What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.

This newsletter is about leveling up your paid growth marketing skills by analyzing the best brands' paid strategy, tactics, positioning, and value props.

This newsletter is divided into:

• Sharing what I've learned

• Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers’ lessons with you

• And I analyze & compare the best ads on the internet (this issue)

And welcome to the 150+ new subscribers who joined us since last week’s issue. Do check out these three blogs to get value from this newsletter immediately:

• The Case for Permissionless Advertising

• The Ultimate Ultimate UGC Guide

• The Ultimate Ultimate Guide to Creative Testing

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I’m a huge fan of the My First Million podcast. They recently talked about a business that’s making north of $100Mn in revenue with 7X ROAS for a premium product that starts at $4990.

This business spent roughly $860K last month, and their CAC is $387. The ROAS and profitability are insane. 

You can watch this segment in the pod as a reference. 

It’s a brand called Plunge.com.

TL;DR of what I learned from their ad account:

• Your ads should make your audience feel even with a static image.

• Early on, focus on seeding strategy and be generous if you truly believe in your product but do go with people with credibility. You need a trust strategy before you design an ad strategy.

• Do the math for your audience and lean into anchoring bias.

• Create ads that explore a typical journey of your user and show how your product is better than bad alternatives.

• Focus on your best customer profile in your ads, the rest will follow.

• Use this ad framework for your static ad: visual appeal + lifestyle aspiration + emotional connection + connectivity of the message + action call (verb) + ideal target audience (explained below).

• Call out your audience with the mindset or familiar visuals (like a sports stadium). 

• Premium brands can also do memetic ads. Don’t shy away from these. 

So, naturally, I was curious to know what’s going on with their ad strategy. What is it that’s helping them win?

I have to say, I was a little disappointed but I still found some gold nuggets that you can apply to your advertising.

Most importantly, this is for skeptics who think high-ticket products don’t work well on Meta. Well, here is your answer. The key difference is, that high-ticket products don’t get proper attribution back so people think they don’t work. 

Anyway, let’s get into it.

Plunge is selling a cold plunge bathtub as a product. It includes the physical product, the necessary maintenance stuff as well as a tech app connected to monitor your sessions and health.

The Wim Hof style cold plunge was mostly popularized by influencers like Andrew Hubermann, David Sinclair and many other health-science experts & influencers in 2021 and has taken off since then.

The term ‘cold plunge’ has also been trending since then.  

Before looking at their ads, it is important to mention that when they started, the first thing they needed was trust and credibility. To get that, they partnered and offered free plunges to 100+ influencers. This is the power of seeding. But most importantly, they believed in their product. 

Andrew Hubermann talked about them 2 years ago in this video. 

And then, you check out this page that is just filled with a wall of love, credibility, and trust.

See influencer marketing and seeding still works well, especially to pass along the credibility. This is why you should check out Upfluence if you’re thinking about streamlining your influencer strategy.

Bumper sticker nugget: Before creating the ad strategy, work on your trust strategy. It sounds simple, but not many start with it. 

Ads that appeal

Here are some of their static image that adhere to one or two advertising principles:

Note: All ads have been running for 30 days or longer. They’re proven, and you can safely steal and learn from them.

Ad # 1 – Words that match the visual & Jobs-to-be-Done

Audience: Cold

Ad nugget: This is my secret to my designers and copywriter. Use one word and make it a visual image. This ad does really well with it. They took the word and matched it with a visual and connected it with the jobs-to-be-done because essentially a cold plunge is there to help you recover from your hard work out.

This ad has more nuggets that I can share.

It has:

Visual appeal + lifestyle aspiration + emotional connection + connectivity of the message + action call (verb) + ideal target audience.

Let me explain.

Visual appeal: Visual representation of health and wellness in a single image.

Lifestyle aspiration: A pool + backyard with a nice health and wellness. Who wouldn’t want that?

Emotional connection: This leads to the cuteness principle. Pets drive the happiness and comfort signal. Learn more about adding a dog to your ad campaign here. 

Connectivity of message: The stepping part. As previously explained.

Action call: The phrase "step into" is a call to action that invites the audience to engage with the product and the modern recovery process.

Ideal target audience: The copywriting is on point with the visual that attracts an audience who want this kind of lifestyle.

The framework is clear and concise. Use the framework for your next ad.

Ad # 2 – Make them feel

Audience: Cold

Ad nugget: Social proof + make them feel + expletive-worthy creates a strong motivation. The picture makes us feel how she feels in that moment. This plays into consumer's desire to achieve similar feelings of euphoria or intense satisfaction. Don’t you wanna feel fu%$*ing amazing too?

Ad # 3 -  Price anchoring – It’s too expensive

What is price anchoring: This cognitive bias occurs when people rely too heavily on the first piece of information (the "anchor") offered when making decisions. In this case, the cost of 30 ice baths ($300-$450) is presented first and is higher, which sets the anchor. Then, the cost of the Plunge ($127/month) is presented as a more economical and reasonable alternative.

Audience: Retargeting

Ad nugget: People are comparing the cost. Do the math for them. $4990 seems like a big price, but on a monthly basis it seems cheaper.

Ad # 4 – Memetic ad with price anchoring

Audience: cold

Ad nugget: This ad has a similar price comparison and anchoring psychology. It uses the mindstate of comparison for those who already use ice baths. Meme ads leverage familiar cultural references that lean into familiarity, humor, relatability, and virality.

Note: This ad is punch in the face for those who care about their brand just a little too much because it is a premium brand. Cold plunge is leading the way for other premium brands to help them make the next move. 

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Ad # 5 – Calling out sports fanatics who want to win

Audience: Cold

Ad nugget: This ad is calling out the ultimate benefit to a specific audience with this visual– what winning feels like to footballers.

I love it because instead of saying Attention Footballers, they’re trying to get attention from those who want to win (the mindstate). And great visual appeal when they show a sports stadium. Masterpiece!

Now, I saved their best ad parts for you – it’s their video ads. 

Ad # 6 – Go on a journey that appeals to your prospects 

What immediately stands out:

• Reflection question, an underrated hook technique: “What’s all the cold plunge talk about.”

  • This leans into what people are talking about. It probably seems legit that you wanna try.

  • It seems like the person will be going on a journey.

• Indeed, it is a journey – this opens a curiosity loop to watch the entire video. Damn, this is not an ad. It seems like a native video on my feed.

• Clearly, the user got the experience but the alternatives that were shown were too bad.

• Everyone loves other people doing experiments and watching them get the most efficient results.

• B-roll is great for storytelling, how someone’s trying and then changes their mind

• Benefits: Better mood and body recovery

• The alternatives shown were really bad (experience-wise)

• Better alternative: Clean water, and no ice-needed – Seems like a no-brainer.

• No clear CTA instead just “thank you.”

What can we steal:

• Steal the hook clearly. 

• Steal the format of going on a journey.

• It worked for them because even I, as a semi-sold on Plunge viewer, will first try the cheaper alternative version before buying this expensive device. I think most people would too. 

Now it’s time to reflect: Are people going to go on a journey with a shittier alternative that you could make yourself? Or is it obvious to them through the ad journey instead? 

I am going to give this a try.

Ad # 7 – Go hard on the best customer profile, the rest will follow

What immediately stands out:

• Hook: As a two-time Olympian, cold tubbing has been a huge part of my life

• The video leans into credibility and the emotion of exhilarating 

• They’re focusing on cold-plunging to athletes as they are the leaders in the category

• The copy: Take the Plunge and Change Your Life like Olympian Sage Watson.

What can we steal?

• I think the ad is pretty obvious, but what I loved about it was that it is attracting a very specific type of audience: Those who have the willingness, motivation and desire to buy. Most of the time, we are trying to be everything to everyone. This is doing the opposite.

If you follow the main customer profile, aspiration profiles will follow. Be bold. Be one thing to a few. Not everything to everyone. 

Not evaluating this ad but it also leans into an elite profile: the work-from-home, productivity and wellness mindset fanatics. Your audience has more than one interest. Tap into that.

Honestly, the ads are NOT that impressive but they don’t need to be. They just need to work for an audience that finds it relatable enough to take action. Period.

But sure, we did learn something. This usually happens when you have a winning product, jumping on a big trend and leaning hard into the audience that already knows the benefits. 

As they say, great products make marketing easy. 

Some things I found that must have also contributed to their success:

• They’re sending everyone to this product page that works like a landing page

  • The page feels premium

  • They have multiple videos that act as VSL but with more video shots

  • If you show it to a CRO, they’d be pulling their head with frustration over the amount of optimizations needed on this page. Still, it is converting well for them.

• Organic and Paid Search are contributing to their growth, but the FB CAC is still mind-blowing.

  

• Their organic Instagram is probably further helping them with conversions. Check out all these videos here. Note: It is not just your ad, but the support assets around and after your ads do matter too like how your Instagram organically looks like or reviews on social media. 

Ready to take the plunge?

Bonus because you stayed till the end.

I used to be skeptical about feature point-out ads. This is currently giving the me best ROAS and it is this format that worked out for me. Do give it a try.

And here are free Canva templates that you can make these ads yourself.

That’s all for this week.

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

Since this newsletter is free, I do it to follow my curiosity. But I’d love it if you could reply to this email and let me know your unfiltered feedback.

Three ways I can help you, whenever you are ready:

• Work with me to reduce your CAC in half. Book a call here. I’m open to more clients now.

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P.S. Next week The Performers are having a session on The Science Behind Hooks by a guy who studies viral hooks for a living. Happy to invite you if you wanna join the community and learn from the best-paid marketers.