GTM Sauce

Clear 30 · B2C · app to quit or cut down weed

Film your own funny ads that call out a very specific moment

Specific callouts grab attention; calm ads with an older speaker convert best

Workedpaid-social

What they did

Founders script and film their own ads, starring family (Asher's actor dad, his mom). Pick the demographic likely to commit and pay, then apply persuasion basics: strong headline, build trust through the ad, clear call to action. Hooks use hyper-specific, even absurd callouts ('Do you hang out in your basement after school hitting your pen until 3am watching skateboarding videos?'). Some best converters are Asher's mom explaining the problem calmly to an older audience.

What happened

Specific callouts 'really resonate'; calm, mature ads aimed at older users are among the most converting

In their words

Asher Herbstman & Thatcher Clough - I Built a $30k/mo App That Helps You Quit Smoking

Play from 5:10
5:07

HostHow do you actually make that ad, like what do you think made it do well?

5:10

Thatcher CloughI would say one thing that's been super kind of helpful for us in terms of making content is getting really specific about the call out that we're having. Are you someone that hangs out, you know, in your basement after school and hit your pen until like 3:00 a.m. while watching skateboarding videos, like that type of thing is really helpful cuz we've seen that it really resonates with people, and yes you're going to get like a more narrow audience with that, but they sort of like, you know, noticed as a human because we are noticing them,

5:36

Asher HirschmanYeah.

6:20

HostThat's really interesting actually. So did you see any big differences in the actual conversion reasons versus what you guys thought would get people to convert?

Asher Hirschman… market on TikTok. Don't do this or that." Like if you look and you're seeing like 18 to 20-year-olds convert at 0.19, while you know even just a few years older at 26 to 30, it's almost double that. People say the meta in advertising is like switching off 18 to 25 on Meta ads or anything, or TikTok ads, because they don't want to target those people. And just continuing to think about balancing, like yes, we can make a funny TikTok ad targeted towards kids and they're going to laugh, you can't judge by how many likes you're getting or how cool a bunch of, you know, like 19-year-olds think you are, as much as I would love that world, but you actually have to build a business that survives. And sometimes the most converting, best ads are ones with my mom, who's talking in a very zen, not very exciting clickbaity way, but is just explaining the problem in a more mature way to an older target audience.

7:21

Thatcher CloughSomething that this is also helpful for is not only showing like what is working, but also what to work on. Cuz like one thing that sticks out to me, for example, is that like saving money is at, you know, 23% conversion, whereas like legal obligations at 29, our average user that comes in spends upwards of $55 a week on weed, and yet our program is $30 for a year, but not all of them are converting. In an ideal world, it's like, oh, you're …

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Tags: meta, tiktok, creative, hooks, self-filmed, callouts, older-audience