MrBeast marketing lessons for media buyers (thumbnails, headlines, hooks and more)

This week will be slightly different. We can get inspired by what other brands do, and sometimes we can learn from creators who are great at organic content creation such as MrBeast. In case you don’t know him, he is the greatest video creator on the internet. So, I wanted to learn from the best mind that has figured out attention, human psychology, and virality.

MrBeast himself says that you should be looking for inspiration in unusual places.

My unusual place in this newsletter is not so unusual but perhaps surprising to some of you.

So, after watching & reading 100+ hours of content, I have divided the newsletter into:

• Thumbnails

• Headlines

• Hooks

• Holding attention

   

These are the most critical factors to his success and what we can steal from him. Let’s dive into it.

1. Thumbnails

The purpose of a video thumbnail is to attract viewers and make them want to click and watch the video. It's essential to create a thumbnail that accurately represents the main idea or focus of the video. And it has to be visually appealing and easy to understand. Confusing or unclear thumbnails will only discourage viewers from clicking on a video.

MrBeast’s process for creating thumbnails involves taking screenshots from the video, adding some text or graphics, and using a color scheme that stands out. He also mentions the importance of testing different thumbnails to see which one performs best and adjusting future videos accordingly.

Here’s a checklist for brands when creating thumbnails, whether for YouTube or any other medium:

• High-quality imagery: clarity matters

• A human face conveys an emotion

• Big, readable text that’s easy to understand

• Action shots: movement always helps

• Primary focus conveying a single idea

• Focus on the curiosity gap

But there is more to it. You can use different elements to make thumbnails:

2a. Focal point

The focal point is the main element of the thumbnail. To easily find the focus, blink your eyes as fast as you can.

What you remember first is usually the focus.

2b. Two Elements

An element is a part of the thumbnail that grabs the attention of the audience. In this case, MrBeast and MrShark.

3. Composition Psychology

Composition - the thumbnail is easy to process, which catches your attention. Psychology - I want to see the Lamborghini crushed, so I click.

In short, if I were to steal a thumbnail strategy, I’d make it clear and lead with curiosity. And, I’ll definitely use a face expressing an emotion. You do not want the purpose or meaning to be unclear.

And emotion is the most important aspect of a thumbnail.

MrBeast uses far more happy/excited emotions in his facial expressions than any other feeling. He also has many videos showing shocked expressions that do very well too. A smaller portion of his videos has angry or neutral emotions.

The emotion should tell the viewer what to expect. Something shocking? Something cool, fun, or interesting? Should they expect to become upset or angry with something in the video? If a person wants to enjoy a video, they will choose a more positive thumbnail.

2. Headlines

Here are the titles of MrBeast's most popular videos:

• $456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!

• I Spent 50 Hours in Solitary Confinement

• I Ate a $70,000 Golden Pizza

• I Spent 50 Hours Buried Alive

• I Put 100 Million Orbeez in My Friend's Backyard

What I see in these headlines is a common theme:

• A big number

• A shocking story

• An unbelievable claim

• An ‘I did something’ declaration

So, here’s an example of an ad headline we can use:

I spent 100 days trying Soylent and here’s what I found. The Hustle used this headline to grab attention. This article went viral.

MrBeast said the headline should have 50 characters or less and be very clear.

So, use numbers and state an unbelievable claim or shocking story with 50 characters or less (this is purely for Youtube but we can use it for Facebook ads too. Apparently, The Hustle headline has 55 characters 😂).

Another thing I found is that he uses power words in his titles.

A power word is what marketers use to trigger an emotional or psychological response in the viewer.

Generally, these triggers create curiosity, emphasize emotions, and influence your audience to click.

Power words can:

• Build trust

• Create urgency

• Emphasize the extreme

• Create curiosity

• Personalize the content

• Create tension

• Show value

To make it easier to understand here are some examples:

In short, use these power words in your headline.

Fun fact: I’m using two subject lines as an A/B test experiment in this email:

• What paid marketers can learn from MrBeast

• I Spent 50 Hours studying MrBeast

The second subject line is stealing from MrBeast. If you recieve the second subject line, then MrBeast method works. If it does not, my brain won 😂

3. Hooks

MrBeast is the king of hooks. His 139 million subscribers make him the fourth-most followed YouTuber of all-time, which isn’t by accident—he’s obsessive about his content. But how does he stands out? Hooks.

According to MrBeast, your hook has to be an extreme opinion. He believes that negative clickbait is much easier than positive ones. So, why do the hard thing? He gives an example with a water bottle brand:

• Nestle water sucks – This is an okay headline and hook.

• Nestle water is the worst water I have ever drank in my life – That’s a really good clickbaity headline that could be interesting to any viewer.

One strategy MrBeast uses to improve audience retention is to introduce hooks at the beginning of his videos that capture people's attention and make them want to keep watching.

These hooks can take many forms, such as a dramatic introduction, a funny moment, or a cliffhanger ending at the beginning of the video.

A good example from a recent video where he made a dramatic introduction with: “Behind me is an assassin.” And I am like damn bro, tell me more.

Here’s another video hook: I’m in a giant circle in the middle of nowhere:

He slams you into the action with this zoom in and sound effects. He then pulls you in with an awesome drone shot showing how he really is in the middle of nowhere. Then he explains the challenge within 5 seconds, and if you take a closer look at this video, he is making everything visual. He uses images and text to explain the premise.

To further understand his hooks, we need to divide them into three parts.

1. Premise: What is the goal of the video? It’s basically pitching to your viewer why they would watch it. And, it confirms the click.

2. Stakes: What is on the line? Stakes create tension in a video and psychologically get you more invested in the story.

3. Twist: How is it unique? How do you say it differently?

To really understand this, I’m going to share some hooks scripts with you:

The takeaway for me: use visual hooks, explain the premise, and have an extreme opinion to hook the viewer.

While we as paid media buyers can’t use stakes, we can definitely use a promise to hook the user.

4. Holding Attention

Good marketers focus too much on getting attention (which is great) but great marketers nail holding attention too.

Hooking is great and creating a curiosity open loop will get you halfway there. But MrBeast holds attention by overdelivering.

Overdelivering is when you go above and beyond what the viewer expects in the intro so that they become hooked. And then you should overdeliver in the rest of the video.

This gives your audience a dopamine hit, which builds the association of happiness/satisfaction with your content.

And dopamine builds the association of the release of Serotonin with your videos, making your audience want to watch more videos.

His focus is on preventing segment loss. The points at which viewers leave are called exit points and many viewers do exit videos.

This is when viewers will likely leave the video, resulting in a sharp drop in the retention grab.

So, in this video (watch the video to get the context), Jimmy showed the shark challenge but it was soon over and he connected the viewer with his next challenge. The way he connected the second challenge with his third challenge was by saying “we’ll see you guys in a little bit” and yet he did not finish the challenge completely. Now, I got so curious about what will happen to the guy in the second challenge, but he started showing the third challenge already. That’s how you prevent segment loss.

The second way of holding attention is by creating tension.

The thing about tension...it’s a very important thing…a thing that we should all know about. But somehow, we fail to rely on it. But not MrBeast. He is a master of productive tension.

But what is productive tension? Here’s how another master storyteller, Jay Acunzo, describes it:

So after creating productive tension in his videos, what he does is – he creates open loops and does not close them all together.

This graphic gives some clarity:

You should definitely read this guide on creating open loops to get better understanding how to use them effectively.

For example, MrBeast started this video I mentioned previously at 1:26 seconds and closed the loop at 3:16 seconds. But this video now has more open loops so I am deep in his videos because I need to know more.

But then he raises the difficulty level and offers more money to keep the story going and switches 3:47 to some other challenge again.

Here’s the key takeaway: Don’t close the loop until the end - that’s how you hold viewers’ attention.

BUT

Yes, there is a big but here. While studying MrBeast, I learned something else that I want to share with you. MrBeast’s tactics are great and useful for media buyers to apply to your ads, but he genuinely tries to create REMARKABLE videos and content.

But, what does remarkable mean?

Remark: Say something as a comment or mention, regard with attention or notice.

Able: Having the power, skill, means, or opportunity to do something.

Remarkable: Having the power, skill, means, or opportunity to get someone to regard something with their attention.

Here’s a remarkability test: If you used your idea as an ice breaker with a stranger, would they:

• Not care, or

• Would they ask a follow-up question?

In terms of YouTube, a follow-up question is the same as someone clicking the video, as in both examples, they want to know more about the topic.

MrBeast: I Counted to 100,000!

Viewer: What? Why would you do that? You must be lying!

MrBeast: Click my video to see.

Viewer: Okay, sure.

This is why he creates remarkable videos.

The lesson is — you need to create remarkable ads.

Here’s the thing, there is only one MrBeast. Even if someone tries to copy him, it would be hard to come close to his level. So, instead of copying him, we can learn from his lessons and create something truly unique and remarkable. And that goes for our products and ads.

I’d love to know what part of this breakdown caught your attention the most.

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Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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