Show Notes
How do you write your ads? Not physically—mentally. Do you have a framework?
The research: In 2023, Scott's Land Moto team analyzed over 10,000 ads to answer one question: What makes an ad clickable and convertible?
You have to win twice. First, they click. Then, they convert. Two separate wins.
The finding: The highest performing ads consistently answered key questions already in the reader's mind.
The DREAMS Framework — a six-point diagnostic:
D — Destination Vision: Paint what life looks like after they buy. They have to see themselves getting what they want.
R — Reasons to Act: Connect features to benefits. "Two and a half acres" → "You can spread out without being on top of your neighbor."
E — Eliminate Objections: Quiet the logical brain. "I can't afford this" → "We can make it affordable." "I don't have credit" → "We don't worry about that."
A — Accessibility Signals: Make the offer understandable. Clear price. Simple terms. Get them from "no" to "maybe."
M — Motivational Trigger: Give them a reason to stop scrolling. But don't create fake urgency. Make the next step small—capture an email, not a credit card.
S — Scannable: No walls of text. Make it easy to consume.
The Instagram story: Scott clicked an ad, landed on a $27 Thrivecart page with a $67 upsell. He wasn't ready to buy. He left. She has no way to contact him without spending more on marketing.
The Main Street store analogy: You walk in, browse, walk out. "Thanks, have a good day." They never captured that you were there.
The key: DREAMS isn't a rigid template. It's a diagnostic checklist. The more elements you include, the stronger the copy.
Learn more: scotttodd.net/dreams
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:12.472)
How do you write your ads? I'm not talking about physically writing them like on a computer or using AI, but I'm really talking about how do you begin to develop the ads in your mind? Do you have a mental framework that you use to begin to build things? And look, most copywriters, they do. They kind of have this set recipe, if you will, of how they go about writing their ads.
And that's one of the things that we're gonna look at in today's episode. Welcome to Fix My Business. I'm your host, Scott Todd. I have built multiple seven-figure businesses. After leaving my corporate 500 job is actually a corporate 300 job, Fortune 300. I was a VP at a big company. Left there, started multiple seven-figure businesses and grew them. And I want to help you do the same thing. One of the challenges that most businesses face is this constraint.
on demand. You know, we we don't have enough customers. And most businesses are in that boat. You can always use more customers. And in 2023, the Land Moto team began to analyze over 10,000 ads on the platform looking to answer one simple question. What makes an ad clickable and convertible? Now
Let's talk about clickable for a moment. In most advertising today, most digital ads, you have this element to where someone has to click something to the go to the next step. It's somewhat of a two step process. Think about any ad you might see on Instagram or any type of digital platform. You got to catch their attention, they have to click something, then they go, and you're looking for the next step because there's more information behind it. So first and foremost, what makes people
Want to click on the ad. And then when they're there and they're reading it, what makes them want to convert into a lead or in some situations a customer? So when we talk about clickable and convertible, what we're really thinking about is okay, what does this two-step process look like? Because there are two steps. You have to win twice. And what we found is that the highest performing ads
Scott Todd (02:35.039)
Consistently answered some very key questions that were in the mind of the reader or the person that's consuming the ad. And when they did that, when you answered these questions in the copy, the clickability of the ad went up, and so did the convertibility of it. So we got more results from it by simply connecting with the buyer where they are.
It sounds simple. It really does sound simple. And it's like, yeah, that seems logical, right? And when the f team first presented it to me, I was like, Well, that makes a lot of sense. And I said, Okay, well, now that we understand this, that we need to meet the the the viewer where they are, how do we put this into practice? How do we make this simple and repeatable? And this is where we created what we call the dreams framework. I created this dreams framework to help really any business. It works for
The Land Moto customer, but it really works for any business. And the Dreams framework is essentially six elements. And I want to spend some time with you now and share these six elements with you. And I want you to really think about the ads that you're producing. And are you delivering on these for the people that you're writing for? And the first one is the D, the destination vision. And what we want to do here is that we want to paint a picture.
