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)

Estimated read time: 7 minutes, 18 seconds.

And welcome to the 400+ new subscribers who joined us since last week’s issue. Do check out these three blogs to get value from this newsletter immediately:

• How fitness brands sell ads on Meta

• What does an award-winning agency know about creative ads that you don't

• MrBeast marketing lessons for media buyers (thumbnails, headlines, hooks, and more)

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How this DTC Brand Grew from Zero to $30Mn in just 3 Years

Did you hear the one about the 3 friends who invested $3 and became a 30M company in 3 years?

True story! Okay, they invested $10K but still, they won BIG time.

Want to know how?

I think the crazy part is that they invested so little and got every decision right.

But they used one psychological trick - distinctiveness - to grow their ecommerce business.

So here are 7 lessons that you can instantly apply to your business (at the end, I’ll also share some lessons you can learn from their ads, copywriting and landing page.)

But first, let me tell you about the brand:

Brand Obvi: It is a women’s health and wellness brand poised to become a market leader in collagen, superfoods and women’s hormone products.

Who: Women aged 25-60 looking to improve their health with collagen.

Okay, let’s dive in.

Fact: 95% of ecommerce businesses fail

But this one succeeded.

Obvi = one marketer (Ashwin Malwani), one accountant (Ron Shah), and one designer (Ankit Patel).

Each of them had "distinct" skills to grow the business.

1. Backstory

Each of the founders were in the wellness category.

And they each spotted the same trend.

Women don't want to have the perfect body, instead, want to look and feel healthy.

This was the birth of Obvi.

2. Pink

Nobody could imagine a wellness brand with this color.

Yet, the pink color helped them stand out with paid social ads.

Distinctiveness - We pay more attention to stuff that stands out.

3. The distinct use of psychology.

Early on in their zero to 100K journey they bought limited inventory but sold out immediately.

Results: Fear of missing out drove MORE sales and Obvi had social proof that there was a demand.

They used nostalgia to their advantage.

4. Less is more

Hick’s law states that the more options are available to a person, the longer it will take for him or her to make a decision about which option is best.

When to use it: retargeting

Example: Obvi sells a bundled product when viewers click on this ad.

On the landing page:

5. The distinct way of running a community without marketing.

Obvi’s Facebook group was connected to each touch point (FB invite link went in their emails and ads), so even if someone didn't immediately buy - they were still consuming it to buy later.

Community is about learning to launch new products & collect feedback.

6. SKUs –grow with few, scale with many

Launching new flavors and products based on the community feedback helped Obvi grow from $1M to $10M.

Here's an example (plus look at the engagement.)

7. From $10M to $30M - The distinct brand play.

"Scaling requires you to trust your people. In order to scale, everyone has to be a CEO," says Obvi’s CEO, Ron Shah

Obvi only has 8 employees but everyone works as a CEO.

Now they are on their way to becoming $100M.

Obvi Ads Lessons

Here’s why you should pay attention to Obvi’s ads: They are the 8th most-saved brand account on Foreplay (a platform that lets you view and save ads even after the brands have pulled them from social media). This means other marketers are learning from them too.

Important: For a better appreciation of the ads, I recommend watching the ads first. These ads are hosted on Foreplay, a great platform that allows me to save ads for inspiration even after the brands have deleted them (they also have a discovery feature where I find good ad concepts to steal).

Btw, I have already analyzed Dr.Squatch and Magic Spoon from this list.

Let’s move on. One thing they do really well is create single image ads that stand out with simple copywriting. I’m going to discuss those first.

1. Obvi’s single image ads

Here are 3 successful single image ads that you can learn from:

So, what can we steal:

• Use shorter headlines

• Tell the desired outcome

• Include guarantee in your product

• Reduce risk by showing social proof

2. Copywriting

Not only is Obvi’s image copy totally on point, but their primary text is thumb-stopping too.

So here’s the winning formula we can steal for our ads:

• Claim to solve the problem with your product and offer more

• Show social proof that you solved that problem

• List what makes it special

• Answer objections with your features

• Make it no-brainer with guarantees + offers (with scarcity principle)

• Add a landing page link

WOW! Is your mind blown or not? Mine is, and I am definitely stealing their formula.

