd like to like add for our audience, any tips or advice on using psychology in their ads to make them perform better?

Yes. So obviously the basis of all of this goes back to the research, how much, you know, your customers is going to change the entirety of your. If you cannot get it through comments, please do some sort of survey, any sort of written or in person survey would be better because then you can see their face and hear the tone expression of what they're actually trying to convey to you, and then take those and, and use it to build your creative strategy from instead of guessing, or instead of pushing all of the responsibility.

And this is something I talk about a lot on Twitter. Don't push all of your responsibility onto your media. Quite yet, because they are just beginning to understand how to use creative strategy to form your, you know, paid advertising strategy. This is the reason why I think creative strategists are gonna become more and more important as we go along.

cause they're the type of person that can do both data and creative. You need that unicorn person that can do both, but this is only gonna become more important. And I think it's gonna become bigger, a bigger need as we move forward. Man iOS just killed off everything, but it also created an amazing opportunity.

If you can get content, correct. You have, you have an amazing ability to just completely blow everybody away. Cause you can do something that your competitors will not. Yeah, totally. And that's something that a machine can't. It's exactly. it's that human creative element. Yeah, not yet. Anyway. well, exactly. We wait for the AI to catch up.

Awesome. Well where can where can everybody follow you, find you hear more from Sarah. Yeah. So finally, over on Twitter, it's at Sarah lavender, Sarah with an H Avenger, L E V I N G E R. And then my website actually just got completely rebranded because I'm like, I should probably work on my.

Branding at some point my business always gets shoved to the back yeah. Cause I'm always working on everybody else's but my website is HG performance, creative.com and yeah, I'm always up for conversations with anybody. If you have a sort of strategy questions hit me up on Twitter, DM me, cause I I've, I'm happy to share more.

I'm obsessed with this stuff.

yeah. Awesome. Well, I'll add all your details in the show notes so people can find you well, thanks so much for coming. Thank you. This is so fun. I appreciate it. yeah, me too. I'm obsessed with this stuff. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I'll add all your details in the show notes so people can find you well, thanks so much for coming. Thank you. This is so fun. I appreciate it. yeah, me too.