The Best Ads for Nuts and Sunflower Seeds

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You’re reading Marketing Fodder, a weekly newsletter dedicated to helping you improve your Facebook and Instagram ads.

Today, we’ll be examining the ads of:

1. Smackin’ Sunflower Seeds

2. Nuts.com

STARTER
Marketing Headlines

• Google now highlights certain content creators in search results. This means Google feels confident that they can identify authoritative individuals in specific fields (Read more)

• Cloudflare is releasing a tool that will help website and content creators understand how AI model providers are using their content (Read more)

• NerdWallet’s SEO journey has some great nuggets (Read more)

MAIN
Nuts & Seeds

Trends:

According to Google Trends, US search interest (over the last 5 years) for sunflower seeds is greater than search interest for pecans, almonds, and brazil nuts. Search interest for Brazil nuts did briefly surpass sunflower seeds in June 2024, but fell after that:

How I Analyze Facebook Ads

A great Facebook ad communicates the benefits of the product or service, not solely the features. Think about it like this: a feature makes the product better but a benefit makes the customer’s life better. Features typically describe a physical aspect of the product, while benefits describe a change in the emotional state of the customer. Makeup companies do this well. Instead of focusing on features like ingredient names, their ads highlight how much better someone will look or feel by purchasing the product.

Alright, let’s see how these companies market their snacks:

#1: Smackin’ Sunflower Seeds

The Good:

• What this ad does well is make a simple product look premium.

• Using emojis in the bulleted list helps to highlight the features.

• The magnified image of a single sunflower seed makes the ad feel like the it’s promoting a gadget; this stands out because viewers are not expecting to see a tiny seed promoted like this.

The Bad:

• The headline, URL, and description section below the image are empty. I would add helpful information here unless testing has showed that keeping it blank is increasing CTR.

The Recommendation:

• The benefit of feeling enjoyment from eating a better sunflower seed is implied, but I would spell it out for the viewer with a sentence like, “Upgrade your snack game and treat your taste buds to pure deliciousness.”

• Test having a headline, URL, and description section with information about shipping and/or promotional offers.

• Test different background colors for the image. The blue looks great, but testing other colors like light red or yellow can produce surprising results for food products.

#2: Nuts.com

The Good:

• The image is doing most of the work in this ad. The text at the top of the image is large and easy to read. The image itself is eye-catching, having 80s vibes and showing a pecan being sucked up by a UFO. Being playful and comical in ads is underrated—far too many brands just post a picture of the product with a white background.

• This ad uses the headline and description section below the image to encourage the click.

• The additional “Shop Now” button within the image is a nice touch and stands out more than the gray button below the image.

The Bad:

• The ad copy in the Primary text (above the image) is the weakest part of this ad. It’s trying to be as playful as the image but would be more effective if it described a benefit, like, “Our jumbo nuts take movie night to the next level.”

The Recommendation:

• Text variations for ad copy that highlight a positive feeling or emotion that someone would have from buying the nuts.

• Test a customer quote in the ad copy.

Pro Tip

Understanding search intent can give you a competitive advantage.