Of what life looks like once they've done the thing that you want them to do. What does life look like, for example, for the Land Moto customer? What does life look like when they buy the property? How does life change? How does life feel? What are they gonna enjoy? Because they have to see themselves getting what they want. It's not what you want, you want to make a sale. But
Everybody has these visions of what they want for their life. The reason that we buy things is to solve a problem, real or perceived. To the problem could be that I just have this dream of of owning something. Whatever it is. Maybe it's a Porsche or maybe it's a beach house or maybe it's just a piece of of land. Whatever that is, we have these visions. And what we need to do is we need to get into the mind of the buyer and say, this is
Scott Todd (04:56.936)
This is what life is going to look like when you do this thing, when you buy this thing, when you consume this thing, everything's going to be better for you. All you got to do is do this thing. We want to put that into the ad. The R comes down to reasons to act. So when we talk about reasons to act, what we want to think about is we want to connect the features of your product, the features of your property, the
Features of your listing, whatever it is that you're tempted to list out, and we want to connect that to some benefit. And that's a big thing. So I see all the time people say, like, you know, I don't know, two and a half acres. Okay, that's cool, but what does that really mean? So then the next logical step is that's two and a half football fields. Okay, so what does that really mean? It means that
You can spread out and enjoy life without being on top of your neighbor. See, I connected that that piece to a benefit that the person is going to want to enjoy. So oftentimes people might say, Well, there's power nearby. Okay, so what? What does that mean? Explain why it matters. And when we do that, now we're we're serving the audience in a different way than, well, everybody else. The E is eliminate objections.
And I want you to think about this for a minute. Every time we go through the world and we read things, our brain is telling us all the reasons we shouldn't do something. Yeah, don't request that information because it's a sales pitch. Yeah, you really can't afford this. Yeah, this isn't meant for you. And we walk around with these mental conversations in our head every time we're reading something. We're skeptical.
And so if our ads begin to offset those objections, if those ads begin to kind of answer those questions, then all of a sudden it quiet the brain. It quiets the brain of the reader. And when you quiet the brain and you quiet the logical part of humans, now we can tap into the emotional part, which is what the vision does. See, the vision's connecting with the emotional.
Scott Todd (07:20.822)
And now with the objections, what we're saying is, shh, don't worry about that stuff. It's all taken care of. Because look, some of the objections might say, well, man, I can't afford this. You you can't? It's very affordable. Or we can make it affordable. Or I don't have the right credit for this. don't worry about that. We don't worry about that. Or, you know, you know, I'm worried that
I'm never gonna use this thing. don't worry, we we've solved that problem too. You see, we all have these these questions swollen around. I was recently I was looking at some property in a beach community, and it was funny because when you look at the price, the price was the price was up there, but then they offered that property with owner financing. And sometimes when
owners list the property with owner financing, they'll say, well, we'll do it with half down, which is still a lot of money. or they'll do it with, you know, some high down payment. They made it irresistible. And I all of a sudden I was like, this is possible. I can own a beach house here. Okay. We didn't do it, by the way. Not yet. But see that not not that we would. I don't know. I don't know. That's a different story for a different day. But see, here's the thing is when I'm reading the listing, all of a sudden this
question that's in my head stopping it, all of a sudden they started to introduce that, wait a minute, Scott, this is actually possible. And then they hooked me back in again. The A stands for accessibility signals. And sometimes this can be a little misunderstood, especially in the world of property where you think, well, the the property is accessible. Yeah, it's got a road. That's not really what we're talking about. What we're really talking about is that accessibility signal
really ties into what I just said, which is you want to make this deal, you wanna make your offer understandable. Because if it's complex, you're never gonna move forward. You wanna paint what the clear price looks like, what the payment options are. You wanna make it simple for them that they can do this. Just like I was just saying in that one property listing where all of a sudden I went from, I'm not this is a big expense, I'm not sure I want to do this right now to
Scott Todd (09:46.773)
Huh, that's not a bad deal. See, once they got me to say maybe, they kept me on board. And that's part of this whole challenge here is that you're recognizing that your customer might say no when they're reading what you're saying. But then if you slow down, say, wait, wait, wait, hold on, give me a second, hear me out. Now we can maybe get them to a maybe. And if you get them to a maybe, then you're more likely to get them to convert into a lead.
