Thoughts:
“In Ecommerce, your best marketer isn’t your product. It’s your creative.”
“Selling is war. And your ad creative is the bullet in the gun.”
“Attention is not given. It’s stolen”
Most struggling ecommerce sellers in Nigeria don’t have a product problem.
They have a boring ad problem.
Their ad looks like a flyer designed in a Word document.
Their copy reads like a WAEC past question.
And then they wonder why no one is clicking.
Here’s what you need to understand…
Your product can be mad.
But if your ad doesn’t GRAB attention in 3 seconds or less – you’re invisible.
This is not Netflix. People are not “watching” your ad.
They’re swiping past you while pooping, pressing phone on BRT, or dodging work on Monday morning.
So your ad has one job only – stop the scroll.
That’s it.
Everything else – your product, your sales funnel, your upsell…
Is useless if you never get attention in the first place.
Marketing is a visual fight for survival.
The winners? They’re the ones who say something worth looking at.
Think about it – if you’re scrolling through Instagram, and one ad shows a girl pouring dettol on her armpit…
And another shows a beautiful static image with “Best natural body spray for ladies”…
Which one are you stopping to watch?
Let’s be honest.
You’re watching the chaos.
Because as humans, our brain is wired to detect motion, faces, drama, and danger.
So if you’re selling your product with boring angles, lazy videos, and generic captions like “Buy now,”
You’re not just losing money…
You’re walking into a battle with a gun that has no bullet.
3 Lessons That Changed Everything
1. The job of your ad is NOT to explain. It’s to attract.
I used to treat ads like classroom notes – long, straight to the point, and BORING.
“This waist trainer burns belly fat.”
Who cares?
Now I treat my ads like gist in a salon.
“She wore this for 21 days… what happened shocked even her boyfriend. Then her ex came back begging…”
That’s what makes people pause.
That’s what gets clicks.
Think about it:
When someone scrolls through their phone on social media, they’re not looking for a lecture
They’re looking for gist, drama, wahala, or vibes.
Your first 3 seconds must feel like something their friend would forward on WhatsApp at midnight with the caption:
“Omo, see this.”
If your ad doesn’t catch eye + trigger emotion + sound like gossip, it’s dead on arrival.
2. Your best ads don’t look like ads.
Real talk – people don’t scroll Instagram or Facebook or TikTok saying,
“Let me go and look for something to buy today.”
That’s for jiji and FB marketplace.
On social media, they scroll for escape.
For banter.
For madness.
So I stopped making clean, serious, “professional” ads.
Instead, I did a 10-second skit where a girl hid her belly with a throw pillow each time her crush came over.
Posted it like a meme.
Boom. N700 for order instead of N2500.
That ad didn’t sell the product… it mirrored the pain.
If your ad screams “BUY NOW” or looks like something printed on a banner for a crusade, you might be invisible.
But if it feels like gist from a nosy neighbor?
They’ll watch it 3 times, laugh, tag a friend… then click to buy.
But you must create and test lots of creatives to find winners.
3. Your words must poke a wound or spark a dream.
Forget “This cream works.”
Nobody believes that crap anymore.
Everyone has trust issues.
But say:
“She used 4 creams. Nothing worked – until this one that has (your magic). It cleared her face in 9 days.”
And people will FIGHT each other in your comments to know the secret.
Why?
Because people don’t respond to facts – they respond to feelings.
Your ad should sound like a friend whispering secrets.
Expose a fear.
Remind them of a shame.
Paint the picture of who they wish they could be.
Don’t just sell them a solution.
Remind them what their problem feels like.
Then show them they don’t have to suffer it anymore.
Bottom line?
Good ads are like jollof rice at owambe.
They don’t beg for attention.
The smell finds you first.
And before you know it, everybody wants a plate.
That’s the game.
No more silent products.
Your ad creative is your loudspeaker.
Your billboard.
Your influencer.
Use it well – or stay broke trying to explain your product in peace.
This is why many beginners never scale.
They copy foreign ads.
Or wait for “inspiration” that never comes.
Meanwhile, their competition is testing 5-10 new creatives weekly.
If you’re not learning how to think about ads, how to find angles, how to sell with drama and desire…
Then you’re just feeding Meta and TikTok your money.
And praying.
Inside E-commerce Success Launchpad, this ad creative skill is not a “nice to have.”
It’s mission-critical.
You’ll learn:
- How to create viral scroll-stopping ads even with your phone
- The exact ad script templates we use to make millions
- Ad creative examples from real products to copy, clone, and test
- What to post on TikTok, IG and Facebook to drive traffic for free
You don’t need to become a graphic designer or video editor.
You need to understand what makes humans STOP.
And inside ESL, we break that down in baby language.
If your ads aren’t getting clicks, it’s not your product.
It’s your creatives.
Let’s fix that.
Join E-commerce Success Launchpad and make ads that do what they’re supposed to do…
…print money for you!
