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. It's a common one – should you go for a simple, punchy ad or an info-packed one? The honest answer is it's not really about which ad is 'better' overall, but which ad is right for the specific person you're showing it to, at the specific moment they see it. Most people get this bit wrong. They spend ages perfecting one ad, when the real problem isn't the creative itself, but the entire strategy behind it – who you're targeting, what you're actually offering them, and what happens after they click.

Your question is the last piece of the puzzle, and we need to build the rest of it first. So let's put the ad creative debate to one side for a moment and look at what really drives sales for a product like a mental health workbook.

We'll need to look at your customer, not your creative...

Right now you're probably thinking of targeting people with interests in 'mental health', 'wellbeing', or 'meditation'. This is the single biggest mistake you can make and it's why most campaigns like this fail and burn cash. It's far too broad. You're trying to talk to everyone, so you end up resonating with no one.

You need to forget demographics for a second. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a demographic; it's a nightmare. It's a specific, urgent, and emotionally draining problem that they are desperate to solve. Your workbook isn't for "people who want to improve their mental health." It needs to be for:

• -> The university student who is so crippled by procrastination and anxiety that they're about to fail their exams.
• -> The new manager who has impostor syndrome so badly they can't sleep on Sunday nights, dreading the week ahead.
• -> The person whose social anxiety is so intense that they turn down every invitation and feel their world shrinking.

See the difference? These are specific pains. They're real, they hurt, and people will actively pay for a solution. When you define your customer this way, your targeting on platforms like Facebook and Instagram becomes incredibly precise. Instead of targeting 'mental health', you start targeting interests related to university stress, business management publications, or specific authors who write about social anxiety. Your ad is no longer a random interruption but a potential life-raft appearing at the exact moment they feel like they're drowning.

Before you spend a single pound on ads, you need to do this work. Who, *specifically*, is your workbook for? What is the one major nightmare it solves for them? Write it down. Get absolutly crystal clear on it. Every decision you make from here on out—your ad copy, your images, your landing page—flows from this one answer.

I'd say you need a message they can't ignore...

Once you know exactly whose nightmare you're solving, you can finally write an ad that they can't ignore. This is where we come back to your original question about simple vs. info-loaded ads. The format doesn't matter as much as the message inside it. Your ad copy needs to enter the conversation already happening in your customer's head.

We use proven copywriting frameworks for this. One of the most powerful is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

• Problem: You state the problem they're experiencing in their own words. (e.g., "Staring at a blank page again, with a deadline looming?")
• Agitate: You pour salt in the wound. You remind them of the emotional cost of the problem. (e.g., "That familiar wave of panic and guilt, while another evening gets wasted scrolling your phone...")
• Solve: You introduce your workbook as the clear, simple solution. (e.g., "Our 5-Minute Focus workbook gives you a simple, daily framework to break the procrastination cycle for good.")

This entire PAS sequence can be the "information" in your info-loaded ad. It's not a boring list of features like "100 pages, A5 format." It's a story that makes them feel understood. For your simple ad, you'd pull the most powerful part of this story. The image might be a serene picture of a completed checklist next to a cup of coffee, and the one-liner could be the "Solve" part: "Break the procrastination cycle in 5 minutes a day."

Let's look at how this transforms your messaging:

The effective copy isn't just better; it actively filters your audience. People who don't have that specific problem will just scroll past. But the person who feels that pain viscerally will stop and think, "How did they know?" That's when you've got them.

You probably should fix your funnel before spending a penny...

Let's assume you've nailed your ICP and your messaging. You create a brilliant ad, someone clicks... and then what? They land on a generic product page with a price and an 'Add to Cart' button. This is where most sales are lost.

For a product related to mental health, trust is everything. A standard Shopify product page doesn't build trust; it just tries to make a transaction. You need a dedicated landing page that acts as a sales page. Its only job is to convince that specific person (your ICP) that your workbook is the solution they've been looking for. It needs to be perfect.

What does a trustworthy, high-converting landing page for your workbook need?

• A Reinforcing Headline: The headline must match the promise of your ad. If your ad said "Break the procrastination cycle," the headline should be something similar, not just "The Mindful Workbook."
• Social Proof: Testimonials are non-negotiable. Even if you only have a few to start, they are powerful. "This workbook helped me finish my dissertation" is a thousand times more effective than any feature list. If you dont have any, give some copies away for free in exchange for an honest review.
• Author Credibility: Who are you? Why did you create this? A short, honest bio about your own struggles or expertise builds a human connection and reassures people you're not just some faceless company.
• A Look Inside: Show them what they're getting. Don't just have a cover image. Show mockups of a few key pages. Let them see the quality and understand the process. Make it feel tangible.
• The Offer Itself: Is it just the workbook? Could you make the offer more compelling? Maybe it's a "Procrastination Buster Bundle" including the workbook and a short video guide. Maybe you offer a free digital chapter for an email signup. This is about increasing the perceived value and reducing the risk for the buyer.
• A Risk Reversal: A money-back guarantee. For a digital or physical workbook, this is simple. "If you don't find this workbook helpful in the first 30 days, we'll refund you, no questions asked." This removes all the risk and shows you're confident in your product.

People often spend 90% of their effort on the ad and 10% on the landing page. It should be the other way around. Your ad's only job is to get the right person to click. It's the landing page's job to make the sale. If your conversion rate on the landing page is poor, you're just pouring money down the drain, no matter how good your ads are.

You'll need the right targeting strategy...

So how do we put this all together on a platform like Meta (Facebook & Instagram)? We use a funnel structure. You dont just run one campaign; you run multiple campaigns that guide people from being completely unaware of you to becoming a customer. I've seen clients get amazing results for info-products and courses this way. For one course-seller, we generated $115k in revenue in just a month and a half by getting this structure right.

Here's how I would structure it, based on the audience prioritisation we use for our eCommerce clients:

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) Campaign - Finding New People:
   • Objective: Conversions (Sales). Always optimise for the final action you want. Don't use 'Brand Awareness' or 'Reach'; you're telling Facebook to find you people who will never buy.
   • Audiences to test: This is where you use your ICP research. Create different ad sets targeting specific, niche interests. For the procrastination workbook, you could test:
     • An ad set targeting interests in productivity authors (e.g., James Clear, Cal Newport).
     • An ad set targeting users of productivity apps (e.g., Asana, Trello).
     • An ad set targeting students of specific universities combined with behaviours like 'Engaged Shoppers'.
     Once you have some sales, you can create a Lookalike audience of your buyers, which is often the most powerful audience you can build.
   • Creative: This is where your simple, attention-grabbing ad often works best. Its job is just to stop the scroll and get the right person to click through to your brilliant landing page.
2. Middle/Bottom of Funnel (MoFu/BoFu) Campaign - Retargeting:
   • Objective: Conversions (Sales).
   • Audiences to test:
     • People who visited your landing page but didn't buy (in the last 14-30 days).
     • People who added the workbook to their cart but didn't check out (in the last 7 days). This is your hottest audience.
     • People who have watched a percentage of your video ads.
   • Creative: This is where your info-loaded ad shines. These people are already aware of you. Now you need to overcome their objections and build more trust. Use ads that feature a powerful testimonial, show a walkthrough of the workbook, or answer a common question. For the cart abandoners, you can even run an ad with a direct message: "Forgot something? Your journey to focus is waiting."

You start by putting most of your budget into the ToFu campaign to feed the funnel. As people visit your site and interact, your retargeting audiences will grow, and you can allocate more budget there. This systematic approach of testing audiences within a funnel structure is how you find pockets of profitable customers and scale your sales, rather than just throwing random ads at the wall and hoping something sticks.

Let's talk about the numbers...

This is all well and good, but what can you actually expect in terms of costs and returns? This is where many people get a nasty suprise. Advertising isn't a magic money machine, especially at the start. You have to spend money to gather data and find what works.

Based on our experience running hundreds of campaigns for eCommerce products, here are some very rough ballpark figures for a developed country like the UK or US:

• Cost Per Click (CPC): You can probably expect to pay between £0.50 and £1.50 for a click from a reasonably targeted ad.
• Landing Page Conversion Rate (CVR): A decent eCommerce landing page converts at around 2-5%. A really good one, with all the trust elements we discussed, might get higher, but let's be realistic.

So, let's do the maths. To get one sale, you'll need between 20 (at 5% CVR) and 50 (at 2% CVR) clicks. Your Cost Per Purchase (CPA) would therefore be in the range of:

• Best Case: 20 clicks * £0.50 CPC = £10 CPA
• Worst Case: 50 clicks * £1.50 CPC = £75 CPA

This is a huge range, and your actual results will be somewhere within it. The key thing to understand is that your CPA must be significantly lower than the price of your workbook for this to be profitable. If you're selling a £20 workbook and your CPA is £25, you're losing money on every sale. This is why optimising your landing page conversion rate is so important. Improving your CVR from 2% to 4% literally halves your cost per acquisition.

Use the calculator below to play around with some numbers. It'll help you understand the relationship between ad spend, conversion rate, and your final return.

So, which ad should you run?...

After all of that, we can finally answer your original question properly. It's not about "simple vs. info-loaded." It's about "right message, right person, right time."

You need to test both, but within the strategic funnel structure we've discussed:

• Use the simple, high-impact ad in your Top-of-Funnel campaigns. Its job is to cut through the noise, connect with your ICP's core pain point, and earn the click to your landing page.
• Use the info-loaded, trust-building ad in your retargeting campaigns. Its job is to re-engage people who have already shown interest, answer their unspoken questions, and give them the final nudge they need to purchase.

The biggest takeaway should be this: The creative is a variable you test and optimise, but only after you've built the solid foundation of a well-defined customer, a compelling offer, and a high-converting funnel. Get those three things right, and you'll find that both types of ads can be incredibly successful.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

I know this is a lot to take in, and it's a very different answer than a simple "use image A." But this is the difference between running ads and building a proper, scalable customer acquisition system. Getting this framework right from the start will save you a huge amount of time, money, and frustration down the line.

It's a complex process with a lot of moving parts, which is why many buisness owners choose to work with an expert who has navigated this countless times before. We can help you define that strategy, build out the campaigns, and manage the ongoing testing and optimisation required to make it profitable.

If you'd like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your product and give you some more tailored advice. Feel free to book one in if that sounds helpful.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh