The Best Ads for Treadmills

THIS WEEK’S FODDER
☀️ Good Morning

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

Today, we’ll be examining the Facebook ads of these companies:

1. Peloton

2. NordicTrack

STARTER
Marketing Headlines

• SearchGPT might be a threat to Google, but it’s still early. This article provides a detailed breakdown of what SearchGPT can do and how it compares to Google search.

• Need some quick SEO wins? This article compiled a list of helpful things you can do to boost your SEO.

• Fixing your heading elements (H1, H2, etc.) by putting them in the proper hierarchical order will not improve Google rankings but is a best practice.

• Google’s Danny Sullivan suggests not making radical changes to try to move up a spot or two in the rankings.

MAIN
Indoor Running

Trends:

According to Google Trends, in the past 5 years, search interest for Peloton was significantly higher before 2022; NordicTrack follows a similar trend, but with far less search interest overall:

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 treadmills:

#1: Peloton

The Good:

• This ad from September 2024 does a great job of putting the company’s signature feeling of being empowered to exercise into an ad.

• “One step forward. No steps back.” - This phrase is both aspirational and a play on words. Phrases like this are helpful in ads because they are easier to remember than a list of features (like maximum speed etc.).

• The image shows the product in use and gives the viewer a sense of how this treadmill would look inside their home.

The Bad:

• The URL needs to be cleaned up, including “HTTPS” in this field is not necessary.

The Recommendation:

• The ad copy (in the Primary text above the image) needs to be more compelling. It’s not terrible but it also isn’t inspirational or helpful. I would test motivational language and a brief sentence about a benefit.

#2: NordicTrack

The Good:

• This ad is compelling because it focuses on one main idea, “Personalized workouts.” The ad copy centers on that and reenforces it by spelling out the benefits that “runners” receive by owning this treadmill: improving endurance and hitting new personal records.

• The image is not as effective as the Peloton ad, but it does show the product in use and uses the space to introduce a new product.

The Bad:

• This ad has no URL. This may not affect the performance of the ad in terms of click through rate, but adding a URL provides credibility and some people may prefer typing a URL in instead of clicking on an ad.

The Recommendation:

• Within the image, I would test inspirational language instead of text introducing a new product.

• I would also test different images, especially ones showing the treadmill being used within a home.

• I would also include a URL that points to a product page.

Pro Tip

Get better at copywriting:

• Keep It Simple

• Make Your Customer the Hero

• Speak Directly to Readers

• Avoid Passive Voice

• Limit Adverbs

• Focus on the First Line

• …

To see the rest of the tips and read a summary of each point above, read this article.