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Season 8, Issue 3: Please, please, please, don't run out of ideas
📬 In this issue:
A checklist of all* the possible angles you can take for your next ad creative or campaign, to help you avoid creative burnout — and examples from different B2B SaaS companies
Notion’s brand refresh is a great example of B2B messaging becoming more about the individual
*Probably not literally all
Hi Mehketeers,
I know I’m banging the drum on this, but Mehdeeka has always been focused on small teams and solo marketers, and lately I’ve been finding myself in a rut when it comes to thinking of new ways to pitch products and I don’t have a team member I can pass the dreaded task of “coming up with something new” to.
I’m talking specifically about creating ads. Maybe you’ve run a couple of A/B tests, you’ve got a winning variant but it’s just ok, and you’re looking for a new angle to test it against. It could also be content, sales decks, new collateral, a webinar, whatever!
When you’ve worked on the same brand/product/company for a while, you do start to slide into tried and tested habits. The way you describe something, preferred vocabulary, your stale elevator pitch. It becomes difficult to truly have fresh eyes on what you’re doing!
Hopefully this week’s Mehdeeka helps you out of (or avoiding) that rut!
Reminder: click the images to make them bigger, none of them are links, or open this email in browser to see it full sized.
ROI
A classic. Big numbers, often very graphic in design to catch the eye. Remember these don’t have to be ROI numbers from your specific product. You can use numbers from industry research, consultancy reports (i.e. from KPMG or PwC, etc.), and even academic reports if they’re available. As long as you can cite your source, you’re good to go.
Feature
Wow, a product marketer saying to promote your features? Sue me. There’s a balance between features and values, and every now and then, having a function your competitors don’t can be what wins you a customer.
I find this to especially be the case when your product is very industry specifc and you don’t have that many competitors. I wouldn’t do this for a product that derives its value from network effects or how many users are on the platform – you’d be better off spending your budget on other types of ads.
Use case
What can your product be used for? I think sometimes the lines between a use case and a value proposition get blurred - vague statements like “save time on manual tasks” sit somewhere between (and therefore are weaker than) clear statements that clearly name a task to be completed, and the outcome of doing that task more efficiently.
We want to reach as big an audience as possible, but the best way to do that is through a web of specific messaging over different ad creatives in a campaign, not blanket statements.
Here’s a really vague ad from Linear, vs what’s actually on the landing page this ad goes to (which is WAY more specific):
Value proposition
Often spouted as the creme de la creme, it’s important to know what role these actually play in your sales cycle. Are they shiny, attention grabbing beacons that attract top of funnel leads? Are they the knock out punch that follows up the attention grab, and converts to a demo booking? Are they the consistent thread that maybe takes a back seat, but ties all the funnel conversions together?
I think some of these from Canva are strong and some could be ever so slightly tweaked to make it stronger. Particularly the third one - the caption says “help your sales team seal the deal” and the text under the image says “Perfect your pitch” but in my experience, something around getting assets turned around faster to reduce the sales cycle would potentially be more pointy.
Side note: If you want to make your copy punchier, literally just delete “helps you” from whatever you’ve written (and then you might have to restructure your sentence but it’s easy.) The effect is action and urgency, see the difference here
Canva Enterprise will help your sales team seal the deal
With Canva Enterprise, your sales team seals the deal [faster].
Personas
Why bother with personas if we’re not explicitly calling out to them? I really loved the below ad from EFTsure – bold, attention grabbing, and if the targeting is right then you know you’ve hit your persona perfectly on target.
I also saw these Workday ads in Sydney airport which were persona driven, and also placed outside the business lounge entrance:
Objection handling
I find objections to be a fun game to play. And by that I mean argue with sales teams about, because they’re not great at identifying them. If you ask a sales person what objections they get, they’ll always give really broad answers, and then when you listen back to a call you can pick out specific, detailed questions the prospect has asked which are their biggest needs or concerns - these are the real objections, or reasons why they won’t buy your product.
Handling an objection at the top or middle of the funnel is a great way to avoid them coming up at all, so I do like a clever objection handling campaign.
Testimonial
This one is different to ROI ads because it doesn’t have to be data focused. Returns can be in the form of softer value, like better working conditions, happier team members, or being able to work on “other” because your product has automated a manual process.
Emotional
I’ve spoken before about the five B2B emotions (see link below), but I recently saw an out of home campaign from Hubspot that caught my attention. Spotted at a train station in London, and then at Heathrow airport, these video ads were the same in design and animation, but with copy that was relevant to the location:
At a commuter train station:
Bad picture, but the copy was Shut your laptop. Catch the 5:05 home.
At Heathrow airport, where I unfortunately didn’t get a picture:
Get promoted. Fly to Ibiza.
These both really play on the individual emotions rather than the business emotions - get your work done faster and go live your life. I think we’ll see more of this kind of messaging as we’ve truly left the hustle culture era behind and living life to the max is coming back into style.
Notion recently had a brand refresh, and the ‘the creative agency focuses on time stolen back for creativity and play: “the most important work of all”.’ That’s very in line with the Hubspot ads above, and the refresh has introduced primary colours:
After looking at so many ads…
It was actually really hard to find these ads. A lot of ads were low effort and all same-same, using almost no messaging at all with statements that say nothing. Claims that are too big and too untargeted like these:
Here I really want to ask:
Is paperless your best value proposition? Is “total headache” the best descriptor of the pain point?
So what if a cap table is a spreadsheet? Why should I care? Why should I care you’ve been working “hard an long” (also has typo, oops)
If this is a customer story, is the real highlight of your results “driving performance and business success”? Can you quantify that, or make me feel something?
What does an AI understanding my company really mean? Later on it says its for marketing but as marketers…. we know marketing is BIG.
Admittedly, the ads profiled in this issue (and the messaging angles) is really more focused on lower funnel. Top of funnel is all about events and content which are easier to grab attention with.
These deeper ads really need to be starting with what is our unique insight and how can we prove our expertise/qualifications across features/value props/emotions/pre-empting objections, etc.
Extra reading
Right Percent, a B2B direct response agency, does a lot of big write ups and I found these two articles to be very relevant to this issue.
This really breaks down the issue of why there’s less margin for error in B2B marketing as opposed to B2C
The 2024 version of the article, Which marketing channels are best to grow your business
This one includes a handy graph on which channels are good for what:
Writing outros is hard and I’ve spent all my energy on everything above this
So yeah, that’s it for this issue.
*Homer Simpson in bushes gif*
Kayla
All of the ads!!