Solved: Simple vs. Info-Loaded Ads for Mental Health?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your question about the ad images. It's a common one, and the answer isn't quite as simple as one type being better than the other.

Instead of just picking one, I think we need to look at the whole picture – from who you're trying to reach to what you're asking them to do. Below are my detailed thoughts on how you should approach this. It's a bit of a read, but it should give you a solid framework for not just this test, but all your future advertising.

We'll need to look at the bigger picture: It's not about the ad, it's about the customer's nightmare...

Right, let's get straight to it. You’re asking whether a simple ad or an info-loaded ad is better. Honestly, it’s a bit like asking if a hammer or a screwdriver is better. It completely depends on the job you’re trying to do. Both can work, and both can fail spectacularly. The success of your ad has very little to do with how much information is on it, and everything to do with whether it speaks to the specific, urgent, and expensive problem your customer is facing.

Forget demographics for a minute. "Women aged 25-40 interested in wellness" is a uselessly broad audience. It tells you nothing of value and leads to generic ads that get ignored. You need to define your customer by their pain, by their specific nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. For a mental health workbook series, what is the actual, tangible nightmare you're solving?

• -> Is it the freelance graphic designer who's paralysed by impostor syndrome and can't send the invoice for a project she's already completed?
• -> Is it the new manager who lies awake at 3 AM dreading a difficult conversation he has to have with an underperforming team member?
• -> Is it the university student whose procrastination has reached a critical point, threatening their grades and future?

These are specific, emotionally charged scenarios. Your customer isn't just looking for "mental health support"; they are desperate for a way out of a very specific, painful situation. Once you've isolated that nightmare, your ad's job is to reflect it back at them so clearly that they feel seen and understood. You don't sell the workbook; you sell the solution to the nightmare.

This is where your ad copy becomes absolutely critical. Let's take the new manager example and apply a classic copywriting formula: Problem-Agitate-Solve.

Problem: Dreading that tough conversation at work?

Agitate: Worried you'll say the wrong thing, demotivate your team, and look like you're not up to the job?

Solve: Our 'Confident Conversations' workbook gives you the exact scripts and frameworks to handle feedback like a seasoned leader. Master the topic in one weekend.

See how that works? It doesn't talk about the number of pages or the type of binding. It talks about the user's fear and offers a direct, tangible solution. An ad with that copy, paired with a simple image of a stressed-looking person at a desk, could easily outperform a busy, info-loaded ad that just lists the workbook's features. Conversely, for a different audience that is more analytical, an ad that clearly lays out the "5 modules, 20 exercises, and 3 audio guides" might build more trust and perform better. You simply don't know until you test. But the core message must always start with their problem.

I'd say you need to nail your offer first...

Even the world's best ad will fail if the offer it's pointing to is weak, confusing, or not valuable enough. The number one reason I see campaigns fail, time and time again, is a poor offer. Founders spend ages building the 'perfect' product but no time crafting an irresistible offer around it.

Your offer isn't just your product. It's the entire package you present to the customer at the moment of purchase. It's about reducing their risk and increasing the perceived value. For your workbooks, a weak offer is simply "Buy my mental health workbook for £20." It's boring and high-friction. The customer is thinking, "What if it's no good? What if it's just a bunch of generic advice I could find online for free?"

A strong offer tackles these objections head-on. Here are a few ways you could frame it:

• -> The Bundle Offer: "Get our complete 3-part workbook series on overcoming anxiety, procrastination, and self-doubt for just £40 (usually £60). Plus, get our bonus 'Mindful Mornings' audio guide for free." This increases the average order value and makes the deal feel substantial.
• -> The Risk-Reversal Offer: "Try the 'Procrastination Buster' workbook for 30 days. If you don't feel more in control of your time and more productive, we'll refund you in full, no questions asked. You can even keep the workbook." This removes all risk for the buyer and shows immense confidence in your product.
• -> The Tangible Outcome Offer: "Our '5-Day Impostor Syndrome Fix' workbook. Follow the daily exercises, and by Friday, you'll have the confidence to pitch that client you've been avoiding. Guaranteed." This ties the product directly to a result.

