Subscription Box Answers

These Simple Facebook Ad Creative Tips Will Help You Attract More Subscribers..

• Liam Brennan

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In this episode of Subscription Box Answers, I share simple Facebook ad creative tips that can help you get more people signed up for your box. I firmly believe that small tweaks can lead to big positive changes in your advertising. This episode is divided into two parts:

  1. Video Tips: I share strategies for creating effective video ads.
  2. Image Tips: I provide advice on using images to enhance your ads.

At BusterBox, we spend a lot on Facebook ads and are constantly learning new things. I’m sharing some of what we’ve learned in the hope that it will help you improve your customer acquisition.

If you have a question you’d like answered on the show, head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com, join the free Facebook group, and post your question there.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the questions, you ask the questions, you ask the questions. Liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers. I hope your day is going really well. Subscription box answers. I hope your day is going really well. In today's episode, I want to help you improve your customer acquisition and I want to help you get more people signed up to your box. That's my goal in this episode. So what we're going to do is we're going to go over Facebook ad creative and I'm going to share some simple tweaks you can make to your creative which have the potential to have a big impact, because, remember, when it comes to advertising, simple tweaks can have a big impact, and that's what we're aiming to cover today and that's what we're aiming to cover today.

Speaker 2:

So this episode is going to be broken down into two parts. The first part is where I will talk about video and I'll share some simple tweaks you can make to your videos which have the potential to make a big positive difference to your advertising results. The second part of the podcast is where we'll talk about images and I'll share some stuff which will help you there as well. Now we all know Q4 is coming up and if you play your cards right, you can get a lot of growth in your business in Q4, but it's also a very competitive time of year and the stuff that I'm sharing here on this episode are just small tweaks which will give you a slight edge over your competition and help you improve your advertising results. Now, on this episode, we are not getting into any deep technical things. We're not doing that. This episode is an episode where we'll just focus on small tweaks you can make to your creative.

Speaker 2:

If you are interested in learning more about Facebook ads and what works for subscription boxes, I highly recommend going back and listening to previous episodes. Boxes. I highly recommend going back and listening to previous episodes because over the last year, I've covered a lot of different things around Facebook ads. We spend a lot of money on Facebook ads and BusterBox and we're testing different things all the time, and I've shared a lot of what we have learned in the previous episodes as well, so definitely check them out.

Speaker 2:

Now. I just want to explain one thing before we jump into this. You will probably notice in BusterBox we are regularly advertising different offers. Now a question I regularly get is how do we make this work? As you probably know, we're on Subly and Subly make this really easy. We just have a different URL for each offer and each URL will have a unique sales page. Well, the sales page is pretty much the same. It will just have a different header. Then we will have different plans set up for each offer and that way, we understand what offer each customer has actually signed up for, because we can clearly see oh, this person signed up on the free bed offer and then, when we export the orders, we can see they're on order number one and then we know that customer is due to receive a free bed. Okay, I just wanted to explain that before I started jumping into giving creative tips and talking about a particular offer we're running, because this is a question I regularly get.

Speaker 2:

Okay, let's jump into it. We're going to start with video. Okay, the first thing about video is right to produce it. It is not difficult To produce women creative is actually relatively easy.

Speaker 2:

Now, a big mistake that a lot of subscription box owners make is they don't focus on video and they just go with images. Now, images are great because they're a lot easier to produce, but if you're not testing video as well, you're potentially missing out on a lot of your target customers. I've said this before, but let me repeat it for those who aren't familiar with this the way the algorithm works is it knows the type of people who are most likely to respond to video and it knows the type of people who are most likely to respond to images, and if you're not testing both of those things, you're potentially missing out on a lot of your target customers. Now to produce video, there's obviously the easy way go to your customers, run a competition and ask for box opening videos, and the best video will win a free three-month subscription. Or you could go to influencers, you could go to the tiktok creator marketplace, you could go through an agency. There's so many different ways to do it. For us, I like to shoot our own videos because that gives me complete control, and I don't stop until I'm satisfied with the shots we have got. Now, if you can give yourself half a day, if you can put aside that time and get yourself prepared, you will be able to record 10 to 20 videos, and those videos are assets that have the potential to produce new customers into your business for a very long time.

