The Game with Alex Hormozi - How to Make Ad Headlines that Get Clicks | Ep 158

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

"Your job as the reporter is to go and grab the story and capture it." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses a simple formula for creating effective fitness ads. The formula includes using a headline with a duration, benefit/result, and power word, and matching the creative and copy to the target audience.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(0:34) - Formula for fitness ads: duration, benefit, power word(4:12) - Next step: creative design(4:47) - Copy: specify target audience(7:02) - Start with attention-grabbing headline; consider branding and imagery(9:10) - Who it's not for can be more powerful than who it is for(11:38) - Ensure page matches offer, benefits, and results in adFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Hey, what's going, everyone, happy Sunday. Hope you guys are rocking and rolling on your Sunday morning, evening, afternoon, whatever time zone you are watching or listening to this in. I recently have been doing a deep dive into funnel world and ads for both B2B and BDC. I've been kind of like taking a more frenzy reproach lately. And so I wanted to make this because I recently had a gym owner sending me some of their ads. And I was like, oh, crap, these are definitely not going to convert. And so I wanted to just give basic headline stuff that will always just make you more money.

And so the formula that I've used for all of the fitness ads that we ran and that I ran at my gyms and that we continue to run is a simple formula. It has three parts to it. The first part is duration, all right? Because virtually every fitness-based promotion that you're going to run is going to be X amount of weeks, X amount of days, whatever. So it's like 21 day, 42 day, six week, 28 day, 30 day, one month, whatever that is, that's the first piece of your headline, okay? Second piece of the headline, and this is what I see people mess up, is the kind of the benefit or the result. Okay. So it would be like six week, six pack, if it was for guys, right?

28 day bikini, six week booty, 42 day detox. Like shit, I'm trying to think. I mean, if you want to even get a little bit more creative with it, you could say like 20-day skinny friend, right? So now you're like, then the copy is going to reel that in and talk about how, wouldn't it be nice to always be the skinny friend, right? Because now you're talking about status within the context of other people. So you're looking at the prospect within the eyes or from the perspective of their friend, right? And so you have duration first, okay, in the headline. and the second piece of the headline is going to be the benefit.

All right. It could be leaning down, slim down, thin waist, you know, small dress. Like that's where like the, a really popular one was a little black dress, right? Because that was the result. That was the benefit, right? And so like, like loosen a belt loop, like two notches down on the belt loop. So try and demonstrate what the result is going to be with the second piece. And that's where just being creative as a marketer comes in, all right?

So duration is simple. make sure you have a duration first because that's where people wanted to see what kind of commitment or implied when they're going to achieve the result, right? So it's like if you have a 28-day drop-to-belt notches,

like, cool, I get it. Drop two belt-notches in 28 days, cool. But you're not making a guarantee that's just the title of the advertisement. Okay? The third piece to this is a power word, all right? And so a power word could be challenge. It could be blueprint.

It could be accelerator. It could be intensive. It could be, of course, I'll blank while I'm live. But it's words like that that are like program, you know what I mean, transformation. All of those are going to be like the period at the end of the sentence. And so when you're making your ads, this is the headline that would go in the banner. All right. This is the headline that goes in the banner.

Once you've done that, like if your ad doesn't have that, the likelihood that it's going to convert is much lower, period. It's just like these are, and what's interesting is that you're like, that sounds so basic. Alex, I see ads all in time from gym owners even in our community that don't obey this, and then they're surprised that they're not getting results. Like, I made a video a couple days ago about, like, it's like the news. Like, if you look at the way the headlines look on the news, they're still the same. And all they do is they just change the characters. And your job is the reporters to go and grab the story and capture it, right?

So, duration 28-day, benefit, you know, duration 28-day, benefit, you know, duration 28-day, benefit six-pack or skinny waist or smaller gene size or whatever, right? And then blueprint, challenge, transformation, whatever it is, is the third word. And so that is how you go, one, two, three, and that is your formula for headlines. Now, once you have that, the next piece is going to be the creative. I'm not going to get into the creative too much because I've made other videos about that. But using the lead gen scrambler for whatever you want to put in your video or your image is going to work well, right? So that's going to be group workouts, a pitch of you explaining what it is going to be, any images of people sweating together, in the group together, testimonials work.

All of that stuff is creative, and you can still use the same headline. The headline doesn't have to be specific to the creative. So it's one of the biggest things that I've learned as a marketer is that you don't need that. Those two don't actually need to be connected. Okay. Now, I'll tell you where it does need to be connected in a second. The next piece that you're gonna have to this is when you actually go to the copy.

So I'm only specifically talking about Facebook ads if you're marketing on GDN or other things and those are banners and you have to have more steps to it. But if you're just talking about Facebook, then what you're looking at then is the first line of the copy is gonna be calling up who you want and who you don't want, right? Like residents that are in this area, right?

That's what you're like, there's obviously ad compliance guidelines of making sure that you can't say you and you can't say like you ladies because you can't identify the prospects Facebook doesn't like that, right? And so you're going to do your best to describe it without calling out the person individually who's reading, okay? So it's who we're looking for, and if not, more importantly, who we are not looking for,

okay, and that can be the first two lines. And then you have your subhead, right, which is going to be tied back to the headline that we said. So it's like if we said the 28-day skinny friend's, you know, transformation, right, or skinny friend accelerator, whatever program, it doesn't matter, right? You go there, it's like, wouldn't it be nice to be the skinny friend for once? We all have those friends, right? And that's the lead in.

That's the lead in to the ad. It's like we all have those friends. It seems like they can eat whatever they want and they never gain weight. Wouldn't it be nice to know that it's not their genetic. It's actually their habits. And those habits are programmable and teachable. Right. Now I'm like, oh, this is an interesting ad.

