How to Boost Revenue by 25% with Just ONE Ad

It's been a while...🫣

I've been MIA for the past two weeks (this month has been chaos!), but I'm back this week, excited to share with you something a bit different than usual...

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a consumer psychology fanatic. 😅

Immersing myself waist deep in peer-reviewed studies is just another Tuesday for me, but I will never get over the thrill of watching psychology-based advertising work in real time.

The following is a real-world case study that showcases how a profound understanding of consumer psychology can lead to a significant boost in revenue during the most important advertising periods of the year for this brand.

Here’s how we achieved it...

The Challenge: Finding the "Why"

Last year, I worked with Original Grain, a luxury watch brand that sells rugged watches made from whiskey-barrel reclaimed wood.

They already had a great foundation:

• Unique product with exceptional quality all around.
• Excellent brand perception (both in product presentation and online presence).
• Interesting USP in a market that is rapidly growing.

What they didn't have was a good handle on why their customers were buying from them, and what they needed to say to get them to buy more.

I've been working with DTC brands from all around the world for the past 4 years, solving all kinds of psychology-based behavioral questions.

Of all the acquisition questions I get to solve, "why do people buy?" is probably my favorite.

Regardless of what industry you're in, understanding the "why" behind the buy is the key to growth.

"Why" goes beyond the tactical, strategic, analytical ecosystem marketing is built on.

It's a question that requires us to look deeper into how humans make decisions, who they make those decisions with, and how they go about solving the problems that plague them most in life.

Ultimately, everything comes down to why.

The Winning Message

🔬 STEP ONE: Research

To figure out why the Original Grain customer was purchasing, I had to do some serious digging into what their customers were experiencing outside of the brand.

I started by conducting some targeted research using:

1. Google Trends - so I can see where the industry is headed.
2. Google Keyword Planner - to see how many high intent purchasers we have.
3. Answer the Public - so I can figure out how educated my customer is.
4. Pinterest Trends - so I can spot visual trends to use in my ads.
5. TikTok for Business - so I can spot video trends to use in my ads.

(Note: I have a few other paid resources I use to help provide more context around what our customers need, but this is the main stack.)

💡 STEP TWO: NLP Analysis

After digging into the above resources, I ran an NLP (natural language processing) report on their reviews.

Natural language processing is a machine learning technology that helps computers interpret human language. The process I use categorizes reviews into 9 emotional categories (read this book if you want to learn more about the 9 categories) so I can accurately identify which emotions are most likely to promote purchases with future customers.

Running an NLP analysis on reviews helps me identify:

1. The top 3 pre-purchase emotions referenced by current customers.
2. Any "self adopted terms" - phrases or keywords customers call themselves.
3. Storylines that surround who, what, when, where, and why our customers needed our product.

I cannot overstate this enough: reviews are a gold mine of information.

Typically reviews are used as an angle generator (or testimonial resource), but in my experience, reviews reveal much more than that. They're an invaluable resource that holds the key to everything - from customer journey milestones to deep emotional insights.

And this NLP just happened to reveal something super interesting about our customer...

Original Grain had two customer subgroups (avatars, ICPs, target audiences, what-have-you) - one that was a "gifting" audience, and one that was a "self-purchasing" audience. The self purchasing audience made up a good portion of their customers, but the gifting audience had high AOV, high LTV, and a pretty strong emotional reason for buying:

❌ Gifters didn't just want another random present.

✅ Gifters wanted to show the most important person in their lives that they saw them. They wanted to show respect and acknowledgment to the person they were giving the gift to, and (most importantly)...they wanted to appreciate their individual value as a person.

🧪 STEP THREE: Testing

Armed with this knowledge, I generated 10 new ads with messaging built from the 3 core emotional motivators discovered in the NLP and the targeted research we conducted earlier.

While this particular test wasn't run inside my typical campaign structure, I usually like to separate groups of emotionally focused ads into their own campaigns (for instance, 1 campaign for 3 ads messaging towards "Nurturance", 1 campaign for 3 ads messaging towards "Esteem" etc.)

This helps us quickly identify which emotions we need to prioritize in the next round of iterations (where we'll layer on trending content, generational slang, viral hooks, etc.)

The results from this initial test were - and still are - CRAZY good...

💰 STEP FOUR: Results

The initial test ran during the Father's Day season over the course of about 6 weeks. During that period, AOV rose by 35%. LTV by 33%, and overall revenue by 25%. 🤯

"We doubled our Facebook spend at a better ROAS," says VP of Marketing Nate Lagos.

"Big takeaways:

• Our top & bottom line grew fast!
• CAC did increase, but AOV & LTV grew by 35% so it more than made up for the rise in CAC.
• We were able to discount drastically less than we used to, again, because we communicated more value and our customers were happy paying a higher price, because of the way we positioned it."

(I just love a good psychology-based happy ending. 🥹)

What was the message we used to get all this done?

We simply communicated what our Gifter audience wanted most...

This headline was written about a year ago, in May of 2023.

It's still crushing to this day.

Recently VP of Marketing Nate Lagos posted an update on this ad saying: "This screenshot shows the data from phase 1 of testing for our father’s day sale, where we tested 3 headlines & copy on our main FD Sale landing page."
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"The winning message “Show Dad he’s worth every second…” was written by the great Sarah Levinger a year ago, and despite my best efforts, we didn’t find anything to beat it this year."

"When your marketing is rooted in a deep psychological understanding of your customers, it turns out that it doesn't need to change much year over year, and we don’t have to worry about chasing new trends." - Nate Lagos

Psychology for the win.