Notice how each of these is much more compelling than just a product listing. Your ads, whether simple or complex, should be driving traffic to a page that presents a genuinely strong offer. One campaign we ran for a client selling online courses generated $115k in revenue in just a month and a half. The ads were good, but the offer was incredible – a time-sensitive bundle with tons of bonuses. The ads just got people in the door; the offer did the heavy lifting.

You probably should focus on conversions, not just clicks...

This might be the most important piece of advice I can give you. When you set up your ad campaigns on platforms like Meta (Facebook/Instagram), you're given a choice of objectives: Reach, Brand Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, Sales.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you choose 'Brand Awareness' or 'Reach', you are paying the algorithm to find you the worst possible audience. You're telling it, "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm, being very good at its job, will seek out users who are cheap to reach precisely because they never click, never engage, and certainly never buy anything. Their attention is not in demand, so it's sold at a discount. You're actively paying to avoid customers.

You must fight the urge to run these 'soft' campaigns. For a business like yours, awareness is a byproduct of sales, not a prerequisite for them. The best brand awareness you can get is someone buying your workbook, having a life-changing result, and telling all their friends about it.

Therefore, from day one, your campaign objective should be 'Sales' (or 'Conversions'). You need to tell the algorithm, "I don't care about clicks or views. Go and find me people who are likely to pull out their credit card and buy my workbook."

This has a few implications:

1. It will feel more expensive at first. The cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) will be higher. This is normal. You're paying a premium to get in front of people who actually buy things online.
2. You need a properly installed pixel. The Meta Pixel (or relevant conversion tracking for other platforms) is non-negotiable. It's the brain of your campaign, feeding data back to the algorithm about who is converting so it can find more people like them.
3. You need patience. The algorithm needs data to learn. You can't just run an ad for a day, spend £20, get no sales, and turn it off. You need to let it run long enough to exit the 'learning phase' and find its groove.

Every single successful e-commerce campaign we've ever run, from a subscription box that hit a 1000% return on ad spend to a women's apparel brand that saw a 691% return, was optimised for purchases from the very beginning. Forget awareness. Chase the sale.

You'll need a proper testing structure...

Alright, so we've established that we need to target a specific pain, make an irresistible offer, and optimise for sales. Now we can finally talk about the ads themselves. The key isn't to guess what will work; it's to build a machine that *finds* what works. This means a structured approach to testing.

Your ad account should be structured like a sales funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu): Reaching Cold Audiences

This is where you're introducing your workbooks to people who have never heard of you. Your goal is to find pockets of potential customers. For a new store, this means testing detailed targeting audiences based on interests, behaviours, and demographics.

When picking interests, be specific. 'Mental health' is too broad. Think about what your ideal customer, the one with the specific nightmare, would be interested in:

• -> Authors & Influencers: Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Mark Manson
• -> Apps & Tools: Headspace, Calm, Notion, Asana (for the productivity-focused procrastinator)
• -> Publications & Media: Psychology Today, The School of Life, specific podcasts on personal development
• -> Competitors or related products: The Five Minute Journal, other workbook creators

You should group these into themed ad sets. For example, one ad set for 'Mindfulness Apps', another for 'Psychology Authors'. Inside each of these ad sets is where you test your creatives. So, to finally answer your original question: you test both! You'd run your 'simple ad' and your 'info-loaded ad' against each other inside the 'Mindfulness Apps' ad set, and you'd do the same inside the 'Psychology Authors' ad set.

But don't stop there. You should also test:

• -> A simple video (e.g., you talking to the camera about the problem the workbook solves).
• -> A carousel ad showing 3-4 different benefits or sample pages from the workbook.
• -> Different headlines for each image.

Here’s what a simple creative testing structure might look like inside one of your ToFu ad sets:

You let this run, and after a few days (once you have enough data), you see which combination performs best. You then turn off the losers and give more budget to the winners. This iterative process is the only reliable way to find what works.

2. Middle & Bottom of Funnel (MoFu/BoFu): Retargeting

This is where you target people who have already shown some interest but haven't bought yet. These are your warmest audiences and should be your most profitable.

