Meta Ads Creative Testing Framework Every DTC Brand Needs in 2026 ft. Zach Stuck

Andrew Foxwell: So, you know, look, like what we want to get into today is talking about sort of

the creative engine a little bit, uh, and also how you've gone through a lot of these layers of of building.

And so, you know, I I think one question is out of the gates, right? Like, if you sort of think about this as you what do you do from scratch if you did it today, right? You you land on a planet, let's say, you keep your brain, you lose your team, you lose the tools, you lose the agency, the historical data, and you're rebuilding a Marsmen from day one and from zero. Where do you put your feet first? Like, what are the things that you're going to start investing in right away to get there?

Zach Stuck: Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, do I have a brand? Do I have a brand name? Do I have a product? I think is probably where we're starting, right? So, I mean, I think I think product is what makes makes a company successful at the end of the day. Like, you know, that's what we're here doing. We're selling products and the ones that have the brands that have the best products are usually the ones that end up with scale. So, I mean, number one lesson that I've had over the last like, you know, eight, nine years being in D to C is how can I sell as as little like variants of a product as possible to as many possible people, right? So, I think that's like the first thing that I'm always thinking about. It's why Hollow started with just a couple SKUs. It's why Marsmen is still one SKU as of today. Um, is just trying to keep it simple because I think that that's where that's where a lot of people mess up. I mean, like we've seen it time and time again, apparel brands, like are very well known for doing this where they just end up having thousands of SKUs and then they just can't keep track of inventory and all sorts of, you know, hell breaks loose. So, I mean, first and foremost, I'm starting with the product. I'm starting with the brand and right now I'm definitely deep in the health and wellness space and that's probably where I'd go, right? So, probably a supplement company is what I'm starting. Probably a single SKU supplement company is what I'm starting. Um, ideally I'm I'm building a product or I'm creating a product that that I can sell to you probably hopefully both genders. I mean, like right now, obviously Marsmen is specific to men, but ideally there's an ability to sell it to a little, you know, pretty much everyone. And then I'm trying to create a product that has the ability to be talked about a bunch of different ways, meaning that, you know, if you're going to, you know, let's just let's just call it a sleep product, right? I mean, I've got a I've got a seven month old son at home who was up in the middle of the night last night and I probably could use a little bit better sleep and, you know, my REM cycle's probably, you know, a little little janky right now. So, for the for this example, for this thing, we're starting a supplement company and it's a sleep product.

I the the awesome thing about sleep is everybody does it, everybody wants more of it, and usually there's probably things other factors that are that are having a play. So I can tell a bunch of different stories about why you need this sleep product and why you should buy it right now and why you should be using it every day, which is like, hey, maybe your cortisol is too high. Hey, maybe your diet's janky. Hey, maybe, you know, I can talk to people in so many different facets that that's usually where I'm like when I'm thinking about framing future brands, future products, like that's usually where I start is, does it have a huge TAM? Is it very simple? Can I can I make it a subscription product ideally or at least a high returning customer product and then can I can I talk about it a bunch of different ways? So I'm not just stuck talking about a product one single way. Um, and ideally it's not chasing just a trend, right? So like this is where like I think fashion, you know, we talk about Hollow is function over fashion all the time and I think that function is is is kind of forever and and fashion is is trend. So ideally you're not fighting against trends and ideally you're you're kind of creating something that has longevity out of the gate. So that's how I think about it to start is we're starting probably a health and wellness company and that's that's where we go from there. So, where do we take it from here, Andrew?

Andrew Foxwell: I mean, I think, you know, one thing that's thematic about, you know, in the times we've talked about this on scalability school and in the times of of watching you over the years, uh, is that that simplicity, right? In terms of the way that you've put something out as a product. Um, and even in the agency, right? The simplicity of of what you're offering from the agency when you had Homestead in terms of, you know, we're going to go and do all of these things versus now actually we're going to focus particularly on retention. That's really what we're doing. Like there's a there's a simplicity that you're putting towards it. I guess one question is, um, you know, what's what is in looking at this part of the old playbook that you think a lot of people are still running that you think is dead weight in 2026? And this could in relation to to this product, right? If you're going to get this going, you see people spending more time on it. Um, what do you think they should be spending less time on?

