Facebook Ads For Him - Personal Care Edition

Author

Kevin Fock
March 07, 2024

THE SPREAD
Morning Marketers!

Today we have some quick bites on Gen Z’s preferences and tests that Google is running. Then, we’ll get into the main course and examine the Facebook ads of three popular companies that cater to men. Finally, we’ll end with some SEO updates.

STARTER
To whet your appetite:

MAIN
The Best Ads:

  • This week we are looking at the Facebook ads of three popular brands that create personal care products for men:

    • 1) Hims

    • 2) Dr. Squatch

    • 3) Manscaped

  • Before we get into what these ads are doing well, let me explain the lens that we are looking through.

    • We are judging ads on whether they communicate the benefits of the product or service, not the features. Features are cool, but customers really care about what those features get them (the benefit of it), so we’ll be focusing on whether the ad communicates how the product or service solves a problem.

    Hims:

    • This Hims ad clearly conveys the benefit of the product. In fact, the ad shows the transformation with a before and after comparison.

    • The background color of the ad is notable, Hims may have found that this color had a higher CTR in tests. Running a test on background color alone can be a great way to see if your potential customers care about color (they might not even know they care).

    • The criticism I have for this ad is that it’s hard to tell if it’s the image of the patch hair and the image of the fuller hair belong to the same person, you just can’t tell, which lets doubt creep into the head of the potential customer. Let’s take a look at another version of this ad which fixes that:

  • This Hims ad provides another before and after example of patchy hair and a more full head of hair, but this version includes the eyebrows and eyes of the man. This helps establish that it’s the same person in both photos and increases the credibility of the offer (get hair loss treatment that works).

  • The badge on the right that says, “REAL hims CUSTOMER” is also a nice touch and provides some social proof.

  • Note that the color palette of has also changed to a warmer, redder tone that only takes up the bottom half of the ad.

    Dr. Squatch:

  • This Dr. Squatch ad relies on social proof from “Alec M.” who describes in detail what these soaps feel like and appears to give it a 5 star review. The ad image complements the review by describing the benefit: “Smell Like Bourbon.” If that is what some men want to smell like, then this ad is effectively communicating the transformation the customer will experience with this soap.

  • The arrow pointing to the “Shop now” button below the image is a great way to highlight the call to action, and may help CTR. Testing arrows and other shapes in images is a great way to see your potential customers respond to certain visual cues.

  • This next Dr. Squatch ad is a screenshot from a 41-second video clip:

  • The ad uses the Alec. M 5 star review again, but uses a video as the creative.

  • The man in the video talks about giving advice to his son about needing to “smell like a man,” which is the benefit provided by the soap.

  • My criticism is that this ad feels too serious, I would lean more into absurdity of smelling like a man and create an Old Spice type ad, where the benefits are explained with a comical skit.

Manscaped

  • For certain products, picking the images for Facebook ads is challenging. For Manscaped, it’s especially tricky because you don’t want to show the end result (the benefit) in a before and after type example (plus Facebook policies would not allow it).

  • This ad is Manscaped’s attempt to communicate the benefit of their product without out showing unsightly body parts.

    • The smooth spheres, with the Manscaped products resting on them, attempt to add credibility to the “SkinSafe” claim of the ad.

  • Again, testing the background color, and type of sphere shaped objects (try tennis balls?), may help improve CTR.

  • Let’s take a look at one of their ads for beard trimming:

  • This particular ad fall into the classic trap of promoting features without stating the benefit: a beautiful beard.

    • “Titanium-Coated T Blade”: how does that help me?

    • “Waterproof and Durable”: can I shave underwater?

    • “60 Minute Runtime”: for those that need to shave…everything?

  • My recommendation for this ad would be to communicate the transformation: from scraggily bearded guy who gets rejected by women, to a rugged, handsome guy who gets dates. Social proof and language pulled from reviews would also be worth testing in these types of ads.

Marketing Meme of the Week:

That’s all for this week. Remember, tomorrow’s Friday!

Until the next issue,

-Kevin