Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. It's super cheap. It's easy to get like five, 10 ROAS, but there's no room to scale, so…

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yeah. No, and let's be real, that's where the money is.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. It's way better to spend $600K at three ROAS than 10 ROAS and $1,000K a month, so…

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Definitely.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

So today, we aren't diving into that big fish brand. Maybe one of these days, we could totally do that. But I believe today, we're going to be diving into an eyelash brand, pretty big following. I know you sent over some of the ads. But would you kind of want to give a little background of what kind of industry they're in, what they're kind of selling? I know you didn't want to kind of give away too much, but kind of dive in, so people kind of have a gist of what kind of brand or business we're kind of talking about here.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. I've worked on this brand while I was in Boomn. So I stopped working on this brand probably like four months ago or five months ago. And we were doing quite a big number. So on this one, we had like $200, $300K spends in month. So it was a huge one, too.

It's an eyelash, eye serum brand. It basically... you apply it... I don't remember exactly how many times a week right now, but you apply the serum and your lashes and brows grow. And it was focused on older women, like 40 plus, and US only. So it was one of those accounts where we would pay like 3, $4 per click, as it's the most expensive audience in the whole globe, I think so.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh yeah. You're not wrong there. I have a couple of [inaudible 00:05:47] area and, oh my gosh, it's so expensive. Man, we've actually been even doing a little bit of Snap and TikTok ads and, man, those are just so cheap right now and they're good acquisition funnels, but I mean, shoot, you really have to have the omnichannel approach there.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. Like the Snap and TikTok and all those other smaller platforms are probably good for, I would say, general brand awareness and just bringing more channels into your, as you said, omnichannel approach. But until this day, Facebook and Instagram is our number one revenue generator, at least for me, so…

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, yeah. I'm the same way. I mean, shoot. Yeah. Everything we spoke about is all Facebook Ad related. So the whole Snap and TikTok territory is just so new, but let's go ahead and kind of dive into these bad boys. All right, man. You get to pick. Would you rather kind of dive into the Poor Ad or the Rich Ad first?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

I think we could start with the poor one and end with the good one, on a good note.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Sweet.

I'll kind of dive in, read off some of the copy. I got it pulled up in front of me, but y'all buckle up. I'm going to go ahead and get this bad boy started. All right.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Let's do it.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

So it looks like we do have a video in action. Both the Rich Ad and Poor Ads are video-oriented, but when it comes to the copy and the videos, they are completely different. So with this Poor Ad, I'm going to go ahead and start this bad boy off. But hey, no wonder why 2,700 plus women chose this specific product. 

Real science are patented. Complex taps into your hair, natural phases of growth to work quicker and longer than any other product. So real people, 20,000 plus, can't stop talking about their lashes and brows. Real results, thicker, fuller, stronger in 12 weeks or less, guaranteed.

So the copy's pretty interesting. I'd love to kind of... The video has, shoot, 17,000 views. So with this kind of Poor Ad, would you kind of dive in on the copy side, the video side? I'm kind of curious what made this the Poor Ad, to be honest with you.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. The copy is not bad on this one. It was our most used body copy, and the headline and link description were tested, too. So those performed great on our creatives. This was purely the video ad that didn't perform.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

And what do you think the reason for that was? For some reason, it's not pulling up on mine to kind of play the video, but is it kind of more a testimonial style, an infomercial style, or is it kind of a professionally done video? How would you kind of identify it?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah, both of these ads are testimonials. We picked both testimonials for a reason so we could compare what we're wrong and what we're right in both videos. So on this one, it is a clinical professional talking about this product, and how she tried to use it and how she... did she see results. At first, she talks about... Let me open up the video to be exactly sure.

Yeah. The main bad thing about this video is because she starts with these words, "As a nurse practitioner, I'm very skeptical of a lot of cosmetic theories out there, and what we say, and what we'll do the most of the time is not what we usually do." And she's not really emotional. She is really laid back and her voice is really low and calm. She doesn't attract... She doesn't grab attention.

The only good thing I would say about this ad, that she is a clinical professional, and that might attract some people that, "Oh, there is like a professional medicine person from a medicinal field talking about this product," but she's really not into describing her experience. And I think she just lost the person's attention those first couple of seconds.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

And that makes total sense. And was this kind of more of a user-generated video, like that she sends over, or did y'all have to kind of reach out, kind of, and pay X amount for this video?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. This one was professionally made out of some sort of office. I'm not sure about how much we paid, but I think it was paid, or she was a friend of a founder. I'm not sure right now.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, man. Yeah, no worries there. So with this specific ad, was this consistently like under a 1X ROAS there? Even though the copy was killing it, that video just did not pull it. 

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. It was below one. It never performed. And we tried it in different ways. We tried to use it in testimonial mashups, but it just didn't produce results. It was too... like, it was not... How would I describe it?

