Client told me our Facebook ads were 'too polished' and I had to rethink everything

Had a client back in March who runs a local bakery in Austin. She saw our ad mockups and said they looked like they belonged to a big corporation, not her small shop. She wanted something that felt like a friend texting her about fresh scones. At first I thought she was wrong. Polished ads convert better, right? But I tried her approach. We used phone photos instead of staged shots, wrote captions like we were talking to one person, and cut the targeting down to just her zip code. Conversions actually went up by 22% over the next month. Now I ask every client how 'polished' they want to sound before we start. Has anyone else had a client give feedback that made you throw out your normal process?

2 comments

2 Comments

anderson.gavin25d ago

Brother, I've been there. Same thing happened with a taco spot I helped out - they wanted their IG to feel like the cook was just yelling at people from the kitchen window. Polished stuff can feel fake to regular people. Your best bet is always to ask the client what their actual customer sounds like, then match that energy. That zip code targeting is smart too, nobody wants to see ads for a bakery 30 miles away.

bethj4425d ago

Haha yeah I had a client tell me their ads were "too clean" once. I was like ma'am what do you want me to do, spill coffee on the image? But I ended up using a photo of their cat sitting on the product display and it did better than anything I had ever professionally shot for them. Learned the hard way that sometimes looking like you tried too hard actually hurts.