Ad Roulette #11: Anik Singal, Gregory Hickman, YouTube

I have never seen a more worse ad than this. This is a joke. You guys set this up. Is this a real ad? Is this a joke? Okay, so listen, if I come up missing or something happens to me, you know who got it?

What's going on? Vince Reed here. And it's that time again. It's ad roulette time where we critique ads and funnels and we make them better following a three part framework that looks like this. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at these ads because every third or fourth post is we never know what's gonna come up. And at the end, after I critique the ad, after I make them better, we're gonna vote, we're gonna pick a winner. This is a new element that we just added to the show because we want to get your comments. I want to know if you agree with me. Do you agree with how I grade these ads and funnels? Well, time will tell. So let's get started. Drum roll please. What we got here? What we got? What we got? Oh, wait, wait, wait. Look at that guy. Oh, just the greatest ad of all time. You're lucky this ad isn't in the competition because we would just pick a winner right away. I mean, but we could kind of really quickly play around with it. You know, we're calling out our ideal CL webinar funnels and we're saying, hey, recover 80% of your lost leads. I'm not gonna take your time going through my ad. It just wouldn't be fair. I'd just be too biased. It wouldn't be right. I can't do it. But hey, you see how we got all the stuff there? We can go ahead and keep it scrolling. That guy's ad was cool. Make sure you go check it out in the ad library. Alright, so let's see what else we got here. Gregory Hickman. Alright, so this looks like an image ad. We don't get a lot of image ads. So we're gonna follow our framework, we're gonna look at the messaging, we're gonna look at the creative and the copy. Alright, so let's take a look at the messaging. If you took a one month vacation tomorrow, will your agency break? So clearly he' agencies and he's asking a really big question that a lot of agencies struggle with is you know, what happens when the main person running the agency steps away. So I think that he's, he's found a decent, a pretty solid pain point. Now let's take a look at the creative. All Right. So the creative is just an image. You got the guy smiling. I'm assuming that's the owner of the agency or someone working there. Gradually remove yourself from your agency fulfillment without a big team. Okay, so it's clear. Okay. I'm obviously making an assumption on who I am, who this guy is, but you know, that's what you have to do when you. When you have an image. So let's go ahead and take a look at the copy. All right, so we've got a couple X's there. Burned out, tired feeling like your business, like your business owns you instead of the other way around. It doesn't have to be like this. I was an agent. I was in the agency world for 10 years. Okay, cool. So right to the pain points and trying to stay congruent with obviously the messaging that he has on that. Solid. Pretty clear. So let's go ahead and click on the learn more button. Let's take a look at the funnel. All right, so you can see brand new for agency owners, digital service providers, and consultants looking to adapt, win back your time, escape from constant client work, and create additional revenue in your digital agency service business. All right, so clear in terms of headline. Okay. The one thing I will say in terms of the creative and the copy, there's a lot going on. I say it. It seems like every single episode of Ad Roulette, when you're looking at the copy, you want to be able to just look at it and be able to read what's going on. If your eyes have to physically be forced to read to figure out what's going on, it could be a lot of copy. Especially because most of the traffic is coming from mobile. So what I would do here is I would try to get this to like three lines, max. All of this copy here, try to shrink it down to three lines so you have the sub headline. Use this big little business agency model to reduce overhead and grow profit. All right, So I mean, again, I think there's a lot of copy there. Now the next thing I'm noticing here is in terms of is it mobile friendly? All right, so it's a clear headline. There's a lot of copy here. But the thing that I'm noticing here is there's nothing above the fold for me to do. So let's go ahead and scroll down and see what the action step is that they're asking me or that they want me to take. All right, so there's more information here, bullet points, this presentation. So it looks like that I am Going to be taken to some type of presentation which I was not kind of aware about in the actual ad itself. It wasn't aware that I was going to a presentation. Alright. It wasn't really clear like, you know, video reveals how to get your time back if you're an agency owner. So let's keep scrolling. Looks like we have to keep scrolling. More bullet points. Keep scrolling. Boom. Now the button is way, way below the fold. All right, so you know, this one is not, you know, very mobile friendly. I would definitely try to move that, that button up so, you know, I can obviously click on it and get to the training. So let's go ahead and click on the button and see what happens. All right, so you click on the button. Yes. Send me to the modern day agency presentation. All right, so then it's taking me right to the presentation. So go ahead and click off of that and scroll back up to the top. Alright, so the first thing I would do is in the ad itself, I would try to make sure that the person clicking is aware that they're gonna be taken to some type of presentation. And then I would definitely try to shrink this down to, you know, have less lines and try to move the button above the fold to follow kind of the framework that we set out. All right, so pretty solid. Definitely some things that could be done better. But we'll see what happens at the end when we grade them all to pick a winner. All right, and with that being said, let's move on to the next. Drum roll please. What we got here? What we got here? What we got here? All right, stop. Well, that's YouTube.