Yeah. It was really... she was not expressing right. And she didn't have a lot of charisma. That was the word I was looking for. So she didn't grab a person's attention in those first three seconds, which you think are the most important, the first one to three seconds, just to grab a person's attention, make him interested in what you're selling, making him interested into looking further into your ad. And then you can speak more about your product, give those closeup shots, and basically sell him. But those first three seconds need to grab him.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, yeah. No, that makes total sense. So I mean, I guess the moral of the story is no matter how good the copy is, which has been tested, it's been... the proof of concept's there, the copy makes money, but the video itself is in fact make it or break it. And whether it's kind of professional or user-generated content or whatever it is, a professional video can perform pretty bad, I guess 

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. And I would say like user-generated content is usually better in some cases, and especially in brands like in healthcare business or skincare or like lash serums, sort of health and beauty space products, it's all about user-generated content and testimonials and just basically are customers raving about how good your products are and not just sitting down the founder and/or like a clinical professional and they, in a low voice and no charisma, talking about how good this product is.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, yeah. No. I mean, that makes total sense. I mean, shoot. The videos you see kill... people are hyped up. They're super engaged. Those first three seconds are make it or break it. So, I mean, with that competition out there, you really have to differentiate yourself. And I mean, even though she has the authority, shoot, the authority is not going to pay them bills. You know what I mean?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. That's for sure.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Well, heck yeah. So let's dive into this kind of Rich Ad. Now, I love this one. These are my kind of style of ads right here, starting off with some sort of actual review. The video is a super different style. It's got some badass overlay on there, but I'm going to go ahead and dive in this bad boy, are you ready?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. Let's do…

Host: Dylan Carpenter

So we're going to start off with my eyelashes grew like crazy, from Miss Becky. This is the only clinical proven product to give you thicker, fuller, stronger lashes and brows in 12 weeks or less, guaranteed. The results are real and amazing. And of course, we got a super popped out headline, lash and brow growth that lasts.

So, I mean, this is a complete different copy, a complete different angle and a complete different video. Let's go ahead and dive in this bad boy, kind of, piece by piece and let's separate, break it apart.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yep. Let's do it. The copy is super simple on this one. We just want to like make it feel like it's a true testimonial, like she's not just talking in the video, but she's also talking in the copy. So we just basically put caps lock testimonial, one sentence from her whole speech and put five stars. I wouldn't recommend putting five stars right now because Facebook is banning ads and banning accounts for putting these stars right now. It was legal back in the days when we did this ad.

Karolis Gelmanas:

But there is other ways to show that it's a testimonial. And the headline, it was a proven one. Lash and brow growth that lasts. We also did lash and brow growth that works, and both overview headlines were killer ones.

And about the video, this one starts completely different. We took her best sentence from the whole testimonial video and put it to the start of the video. So I see most of the people, when we do a testimonial video, they just started talking, "Hello. My name is Becky. I'm a mom of three. I work at this place. I tried a lot of products. I liked this one," and it's super slow. And on this one, we wanted to do a really fast-paced one. And the first sentence she says, it's, "It was like a miracle, because my eyelashes just grew like crazy." And already in the first second, you're wondering what is the product, what did she do, what did she eat that made her eyelashes grow like crazy.

So already, you grab the attention of a person who has this problem. She doesn't like how her eyelashes look. And this woman is saying that her lashes grew like crazy. So she must have like this magic pill. And you grab a person's attention and you want to watch the whole video.

And then after this, like, crazy first sentence, she starts to talk more about  her story, how she met her wife and how she said that her eyelashes look fake and were very fake, and she was really amused that everybody thought that her eyelashes are fake. So this one was not talking about a product really much, but I also think that if we added a couple of shots and a couple of sentences about her talking about the actual product, it wouldn't make a bad ad. I think it would work as well. But this one was a truly personal one and talking about her experience using this product.

And I think this is one of the most important things in these health and beauty skincare product lines, too, not just talking about that your product is amazing and it works, and we have a guarantee, and it will definitely work for you, but a real person talking about her experience and not just her experience, but how she felt.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yeah.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

If you put your customer in your shoes, the customer wants to get a better feeling. She doesn't want to have longer eyelashes just because they will be longer. She wants to have longer eyelashes because her husband will think that she is more pretty. Her friends will think she's more pretty. She will think she is more prettier herself.