I want to read more. And over the last X years implied authority, like we've done this with over a thousand people in this local area alone. And right now we're opening up our spot in our 28-day blah-b-b-blah accelerator. And so if you want to be the skinny friend, then click over, right? And so then call to action. And so, like, this is a formula. Like, hopefully just from the way I'm describing this, you can understand how this works.

So when you're making ads, and this is what a lot of people are making ads is on Sundays, right? Real quick, guys, if you can think about how you found this podcast, somebody probably tweeted it, told you about it, shared it on Instagram or something like that. The only way this grows is through word of mouth. And so I don't run ads. I don't do sponsorships. I don't sell anything. My only ask is that you continue to pay it forward to whoever showed you or however you found out about this podcast that you do the exact same thing. So if it was a review, if it was a post, if you do that, it would mean the world to me and you'll throw some good karma out there for another entrepreneur.

When you're making the ads, start with the headlines for the actual banner on the ad itself. All right. Duration, benefit slash results, power word. Then you have your creative that's going to plug in. That's really there just to get attention and make sure that they're like, they pause and start. stop. All right. A fun side note is make sure that the color makes sense. Colors and fonts matter, sometimes even more than the words. So if you're doing a meme banner or a banner on the ad, you want to make sure that you're not doing black and yellow or black and red for women, right?

Women are going to be like, that looks hardcore, right? Same thing. You don't want like stenciled spray lettering, which is like kind of like hardcore GI Joe lettering for women, right? It's not going to work as well. It has a different feel. All right? To the same extent, if you're doing a Guys-based ad, they're doing black and green, black and blue, like sort of male-based colors, it's going to work fine. You should make sure that you're matching those two to the prospect that you're trying to attract. And the next thing is, like I said, is the font, right?

Some fonts work either way. Like permanent marker is a font on Google fonts. Works for guys or girls, right? So you can have white and pink in permanent marker font or you can have black and yellow or black and red or blue and black, whatever it is, right? Obviously, you can be in the middle and just do blue and white or green. or blue and white or green and white or with black stencil, all that,

that stuff's fine, right? But make sure that you're matching that. And these are definitely like the fundamentals. Like these are the basics, but if you're not doing these and you'd be surprised how many people don't do the fundamentals, like the advanced people just never don't do them. And that's all it is.

Okay. So we're going back to the ad. So we've got our headline. It's in the right font that matches the prospect and it's in the right colors. Cool. We can have our creative, which we know converts, which is going to be people working out together,

food pictures, you know, images of like sweaty selfies, eye-based images where someone's staring at the camera, selfie pitch videos, all of those types of videos work, right, for creative. Then you have your who you're calling out, too, to make sure that you both attract the right people, but ward away the ones you don't. The not, the who it's not for is just as, if not, more powerful than who it is for. because it shows that you're selective and you're going to be more magnetic and repulsive when you make that, right? Like if you notice recently, a lot of the gym watch ads have come out have been like no personal trainers.

Like, we only want gym owners who have over 25 clients or full time, have a signed lease and XYZ. And the reason for that is because we just did a data analysis on the clients that make the most money with us and stay the longest. And guess what? It's fucking gym owners, right? And so we're just making sure that we're 100% clear that that's just who we work with. Now, you, if you want to, look at your own clients and find out which clients are actually worth the most to you and then put it in your copy, ward off the people who aren't good and the people who do read that and are like, wow, that's really me, right? Then they're going to be way more likely to click and then the quality of the click that you get is going to be much higher. All right.

And the next thing, finally, is the subhead, is the lead in, right? And that's usually going to be tied to the benefit slash result, the middle word of your headline, right? And so if you did the 28 day, lose two notches, whatever, transformation, right? And this is where you'd have a little image of jeans and a belt or something on the banner, right? It would make sense. And then with the lead-in, it's going to tie it back to that because they're like, how is this connected? And so you're going to connect that to like, hey, have you ever, have you noticed recently that you keep going up in notches every six months or so? Well, the good news is it's not permanent and we know how to fix it, right?

and then you're like, boom, then you can go into your normal copy. Okay? So if you were making your ads, make sure to use those headlines. Make sure that the banners are set that way. Three pieces, duration, benefit slash result, and then power word. Make sure the images slash copy are attention grabbing. Usually like the lead gen scrambler, like just use that. And then when you are doing the copy on the top, make sure you're attracting and repulsing the right people.

And then do your lead-in, your sub-headlines. or what would be your subhead line, because you don't want that actually in the actual banner. It's too many words, but you want that subhead because if they read that, then they're going to want to find out more.

And they find out more than it's going to tie in to what they just read, and it's going to be relevant. All right? Once they click from there to the page, you want it to be congruent. So if you're having a 28-day, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this is where it's like,

this is where it takes work. This is where, like, good marketers be mediocre marketers just by not being lazy. And so then they make sure the page matches the, the offer and the benefits and the results that we're talking about on the ad because the people who clicked, it's exactly what they want. And so that's what we're doing here. So you can have two funnels that are running for the same campaign, just once for men and once for women. That's a

basic split, right? If you want to get more granular, you can have older women and younger women. I would imagine that you probably talk to a 55-year-old woman, differently talked to a 25-year-old girl, right? Of course you would, right? The messaging changes, the way that the page probably looks different, et cetera. And so that's where you become a better marketer. So anyways, I hope that just gives you just like a quick overview in terms of gloss if you're making your ads today because it's Sunday which is what a lot of our gym owners do make their ads. Follow those guidelines. You'll get more clicks. You'll get more leads. And if you found this valuable, tag somebody, drop a like or comment. If you're listening on the podcast, please leave you with you.

All right. Keep being awesome. Lots of love. I'll put you guys soon. All right. Bye.