Read time: 3 mins…
A few weeks ago our webinar ads started misbehaving…
You see we only target UK business owners…
Which is small pond in the grand scheme of things… but reasonably for a free live event opt-in we would expect to get a £15ish CPL.
… and we were getting £38!!!!!! 😬
Ouch.
Now the normal move here is to film new ads.
Ideate some new angles and hooks, get out there and film, edit, trim, captions etc….
But we didn't do that.
£38 is so outrageously high that we needed to act EVEN quicker if we had any chance of saving this live webinar.
So here’s what we did instead…
We took the top performing videos
Threw them into Canva
Overlaid different headlines on the first ten seconds.
In a big white box. Plain black text.
As you can see nothing pretty.
(I would argue actually quite ugly… 😅 but this is advertising not america’s next top model so idgaf.)
We made around 100 versions in 10 minutes…
And quickly uploaded them ALL into Meta Ads.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT…
The Meta Algo’ did it’s thing - and only spent money on ads that worked well.
So out of 100…. Meta gave meaningful spend to about 10 of them…
The 10 that were the best.
Which meant our cost per lead dropped from £38 to £16.
Exact same videos as before. Same targeting. Same offer.
The only thing that changed was the first line people read.
Here's why it works…
A headline that stops person A does nothing for person B.
Run one headline and you're fishing for one type of brain.
Run twelve and you start capturing people your ads were sailing straight past.
Afterwards I sat down and worked out why the winners won.
It came down to 12 psychological principles… and once you see them, you can't unsee them. 👇
The Curiosity Gap.
Open a gap between what they know and what they want to know… then refuse to close it.
"The setting 90% of our users never touch that doubles their results."
Open Loops.
Start a story and leave it unfinished. The brain has to close it.
"This client fired us on Tuesday. By Friday they'd called back."
Specificity.
Never use bullshit numbers. Rounded feels fake. Specific feels real.
"We'll call you back in 27 seconds."
Pain Articulation.
Describe their pain exactly how it sounds inside their head.
"You quoted the job. They said 'sounds great'. Then they vanished."
Contrarian Positioning.
Say the opposite of what your whole industry says… and mean it.
(This is the Moose in the Road. You know the one.)
The Paradox.
Two words that shouldn't sit together. The brain has to resolve it.
"The laziest study method that outperforms 6-hour revision days."
Loss Aversion.
Protecting what people already have beats promising something new.
"Every missed call is costing you money. You probably missed one today."
The Identity Callout.
Name exactly who you're talking to. Specific beats broad.
"Learning to code after 30? Do this differently."
Embedded Social Proof.
Don't say you can do it. Say how many times you've done it.
"How we've hit £100k months… 15 times."
Forbidden Knowledge.
People want what's behind the door. Proprietary beats public.
"The exact email we only ever shared with paying clients."
Stakes & Consequence.
Make it clear something is on the line.
"Check this one clause before you sign any commercial lease."
Fluency.
Easy to read wins. No jargon, no clever. Don't make them think.
(It's why our overlays are a plain white box. Ugly. Effective.)
Now here's the fun part…
You don't use them one at a time.
You stack them.
One of our top performers:
"The dumb 9-step system I've used 15 times to build $100k a month businesses."
That's the paradox + specificity + social proof… in one easy sentence.
Write one new headline for five of the principles above… and I'd place a hefty wager that at least ONE beats your current version.
As always I hope it's useful.
Elliott
P.S. I post a lot more in-depth content like this on YouTube for free.
Check out my YouTube channel here.
