In this video, Eric Deeran critiques the overuse of short, direct‑offer ads that dominate Instagram and Facebook feeds, arguing that they lead to audience fatigue, low‑quality leads, and a commoditized market. He introduces the concept of “sketchbook ads,” a format he adopted from creator Revel, which are longer (3‑5 minutes up to 18‑minute video sales letters) and focus on delivering genuine educational value before asking for any contact information. By giving prospects useful insights—such as step‑by‑step processes for creating brand films or short‑form content—these ads build authority and trust, resulting in higher‑quality leads, longer ad shelf‑life, and reduced ad fatigue. Deeran explains that while direct‑offer ads only capture the ~3% of the market ready to buy immediately, educational sketchbook ads can reach the broader problem‑aware audience (up to 60‑97% of the market), moving them from awareness to a solution‑seeking mindset. He emphasizes that the length of the ad should be as long as needed to provide real value, and that the ultimate goal is to earn trust before requesting sensitive information or a sales call. The video concludes with a call to action for agencies to adopt this value‑first approach, positioning themselves as experts who can handle the work the prospect prefers not to do themselves.
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What's going on, guys? In today's video, I want to just make a short video going over a type of ad that we've found working really well for us, working well for our clients. And if you follow me, you probably have seen this ad before, so you probably know what I'm about to say. But I think, including myself, I think I've thought about ads completely wrong for a very long time. I think that I had always been very direct in my offers, very specific, very like direct offer, and that definitely works up to a point. But I think at a certain point you run into a place where like people are tired of seeing the same offers, and I think everybody's ads are starting to look the same, where you see like, "Get 5 clients or you don't pay," or, "We're gonna help you do this thing," and it's like very direct offer, and if you look through your Instagram feed, you probably see that in your feed right now, where you're like, it's, everybody kinda starts to look the same, and so then I think what we need to be thinking about is how do we stand out, how do we look different, and how do we make ads that are different and actually helpful to the people that we're trying to attract? Because if everyone's making the same ads, then you get kind of blended into this sea of commodity, right? Like everybody kind of starts to look the same, there's nothing really different about anybody's content or what anyone's doing, and so I think it's very basic and it's a lesson that's been taught over and over and over again, but it's a good reminder, is that we need to give, give, give, give, give, and then ask people for things. And so a format of ad that's working really well for us is these sketchbook ads. And I got it from another creator who's, I believe his name is Revel, so I wanna give him credit 'cause that's where I got the sketchbook idea from. It's not my original idea. But I think what he says and what a lot of other people are saying is completely accurate to the point where you need to be giving people things. Like you need to be educating them. You need to give them some sort of value before you're asking for their information. And when I see a lot of agencies running ads, they're like running basic static photo ads or they're running basic format ads or they're running just basic ads that look like everybody else's that really don't give any value and they're kind of like polluting the Facebook or Instagram environment. They're not adding to people's lives like— and Revel says this too, I think it's a really good point— we need to be adding to people's lives. We need to be leaving them feeling informed, educated, like they learned something new because that's what's actually going to build trust. And ads are only going to get more and more and more expensive. It's going to get more and more difficult. So I think if you can stand out by giving more value to your audience and giving more, like, more of your secrets away of how you do things, then they're going to trust you more because of that, right? And for us particularly, like, some of our new ads that we're running are 3 to 5 minutes long. Some of them, we're running the entire video sales letter, that's 18 minutes long. And so I don't think there's a length of time that is too long. I think it's only if you start kind of just like spewing trash or like not giving any value is when you should cut that ad short. It's like, how long do you need to give people as much value as possible? And ideally, the longer you can do that, the better. And if we can condense like all of what we learned in the topic into a sketchbook or into a long-form YouTube video that we run as a meta ad, If we can do that, then we can build a lot more trust with people before they click. And I think a lot of people complain sometimes when they're like, "Oh, you know, I'm getting trash leads," or "It's fake information," or, you know, "The people I'm getting, they're not answering the phone." All of that to me is a symptom of not giving them enough value before they opt in. Because if you don't give them enough value, what makes you think they're gonna give you their real information, their monthly revenue, sensitive details about their business, like, They don't trust you yet, and because they don't trust you, they're not going to give you the info, and because they don't trust you, they're not going to answer the phone, and because they don't trust you, you're getting spam leads. And so it should be solving for how do I get people to trust me more and not solving for how do I make more ads or different ads. And the other thing that I found too from, from what we're testing is that the ads that provide more value run longer. They have a longer shelf life to them. They don't fatigue as quickly Sorry, there's construction over there. They don't fatigue as quickly, right? And you can run them for a longer period of time and reach more of the market. Because like, when you make these direct offer ads, you're only reaching 3% of the market who's ready to buy right now. When you start running these educational-based ads, you can reach the other 97%, or at least 60% of people who are like problem aware in the market, and then take them through educating, like educating them through your sketchbook or long form or whatever your ad is, and then get them from like problem aware to, hey, now I'm looking for a solution and I trust you. And I think some people think this only works for info. It does not. It works for agencies like many, many agencies as well, because if you can take them through what's the process for you creating a brand film or what's the process for you creating short-form content for them and like list out all the steps, they're going to look at that. They're going to be like, wow, that's a lot of work that I don't want to do myself. And then you can at the end of the ad just be like, if you don't want to do all this yourself, we'll do it for you. Click link below, book a call with us, see if it's a fit, right? You can take all that and just overwhelm them with education, but at least when you did that, they're like, I trust Eric now because he educated me around a topic, but I don't wanna do it myself, so I'm just gonna hire Eric, right? So I think, think in terms of how do I make better, more educational, more authority and trust-building ads, and not how do I just like pump out a bunch of these like random photos, photo ads, image ads, static ads, these 5-second clips on your phone. Hey, if you want this, we're going to do this. Click the link. We guarantee XYZ. Because everyone sounds the same now. And it's a topic that I'm really passionate about because I truly believe that if you could just provide more value, people are going to trust you more. So hope that helps, and we'll see you in the next one.