Zach Stuck: It's a great question. I think, uh, websites is is is like a big one that's like, I think a lot of people can still go spend a bunch of money on a website design where now there's awesome tools out there where you can literally spin up like PDPs and homepages, um, in like a matter of like hours. So, I mean, if I'm going to start a brand again, I'm I'm going to get one of the kind of two main apps, right? And I'm going to spin up a a a landing page and that's really all I need to do, right? There's so much already learned knowledge of how consumers think to go design a beautiful website that's just vibes forward that's probably not going to convert in the first place. Like that's where I see a lot of brands waste a lot of money out of the gate. Um, the second one is like people really love to flex on packaging and that that's something that I think I see a lot of brands spend a ton of money on. I think you can start a brand and build it to a million dollars a month within your first year without worrying so much about packaging. I think like the way you talk about the product and making sure the product solves the right problems is more important than how fancy the packaging is, for example. So, I think that brands and people like to make things look really dope, which is cool. Um, but it doesn't have to be perfect out of the gate, right? I think you can start if you're going to start a supplement company, like start with the white bottle first before you go all in, unless you have the capital and funds to take the bet to go do like the crazy custom, everything's like, you know, brand forward. So, I'd say try to solve the problem first or try to like really figure out like is it resonating before you just say, oh, hey, I have the best looking thing because at the end of the day, people aren't buying for the packaging. They're they're buying mostly for like the problem or the solution that your problem, you know, product is solving first. So if you can sell that better, then you can always make your your packaging, your design, your everything like more robust.

Brad Ploch: We'll um, we'll grant you, you're talking about sleep supplements and you're kind of going back and forth between Mars and and sleep supplements here. I'll I'll tell you what, we'll grant you Marsmen. You you get Marsmen and you get the idea.

Zach Stuck: I get Mars.

Brad Ploch: You get Mars. You get Mars. And we're going to drop you onto the planet Mars at the same time. That's that's the that's the fancy planet you've dropped on. I think what we're thinking about here is, okay, how do we you're starting Mars again from from scratch and you know, obviously you you know a lot.

Zach Stuck: Everything that I know now. Okay, got it.

Brad Ploch: Yes. You can and you can you can keep that context. That's fine. But you don't have you don't have like Andrew kind of phrases it up, like you don't have the team, you don't have the humans, you don't have anything in place. You maybe have an an inclination about what's going to work. And maybe that's the starting point. Um, but I think before you can make the single ad, before you can crank out landing pages, let's say you do have the product in in hand and you're ready to go, you need to have an idea and context and a hypothesis about what you think could work. And in the sleep example, you listed out a bunch of different things. Like, I'm also a sleep deprived dad. Like, okay, so you and I are buying sleep supplements because we're sleep deprived. Um, but there's plenty of other reasons people might be sleep deprived or want to sleep deeper. Um, how do you even go about like setting the the the testing and understanding like what are the things that people are going to respond to first? And then second, like, how do you test that in an efficient way? Um, and maybe this is similar to the playbook that we've talked about previously.

Zach Stuck: Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, like just taking the time to think about the impacts of what your product could do, I think is just like worthwhile. So like for me, right, for testosterone, you might just think, oh, you're going to add more muscle. Like that's like where everyone thinks, oh, you're going to be a big meathead or it's going to be like, you know, it's going to help, you know, men in bed scenario, right? I won't I won't go in any deeper there. But it actually helps with a lot of things, right? So like it can be tied into and candidly like this is what took us some time to figure out. We tied into like a weight loss journey. It can be tied into the fact that like, hey, your main hormone is like also like tied to your cortisol having an impact on testosterone, which has an impact on your weight loss and has an impact on how you feel. Uh, testosterone has an impact on your day-to-day energy, right? Maybe the fact that you're you're over over slamming way too much caffeine is like part of your problem and really what you need is like a natural form of energy, which is just having higher testosterone. Um, so I mean, I think for for me, it was candidly like I I would start thinking about these things of what are all the spider webs I can draw back to my product, even if there's a little bit of a stretch there that I can use to tell a story that can then get into the weeds of why my product solves the problem correctly.