Or an inquiry. And that's all we're trying to do with marketing. We're not really trying to sell. We're just trying to get them to say, maybe let me take the next step, which we'll talk about in a minute. The is the motivational trigger, and it's the reason that you're giving them so that they'll stop and have some interest as opposed to keep scrolling. Right? So here's an example.
One of the things that people often want to do is that they want to get the sale. I get it. Like I want sales too. We all need revenue. But at the same time, we can leverage this. It's easy to leverage in your marketing this fake urgency, which everybody says create urgency. It's easy to put in this fake urgency or excessive urgency. You seem too too like you seem on like you seem too aggressive in your approach.
as opposed to really thinking about what that next logical basic step is. This is like the call to action, right? Like what's the one thing that they can do next that's just like not necessarily doing the thing. Let me give an example. I was looking over the last couple days, I was looking on Instagram and an Instagram ad popped up and there was a a lady, I follow her
And you know, she's kind of pitching her course, if you will. And I was like, okay, that's pretty interesting. So she got me to click on it. So I listened to what she said, I hit the learn more button and I clicked on it. And the next thing you know, I'm on her sales page. Well, the sales page is fine and she was doing that whole thing of like a low dollar ticket item. It's like twenty-seven dollars and I'm on her Thrivecart page.
Scott Todd (12:10.993)
And I can see that the very next upsell is gonna be sixty seven dollars. And it's like this whole moment where like, Okay, here we go. We're not getting to the real thing. But while it was thorough, she's instantly asking me for money.
And I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying that she hit me with this request for money. As opposed to the very next logical thing would have said, Here, here's more information. Here's a way in which you can get something for free. Look, I don't mind paying. But at the same time, I wasn't necessarily ready to commit. Okay. So instead of getting this one piece.
of hey here's a way that you can go and get more information. I had to go back out and whip out my credit card. So I left. It's the as it's the equivalent of walking into a store and then turning around and walking out without buying anything. And you see something weird happens there. Because think about when you go to the mall or you go to any store, like especially in a little little town. You walk into a little town store, Main Street
You walk in there, you browse, you see maybe you see something, maybe you don't. You turn around and walk out, and what did what do the owner say? Thank you, have a good day, thanks for stopping by. No problem. Do you know what happens there? Every time I see it, I kind of cringe. What happens is I walk out. They never, ever, ever captured the fact that as a potential consumer in the future that I had walked into their store.
They have no way of contacting me, no email list. Nothing. See, what I would rather do is I would rather make that next step something that just gives me the ability of collecting an email address. Because just like the lady I went to her Instagram page or from her Instagram ad to her page, I left and there was no record that I was there. I mean, Instagram knows I was there, but she doesn't know.
Scott Todd (14:24.686)
And I want you to think about that for a minute. She never, ever, ever has a way of contacting me without spending more money on marketing. So when we talk about, you know, this motivational trigger, the we want to make it a very next step. Like what's something that's simple that they can do that you can do that captures some information? And then the S is scannable. We we want to make sure that we're not giving them walls and walls and walls of text.
But we're making it something that they can scan and get the gist of what's there. Now, the key to dreams isn't necessarily that it's this rigid template where the D has to be in paragraph number one, the R in paragraph number two, and so on. I really want you to think about the Dreams framework as a six-point diagnostic. Okay, does this piece of marketing content create desire, give reasons?
Remove the resistance that's in their brain, make the offer accessible and motivate them to take the very next smallest action possible. And also at the same time making it easy to consume. And if it does all of these well, then what you have here is you actually have a stronger piece of copy. And that's what's lacking so many times in marketing is we don't really know what to say about our thing.
Now, do you have to have all six? No, you don't. You can the more of them that you have, the better. And again, like I said, it doesn't have to be in an exact order. They just need to be elements that are in there. It's almost like this checklist. Check, check, check, check, check. The more those you can check off, the more likely it is that you're going to get a click and you're going to get something that converts into something that you can take action on again in the future.