Okay, okay, I know. All right. I have never seen a more worse ad than this. YouTube for real. Okay, first of all, let's just back up. Let's take a look at the framework. Pull it up here. Messaging. I would have no idea that this is a YouTube ad. Unless, you know, if I didn't know that it was YouTube with the blue check mark. Okay, I'm almost like looking to see, is it like an underscore here? Is this like a meme account? This is a real YouTube account. No, I have no idea. This is a YouTube ad. Unless obviously I see the YouTube as obviously the handle. Hey, there's nothing in terms of messaging, all right? And then you've got two people sitting here smiling without having anything like YouTube on, like a shirt, a T shirt or something. For real. This is a joke. Do you guys set this up? Is this a real ad? Is this a joke? Alright, let's See the copy, see the results. You want YouTube ads make it easy for people to choose your business. Alright, so what this should say is, this is why you don't want to run Instagram ads. You shouldn't come to YouTube because obviously you guys don't know how to run Instagram ads. Sorry, sorry. This is terrible. So go ahead and click on the Learn more button. Alright, so it's following our framework. We want to look at the headline, we want to look at the copy of the creative. We want to make sure that it's mobile friendly. All right, so this is better. Okay, now we know it's YouTube advertising. Grow your business with YouTube. See, this is literally what the ad should have said. Moving this up with the image with the video right there. This would have been a perfect ad. I think somebody got confused. You know, this is what happens when you're making all that money that you're making over at YouTube. You just think you can get away with anything. Just put up an image with the two people smiling and then they're supposed to just know that they can just click on it. Alright, so we have, let's see, reach your potential customers where they're watching above the fold. It's hitting all the criteria on the funnel. It's mobile friendly. I mean, even have the phone number to call them. I mean, clearly whoever's making the funnels is doing a good job. But, you know, whoever's making your ads at YouTube is clearly just, you know, I don't know what was going on, but outside of that, the funnel was strong, but the ad was absolutely terrible. We know where they're getting graded. But anyways, with that being said, it's enough of that bad ad. Let's move on to the next. Drum roll, please. I'm gonna get banned because of y'. All. All right, here we go. What we got here? Board of experts. Looks like my man annexing Goll. We got the long vertical ad scaling right there, hitting you right in the face with the messaging. And it got all, you know, I'm assuming what he's saying is what's being shown down here. So that's cool. He realizes that, you know, sometimes when you're scrolling right, there's no audio. So he's trying to make sure that it's clear what's going on. All right, so let's go ahead and look at the copy here down below. Are you looking to scale your course? Coaching or agency business? Want a great mastermind to help you? All right, cool. So let's go back Up. We forgot to listen to the creative of the ad. Pretty clear. Looks like some type of mastermind for coaches. Let's listen here.

We're able to sell over $64.8 million worth of information products since 2015. We sold over 247,000 courses and, you know, in just a 12 month window, we were able to spend over $10 million on paid ads, obviously profitably. And this was not easy. This was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. But the biggest, biggest breakthrough I finally got through was because I had to learn all this on my own. There is no one out there teaching us how to do this. There is no one out there. Like, yeah, there's like the theoretical advice, right? But like, what about practical advice? What about write this copy? What about create an offer like this? What about build a sales team like this? What about like use this source of traffic, you know, make your funnel deeper. Here are the numbers and KPIs that you should match. Here is where you find the best talent for this type of thing. Like that type of specific questions and answers. And that's what we've built. I want to invite you to click above or below, go to the next page and give me your name and email and watch a 20 minute video about a program that I've created here called Board of Experts. It is for not the most. Okay. It's lit.