So we want to give the person a feeling that she will be more pretty and not just talk about how the product is amazing and works every time.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

That makes total sense. Now is Becky in the one in the actual video that the testimonial's coming from?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yep.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, so you matched up the testimonial with who was kind of speaking in the video?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. Yeah. We want it to match like, as this testimonial, as this ad is going from her.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Man, that's pretty nifty. So is this something y'all kind of do across the board whenever you have a specific video from someone similar to Becky, all kind of match it with the actual testimonials themselves?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. Yeah. That's a typical thing we do. And it works really great.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

When it comes to this kind of performance, how long was this ad kind of running and what was the kind of return on ad spend you were seeing consistently with this? I know for the last ad, it was one or below. Was this one pretty high up on the ROAS scale?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. This one, we ran for, I don't want to lie, but probably four months or something. It wasn't really good ad for us. And we had a lot of different variations of it, different meme bars, different entry points, like the first couple of seconds. We used this ad with different offers, and in testimonial mashups. So we utilized this one a lot, and it was above two, for sure. It was one of the best ones for us.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, yeah. I mean for cold audiences, when you're scaling up and sitting at that two, I mean, that's a killer area just because you got to keep in mind of the lifetime value. Because I mean, shoot, if you're going to acquire a customer, put a dollar in and get two out, I mean, you're going to be able to have a ton of backend sales going in there.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. And the returning customers are a gold mine, so…

Host: Dylan Carpenter

What do you think the actual returning customer rate was for a client like this? Would you say it was like 30, 40% or…

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah, it was 30, 40% because you have to keep using the product to keep those lashes and brows growing, and not go back to the same spot you were before using the product, so you have to keep using.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, man. Yeah. Heck yeah. Those are the best types of products there.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Shoot. And the cost effective manner out of the gate, then shoot, nurture those bad boys or bad ladies.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yep.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Heck yeah. I mean, I guess, the whole gist of all of this is, was this... This wasn't a professionally done video. This was more user-generated content, right?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

This one was done professionally, too, but not that studio looking one.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yeah.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

It was filmed with a good iPhone and it was her sitting in front of it. So it's kind of in the middle. It was not the typical user-generated one, with her is pixelated and like in a super home environment, but it was not in the studio and looking super professional, too, so…

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, man. And this was actually done with an iPhone?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. I think it was done with the new iPhone.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, the cameras are that good. Oh my gosh. Hey, if you can do it from an iPhone, so be it. I mean, it goes to show you don't always need a crazy professional team to spend 10K on a video to make it happen. You know what I mean?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. I might be wrong on this one, but I know that we had a lot of videos filmed on an iPhone for this brand. But yeah, you don't need a great camera to make a great ad. Like, you just need an iPhone, perfectly... a stabilizer or some kind of stand, so it's not shaky and that's it, and get a person with a lot of charisma, and that's it, you have a killer ad.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Heck yeah. Well, shoot. We had two complete different types of copy, two complete different creatives. And I mean, shoot, the numbers don't lie there. I mean, y'all be able to get some context there, but I mean, complete different angles. So, I mean, when it comes down to it, charisma plays a large role. Those first three seconds to kind of really capture, "Hey, it was a miracle. My eyelashes grew this crazy" to where it's like, all right, as you mentioned, is there some sort of magical pill? So, I mean, I would imagine the watch-through rate on this was just epic.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. And about the charisma part, you have to try a lot of different people doing testimonial videos, because sometimes, you can think that, "Oh, this one is perfect. She has a lot of charisma and has good expressions and uses her tongue in the right way," but it just doesn't click with your audience. So you have to try a lot of influencers, a lot of friends, even.

We had for other brands at the agency, we had the owner, Colin McGuire, do some basic UGC videos and they were the best performing ones. And she just filmed them in like 10 minutes with an iPhone. So you just have to test a lot. And it comes with everything, not just ads and not just testimonial videos. That's a lot of things, and what will hit. Maybe it will be the one million dollar ad, and you will scale, so…

Host: Dylan Carpenter

No, I mean, that makes total sense. I mean, at that kind of scale of spending, shoot, more than 100K a month, that's 2X ROAS on the top of funnel side, it's an absolute gold mine. So, I mean, would you say this is an ad that really brought in the majority of revenue or did y'all have four or five winning ads kind of at one time there?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

We had. This was not the only one, but this one was a great contributor. We had some other great testimonial videos. The founder of this brand is super charismatic as well. So we had some great videos from her. But yeah, this one, the Becky one, was definitely a great working ad, and contributed to a lot of revenue for us.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Well, heck yeah. Miss Becky killed it on this video.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Going to be able to get some insights there. I mean, this is textbook of a perfect video, as well as what was done afterwards. Just some nice overlay texts. The color is similar to the actual product page. So I mean, it's pretty snazzy and I think it's a great example. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, it's a really good ad to kind of look at and possibly build some ideas off of there.

So, I mean, I would love to kind of get your perspective on what creates a perfect ad, kind of from your perspective. Because I would imagine, you've tested a ton. Would it be different copyings with testimonials, USG content? We've already spoke a ton about that. What do you think would kind of make a perfect ad there?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

For this particular brand or in general?