• -> MoFu: People who have visited your website or watched a percentage of your video ads. You might show them testimonial ads or a different angle on the workbook's benefits.
• -> BoFu: People who have added a workbook to their cart but didn't complete the purchase. This is your most valuable audience. You hit them with an ad that reminds them about their cart, maybe with a small discount code ("Complete your order and get 10% off") to nudge them over the line.

As your store gets more data, you can also create Lookalike Audiences. This is where you tell Meta, "Here is a list of my past 1000 customers. Go and find me a million other people in the UK who look and behave just like them." These can be incredibly powerful for scaling your campaigns.

I'd say you need to understand your numbers...

Running ads without understanding your business numbers is like driving a car blindfolded. You're going to crash. The two most important metrics you need to get a grip on are your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and your Lifetime Value (LTV).

CAC: This is simply how much it costs you to get one new customer. If you spend £100 on ads and get 5 sales, your CAC is £20.

LTV: This is the total profit you expect to make from a single customer over the entire time they buy from you. This is a little more complex to calculate but is absolutely fundamental.

Why is this important? Because it tells you how much you can afford to spend to get a customer. If your workbook costs £20 and your profit margin is 80% (£16 profit), and a customer only ever buys one, then your CAC must be below £16 to be profitable. This can be very limiting.

But what if people who buy one workbook often come back to buy the others in the series? What if your average customer buys 2.5 workbooks over a year? Suddenly their LTV isn't £16; it's £40 (£16 * 2.5). Now you know you can afford to spend up to, say, £30 on ads to acquire that customer and still be very profitable in the long run. This knowledge is what separates amateur advertisers from professionals. It unlocks aggressive, intelligent scaling.

To help you figure this out, here's a simple calculator. Play around with the numbers to see how small changes can drastically affect what you can afford to spend.

You'll need to look at your website and the whole journey...

Let's imagine you create the perfect ad. It speaks to the customer's nightmare, it's visually stunning, and it's getting a fantastic Click-Through Rate (CTR). But you're still not getting sales. This is where you have to remember that the ad is only the first step. The customer journey from click to purchase is a chain, and it's only as strong as its weakest link.

When we troubleshoot a campaign, we look at the whole funnel for drop-off points:

• -> High Impressions, Low CTR: This is an ad problem. Your creative or copy isn't grabbing attention or resonating with the audience you're targeting. This is where you test simple vs. info-loaded, different images, different headlines.
• -> High CTR, Low Add-to-Carts: This is a product page problem. People are interested enough to click the ad, but something on your product page is putting them off. It could be poor quality mockups of the workbooks, a lack of detailed description, no customer reviews, a price that feels too high, or a general lack of trust in the website.
• -> High Add-to-Carts, Low Purchases: This is a checkout process problem. The user was ready to buy, but something in the final steps stopped them. The most common culprit is unexpected shipping costs. Other issues could be a long, complicated form, not offering enough payment options (like PayPal or Apple Pay), or technical glitches.

Here’s a visual representation of that journey and where to look for problems.

For your store, you need to be brutally honest with yourself. Does it look trustworthy? If you were a random visitor, would you feel comfortable entering your credit card details? Simple things can make a huge difference: high-quality product images (show mockups and even some sample pages), clear and compelling product descriptions (focus on benefits, not just features), and social proof (customer reviews and testimonials are absolutely vital).

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know that was a lot of information, so let's boil it down to an actionable plan. If you were our client, this is the process we would walk you through to build a successful advertising system for your workbooks.

As you can see, the question of 'simple vs. complex' is just one small part of a much larger puzzle. Getting the strategy right is far more important. This whole process can feel overwhelming, especially when you're also trying to run your business. It involves a lot of technical setup, strategic thinking, creative development, and constant analysis.

This is, of course, where having an expert can make a massive difference. We've run this playbook for countless e-commerce and info-product businesses, helping them navigate the complexities and avoid costly mistakes. We can help you define your strategy, set up your campaigns for success, and manage the ongoing optimisation to ensure you're getting the best possible return on your investment.

If you'd like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session where we can take a look at your store and your goals and give you some more personalised advice. It's a great way to get a second pair of expert eyes on your project.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh