The Startup CPG Podcast

Andrew DiLullo
We're very much about growth. We recommend like, hey, try and figure out how you can scale at like a two or two and a half x. Because at the end of the day, a premium website, premium ads and premium spend, right? You're going to get rewarded for spending more than your competitors. That's what makes meta and Google money. So if you can do all those things, you are going to absolutely crush it and you're going to get rewarded so much more if you can manage those. Now that doesn't mean we scale everybody at a two or two and a half x. You're always trading volume for profitability, right? It's an equation, so you kind of have to look at it like that.

00:44
Daniel Scharff
Hello CPG ers. Are you ready to learn about meta ads with me? I am a total novice, so I love this episode with Andrew and Victor from Ad Crunch. For me, they really highlighted the importance of studying the videos and templates that are already working for other people on social media and then just testing tons of different hooks and offers to see what really starts to drive profitable growth. I'm also excited to say that they usually only work with brands on something like a $10,000 level retainer, but they've created two pared down packages just for startup CPG brands. There's a $2,500 a month option where you get a limited number of videos from them and then also even cheaper option if you just want coaching.

01:27
Daniel Scharff
So if you want more info about that, stay tuned to the end and also you can check the show notes for more info on those offers and also how to follow up with them. Enjoy. Hello and welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. Recently we did a webinar on meta ads with today's guests, Andrew and Victor from Ad crunch. I couldn't attend, but then I heard about it from so many people that it was one of the best webinars they'd ever seen. So we had to get them on the podcast. Andrew and Victor have years of experience helping CPG brands unlock growth through Meta and Google Ads. I'm so excited just to dive right in. Andrew and Victor, welcome to the podcast. Welcome guys.

02:07
Andrew DiLullo
Hello. Hello.

02:08
Daniel Scharff
All right, so just to get started, how about could you tell me about ad crunch digital and how you got into the meta ads business?

02:17
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, so ad crunch digital. So I've always kind of like freelance. Actually. This story kind of starts a while ago, but I initially I was running ads for artists like musicians, and I have a degree in audio production. And very quickly I figured out businesses would pay you much more money to run ads for them than musicians. So that's kind of how it started. That's kind of how we got into the industry, the marketing industry, and really from there, we've just, we want to be excellent and everything that we do. So I feel like Victor and I have just pursued excellence and trying to figure out, like, hey, what's the cheapest, best way to test ads? What's the, what's the best way to, like, what are the strategies we can use to actually grow companies?

02:54
Andrew DiLullo
Like, how do offers, ads and website optimization work together? So that's kind of been really, Victor and I are in the pursuit of excellence. And, yeah, we love watching brands go from 1 million, $2 million to ten plus. Like, it's just cool to see a brand grow like that, especially when you have a good product.

03:10
Daniel Scharff
All right, so when it comes to musicians, yeah, probably they don't have a lot of budget for things like meta ads because what's the return going to be for them? You know, if they even acquire customers to listen to their streaming, that's just pennies for them. Right. So if you think about businesses having bigger budgets, that makes sense, which are the kinds of businesses specifically, let's say, within CPG, that are going to have bigger budgets, meaning this is going to be a more profitable way for them to grow.

03:36
Andrew DiLullo
It's less about budgets and more about your average order value. So our recommendation is an average order value of $75 plus. Just generally speaking, that's where we see, you know, hey, you can get to $5,000 a day, $10,000 a day, and spend at 75 plus dollar AOb. If you're not there yet, there are a lot of ways to get there. And there are other things you can do, subscription models and offers to get closer to that. But, yeah, generally we're looking for around the $75 aov. You could go a little bit lower if your conversion rate is really high or you have a good organic presence. So.

04:08
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so average order size or aov is the most important thing. And then you said, could be a little bit different if your conversion rate is a little, is high, which means the number of people who actually respond to an ad that you're running.

04:20
Andrew DiLullo
Yes, exactly.

04:22
Daniel Scharff
Okay, great. So that makes sense. And then, okay, if you're thinking about working first with the brands that have the biggest order size within that, like, do you see differences about, like, well, what kind of product is it exactly? I mean, I know there's going to be a big impact also, about, like, just a profitability. Okay. I ran, I ran a beverage company. The product is heavy. It still was very hard for it to make sense, even if we could get people to buy a few cases.

04:44
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, yeah. I think specifically, like, I'm sure y'all are maybe familiar with waterboy, something like that, where it's easy to ship where you're going to have a subscription. Right. They're like electrolytes for hangovers.

04:54
Victor Vo
Right.

04:55
Andrew DiLullo
So I love using them as an example because I'm sure most people are buying them multiple times. And that kind of brings me to my next point. Any product that's problem solution is going to sell much better on meta than, like, a product that just looks cool. So if your product solves a specific problem, like, waterboy is like, oh, we're electrolytes for hangover. Right? That's like, that's what it does. That's going to be so much more effective than. I like to use clothing brands as an example. It's like, you really have to feel like clothing brands are still, like, so influencer heavy. You have to get your clothes on the right people. You have to really make it look cool versus, like, if you're a clothing brand, maybe, you know, I don't know, like, this is an idea, but dresses with pockets, right?

05:36
Andrew DiLullo
That's very problem solution for girls. So anything like that's going to sell better.

05:42
Daniel Scharff
That's pretty interesting. And that's because people just, when they're scanning through ads, like, they're just going to respond quicker to some kind of a need state that they have because of a problem.

05:51
Andrew DiLullo
Exactly, yeah. And it's much easier to convince people that they do have that problem. Right. I think it's really easy to show, like, hey, your dresses don't have pockets. Like, what happened? Of course. Yeah, you have a purse, but what if you're just out and about and you forget your purse or you know, you just want quick access. Yeah. I think it's easier to show that than showing, like, look how cool this is, or this will make you look fitter or whatever. Right. So those are definitely the brands that do better on meta.

06:17
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. That's interesting. I just saw and saved an ad because it was like, these are the most comfortable travel pants for bigger guys.

06:26
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah.

06:26
Daniel Scharff
So I saw that ad. I'm immediately like, okay, yeah, that looks like something that I need. So I saved it so I could buy it later. I was traveling at the time, actually, so when I got home, I could check it out so that. Yeah. And it's not often that an ad will get me for something like that. So hearing you say that, it makes sense why. So we know that a few years ago there was a huge change in terms of acquisition cost for online users that led to a lot of people scaling back their e commerce investments. Now it seems like, okay, people are investing in retail more, but now e commerce perhaps is coming back and people are thinking about approaching it and maybe for the first time or maybe just ramping up their investments.

07:02
Daniel Scharff
How do you talk to a brand that really is just getting started in meta ads for like, hey, how should you be thinking about starting your strategy?

07:11
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, definitely. So I think the most important thing is going to be your, like, just your messaging, right? We have a lot of, and we're giving it away in the description here. But a hook sheet, right? You want to figure out what hooks resonate with your audience. If you don't know how to talk to people, you know, you're just not going to sell your product. The other idea here is volume. We test a volume of hooks and that's because you have to go through kind of different frameworks of hooks, whether it's like point of view hooks or like equals hooks. That's what we call them. Like a long hair equals my dream hair or something like that.

07:43
Andrew DiLullo
So things like that, we look, we kind of, we work through this framework of hooks and then we'll test around like 30 or 40 of them just to see what kind of messaging is actually resonating most with our audience. So that'd be the first step.

07:57
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so the most important thing is the messaging, and you're basically creating a bunch of different hooks. And, you know, I've run a brand before and I think it actually would have been hard for us to come up with a lot of those hooks because we would have been so tied to our branding and like how we talk about the brand. But then I've had marketers, e commerce marketers come in and be like, you're doing it all wrong. This is the way you need to talk about this. And it like, hurts for you to hear it. You're like, that's not what we want to do, but you're probably right. Like, do you get that a lot? And then how do you actually come up with those 40 hooks?

08:25
Andrew DiLullo
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Facebook is your playground. That's what a lot of people don't realize. This is now your end all be all. I mean, if you spend a $100 on your, on an ad, that's not your brand. That's learning, right? So I think that's where people, it feels very much like tv. It feels like I'm putting this out, this is permanent. Everybody's going to see this and it's just not true. A subset of people in America are going to see your ad and you're going to get feedback from them, and that's what's important.

08:48
Daniel Scharff
Okay, great. So when it comes to hooks, I understand the importance of them. We've all been gotten by one of them on Instagram probably. But the interesting thing for me, having run a brand, is that I actually wouldn't be able to come up with those hooks very well because I'd be trying so hard to align them to our brand pillars and just like our own language. But I've had really good e commerce marketers come in and be like, that's bad, and you should talk about it this way. That's what people actually care about. It's hard to hear it, but they're probably right that the hook is not what you think it is. And often it's easier to hear it from somebody else.

09:19
Daniel Scharff
So when you're working with a brand, how do you come up with all of those 40 hooks that you're going to test? And is it usually something they don't actually expect on the brand side?

09:29
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So branding, we kind of think branding to a degree, I'm not saying totally is dead, especially with the language. Basically, we look at it as like, Facebook's your playground. It's your way to test and actually get real feedback. Before you had to send out 10,000 mailers to get feedback one hook. Now you can spend $10 to get feedback on a hook. So your spend should actually dictate your brand, not the other way around because you could get real feedback so quickly now with meta. And then how do we come up with these hooks? You get on TikTok, you can search all these different variations of. We kind of do a lot of like, we'll do like a lot of like, versus hooks, pov hooks. We'll look for things that are trending.

10:07
Andrew DiLullo
I think actually the biggest problem with copy and hooks right now is marketers write to other marketers. They're not writing to consumers. And so this sounds crazy, but we used to write hooks, like, I'm just gonna use hair extensions as an example of hair extension brands, but in beauty brands. But like, literally our winning hook right now, our hair extension brands is POV. Watch me install these extensions with three s's and a sparkle heart. All right. We're not, like, where it's not stop buying cheap extensions and get extensions that last after the 17th wash. Right. It's like, it's inviting the person in to come watch the video and learn something. It's inviting them to watch the demo, things like that. I mean, it's ridiculous, but things like that are, like, long hair equals self care.

10:49
Andrew DiLullo
We're just kind of reformatting a classic benefit hook to be a little bit more palatable to consumers.

10:54
Daniel Scharff
So, okay, so I know our social media team, which is awesome. They look through what templates or types of memes or trends or whatever are trending on TikTok or instagram, and then, like, we can think about how to repurpose those for a message that we're trying to get out. So it sounds like it's a similar process for. For the kind of hooks that you guys come up with.

11:14
Andrew DiLullo
Right.

11:14
Daniel Scharff
You're looking and seeing what's really out there. Yeah. So, like, versus. Okay. You're seeing a lot of templates around that and then figuring out how do we adapt that for this brand. Is that right?

11:21
Andrew DiLullo
Exactly. Yeah. Just tick tock your product on. Tick tock. And see, like, what other people are doing. And also look at trends and adjacent industries. So, like, if you're selling electrolytes, like, see, what is it, like, body armor or powerade is doing? Right. Because those people are also consuming that content as well. They're not just consuming content for electrolytes. So adjacent industries are really important.

11:43
Daniel Scharff
So literally, in the search bar, just type in your product and see what people are posting about it. And then look up some of your competitor products and seeing what kind of content they're posting. And people are posting about them.

11:53
Andrew DiLullo
Exactly. Yeah. And do it on TikTok, too, because that's where you're going to find the on trend stuff.

11:58
Daniel Scharff
Okay. Makes sense. And then I wanted to ask also about offers. Right. Because a lot of times you're going to be, I guess, combining those or maybe separately doing offers. Right. Of some kind of special or a discount. What role does that play? Play?

12:12
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah. Offers are huge for growth in the CPG world. I can tell you, like, one brand were working with, they're kind of chugging along at. It's like eight k a day. We literally started running this, what we call a threshold offer. And all it is you get 10% off if you spend below. You know, let's just say your ao, your average order value is $100. So your high end threshold should be at, like, 125. It should be just a bit above your average order value to push people up over that. So they would get 10% off if you spend under 125 and then 20% off if you spend over 125. That's a very simple offer y'all could implement right now and probably see a ridiculous amount of growth.

12:51
Andrew DiLullo
When we did this with this brand, they went from about eight k a day and now they're at day. I mean, every single day. It's just all you're doing is you're incentivizing and their average order value has gone up, their conversion rates gone up. And all it really is just an incentive to push people up over what theyre normally spending. And then you want to have that lower end discount because you want everybody to have a reason to buy. And then theyre also comparing the offers. Its like, okay, I only get 10% off. I was already going to spend $100 anyway. If I spend 125, thats $100. A lot of times people even spend more than that higher end. So theyll spend 150 or 175 or something like that. So it really does help a lot.

13:35
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, that's interesting to think about. I feel like with things like online grocery delivery, if I'm a few bucks away from the free delivery, I'm just barely going over. I'll add just a second thing or whatever. But yeah, if I'm shopping, okay, yeah, like there isn't just ten or $15 item that I probably want to add from a retailer that I don't know, I'll just be like, okay, well, I'll just get a whole nother item and I know I can return it if I need to, usually. So, Victor, let me pull you in here then, because, you know, we're kind of talking about the juxtaposition of some hooks and offers and like text and stuff with all also then videos and like what kind of videos are going to be, you know, really trending?

14:11
Daniel Scharff
So just based off all the stuff that we're talking about right now, what are some of the video strategies that you think are really important for brands to consider? And like when you're thinking about the videos you're going to create as a brand to get started on meta, should you be thinking about like just kind of blue ocean, like here's the kind of content I want to create or really just jumping in and yeah, looking at what's out there and then figuring out, okay, how can we replicate something just like that?

14:33
Victor Vo
Yeah, Daniel, that's a great question. And it goes back to a very similar process. In which we talked about a while ago, where Andrew mentioned looking at what's trending. Right. There are several different ways to look at video. The biggest thing is you want to see if brand specific things are going to resonate with your audience or native.

14:53
Andrew DiLullo
Right.

14:54
Victor Vo
So there are three different levels here where we look at video creatives that are more brand. You can tell these are like tv ads and stuff where they're just very well done, polished. Right. All the way over to native, which is if somebody just filmed it on their iPhone. Right. And native is probably one of the best things to do for any brand because number one is cost effective. You can easily do it. Number two, it blends in with what's happening on the platform and it gets people to actually engage with it. Right. There's a whole path that you can go down here to really figure out, hey, do I want to do brands or native? Or brand native, right. So you would test those concepts.

15:32
Victor Vo
The biggest thing I would say is this, if you are looking at these ads and doing this right now, on the creative front, when I say creative, I also do mean video creatives. Just go and watch 50 TikTok videos in your niche, whatever it might be, catch the patterns. And the way that you would qualify is look at the videos that have the most views and the most likes and the most comments. Side note, when you look at the comments and what people are saying, those are words from your potential customers that you can use for your messaging and your video. Like if you're selling, you know, electrolyte drinks, going back to that, people are saying in the comments, it's like, oh, I love the taste of this. I love the taste of this. I love the taste of this.

16:11
Victor Vo
Right then you know, like those are keywords where you can use that. Or I hate the saltiness. Right? Then it's like, oh, wow, saltiness is another keyword. Those are all hooks to kind of put this all together. It's like, see what's trending, go after that first and test maybe five to ten different concepts. From there, you go into a process where it's very much a scientific method. You just start iterating and you focus first and foremost on the ads that are actually bringing the attention, but also converting people to buy your products. And all you're going to do is go into hook testing first where you're optimizing the first 3 seconds because if you can catch their attention, get them to stop scrolling, then they're going to watch, you know, the video and click through to your site.

16:54
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so what is it typically like when you work with a brand and you're saying, okay, here are the kind of videos we need. Like, are they scheduling different content days or whatever just to then, hey, we need to film these five different hooks. Okay, let's go and do that. Or are you typically repurposing some stuff that they've already filmed or grabbing stuff from maybe like user generated content? How does that typically work when you figure out those hooks?

17:19
Victor Vo
Yeah, it depends on budget and it depends on where you're starting. If a brand already has been running ads. Right. What we do is we go ahead and say, hey, what are your top performing video hooks? Right. Or videos in general. And then we run those again just to validate and make sure, hey, these are strong, right? These are your core money makers. Well, then on, there are two things to do. It's important to look at it like you're optimizing and you're testing. Those are two separate things. Optimizing our smaller changes, which you mentioned, Daniel, iterating off of what's working.

17:51
Andrew DiLullo
Right.

17:52
Victor Vo
Making new ways to repurpose that, keeping the creative fresh. Some of the listeners are probably thinking about, you know, words like ad fatigue that gets thrown around a lot in meta. Well, that's one way to combat that. It's like changing minor changes of things that are winning so they can keep producing. On the other front, testing. That's where, Daniel, you're talking about, hey, scripting, doing shoots, days where you're doing shooting and stuff like that. And it's important to think about those two different levers because that's how you allocate your budget for testing. Because in an ad account, you have your budget for just scaling and continue to make money. You have your budget for testing.

18:29
Victor Vo
And so if you have more threshold for testing and you need to create more winners so that your ad account can go get stable to a point where you're ready to scale and make more money, then you can put more money to testing, take bigger swings. And that's where we talk about, hey, let's dissect all of the videos that are working right now, even bringing in UGC content to see what's the biggest lever for us. Schedule a day, make sure we have the script, and then shoot that and then run those.

18:58
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so we're talking a lot about videos. Should everything be a video or how much do you see people allocating across? Maybe a still image with some text on it versus actually creating a video?

19:10
Victor Vo
Yeah. So that's going to be account specific as well as your brand specific. You're going to have to test those different things because your audience is going to resonate differently with that. And no two accounts, even if two companies are selling electrolytes. It's weird. I've seen things where static images work really well from one brand, but then the other brand just dies and then vice versa with video. So video is the key, especially for pulling in cold traffic and those that are, they don't know your brand and stuff images. Andrew and I have found that those really great for remarketing people that have know your touch points and going back to the offer point a while ago that it would be a great place. One of the things we like to run is a carousel ad of images.

19:54
Victor Vo
Just pushing an offer like, hey, flash sale, up to 48% off, boom. Because you've already spent so much time, energy and money educating and getting their attention. Now you just got to close the deal.

20:06
Daniel Scharff
And is it going to be similar? Okay, with a brand, you probably have your beautiful brand photography. Typically you think those are the kind of images that are going to do well or do you typically give brands like, no, do it this way. It's not how you would love to do it, but that's what's actually going to pop in still images.

20:23
Victor Vo
Yeah, I would take both, right. And then run them as a test because you got to figure out, hey, maybe your brand like loves ugly ads, right? Or your brand is one that actually more money from really polished luxury high line ads at the beginning. Get both and run them, make sure that you spend the right amount to test them. And then you're like, actually, this is the way to go. Now we know that ugly ads work for our brand. Let's kind of structure the content, the static images as well as videos from there around this idea and concept.

20:56
Daniel Scharff
Okay, interesting. So I imagine if somebody comes to you for the first time, you're probably going to then look at their stuff and see how it's performing and probably give them some kind of a checkup assessment, right? So like if you're looking at some of the metrics, what are some numbers you're immediately going to be looking at for their health assessment? Be like, oh, this is good, this is bad. Or, you know, hey, this is like workable. We can optimize this verse. No, no, this is a terrible number. We need to just completely start with testing new content.

21:22
Victor Vo
Yeah. So first off, there are what we call like, you know, your core metrics and then your soft metrics. So look at the core metrics first, like return on ad spend and volume, right? Don't just look at them in isolation. I think that's the worst thing somebody can do. And if listeners are trying to figure out, well, how do I master analytics quickly? Lean analytics is the book that started off for me over a decade ago, and it's still timeless how you basically look at data and make it make sense by looking at it relationally. So I would look at return on ad spend as well as the results that you're driving. How many purchases have you gotten on that ad spend? Because some people say, hey, I have a 20 x return on my ad spent, but they spent $50.

22:06
Victor Vo
But when you start scaling, you start seeing that, you know, the roas might decrease, but your volume and your revenue, bottom line revenue is going to increase. So you look at those two first, what's driving purchases and what's driving purchases profitably. Then if you're doing video, then your main metrics are going to be hook rate, which is the rate in which people are watching the first 3 seconds of your video. It's like, did your creative hook them to make them stop scrolling and then listen to your pitch, essentially. And then your hold rate, like, did they watch through majority of your video? Right? And then you're like, boom, that's great. And then from there, you look at your link click through rates. After they've seen your video, did they click through to your website where then you can continue the conversation?

22:52
Victor Vo
And if you're looking for benchmarks, Daniel, I would say hook rates that are at least 30%, it would be great. Hold rates around 15% to 18%. And then link flick through rates, you know, anywhere between one to 2% and above. And the last point that I'll kind of tie this all together with this, as you look at those rates, you'll know when you should move on to the next test and take bigger swings or not. Those are indicators, because if you found that one video is already doing a 40% hook rate with a 20% hold rate, and your click through is, that's a winning concept, that's a winning structure. Put that aside, right. And then use that to then scale the account. And then from there, you're able to, you know, move on to new creatives and those other endeavors.

23:38
Daniel Scharff
And what for return on ad spend? What are some numbers that you like to see people getting to, let's say, after the first six months or a year, obviously, with your guys's great help optimizing everything?

23:49
Victor Vo
Yeah, I'm going to tag Andrew in for this one so that we balance out the conversation. So go ahead, man.

23:55
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I would say, roas, I mean it depends on your goals, right? Like, and touch on what Victor was saying earlier, like, I'd rather spend five hundred k at a two x than spend $50 at a 20 x. And that's just because you get a halo effect. You can't track like people telling if you have a good product and you have good customer attention. You can't. It's very hard to track people telling each other about the product. I mean you hit a tipping point at some point, right. And so that's kind of the at scale, that's the goal with ads, is to get enough of your product and enough people's hands that it just spreads like wildfire, right? So different businesses have different needs at different points.

24:29
Andrew DiLullo
We work with some businesses that are, I would say, healing from bad agencies previously and so they want to be a little bit more profitable. We're very much about growth. We recommend like, hey, try and figure out how you can scale out like a two or two and a half x. Because at the end of the day, a premium website, premium ads and premium spend, right. You're going to get rewarded for spending more than your competitors. That's what makes meta and Google money. So if you can do all those things, you are going to absolutely crush it and you're going to get rewarded so much more if you can manage those. Now that doesn't mean we scale everybody at a two or two and a half x. You're always trading volume for profitability, right? It's an equation.

25:07
Andrew DiLullo
So you kind of have to look at it like that.

25:08
Daniel Scharff
Okay. And then like kind of going back to budget, let's say you're just getting into this. I mean, yeah, it's hard to immediately allocate as much budget as you would love to make huge splash. Probably you guys would even say in this early testing phase you need to invest enough so, you know, but maybe not so much that you're betting the farm on some ideas already before you know what's going to work. Well, what do you like to see from people?

25:27
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, I think again, it depends on the stage of your brand. If you're fresh, new, I mean, do some, we call these engagement click through rate tests. Do some of those with hooks. That way you can at least see how engaging your hooks are. Those are extremely cheap. They cost about five to $7 per hook. If you have a little bit more money, we usually run those tests before we run conversion tests, it's just a cheaper way to test like the engagement level of the hook before we actually go for conversions, which are more expensive. Generally speaking, we'd like to see a minimum $200 a day testing budget, so.

25:59
Daniel Scharff
Got it. And then in terms of testing hooks, is that something that only Andrew and Victor know how to do because you guys have done this so much, or is that something somebody getting started could actually do on their own?

26:09
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, anyone getting started could do on their own. If you need help doing it, contact us. But the quick answer is yes, you just want to set up one ad set. Every ad should be exactly the same. Your headline should be exactly the same, your body copy should be exactly the same. And in that one ad set, you could have ten ads. You just want to change out the hook in each ad. So thats how you test the hooks. Youre basically just like its one variable per ad and thats the hook.

26:33
Daniel Scharff
And you were saying like five to $7 an ad, which means like thats the kind of minimum you need to put against it to see something thats statistically significant in terms of the difference.

26:42
Andrew DiLullo
Yes. And then we would run this any whats called a click through rate campaign. And the goal of that campaign is not to get conversions, its to just get engagement metrics on your hook. So the idea is like if one hook has a 10% click through rate, but another hook has a 2% click through rate, the hook that has a 10% click through rate is much more likely to convert because it's higher, it's more engaging, it can get more people to your site. Facebook's going to reward you for being more engaging. So that's the idea there. And it's just cheaper too.

27:09
Daniel Scharff
Got it. Okay great. So maybe I'll tell you a little bit about our journey creating meta ads and probably not doing it exactly right because we didn't have anyone as smart as you guys helping us. But so for the startup CPG Instagram, we had a really nice organic growth. You know, people just kind finding us however. And then I started experimenting a little bit with promoting posts so we would never just buy followers. I don't think that's the right way to go. But yeah, like promoting some posts. Oh yeah, sure.

27:35
Daniel Scharff
Because you know, I did that a few times and then immediately started meeting people at our events who were like, oh yeah, I found you through Instagram, which I know is because we had some really cool meme posts or event posts that then we promoted and we got so many new followers because of it. I expect maybe it was a little bit easier for us. And I think were actually getting followers at a pretty effective rate, maybe because we had already built a lot of brand awareness over time. But I basically was doing the cheap version of this, or the, I don't know, anything version of going into the Instagram app itself and then just hitting boost posts and hitting, like, to an audience like mine. And, you know, I was doing pretty well.

28:12
Daniel Scharff
And then I told a friend of mine who runs another agency about it, and he just shook his head and he was like, disgusting how much money you're probably wasting just by not knowing a couple of really easy things that you should be doing. So then, okay, I tried to get set up with the business manager, I think, online, which was a bit of a process to actually get the accounts linked. I guess that was a hurdle that took me about four months of just kind of avoiding having to actually do it. And then, you know, I think once we actually get set up there, I don't know, it's not as easy for somebody who's like a fogey like me just to, like, click the button and do it. You have to, like, actually create the ad and go in and do it.

28:45
Daniel Scharff
But let's say you get past that, you're smarter than I am, and you're in there, and you actually just start setting up at your meta ads in the business manager. What are a couple, like, low hanging fruit things that anybody should know to do when they start running their ads in there?

29:00
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, I think on the ad side, I see a lot of brands not using catalog campaigns and retargeting. They're like people who have either viewed their content or site visitors who have viewed a product. That's probably the easiest way to get a conversion.

29:13
Daniel Scharff
I mean, can you explain what that is? The catalog campaigns?

29:16
Andrew DiLullo
Yes. So a catalog is like, basically you can connect, when you connect meta to your shopify store, bigcommerce or whatever, it, what's called a product catalog should get pushed to meta. All that is just, it's the pictures of your product. It's the first picture of your product and their pricing and all the product information. Yeah. And that's what a catalog is. It's just a catalog. It's literally a catalog of your, like, old, you know, they just named it after the old catalogs. Right. It's just a catalog of your products.

29:40
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so step one is people not knowing that they probably should run those kinds of ads.

29:45
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah. Victor and I most of the accounts we get in, it's kind of crazy. Like big name agencies are just running like stuff to wide open, targeting no catalogs, you know, you've already captured traffic, why not take advantage of it and.

29:58
Daniel Scharff
Then retargeting, meaning just not turning on an ad that then like, okay, there is a pixel or something that knows that people have already looked at your ads and then just running some stuff to them.

30:06
Andrew DiLullo
Exactly. Yeah. So just creating an audience of, usually we do, we test seven days site visitors and 30 day site visitors. So we test both of those. One of those is going to win, whichever one wins. Leave that on. And this is a big hack. A lot of people, if you have a lot of purchasers or emails, put those in an audience. A lot of people aren't doing that. We get in accounts and they're not retargeting past purchasers. Some of these brands have 300,000 past purchasers. I mean, that's like a freaking gold mine. It's like crazy. Yeah.

30:36
Daniel Scharff
Okay, cool. And, and what about in terms of setting up the audience? Because when I did it, okay, I found this button that said you can do a lookalike audience. People who look like your audience, target it to them. But I think there's much more advanced stuff that you can do. Right. Or I was picking a city, I think I was doing it really inefficiently. So what are the basics of setting up the audience for your ads?

30:55
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, so remarketing, went over those. That's your past purchasers. We'd also segment engaged emails versus unengaged emails because you probably have a lot of emails. And then also seven day and 30 day site visitors running catalog campaign to those for audiences, it can get a little bit more complicated. We definitely, we test a couple of things. Probably the highest likelihood of success right now is either going to be a lookalike audience and you need to test 1% lookalikes, 5% lookalikes and 10% lookalikes. What is. So if you have a, it is an audience that looks like, let's just say your purchaser, if you create a look a like audience out of your purchasers, what meta does is it says, okay, I have 3000 people on this list. I'm going to go find people that are closest in socioeconomic class.

31:42
Andrew DiLullo
I'm going to find people that are closest in area, and it's going to find all these different dimensions that are close to those people in your list. So it's basically just finding people that look like that audience.

31:51
Daniel Scharff
Okay. And the 1%, 5%, 10%, what's the difference between those?

31:54
Victor Vo
Oh, yeah.

31:54
Andrew DiLullo
So that's 1% of the United States population, 5% of the United State population, and 10% of the United States population.

32:02
Victor Vo
It's more focused when it's 1% lower, it's a little bit more liberal, where it's like, there are some people in there that might not be as precise. It's a precision term.

32:12
Andrew DiLullo
Yes.

32:13
Daniel Scharff
Okay. And so if you do 1% versus 10%, I guess you're probably going to see, I mean, on the plus side, you could see a little bit higher roi because they're more like the audience that you've gotten a good return from. But on the downside, you're probably like, it's not telling you everything and you might be missing some stuff if you're trying to stay too tight. And also, it's not a scalable.

32:32
Andrew DiLullo
Exactly. Yeah. One percent's not going to be a scalable. Ten percent's going to have more pockets. Right. So Facebook is not gone. It's not always right. So a lot of times we see 5% and 10% perform better than 1%. And that's just because there's more pockets.

32:46
Daniel Scharff
For it to test and pockets meaning just like broader reach of people. And then also you can probably learn more to actually have a better lookalike audience. Cause it's testing more people with different characteristics.

32:56
Andrew DiLullo
Exactly. So basically, Facebook, with your lookalike, there's going to be buckets of audiences, so different cohorts of people that Facebook is grouping as similar. That's why a lot of times it's good kind of when you launch ads to let them run for a couple of days before you make any decisions, because you have to let it test through these different pockets of people. So.

33:17
Daniel Scharff
Okay, amazing. So let me see if I can summarize what I think I just learned from you guys. And I think I'm a good test case because I know almost nothing about this, which is okay. So basically, at the beginning, you're going to want to get out there and really just see what's working with competitors and with your audience and figure out, hey, what are the styles of videos and still images that seem to resonate with people, and then get out there and make that content or see what content you already have. And then I think the key for you guys, it sounds like, really is just test, test, like, test all the stuff you have. Test tons of different iterations of it. Like get a bunch of different hooks out there.

33:52
Daniel Scharff
And I know you guys have a template for that people can use. But then also like, I think you can generate probably a bunch of AI hooks as well, right. And just test so many different things and then immediately just start reallocating and driving your budget to things that start doing even better. And it might be hooks that you really don't expect or don't even like personally, but just seem to resonate with people who don't know you. And then over time you're basically just going to be trying to get a lot of new people to find out about your brands. Maybe more of them will discover you through video if they didn't know you before, which can be really authentic, interesting content for them to learn about your brand.

34:25
Daniel Scharff
Then maybe over time you're then feeding them a little bit more like still images, reminding them about this beautiful product that they like. And they don't need to watch a whole video about it, they just need to remember to add it back to their cart. And then, yeah, probably over time still, then just, it's a game of just then, okay, starting to increase and try to optimize your profitability. And then probably always testing and learning because, yeah, people are going to get probably sick and tired of the same hooks. Especially once you start getting more or penetration, more people see it places. What do you think? Is that a good summary or what? I know I'm probably missing a lot, but anything specific?

34:57
Andrew DiLullo
Oh yeah. The other thing I would say is most people are not doing the volume they think they need to do. There's a reason we test. Like if, like when we get a client, we will literally test 40 to 80 hooks. I mean, I think that's the most important thing that business owners aren't doing. Like when we do something, we try and do like about five to ten times more than we think we should because that's how you learn and that's where you start to really push the edge of like what's known. Yeah.

35:20
Daniel Scharff
And just like one little change of a word also can really have a big impact, can't it?

35:25
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah, huge.

35:26
Daniel Scharff
And you won't know that unless you test both and then a bunch of other iterations as well.

35:30
Victor Vo
There's a David Ogle, the quote that, you know, Andrew, I really like where it says $0.80 out of every dollar spent on marketing is spent on the headline. It's night or day. And I love that. Daniel, you said test, test. Absolutely. Because the way that we see it is mastery is not working at something for 10,000 hours is actually 10,000 rations.

35:51
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah.

35:52
Daniel Scharff
Amazing. Okay, great. And then just lastly, I know you guys have a special offer which we love for our startup CPG brands. To get to work with somebody like you, which I know is just because I've shopped around, can often be kind of hard for early brands. Do you mind telling everybody about what that offer is?

36:10
Victor Vo
Yeah.

36:10
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah. So we have two things. So one, so just so you all know, normally, like brands that we work with, we charge $7500 to $15,000 for like a full service package that's usually about like 60 iterations of a video a month, new videos, multiple hooks a month, and it's quite a bit of work for startup CPG. We have a $2,500 package where you kind of get like a bunch of hook iterations. You'll get research. You'll also get five, about, around like five videos a week.

36:36
Daniel Scharff
Week.

36:37
Andrew DiLullo
So five iterations a week in video. And so that's one package. And the other thing is if you want to learn on your own from us, we also have a coaching offer, so it's $1500. You get four sessions a month. They're usually about an hour to an hour and a half. If you know you want to learn on your own, that's the fastest way because we're going to give you all our sops, you're going to get all of our sheets, you're going to get all of our frameworks. And so it's something that, you know, you can learn and you could probably learn it pretty well in like two to three months. So.

37:03
Daniel Scharff
Amazing. All right, cool. Well, that's a very cool offer for people who kind of want just the coaching approach or a pared down approach as they start testing and learning. So that's awesome.

37:13
Victor Vo
Cool.

37:14
Daniel Scharff
All right, so yeah, I'd say just lastly, what's a good way for people to follow along with you guys to add you on LinkedIn or what's a good way? Yeah.

37:22
Andrew DiLullo
Victor, do you want to take this one?

37:24
Victor Vo
Yeah, for me, definitely LinkedIn, Andrew's LinkedIn as well. And then email is definitely still something that we use a lot. That's a great place to kind of get in touch with us. I mean, we go through messaging and figure that out. So I assume that the handles and the email addresses will be in the show notes.

37:42
Daniel Scharff
Yes, sir. We'll put everything in there. We'll give you guys also link to some great resources as well. And then if you want to follow up with Victor andrew, you will be able to do so. So just check the show notes. Thank you, guys. I know this is a really complex topic, and it's one that I think a lot of us don't know a ton about in the community. And so I think this is a really cool overview. And I hope that, you know, maybe if nothing else, people really just take away from this the idea of just getting as much out there as possible, like knowing what's working in your category with your competitors and then testing a bunch of different stuff.

38:12
Daniel Scharff
And just don't be married to what you think your brand is all about always, because, yeah, often, like, ask somebody else what they think about your brand and they'll use words that might actually be way more compelling than the beautiful language that you constructed with your perfect headline. All right, guys, thank you again so much for joining us here on the startup CPG podcast. Look forward to hosting you guys again soon.

38:33
Victor Vo
Awesome.

38:34
Andrew DiLullo
Yeah.

38:34
Daniel Scharff
All right, bye everyone. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast today, it would really help us out if you can leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I am Daniel Scharff. I'm the host and founder of startup CPG. Please feel free to reach out or add me on LinkedIn. If you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipstartupcpg.com and reminder to all of you out there, we would love to have you join the community. You can sign up at our website, startupcpg.com to learn about our webinars, events and Slack channel. If you enjoyed today's music, you can check out my band it's the super fantastics on Spotify music. On behalf of the entire startup CPG team, thank you so much for listening and your support.

39:21
Daniel Scharff
See you next time.