All right. I thought this was a really solid ad. A lot of things are happening here that I saw was happening and I want to make you aware of them that were good. Why I think this is great. All right, so number one, he hit you with the humble grab, humble brag, right in the beginning, right? Sharing all of the accolades, you know, spending 10 million on ads, right? And then he went into the questions and I call this kind of a catch all method, right? He's asking you a bunch of questions and he knows that if you're a person, then you ran ads and you've been in business, but that typically one of those questions are gonna catch you to draw you in, right? So I know there was a few there that I was like, hmm, what does he mean by going deeper in the funnel? These are some things that even myself I'd be curious about. And then he hit you with, hey, I have a mastermind. And this is where you can get those questions answered. So I thought he'd hit all the major points. The creative was on point, letting me know what it was about. A mastermind for coaches and consultants. All right? So go ahead and click on the learn more button and check out the funnel. All right, so we want to look at the headline, we want to check out the creative and the copy, and then we want to make sure that it's mobile friendly. So right off the bat, I would try to move this up a little bit. There's a lot of space here. Right. We want to make sure we. We don't waste any of that space. But let's see, only for core sellers, coaches, and agency owners. $500,000 plus a year calling out his ideal client. You know, although I'm a fan of having less copy here, this is. It isn't really isn't terrible, but I definitely would shrink it down to like five lines. Again, if you're looking at the copy, you don't want the individual to be forced to read. Remember, this is a mobile phone. You want them to be able to see and understand exactly what they need to do. But, you know, you can see here, finally, learn how to scale your business by joining an exclusive mastermind focused on funnels, traffic offers, copy, and a hiring systems. Right. So you got the button above the fold and then there's more copy here. Right. Maybe there's a way to, you know, create this where there's bullet points listing all of the things the mastermind is about. So, for example, you know, you can say here, like, watch this video or join this mastermind and discover. And then you could have this all in bullet points on how to, you know, fix your funnel, get more traffic, improve copy and hiring. You could list it in bullets versus having it in just kind of one, you know, big thing jumbled up here. Let's go ahead and click on the button and see what happens. So, boom. Enter your name and email below and secure your seat. So, you know, really clear to the mastermind. Looks like it's a VSL or an evergreen type of funnel model. Really, really clear. All right, so we had an X off of that. Yeah, I thought that this had all the elements of a strong, strong funnel. You know, we've got a chance, guys, to check out three ads, three funnels, and now it's time for me to get my thinking cap on. And it's almost the moment of truth where we pick a winner. That's why I'm gonna need your help because I want to know if you guys agree with how I'm going to critique some of these. So you can go ahead and start the Jeopardy music as I get into thinking mode. And then when we come back here in A second. It's time to grade these funnels and to grade these ads. All right, moment of truth. Okay, it's time to pick a winner. And again, in the comments, let me know if you agree with what we're going to have here. All right, so the first ad that we took a look at here, Gregory Hickman, I thought that the messaging was great. Okay? If you took a month vacation tomorrow, will your agency break? Now, you have the image here, right? And the image always leaves room for some type of assumption. Okay. At first glance, I was just like, okay, I'm assuming this guy, you know, has something to do with the agency. But the more I started to think about this, and in fact, I had someone on our team chime in. He said, well, this guy is living his best life. It looks like he's biking, he's able to get away from his agency. So, you know, again, I had to kind of think through that. Ideally, you'd want it to be a little bit more clear of what they're trying to portray. But I get it, again, supports everything in terms of, you know, being able to fulfill a big team without you even having to be there. And then the copy went right into the pain points. All right, so, you know, in terms of the ad framework, the messaging, the creative, and the ad copy, the only reason I'm not going to Give this a 3 out of 3 from the Creative perspective, and I'm going to give this a 2 out of 3 is because I simply had to spend too much time trying to figure out, okay, what he was trying to portray there. All right, you want it to be extremely clear. You want there to be some type of congruency here. And again, I'm getting a little bit harder and more harsh on these critiques. All right, so I'm going to give this person a two out of three. But, Greg, this could have easily been a three. So don't. If I ever meet you out somewhere, don't be mad at me. Now, in terms of the funnel, okay, looking at the funnel framework, first thing we want to look at is the funnel headline. It was clear again. It was matching what was going on inside of the prospect's mind. You click on this ad, you're expecting something that's going to help me get more organized, have more time and freedom. It did that in the headline. Now, I felt that there was way too much copy and creative here in the funnel messaging. We want to be able to just look at