B2B paid ads that don’t suck: Proven creative recipes that sell anything (even boring products)
How to Create a Fun Ad for a Boring Product and Drive 1,000+ Leads
We’ve all been through annoying processes with endless forms we have to fill out manually. The HR portal that asks you to confirm a date you typed in twice. The fact that I can’t even copy and paste the ACH number from my bank account (WHY?). The expense tool that wants a receipt for a $4 coffee (sorry, Dan). I have dealt with plenty of those, and I’m sure you have too.
I have never once seen an ad for one of those tools that made me feel… understood. They all sell “streamlined workflows.” None of them show you the part you actually hate. Then, two weeks ago, one guy at our Exit Five Live session about B2B Ads gave us a masterclass in how to make B2B ad creative that actually stands out, even if you have a boring product.
Shlomo Genchin is creative director at Unbore.com, and describes his entire job as “making fun ads for boring tech products”. One of us!
During our Live B2B Ads Playoff, he showed us HR software ads that pulled in 1,000+ leads, 80% cheaper than usual. Our live audience voted for his play (out of 8 others) not once, but twice, so we know the content resonated. He walked through two ads he made for HiBob, an HR platform, using two “creative recipes”. Here they are.
How to use personification and visual analogies in B2B ads
HiBob sells into a category where every ad looks like every other ad. The feature was never going to be the interesting part (is it ever?). The default move here is a better product demo. Shlomo went the other way and made the software a character instead.
How to use personification and visual analogy creative approaches for B2B ads
Below are two time-tested Creative Recipes you can study to help improve your B2B ads.
Creative recipe #1: Personification
Step 1: find an enemy. For HiBob, it was legacy HR software. Not a specific competitor, but a category everyone already resents.
Step 2: build your characters. Shlomo took the old Mac vs PC playbook and cast legacy HR as the boring guy. HiBob became the one who is beautiful, smart, popular, and “unlike you, not wasting my time.”
Step 3: pick a scenario your audience knows by heart. He chose a soap opera breakup and avoided product screenshots and feature lists all competitors are leading with.
Result: 1,000+ leads, 80% cheaper than usual, CPM down 50%.
Creative recipe #2: Visual analogy
Step 1: find your “voice of the customer”. Shlomo calls himself a lazy marketer, so he doesn’t invent the pain point. He goes to Reddit Answers (free), and prompts it: find posts and comments where HR managers share real challenges, frustrations, and relatable situations. A minute later he has a report full of threads.
How one prompt creates a list of real complaints in your customers’ own words
Step 2: look for the phrase that paints the picture. HR managers kept describing the endless approval back and forth as email ping pong. Ping pong is a visual, that became the ad.
HR managers were already using this phrase. Shlomo just took it literally.
Step 3: storyboard it with PAS. Problem: an employee asks for time off. Agitation: A very annoying back-and-forth process (in this case: form B3.2, then section four, then a section that doesn’t exist in her copy.) Solution: HiBob, done in a few clicks.
Shlomo uses a storyboard where he maps out the PAS framework for a winning ad
Step 4: cut it down and rerun. This ad hit his cheapest cost per thousand impressions yet, with his best stop rate and hold rate to date. He then sliced it into statics for retargeting, and those are performing well too.
The line every HR software ad runs: “Automate time-off requests and approvals.”
Shlomo’s version: “An employee asks for a Friday off. Then form B3.2, then Section 4B, then ‘there is no Section 4B on my copy’.”
If you want to study these plays even further, I have the whole recording for you here. Go to minute [35:00] and [55:00] to see the video versions of these ads. Plus, get more ad ideas from Survey Monkey, Pacvue, Tatari, and more.