Speaker 2:

Now, a mistake people make is they say oh look, I don't have time to source videos, I don't have time to record videos. What should I do? If this is the case, you need to change your attitude. Marketing is one of the most important things when it comes to your business. It's actually essential. You have to be able to recruit customers, so anything around marketing should take a very high priority in your schedule and, like I said, it doesn't even take a lot of time to do this. It's just a case of blocking out half a day and preparing in advance, and if you do that, you'll be able to produce a lot of videos that you'll be able to use to hopefully get a lot of people signed up for a long period of time.

Speaker 2:

I'll give you a example. A couple of weeks back, I spent half a day on a Friday driving around recording new videos, but I prepared. I got a few different boxes shipped out to me in advance, I got a few different offers shipped out to me in advance, and it was actually my girlfriend who I was working with on the day and she prepared a few different dogs over in her house and I drove over and we recorded 12 different videos in a few hours. Now, we achieved this and kept things fresh by recording with different dogs, by recording in different rooms of the house, by using different boxes and different themes, by shooting different ads for different offers and by switching up the script slightly, and she even changed her clothes a few times to keep things fresh so it wouldn't be repetitive. You should do the exact same, and if you do that and you prepare, you will be able to produce a good amount of video.

Speaker 2:

Now let's jump in to some tips. Number one there is an app you can download called CapCut, and this is a really cool and handy app to help you edit your video ads. Now there is a free trial and then it's like a small fee. You pay every year, or I think you can pay monthly, but it's definitely worth it because it makes the process of editing your ads and getting them to convert pretty easy. So what you can do with CapCut is right, and this is a slightly different style compared to the normal box opening videos that you've probably heard me talk about before in the past. But with CapCut you can import raw footage of your box being opened. So what you do is you come up with a script and you come up with a few different essential shots and you record the different shots one by one on your phone. Then you import them into CapCut and you can turn those shots into a video that converts really, really well.

Speaker 2:

Now I'll give you a example. What works well for us is the box is obviously being opened, the dog plays with the toys and is very excited. We put each product in the box in front of the camera, so the viewers who come across the ad can clearly see the different products which are typically included, and we also highlight the offer and for us that's normally a free gift like a dog bed or a camera or a robotic hover or whatever. We will then write out a script and we will talk over the raw footage. Capcut actually allows you to record your voice over the raw footage and obviously add music after if you want. But this is great because it's a really simple way to highlight all the great things about your box and explain how your service works and what your customers should expect. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to share one of our scripts from an ad we recorded a while ago using this method. Here we go.

Speaker 3:

Hi everyone. This is Perry. We just adopted him from the shelter this morning. Let me show you what is waiting for him in his new forever home. We just signed Perry up for BusterBox and he got £253 worth of free gifts. He got this free bed, he has 24-7 access to an online vet and he's getting an extra toy in every single buster box. In the buster box itself, perry receives high quality toys and healthy treats. Most of the contents of the boxes are buster boxes own brand and I can vouch they're super high quality. Each box has a monthly theme and for Perry's first box he received the London theme box. This is really good value for money and if you own a dog, I would highly recommend joining. Thanks so much, buster Box, for making Perry's transition to his new home so special.

Speaker 2:

Now this dog was recently adopted and the angle of the video is the dog comes home for the first time from the shelter and he has his buster box waiting for him. Now we touched on some really important things in this script. We touch on the offer the £252 offer. We touch on how happy he is with the products. We go through them one by one and we say that we're really glad we signed up to BusterBox. So it's really really straightforward, but that's a really high converting video and you can actually apply the exact same principles to your subscription box business.

Speaker 2:

And the great thing about using CapCut to edit your videos is you can change the opening to your videos if they don't work. And what I mean by that is you may have recorded a great video, but the first couple of seconds does not hook the user in, and if it doesn't hook the user in, they're not going to watch the whole video. So you may have the best offer in the world, but you've lost their attention before they get through the video, so it doesn't convert. So what you can actually do is you can easily edit the first few seconds of your videos and you can try different angles and different hooks to get people to watch the rest of the video, and CapCut makes that very easy. It's also very effective because you may have a video that converts really well and it works great for a very long time, but then performance dips because everybody's seeing the video, so you can refresh it by using the method I just described, using CapCut Very effective. Okay, let's move on to tip number two, and this is really straightforward, but so many people don't do this Turn on captions for your video ads.

Speaker 2:

It's absolutely essential. I can't remember the stat off the top of my head, but there's a large proportion of people who browse facebook and instagram and they don't have the volume turned on on their videos. They could be in work or on the way to work on the bus, or they could be in a position where it's just not convenient to turn on the sound, or they may just not want the sound turned on. I know from myself. I keep the sound turned off a lot when I'm browsing different social media platforms, so it's highly recommended you turn captions on Now. The great thing about it is Facebook makes it really easy to do this. When you are setting up your video ad, you can click on the option to edit video and there's actually an option to automatically generate your captions. Facebook will do it for you and it only takes a minute or so. But a piece of advice I'll give you is and especially relevant for us who have an Irish accent which is a bit heavy sometimes. I would recommend going through the captions after they've generated them and just make sure that they have everything right. It will only take you a couple of minutes and we've tested this. That small change can greatly improve your performance when it comes to your video ads. It's important you do this and make your ads more accessible as well for the people who need it.

Speaker 2:

The next tip I would highly recommend, if you're going with a very aggressive offer, to test plastering the offer down the bottom of your video. So if you're doing like a free box, have like free box. If you're giving away a free gift, say what the free gift is and just say like free dog bed. Now, the reason why you do this is depending on the placement. It may not be too easy for the people who see the video to read your copy. So if you have the offer plastered across the bottom of the video, it can help increase your click-through rate and it can help your potential customers understand exactly what you're offering and entice them to head over to your website. Now, we have tested this and in certain scenarios, it has helped us improve our conversion rate, so I definitely recommend testing it Also. Facebook makes it very easy to do this. It's the exact same as turning on the captions After you upload your video. You click the option to edit the video and then you see the option to put text across it, and you can even decide when the text should appear, how long into the video and where it should appear on the screen. So they make that very easy and, yeah, I definitely recommend testing it.

Speaker 2:

Okay, we're now going to move on to images, the first tip and I've said this before, but I have to include it here because it can make such a big difference and it's very similar to the last video tip. Back in the day, facebook would not allow you to include more than 20% of text on your image ads. That has completely changed. You can now include however much text ads you want, so you should definitely take advantage of this. That means you should plaster your offer across your ad. If you use the Facebook ad library and you look at the majority of the BusterBox ads, you will see we always have the offer included in the image, and the reason we do this is it greatly improves our conversion rate. And the reason why it's important to do it is, depending on the placement, it may not be so easy for your potential customers to understand what's going on because they may not be able to read the copy, whereas if you have the offer plastered across the image, they should understand immediately what's going on and it should help you improve your click-through rate. So definitely test doing this. It works great for us.

Speaker 2:

Number two social proof. Now I'm not up on the rules on all the different review platforms, so I don't know where you collect your reviews from or if you're allowed to do this. So if you're unsure, definitely reach out to your review platform and they'll be able to confirm with you if this is allowed. But we have a paid Trustpilot subscription and we collect our reviews on Trustpilot because it's really thought of highly in the UK market, because you can't manipulate the reviews at all, it's an honest reflection of where you are in your business and we have a pretty high review score in BusterBox, and because we have a paid Trustpilot subscription. We're allowed to put that on our ads and I can confirm it a hundred percent helps us improve our conversion rate, having that social proof. So if you're able to do that, I highly recommend testing it and putting your review score on your image ads. It doesn't need to be gigantic or anything like that, but just a small review score down the bottom or up the top of your image should definitely help you improve your conversion rate, improving your click-through rate. So your click-through rate is obviously really important because if you have a strong conversion rate on your website and you can increase your click-through rate, that can dramatically reduce your customer acquisition cost because you're getting more people over to your website without increasing your ad budget and then your website converts well and you convert a lot of them into customers. So you should always be looking to improve your click-through rate, and a simple hack we've discovered to increase your click-through rate and this sounds so silly, but it's true is test having bright colors in the background of your image ads. We have found if our image ads are like pink, purple, orange, green, yellow, the background, that seems to grab more attention on the newsfeed and it improves our click-through rate, which helps us reduce our customer acquisition cost. We highly recommend testing that. It's a very simple test you can run.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I hope you enjoyed this episode. There are just some very simple tweaks you can make which have the potential of really improving your advertising and getting you more customers signed up. So test them and let me know how they go for your business. Now can I ask you a big favor? If you enjoyed this episode or you've been listening for a while, would you mind giving me a review? It doesn't matter if you're on Apple, spotify or whatever. Whatever you listen to this podcast on, would you mind giving me a quick review? It just helps me get the show out to more people. Now. We'll be back next week at the exact same time and, as always, if you have a question you want answered on the show, make sure you head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom and join the free facebook group and you can post your question there. Thanks for listening and chat to you soon.