it and understand what's happening without having to force your eyes to read. And this is probably one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of people that are creating funnels make when they're optimizing for mobile. I'm sure this looks perfectly fine on a desktop computer, but because it's mobile, see, it's a lot more copy, so you might want to think about duplicating it and creating a separate version for mobile with less copy. So I try to get this to three lines and then you got more copy here. But worst of all, the button to actually do anything is below the phone, so it's not mobile optimized. So for those reasons, I have to give this particular funnel A1. Okay, one out of three. Alright, so with that being said, taking a look at the final numbers here, looking at the ad, we have a 2 out of 3. And looking at the funnel, we have a 1 out of 3. So we have a total of 3 out of 6 for the first ad. Alright, moving on to the worst ad in the history of all ads, this YouTube ad. So listen, if I come up missing or something happens to me, you know who got me? It was YouTube. They got me. So y', all, y' all be looking out for that. But anyhow, okay. Oh gosh, look at that ad. Anyways, you got the ad framework here. There is no messaging, there's literally no creative. I don't know if these guys were a guy looking at a comedy show, a guy, you know, having lunch together at work. I had no clue what was going on here. And for that reason, I would probably never ever even get to the copy because I'm still just scrolling by not knowing that this is even an ad. So for those reasons, okay, this gets a zero out of three and you know, just to kind of just continue to just bury, just continue to just bury this YouTube ad. Aren't you guys known for video? Like, where's the video? You know, show me why you shouldn't be running video ads on Instagram, you should be running video ads on YouTube. Alright, so moving on to the funnel. Okay, looking at the page headline, this is where I thought that they did. Amazing, right? You have the clearance headline. Had they matched what's going on here over here, this would be definitely a much better performing ad. But grow your business with YouTube ads. Very clear. You can see and not a lot of copy here. They hit the three lines and you've got the button above, above the fold. You even have a phone number to call. So this was a perfect funnel optimized for mobile, really clear of what the end outcome Is the only thing that sucks about this entire process is nobody's ever gonna get here because ain't nobody clicking on that learn more button to see the photo. Just terrible ad. But I'm gonna give you a three out of three in terms of your funnel. Okay. Bringing you to a grand total of three out of six. Okay. On your ad and your funnel, which leads us to the last and final ad and funnel here. Alright, so looking at the ad messaging. All right, so again, there's no border here, but I thought this ad did a great job in the beginning of having clear copy. And obviously all of the text sharing with you is essentially what was being said in the ad. The creative was. Was great. Right? We talked about that in great detail. How he started off with the humble brag, then he went to the questions. So I thought that the creative was great and I felt like the ad copy was on point, you know, explaining if you're a coach or consulting and you're looking for a mastermind, I thought it was great. The only thing that I would say here is, remember, when someone gets to an ad, especially a video ad, it's gonna be muted, okay? It's gonna be muted in the newsfeed. All right? So depending on what is being said here is the only way that the person that's scrolling by can be clear of what this is about unless they hit the unmute button. All right, so that would be the only thing that I would say to improve on this ad. But the creator was so on point and I believe that there was an attempt to do that with the larger box here and the information. I'm gonna go ahead and give this ad a 3 out of 3. But to make it better, I think I might have had maybe some bigger things happening here in the beginning just to let the viewer know this is an ad and what this is about. All right, so moving over to the funnel. Okay. When we're looking at the ad headline, or excuse me, the funnel headline, it's clear. For course sellers, coaches and agency owners, it was matching what was going on inside the prospect's mind from the ad. Again, as always, a lot of copy here. I would try to get this to three lines. It was a lot of creative and copy. It's definitely optimized for mobile. You have the button above the fold. I would probably try to get this to one line less copy here and you know, maybe try to get it to where we don't need this. Maybe an image here or some type of video in between here to push some of this below out, but there's a lot to look at here and a lot to do on mobile. Again, I'm sure that this is pretty good on a desktop computer, but a lot going on on mobile. So for those reasons, because there's a lot of copy here. Okay. On the creative side, I can only give this funnel a two out of three. All right. Bringing this particular ad and funnel to a grand total of five out of six. And as you guys can see, we have got our winner. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Congratulations. Congratulations, board of Experts. You are the winner of this episode of Ad Roulette. But you tell me, was I too harsh on YouTube? Do I need to be worried for my life? Okay, you guys let me know in the comments and be sure to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel and so you don't miss them. Our job is to make sure that you don't ever, ever, ever make an ad like YouTube. I'm.