Part 2: The new Meta ads playbook for 2025

👋 Hi friends -

Welcome to The Newsletter Growth Memo. Twice a month, I share short reflections with my newsletter clients + other operators.

Zero formality, ads, or affiliate links - just a guy sharing learnings from working with media operators doing $25-500k+ / month with newsletters.

New reader highlights: Welcome to Daniel/Adam/Jordan (Arnold’s Pump Club) and Nick Martell (The Best One Yet / Snacks)

Let’s pick up where we left off -

We’ve got an idea for a concept.

Now, how do you combine it with hooks + body copy that consistently deliver lower CPAs / CPLs?

There are two frameworks you need to design your copy around:

1. Market awareness: how clear are the problem and available solutions to the prospect?

2. Problem → benefit → features (PBF): is the benefit of my offer clear? Have I connected it back to the prospect’s problem and things my product does?

Back in April my friend Jesse and I spent a day with Red Ventures talking to them about paid social.

They’re a multi-billion dollar media company built on top of SEO / content marketing.

They’re earlier in their paid ads journey + loved these frameworks as a way to get their teams thinking more broadly about their creative opportunities.

Here’s what we showed them:

No awareness level is strictly better or worse than another, there’s just a trade-off.

On average, more ‘aware’ audiences are…

1. Smaller scale

2. Easier to sell to - they need less education on the problem, meaning you can get away with shorter ads

What does one product look like presented to different levels of market awareness?

Ryze is a great example - they’re an Ecomm mushroom matcha company.

Here are a few of their hooks:

Unaware? Well, if your urine color is off, you know you have a problem now (+ Ryze does a great job of establishing itself as a solution for issues hydration alone can’t combat)

Solution aware? A mom who already knows she’s looking for quick/healthy breakfast choices just needs to know that Ryze is an option.

You get the idea.

Back to our example from The Average Joe (TAG):

This is an unaware / problem-aware market - it’s BIG and very popular to advertise to.

Every single year a new “easiest way to make money in 20XX” trend pops up - dropshipping, SMMAs, crypto, copywriting, growth operating, etc.

Knowing this, here’s how we built the hook:

1. Lifestyle b-roll: We start with b-roll of nice restaurants and cocktails - authentic (point-of-view footage) is better than stock footage

2. Calling out the outcome: “I hit a net worth of $1.2M dollars before I turned 25” - we call out the age + desired outcome

3. An actor the audience can self-identify with: Black t-shirt, watch - we wanted to go Iman Gadzhi-esque here (the creator we identified back in the market research in my last week)

That resulted in this ad, which first launched in March and is still running today.

Writing the body copy

Good ad body copy includes a few elements - let’s break down the TAG ad above.

1. The benefit: 10x your stock knowledge

2. Cost: Free newsletter

3. Time/effort: Daily - we probably should’ve mentioned the time commitment being low

4. Features: Market updates, trend analysis, and personal finance tips

5. Social proof: Join 250k people

Putting it all together - testing in Meta

Dynamic creative ads (rebranding to flexible ads) are my favorite way to run Meta tests.

1. You give Meta several ads/text options

2. It tests the combinations automatically to find a winning pair

Meta has a step-by-step guide on how to create them here.

How many combinations should you test? I like the rule of 3:2:2.

1. Three ads

2. Two primary texts

3. Two headlines

In each ad, the only difference is the hook (the first 1-4 seconds of the b-roll, script, or visual cues like text overlays)

Why? Your hook will make 80% of the difference in your ads.

I’ve seen massive (50%+) differences in CPLs just by changing this 1 variable.

And that’s it!

The bottom line is don’t try to outsmart Meta on in-platform decisions - run broad targeting / all placements and don’t restrict your bidding strategy.

Instead, spend 70%+ of your time on research and producing hyper-targeted creative.

Once you do this, you’ll see significant improvements across your ads program.

That’s the letter.

- Nathan May

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2. Have a question on growth, monetization, or content? Reply here, on LinkedIn, or shoot a note to [email protected]