Andrew Foxwell: So, when you define a problem or pain point, uh, how do you let the prospect pick their journey? So, in this sense, you know, you're you're kind of putting it out there and then Meta's to a degree is defining that journey for that person, but you're also putting the landing page that matches the creative that you're putting together, which has been a big part of the sauce for you recently. We have a podcast that came out about this recently. Do you want to talk about this briefly?

Zach Stuck: Yeah. So, when I when I think about like the the term that Brad and I use is like landing page congruency. We talk about this a lot now and it's, you know, ideally if you're going to have, um, an ad, let's just use cortisol as the angle. Um, ideally you're pushing them to a page that's also talking about that. So they don't just land on a page that then that then's talking about weight loss or talking about like, you know, getting bigger or feeling like, you know, you need to be stronger for your family. It's like not some big shift, right? So, ideally, you know, I love listicles. That's like the GOAT in my opinion when it comes to landing pages. They do the thing that that I think humans process well, which is just like list out five reasons why, 10 reasons why, seven reasons why you should find this thing interesting at the end of the day. And your job is to basically educate and pre-sell them on on the product and on basically why your product solves the problem that they have. It is the solution for it. So by the time that they read through all five of those or all seven of those, they feel at least more convinced to think, okay, what is this product? What does it what does it cost? Like, let me learn more about it. Does it have good reviews, things like that. So that's what you're trying to do there. So I always start with listicles first. Now, I I think obviously once you start to hit more scale and you have more budget, you can start taking more shots. So like if you go look at the funnels for Marsmen, you might see a weight loss is like one of our pillars or cortisol is one of our pillars and you might see, I mean, you will see advertorials, you'll see different listicles, you'll see a quiz that has a first page that talks about cortisol or talks about weight loss in the first page of that. So, we are we are campaign heavy over at Marsmen.

Brad Ploch: Yeah, and maybe starting out, like if we go back to the very original part or the beginning of this this kind of interview, would you say it's it's one campaign, jam it all in there, once you have your direction, then you can start to split it out.

Zach Stuck: I think that that's probably fair. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Ploch: Cool.

Andrew Foxwell: Okay, let's see. When uh, whoopsie Daisy, clicked the wrong button there.

Uh, when you find a winning ad and you're launching a new concept, what does a net new concept look like versus an iteration? You talked about this a little bit, but I thought it was kind of interesting to put it on there.

Zach Stuck: Yeah, I mean, I know this can be our this can be our last one. Um, net new is brand new, brand, brand new, whole new, looks completely different, feels completely different. It is a different ad. It is usually a different person talking, a completely different style of format. It's not like a, you know, a native static versus like an overly designed static. It's a yapper video versus a claymation AI video. Brand new, net new, iteration is like simple. We we actually try not to spend so much time on iterations anymore. We've found that just spending time on net news is actually what gets us more volume. Um, that's how we think about it. If we find winners, usually then instead of testing an iteration of the creative, we're actually testing a new landing page to see if we can get more performance out of it. So, that's how we think about it.

Andrew Foxwell: Well, everyone, we really appreciate you being here. Um, we know there's still questions. If you have other questions that you're really curious about, you can always email me, [email protected]. Happy to help, uh, try to get you an answer. And, uh, yeah, we're we're we're honored that you were all here and thank you for being here and thanks for having us Motion for really what turned into kind of like a live a live pod, really. I mean, you know, this is it.

Um, so I appreciate that. Thanks for letting me do my CVS impression, everybody. Really appreciate that. Um, hi. That's So, thank you.

Evan Lee: Everybody, you got to throw the love in the chat for these guys. It was absolutely incredible. Andrew worded it the best way. It's like a live podcast. So we're all grateful and had the pleasure of hearing from the experience today. So guys, you're the best. Sincerely appreciate the time. Sincerely appreciate the time.