Now, if you'd like to learn more about the Dreams framework, and I actually have a GPT that's available as well, you can always go to scottodd.net forward slash dreams with an S, Dreams, and it you'll you'll learn more about how how you can begin to leverage this within your business. But this whole copyright strategy, this whole strategy of writing copy and listings and better advertisements.
Scott Todd (16:48.36)
It works. And I get emails all the time from people that say, Hey, I started doing that and my leads went went up. Right. Because it all comes back to this one thing. And I kind of talked on it in our last episode, but here it is. What does your customer need? See, this dreams framework really puts it back into the context of it's all about your customer.
What do they need next? Solve that problem and you will be amazed at what happens to your to the marketing of your business and to the demand side of your business. I hope that helps you and I know it will. And I will see you in our next episode. Take care.
How do you write your ads? I'm not talking about physically writing them like on a computer or using AI, but I'm really talking about how do you begin to develop the ads in your mind? Do you have a mental framework that you use to begin to build things? And look, most copywriters, they do. They kind of have this set recipe, if you will, of how they go about writing their ads.
And that's one of the things that we're gonna look at in today's episode. Welcome to Fix My Business. I'm your host, Scott Todd. I have built multiple seven-figure businesses. After leaving my corporate 500 job is actually a corporate 300 job, Fortune 300. I was a VP at a big company. Left there, started multiple seven-figure businesses and grew them. And I want to help you do the same thing. One of the challenges that most businesses face is this constraint.
on demand. You know, we we don't have enough customers. And most businesses are in that boat. You can always use more customers. And in 2023, the Land Moto team began to analyze over 10,000 ads on the platform looking to answer one simple question. What makes an ad clickable and convertible? Now
Let's talk about clickable for a moment. In most advertising today, most digital ads, you have this element to where someone has to click something to the go to the next step. It's somewhat of a two step process. Think about any ad you might see on Instagram or any type of digital platform. You got to catch their attention, they have to click something, then they go, and you're looking for the next step because there's more information behind it. So first and foremost, what makes people
Want to click on the ad. And then when they're there and they're reading it, what makes them want to convert into a lead or in some situations a customer? So when we talk about clickable and convertible, what we're really thinking about is okay, what does this two-step process look like? Because there are two steps. You have to win twice. And what we found is that the highest performing ads
Scott Todd (02:35.039)
Consistently answered some very key questions that were in the mind of the reader or the person that's consuming the ad. And when they did that, when you answered these questions in the copy, the clickability of the ad went up, and so did the convertibility of it. So we got more results from it by simply connecting with the buyer where they are.
It sounds simple. It really does sound simple. And it's like, yeah, that seems logical, right? And when the f team first presented it to me, I was like, Well, that makes a lot of sense. And I said, Okay, well, now that we understand this, that we need to meet the the the viewer where they are, how do we put this into practice? How do we make this simple and repeatable? And this is where we created what we call the dreams framework. I created this dreams framework to help really any business. It works for
The Land Moto customer, but it really works for any business. And the Dreams framework is essentially six elements. And I want to spend some time with you now and share these six elements with you. And I want you to really think about the ads that you're producing. And are you delivering on these for the people that you're writing for? And the first one is the D, the destination vision. And what we want to do here is that we want to paint a picture.
Of what life looks like once they've done the thing that you want them to do. What does life look like, for example, for the Land Moto customer? What does life look like when they buy the property? How does life change? How does life feel? What are they gonna enjoy? Because they have to see themselves getting what they want. It's not what you want, you want to make a sale. But
Everybody has these visions of what they want for their life. The reason that we buy things is to solve a problem, real or perceived. To the problem could be that I just have this dream of of owning something. Whatever it is. Maybe it's a Porsche or maybe it's a beach house or maybe it's just a piece of of land. Whatever that is, we have these visions. And what we need to do is we need to get into the mind of the buyer and say, this is
Scott Todd (04:56.936)
This is what life is going to look like when you do this thing, when you buy this thing, when you consume this thing, everything's going to be better for you. All you got to do is do this thing. We want to put that into the ad. The R comes down to reasons to act. So when we talk about reasons to act, what we want to think about is we want to connect the features of your product, the features of your property, the
Features of your listing, whatever it is that you're tempted to list out, and we want to connect that to some benefit. And that's a big thing. So I see all the time people say, like, you know, I don't know, two and a half acres. Okay, that's cool, but what does that really mean? So then the next logical step is that's two and a half football fields. Okay, so what does that really mean? It means that
You can spread out and enjoy life without being on top of your neighbor. See, I connected that that piece to a benefit that the person is going to want to enjoy. So oftentimes people might say, Well, there's power nearby. Okay, so what? What does that mean? Explain why it matters. And when we do that, now we're we're serving the audience in a different way than, well, everybody else. The E is eliminate objections.
