How to Make Viral Video Ads

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 share some other performance marketers’ lessons with you (this issue)

• And I analyze & compare the best ads on the internet

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:

• Steal my 6 proven Facebook ad hacks

• What DTC marketers can learn from Speechify ads & marketing

• How to run jaw-dropping commercial ads like Dr. Squatch

Check out the 10 emotion-evoking single-image ads from my swipe file (many of you said “hell yeah” to my swipe file in my last week’s newsletter).

UGC 1.0 was about giving authentic testimonials.

UGC 2.0 was about giving authentic testimonials that have a higher hook rate.

UGC 3.0 now is now about embedding virality in ads.

Why? Standard social proof UGC is powerful, but people on the internet either want to learn something, be entertained, or waste time; you need to make it worthwhile. 

How do we do that? I invited someone who studies virality as his job to take part in The Performers’ mastermind call. His name is Yasin Mammeri, and he has more than 480K followers on TikTok and Instagram combined.

Naturally, you’re going to get at least 20% from that call today that you can easily include in your ads.

If you want to learn more from experts like him and other paid marketers, I’d highly recommend that you check out The Performers.

Here’s how the group is helping one of the Meta Ads consultants, Lucia:

Anyway, back to the topic. 

Here are 7 big ideas on virality that I learned from Yasin:

1. Steal Viral Formats 

Yasin emphasizes using viral formats to be effective. If you’re not hopping on these, you’re missing out. 

1. Reacts + Stitches

Here’s one video I created where I stole exactly from his social media content example:

My video:

The video I stole from:

@viralvideo.club

Wait til the end for 2 ad tips you can steal for your brand. This is a masterclass in how to advertise on social. Make it about the EXPERI... See more

2. Green Screens 

We’re aware of this format, but for those who are not, here are two examples:

3. Comment response

I think if you’re running ads, this format is also popular. Here’s an example:

4. Trends

Stanely Cups became famous thanks to this viral video.

Here’s an ad that took advantage of it:

You get the point. The format does influence virality. (Btw, I have tried these formats, and some ads did tank.)

The key learning was that the format was acceptable, but the messaging was off. Don’t blame formatting for your production or conception.

2. The Timely Sell 

Timing is everything.

So here’s how to time your sell with video content:

1. Provide a huge amount of value related to what you sell

2. Then, about 75% of the way through the video, point out that they clearly care about this problem.

3. Because they’ve watched 75%+ of your video, they can’t deny it; they’ll be nodding along

4. Then introduce your solution - keep this short and sweet

5. Then carry on with the video

His tip: time your sell for once people are invested. Your video should take them from ‘unaware that they have the problem’ to ‘in need of your solution.’ This will almost always lead to your product coming into play a little later in the video.

 The video that I shared above is an example.

3.  Pick the right words

Yasin studied viral hooks, and here’s what they found after spending 20 hours analyzing 50,000 hooks:

1. Swearing increases your chance of going viral

2. Small promises are better than big ones

3. Unusual words perform better than normal words, but their readability score has to be at least fifth-grade level

4. Use “you” more in your scripts & hooks

5. Pain & fear work better than desire (this really surprised me)

You can see his full analysis here (worth the watch).

Some more examples of using the words right:

One more:

Anyway, you get the idea. Right? 

I’ll leave you one quote from Yasin:

4. Universally understood hook

He looked at the top 50 TikTok accounts, and he found all of them have universally understood hooks.

Only 13% of the world speaks English, but almost everyone understands the story by seeing a visual first. This means as soon as you speak, you lose at least 87% of the audience.

So, you need to create a hook that’s universally understood to create a mass appeal.

If people can't understand it, then it won't go viral.

How do you create it?

Here’s his advice: Ask yourself this question: If you want to talk about X topic, think about how you can make it interesting for a 19-year-old gamer AND a 46-year-old accountant. 

This would get you to think creatively. And don’t forget to make it emotionally evoking.

Some examples of universally understood hooks:

Example #1:

Example #2:

5. Don’t only look at others' swipe file; create your own

Yasin, instead of just looking at the swipe files of other hooks, actually scrolls Instagram and TikTok religiously.

He dedicates hours to just scrolling to find good hooks.

Since meeting Yasin, the videos that I use in my ads have usually been viral videos, and they are performing well.

Not just one or two, but almost all of them.

Save all those viral videos that come to your screen to make better ads.

6. How do you come up with great thumbnails or hooks other than the swipe file?

I asked him on the call, and his answer surprised me.

He said we should be bored to come up with these ideas.

He says, “Spending time being bored is the main way. The hardest part of making content is coming up with the format–that's more important than the idea to me.”

He doesn’t use any ChatGPT support to come up with ideas.

It is all about spending more time and sitting on the ideas. 

I find it hard to do this but whenever I’ve thought about the hook deep enough. It has worked.

He has some templates when he comes up with ideas. He says he picks one from these:

• Make it funny

• Make it desire-based

• Make it curiosity-based

• Make it fear-based

7. How do you improve the retention of a video?

I personally struggled with this, and Facebook does a terrible job of telling you the exact drop-off. So, I wanted to learn about it and share it with you: 

The first thing that was recommended was to make a checklist and see what parts of the video are too nuanced and are complicating the video, like:

• Use of complex words

• Use of unfamiliar words or visuals

• Was it too salesy upfront?

Second, speak to a particular audience. This will initially cut off a big audience, but if you speak to a specific audience, it will resonate or go viral. 

If there is a dip in the middle, it is probably boring or doesn’t add value. Cut it.

He says, “The only reason I broke through on Instagram from 1500 was a video that I made three tweaks to, and it went from getting 1000 views or something like that to seven point something million”. 

Yasin knew that this would be a good video because it performed on TikTok but not on Instagram, so kept tweaking.

Some more insights on retention here.

Bonus:

Advertisers like us need hook ideas, and Yasin has a bunch of them, so if you found these insights useful, great. If not, and you are still here, I have been stealing all his hooks, and they have worked really well for me, so go get it:

• Steal these viral hooks # 1

• Steal these viral hooks # 2

• Steal these viral hooks # 3

• Steal these viral hooks # 4

Check out Yasin’s Instagram (worth the follow), his community, his social boot camp, and course (I’m gonna buy the course + community membership because I think the best ideas do come from unexpected places).

And that’s all from this week. 

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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