3. Obvi’s UGC and testimonials

Ad # 1 – TikTok-like testimonial

This ad ran for 40 days so let’s find out why it works:

• It uses a TikTok-like green screen so seems like native

• It comes across as if someone is sharing their weight loss journey

• The creator claims that she lost 70 pounds

• The visuals behind the ad show the transformation

• She’s wearing the branded merch which makes her seems like a fan

• She talks about the benefits such as, gives energy, burns fat, makes her hair, skin and nails look fantastic

• Without Obvi, she couldn’t have done it

• CTA focusing on the product

What you can steal:

• Green screen format to show images or visuals in the background

• Bring in your product fast – in the first few seconds

• Make it look native and authentic

• Emphasize the benefits

• Show, don’t tell

Ad # 2 – UGC mashup customer testimonial

This ad ran for 104 days, let’s find out why this one works:

• Hooks with the claim about losing weight

• Pink sliders that compliment the video

• The video has a single idea: losing weight

• Showing transformation with images

• Sliders talk about benefits: losing weight, boosting metabolism, appetite control, etc.

• Offer with discounts, gifts, and guarantee

• It’s everything against “the brand” department’s values

What you can steal:

• Align with your brand team about this ad (I’ve listened to Obvi’s pod, and the reason why this ad was running is because the brand team was fine running it.)

• Collect best moments from your customer testimonials, the ones that talk about transformation + benefits, and show that

• Use sliders even if it looks controversial (because it works)

• Don’t shy away from running an experiment like this

Ad # 3 – Retargeting to increase the lifetime value

Sure, retargeting does not work that well on Facebook but if it works, you can actually be more creative.

Most people:

• Run offers

• Address objections

Obvi marketers:

• Invite prospects to the community to learn more

• Sell organically within the community

• Keep building the relationship

• Increase retention

This ad ran for 2 years – let’s find out why it worked so well:

• Customer telling why the community is beneficial

• Showing screenshots of the community

• How it is an education play

What you can steal:

• Run $5 per day retargeting ads to your community

• Don’t worry about the conversion

• Engage, not just sell

• If sell, offer FOMO (their stock runs out very fast)

4. Obvi landing pages that convert

I’m fascinated by their landing page. They do work very hard on the landing pages. If we have to steal anything from them, then landing pages are one of them.

This is how they structure that journey:

1. Hero image that highlights the product, has a strong hook/angle, and makes you a great offer.

2. What is the problem you are trying to solve?

3. Why are you the solution to that problem?

4. Why you are the best solution vs your competitors

Here Obvi introduces their patent and also sometimes shows a comparison:

5. Who can vouch for you? (Reviews/Testimonials)

The key thing is that these are not just testimonials, rather before-and-after testimonials.

6. Any additional info that's relevant to your product.

7. Brand Value Props (30 Day Money Back etc.)
This is important to make customers feel safe.

8. Buy Box

Here they use price anchoring really well:

Price anchoring refers to the practice of establishing a price point to which customers can refer when making decisions. For example, when you see a discount going from $100 to $75, the $100 is the price anchor for the $75 sales price.

9. FAQ/Reviews

At the end, they keep showing more social proof from the reviews.io widget.

I teardown this landing page.

But their CMO suggests they keep testing the landing pages:

• Test new styles of Landing Pages (listicles, quizzes)

• Keep AB testing variables on the page (banners, CTA buttons)

• Keep testing offers (BOGO, % or $ OFF, Free Gifts)

If you take away one thing from this section, learn from their landing page structure.

Bringing it all together (TL;DR):

Here’s what we can learn from Obvi:

• Make your brand distinct with color, psychology, remarketing and community. Create a hype around your brand.

• For single image ads, use shorter headlines, tell the desired outcome, add guarantee in your product and reduce risk by showing social proof.

• For copywriting in your ads, follow this structure: Claim, testimonial, list unique features, answer objections, offer guarantees & gifts and share the landing page.

• Video ads: Don’t shy away from using ugly ads that show customer testimonials even though your brand manager may not love it.

• Steal their landing page structure

  • Hero image that highlights the product, has a strong hook/angle and makes a great offer

  • What is the problem you are trying to solve?

  • Why you are the solution to that problem

  • Why you are the best solution vs your competitors

  • Who can vouch for you? (Reviews/Testimonials)

  • Any additional info that's relevant to your product

  • Brand Value Props (30-Day Money Back etc)

  • Buy Box

  • FAQ/Reviews

But most importantly, increase creative testing velocity, landing page offers and work on your CRO to improve your cost per acquisition.

Sources for this content:

• Chew on this newsletter

• Chew on this podcast

• Ashwin’s tweets and threads

• Ash’s landing page thread

• Ron’s pod and Twitter

I think Obvi guys are a must follow. Check out their newsletter below (I’m loving their content):

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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