The Best Ads for Men's T-Shirts

THIS WEEK’S FODDER
☀️ Good Morning

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

Today, I’m testing a new format. Instead of four companies, we’ll be taking a closer look at two companies:

1. True Classic

2. Huckberry

STARTER
Marketing Headlines

• Topical authority, from an SEO perspective, is a gauge of how much expertise your website has on a given topic. Google has never admitted to using an authority score in their algorithm, but a May 2024 leak revealed that Google has a mechanism for measuring site authority. However, we have no idea whether it’s part of the current algorithm. Regardless, you’ll want to understand topical authority if you want to outrank your competition and this article provides a nice explanation.

• Large language model-based systems (like GPT-4o) are trained on unimaginably large amounts of data. If you’re a marketer, you might be wondering how to get your website cited by one of these models, which would show your authority on the topic and bring traffic to the site. This article provides some concrete steps for helping your site get cited in AI outputs; one of those steps is to keep your page load time below 500ms.

• How much time do you spend on Facebook? This chart from eMarketer reveals a lot about how different generations are spending their time on different social media platforms:

  

MAIN
The Fit

T-Shirt = Underwear?

According to Fabrics Galore, t-shirts were originally an underwear item. It wasn’t until the 1950s that t-shirts became fashionable (Marlon Brando and James Dean helped make that a reality).

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. So, focusing on how your product or service makes your target customer’s life easier (or better) helps get the conversion.

Alright, let’s see how these companies market their t-shirts:

#1: True Classic

The Good:

• The ad copy has a snappy feel and the emoji-themed bullet point list makes it easy to read at a glance.

• The image is text heavy but communicates the benefit of this shirt: a confidence boost.

• The quote, “These shirts are like shapewear for men,” instantly helps the potential customer (who might be a female partner) understand the problem that this shirt solves.

The Bad:

• The quote about the shirts being shapewear for men is not attributed to a customer.

The Recommendation:

• Use a human model to show (instead of tell) the customer how the shirt acts like shapewear.

• Provide a customer name for the quote.

#2: Huckberry

The Good:

• The ad copy does a great job of addressing common issues with t-shirts—being too slim or too baggy.

• The image shows the shirt being worn and the person wearing it is smiling (extra points for that!).

The Bad:

• The ad highlights a number of features but doesn’t call out why the customer will benefit from wearing the shirt.

• Also, the shirt looks baggy, which goes against the ad copy.

The Recommendation:

• Incorporate the benefit into the ad copy. Something like, “Your best-fitting confidence boost.

• Test a quote from a customer on the image.

• Test a tighter fitting shirt.

Pro Tip for Ads

This week’s tip comes directly from Facebook’s Business Help Center.

To boost the quality and performance of your Meta ads, make sure the content of your ads does not:

1. Withhold information

2. Use sensationalized language

3. Use spammy tactics to urge people to engage with the ad

For examples and more info on the quality of ads, including the attributes of a low quality landing page, keep reading here.