And I want you to think about this for a minute. Every time we go through the world and we read things, our brain is telling us all the reasons we shouldn't do something. Yeah, don't request that information because it's a sales pitch. Yeah, you really can't afford this. Yeah, this isn't meant for you. And we walk around with these mental conversations in our head every time we're reading something. We're skeptical.
And so if our ads begin to offset those objections, if those ads begin to kind of answer those questions, then all of a sudden it quiet the brain. It quiets the brain of the reader. And when you quiet the brain and you quiet the logical part of humans, now we can tap into the emotional part, which is what the vision does. See, the vision's connecting with the emotional.
Scott Todd (07:20.822)
And now with the objections, what we're saying is, shh, don't worry about that stuff. It's all taken care of. Because look, some of the objections might say, well, man, I can't afford this. You you can't? It's very affordable. Or we can make it affordable. Or I don't have the right credit for this. don't worry about that. We don't worry about that. Or, you know, you know, I'm worried that
I'm never gonna use this thing. don't worry, we we've solved that problem too. You see, we all have these these questions swollen around. I was recently I was looking at some property in a beach community, and it was funny because when you look at the price, the price was the price was up there, but then they offered that property with owner financing. And sometimes when
owners list the property with owner financing, they'll say, well, we'll do it with half down, which is still a lot of money. or they'll do it with, you know, some high down payment. They made it irresistible. And I all of a sudden I was like, this is possible. I can own a beach house here. Okay. We didn't do it, by the way. Not yet. But see that not not that we would. I don't know. I don't know. That's a different story for a different day. But see, here's the thing is when I'm reading the listing, all of a sudden this
question that's in my head stopping it, all of a sudden they started to introduce that, wait a minute, Scott, this is actually possible. And then they hooked me back in again. The A stands for accessibility signals. And sometimes this can be a little misunderstood, especially in the world of property where you think, well, the the property is accessible. Yeah, it's got a road. That's not really what we're talking about. What we're really talking about is that accessibility signal
really ties into what I just said, which is you want to make this deal, you wanna make your offer understandable. Because if it's complex, you're never gonna move forward. You wanna paint what the clear price looks like, what the payment options are. You wanna make it simple for them that they can do this. Just like I was just saying in that one property listing where all of a sudden I went from, I'm not this is a big expense, I'm not sure I want to do this right now to
Scott Todd (09:46.773)
Huh, that's not a bad deal. See, once they got me to say maybe, they kept me on board. And that's part of this whole challenge here is that you're recognizing that your customer might say no when they're reading what you're saying. But then if you slow down, say, wait, wait, wait, hold on, give me a second, hear me out. Now we can maybe get them to a maybe. And if you get them to a maybe, then you're more likely to get them to convert into a lead.
Or an inquiry. And that's all we're trying to do with marketing. We're not really trying to sell. We're just trying to get them to say, maybe let me take the next step, which we'll talk about in a minute. The is the motivational trigger, and it's the reason that you're giving them so that they'll stop and have some interest as opposed to keep scrolling. Right? So here's an example.
One of the things that people often want to do is that they want to get the sale. I get it. Like I want sales too. We all need revenue. But at the same time, we can leverage this. It's easy to leverage in your marketing this fake urgency, which everybody says create urgency. It's easy to put in this fake urgency or excessive urgency. You seem too too like you seem on like you seem too aggressive in your approach.
as opposed to really thinking about what that next logical basic step is. This is like the call to action, right? Like what's the one thing that they can do next that's just like not necessarily doing the thing. Let me give an example. I was looking over the last couple days, I was looking on Instagram and an Instagram ad popped up and there was a a lady, I follow her
And you know, she's kind of pitching her course, if you will. And I was like, okay, that's pretty interesting. So she got me to click on it. So I listened to what she said, I hit the learn more button and I clicked on it. And the next thing you know, I'm on her sales page. Well, the sales page is fine and she was doing that whole thing of like a low dollar ticket item. It's like twenty-seven dollars and I'm on her Thrivecart page.
Scott Todd (12:10.993)
And I can see that the very next upsell is gonna be sixty seven dollars. And it's like this whole moment where like, Okay, here we go. We're not getting to the real thing. But while it was thorough, she's instantly asking me for money.
And I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying that she hit me with this request for money. As opposed to the very next logical thing would have said, Here, here's more information. Here's a way in which you can get something for free. Look, I don't mind paying. But at the same time, I wasn't necessarily ready to commit. Okay. So instead of getting this one piece.
of hey here's a way that you can go and get more information. I had to go back out and whip out my credit card. So I left. It's the as it's the equivalent of walking into a store and then turning around and walking out without buying anything. And you see something weird happens there. Because think about when you go to the mall or you go to any store, like especially in a little little town. You walk into a little town store, Main Street
You walk in there, you browse, you see maybe you see something, maybe you don't. You turn around and walk out, and what did what do the owner say? Thank you, have a good day, thanks for stopping by. No problem. Do you know what happens there? Every time I see it, I kind of cringe. What happens is I walk out. They never, ever, ever captured the fact that as a potential consumer in the future that I had walked into their store.
They have no way of contacting me, no email list. Nothing. See, what I would rather do is I would rather make that next step something that just gives me the ability of collecting an email address. Because just like the lady I went to her Instagram page or from her Instagram ad to her page, I left and there was no record that I was there. I mean, Instagram knows I was there, but she doesn't know.
Scott Todd (14:24.686)
And I want you to think about that for a minute. She never, ever, ever has a way of contacting me without spending more money on marketing. So when we talk about, you know, this motivational trigger, the we want to make it a very next step. Like what's something that's simple that they can do that you can do that captures some information? And then the S is scannable. We we want to make sure that we're not giving them walls and walls and walls of text.
But we're making it something that they can scan and get the gist of what's there. Now, the key to dreams isn't necessarily that it's this rigid template where the D has to be in paragraph number one, the R in paragraph number two, and so on. I really want you to think about the Dreams framework as a six-point diagnostic. Okay, does this piece of marketing content create desire, give reasons?
Remove the resistance that's in their brain, make the offer accessible and motivate them to take the very next smallest action possible. And also at the same time making it easy to consume. And if it does all of these well, then what you have here is you actually have a stronger piece of copy. And that's what's lacking so many times in marketing is we don't really know what to say about our thing.
Now, do you have to have all six? No, you don't. You can the more of them that you have, the better. And again, like I said, it doesn't have to be in an exact order. They just need to be elements that are in there. It's almost like this checklist. Check, check, check, check, check. The more those you can check off, the more likely it is that you're going to get a click and you're going to get something that converts into something that you can take action on again in the future.
Now, if you'd like to learn more about the Dreams framework, and I actually have a GPT that's available as well, you can always go to scottodd.net forward slash dreams with an S, Dreams, and it you'll you'll learn more about how how you can begin to leverage this within your business. But this whole copyright strategy, this whole strategy of writing copy and listings and better advertisements.
Scott Todd (16:48.36)
It works. And I get emails all the time from people that say, Hey, I started doing that and my leads went went up. Right. Because it all comes back to this one thing. And I kind of talked on it in our last episode, but here it is. What does your customer need? See, this dreams framework really puts it back into the context of it's all about your customer.
What do they need next? Solve that problem and you will be amazed at what happens to your to the marketing of your business and to the demand side of your business. I hope that helps you and I know it will. And I will see you in our next episode. Take care.