Specificity in Advertising

Hey! - it's Brian 🦄.

Today you'll learn the following billion-dollar concepts:

• How to position your product or service from different angles

• How to balance specifics with universal appeal in your advertising

• When to use psychographics vs the common denominator approach

• How ad targeting shapes ad appeal decisions

Estimated reading time = 4 minutes

How to Design Better Ads that Scale

Weight loss is a $3.8 billion industry in the US alone.

Suppose you’re launching a new weight loss company and it’s time to fire up some ads.

Your first thought will probably be "Lose Weight".

49% of Americans try to lose weight over the course of a single year, so an ad with this appeal is probably going to get some eyeballs and interest.

But the ad is vague about the WHAT and says nothing about HOW or WHY.

Let's add a little WHAT and HOW:

Lose 10 Pounds in 2 Weeks Without Exercise or Your Money Back

Now we have some specificity.

That sounds credible, as if it's a measured result of a product's effectiveness.

But it still lacks a WHY.

There are 2.06 BILLION Google results for "Why do people want to lose weight?"

Let's take 5 potential reasons WHY:

• Improve your self esteem

• Have better sex

• Reduce sleep apnea

• Fit into your old clothes

• Feel more energetic

What's obvious is that each of these WHYs is very different.

People with different WHYs will respond differently to your ads.

Psychographics in Advertising

Psychographics is a big word.

But it basically means emotions and beliefs that influence why people do stuff.

In other words, WHY.

Let's take a look at one of those WHYs from above:

I have a friend with severe sleep apnea. Sometimes he wakes up choking on his own vomit. His weight problem is a real risk to his health. Appealing to his sex drive is unlikely to motivate him in the same way that helping him solve sleep apnea would.

Similarly, an appeal to reduce sleep apnea (which is correlated with obesity) would be lost on someone without this issue. It's likely a small subset of the overall weight loss demographic.

So what should your ad strategy be?

Both.

Ad Specificity & Advertising Channel

The rule of thumb is:

The more you scale, the more universal your ad appeal must be to work effectively.

A mass media channel such as TV requires what I call the "Common Denominator" ad:

Your marketing strategy at scale is likely a combination of:

• WHY-based ad appeals on highly targeted ad platforms

• Common denominator appeals on the biggest traffic sources

A higher share of profit may come from targeted WHY-based ads because they will convert at higher rates, but:

Most of your revenue will come from common denominator ads

After all, selling sex to someone who can't breath at night is a losing proposition.

Clickworthy Resources

🦄 Beehiiv - supercharge your list growth with the go-to email newsletter platform for creators and entrepreneurs. Native functionality includes a recommendations engine, referral program and more. We run Unicorn Growth Strategies on Beehiiv because it's intuitive, elegant and effective.

🦄 Hypefury - scale your Twitter audience with automated Twitter marketing tools. Generate engagement and virality by rewarding comments, likes and retweets with your lead magnets via DMs. It's the tool I've used to get 49K followers.

🦄 Advertise Here - get your product or service in front of 3,400 entrepreneurs and marketers. Just respond to this email.

Note: if you sign up for Beehiiv or Hypefury we may receive affiliate commission. We pay for these tools ourselves because they are invaluable.