Host: Dylan Carpenter

More on the kind of, I wouldn't say for this specific brand, but even for some of the... for the in-house brand you're working on. What do you see that kind of works best on the creative side that you would kind of maybe recommend people were some best practices? Would it be testimonials and the copy, headlines that pop, or just testing a ton and seeing what sticks? What's your kind of go-to style on the creative to kind of see what's actually working there?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. We have a lot of angles we work on. We have a typical buzz feed videos, like the best, I would say, scaling videos for e-comm brand. And they're not super hard to make if you have some content and some shootings you did in the past. What I do is I just write like six to 10 short sentences and I pile them into the story. And then I give those texts to the video that [Galvi 00:26:48] have and she kind of puts it all into a story together and makes it a buzz feed style video.

So for example, we do like a video that starts with, "Remember that feeling when you dropped your thousand dollar phone?" Yeah. "And it's laying face down and you hoping that the screen is not cracked," and so on. So just those couple of sneaky intros and then you grab the person's attention and he's wondering, "Oh, yeah. I broke my phone a couple of times in my lifetime and I paid like $600 for a screening repair. I wonder what they are selling, and would it help me."

And then we introduce like, "Meet this brand. We are doing this and this. Our phone cases are this good, and they do that, and they are gorgeous, and they are protective," and we are selling them the phone cases in the other part of the video. But the first part of a buzz feed for me is always a first second is a closeup, some sort of movement. It definitely needs to be some sort of movement to grab person's attention. And the copy has to be super attention-grabbing, like "It's inevitable, accidents happen." And yeah, you have to, like I said, grab the person's attention and then he has to wonder like, "What kind of accidents? Like how can I keep..."

Host: Dylan Carpenter

What's next? What's next?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. "How can I keep my phone safe," and so on. So yeah, the buzz feed videos. We started using a lot of images and like flat lays. We have a small office space to do some shootings. And we just basically like do some sort of flat lay. I don't know even know how to explain that. Like put the dress down, put couple of magazines, a laptop and a phone case, and just make a good composition, maybe some sun shadows to look it even more great, or just putting your phone above your head and shooting into the sky so that you can see like the clouds and stuff.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Man, these are some killer ideas actually, man. Shouts out.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. Like the main thing is just brainstorm a lot. There is no magic pill. I will not say the one idea that will scale your business.

For example, we just launched the new collection and we tested like 800 ads. So we just do a lot of crazy ideas, a lot of weird ideas. We think that a lot of these ads will not work. Some of them don't. Some of them do. So it's just a matter of like out-testing your competitors. If you have more ads, yeah, out of those 800, the majority of them will not work. But if we have 50 winners, it's going to be crazy for us because other brands are testing 10 creators per month and they might have one winner, so…

Host: Dylan Carpenter

It's a volume game, it sounds like. You know, just …

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. Like just creating as much as possible, not thinking that much about the hacks, the actual like media buying hacks, using different accounts, using like rules and all those stuff.

It is important. And I spend a lot of my time in ads manager, but I spend a lot of time thinking about creatives, writing creative briefs, writing the creative copy for the videos. And a lot of my time goes to that, too. Because if you don't have those great working creatives, if you don't have catchy copy, if you don't have catchy first seconds, no media buying hacks will help you.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas

So I started to shift my mindset into being creative and copy first, and then when I have that part dialed in, then I could go to ads manager and create those great structures, and testing structures and testing different other bids and tactics. But I only started doing that when I have a creative thing …

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Oh, yeah. That creative is king. I mean, all of those kind of goes to show, because I mean, videos can make it or break it regardless of whether that copy works or not.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Well, snap, man. This has been super juicy. How can anybody kind of get in touch with you? We love to give you a little shout out attached to this. You got a website they can check out, an email, Facebook? What's the best way people can kind of get in contact with you?

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

Yeah. I think Facebook is the best one. I don't have an agency. I don't have a website and anything, but if you want to talk about creatives, if you want to talk, especially copywriting, I'm into that a lot. As I'm not a native English speaker, I need to put way more time and effort into becoming a great English copywriter. So if you want to talk about that especially, let's connect.

You can find me on Facebook as Karolis Gelmanas. It's kind of a hard name for US citizens, but I think you can copy-paste it from the podcast title.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yeah. Yeah. We'll have this in the show notes, how to kind of find him on Facebook. Because I mean, shoot, we had an up and comer killing it on the copywriting. Whether or not you're from the States and you know the English side of things, man, you're killing it. We'll go ahead and kind of have the closeout section. But once again everybody, thanks for tuning into the Rich Ad Poor Ad Podcast. It goes to show, creative is king. And hey, if you need any ideas, go ahead and give him a follow on Facebook and shoot him a message. Hey, thanks everybody. Have a good one.

Guest: Karolis Gelmanas 

It was real nice talking to you, Dylan.

Host: Dylan Carpenter

Likewise, my man.