Transcription
This is the biggest mistake that we made at thesis, and it cost us tens of thousands of dollars. I honestly think that thesis might be mad at me for showing this to you, but this is literally the inside of our Notion boards.
A huge thanks to Notion for sponsoring this video. This is actually my first sponsor for this channel, and I'm really excited to partner with a brand that we actually use every day at thesis. Learn exactly how we use this tool to power our clients' creative strategies later in this video.
So, my promise to you is this: If you watch, understand, and implement the entirety of this video, then you will become an expert creative strategist, and your TikTok ads and Facebook ads will get a better ROAS, guaranteed.
So, what is a creative strategist in the context of paid social advertising? A creative strategist owns the creative strategy for a brand's creative on Facebook ads, TikTok ads, Snapchat ads, Pinterest ads, all the ad-buying platforms. And spoiler alert, every single agency and brand needs one. This is a non-negotiable.
So, at thesis, our creative directors, this is what we call our expert-level creative strategists, actually own the strategy pipeline and QA of all of a client's creatives. And by owning the strategy, this is what I actually mean: A creative strategist will literally decide what ads we're going to run with, what messaging, what imagery, what ad format, and ultimately, what strategy. They write briefs for UGC creators, and they spearhead the strategy for studio shoots.
And how do they do all that, exactly? This boils down to spearheading and conducting a ton of research, which includes looking at ads performance. And they lead the brainstorming sessions internally and externally with our clients. So, for example, say we got a new client that was a sock brand. The creative strategist would conduct in-depth research on the brand, its competitors, and frankly, its place in the market. Once they had all that information, they would lead a brainstorming session and map out the first four tickets that they want to execute on for that client. Maybe they'll want to do a features point-out ad, or an us versus them ad, or a UGC problem-solution testimonial, or maybe a TikTok-style ad.
The creative director is then going to manage that pipeline and select the right video editor to create each individual asset. And once those assets are created, then they are going to go through a QA process and approve or get edits for those ads.
Now, please let me know in the comments if you work at an agency or a brand who runs Facebook and Instagram ads. Let me know if you actually have this person, a creative strategist, who does this work for you, or you expect your media buyers to do it. Because I'm willing to bet a lot of you who are media buyers end up having to do a lot of this work, and I know it's a lot of work.
Now, we have a few different types of creative strategists at thesis. Essentially, we have three different levels. We have a creative strategist, we have an associate creative director, and we have the expert-level creative director. Now, at the creative director level, you are overseeing all of the strategy, all of the pipeline, and all the QA. Whereas the creative strategist or the associate creative director are taking smaller pieces of that.
What is now crazy and unfathomable to me is that at thesis, we used to think that media buyers could own this role. But frankly, this is way too much for one person to do. But also, video editors weren't really right for this role either. And this mistake cost us tens of thousands of dollars. We've learned that not only do you need to actually name the person who is owning that creative strategy, but you also need a bulletproof system for conducting that research and formulating that strategy.
So now, I'm going to show you our exact workflow for coming up with a creative strategy, AKA how you can be a creative strategist. Let's dive into exactly how you can become an expert creative strategist. And I've boiled this down into five steps, but spoiler, they are not simple or easy. They do require a lot of work, but this is exactly how we do it at thesis, and also how I do it in my own consulting work. So if you've ever wanted to work with me, this is literally what I do for your brand.
Number one, you need to have a system for your research. Here's the exact document that I use to conduct that research for my clients. I'm actually just going to give you a quick walkthrough. I'm going to go through this really quick, so get your screenshots ready.
First up, you have the overview. This is just quick links to everything that is necessary with the client's creative account. Then I'm doing research. I'm looking at press, I'm seeing who wrote about them, what they said, taking out the parts that I really like. Same thing for socials. I'm looking at their creative strategies there, how they're interacting with their clients, what kind of messaging they're using in the actual organic creatives, and really seeing what type of questions pop up again and again and again from their users. I'm also looking at their review sites. So review sites are like subscription addiction. These are really different from press hits, somehow. And I just like to keep them all compiled there. I'm also looking at customer reviews. So this is going to be things on the website, things that the client is giving me, as well as things like Trustpilot.
Now, next up, we're going to be looking at competitor brand. And I'm literally just going to be linking out the ad library so I can just come back to this creative strategy workflow once every few weeks and just quickly look through them. I'm also going to be looking at the landing page strategies that are used in ads and just linking those quickly there. And I'm going to do that for as many competitors as I think necessary.
Now, another thing that I am doing is I'm looking at use cases of their product versus the demographics versus the awareness level. Now, most of the time, this is going to be an in-depth conversation with the client, but you're also going to discover a lot of this through the creative strategy research that you just did previously. So you're going to discover the common use cases for the product, why people bought it. You're also going to discover who the actual customers are and how that varies. You're also going to want to discuss and discover the awareness level. So how aware are people of the problems, aka the reason why they need your product or service, and how aware are they of the products, aka the solution?
Now, that is sort of a nuanced conversation to have, but I think that this is actually how you develop angles for your creatives. Because you're going to be thinking about the use case you want to show, you're going to be thinking about the demographic that you want to speak to. And by triangulating these three things, this is literally how you're going to create your creative angles. So you're going to think about the use case that you want to highlight with the demographic that you want to feature or speak to, and of course, the awareness levels. These three things are how we develop creative angles.
Now, next up is the creative audit. So you can see here, there are multiple sections for that. This is such a huge, important part that it requires its own step.
Number two, you need to analyze past creative performance, and this is of course ongoing. And at thesis, we use Notion to analyze our creatives and provide visualizations of that data. It's like having a creative analyst on your team that tells you which strategies to iterate on and which ones to abandon completely instantaneously.
So I'm going to show you some of our favorite reports in here. Notion is the tool for creative strategy. It automates your most important creative reports so that you can make quicker and more effective creative decisions. We started using Notion at thesis and frankly, it's enabled us to make better performing creative. Some of my favorite reports include the top creative report, the hook report, and the hold report. Probably no surprise to those of you who routinely watch my channel.
Now, I love using these three reports, particularly when onboarding a new client. It enables us to make quick iterations on creatives that clients already have and have tested, so we can get better performing creative out the door more within days.
As we continue scaling our creative and sourcing creators and doing studio shoots, here are the other reports that we routinely use. The first one is the creator comparison report. Now, this actually allows you to look at performance across different UGC creators. My clients love looking at this report every single month, and it also enables us to know what types of creators to source next for them.
Next up is the content comparison report, which allows us to look at performance across UGC versus studio assets, even versus client creative, creative, client creative, creative. And this is a really great pillar report for us because it allows us to know what type of big swing direction to go in next. If we see that studio ads are performing a lot more for clients as opposed to UGC, then we know to double down on these efforts and essentially schedule more studio shoots.
The third report that I've just requested Notion to make for me is the team member report. And yes, Notion will actually create these reports for you. And if you have an idea for a report that you'd like to see, they will make it for you, which has been really huge for me. And essentially, the team member report allows you to see performance across different types of creators, so across different video editors or across different creative directors.
This report in Notion in general has actually been really huge for the creative team who are much more visual. They're not really as comfortable inside of Ads Manager, but they're really comfortable jumping inside of Notion and doing analysis for themselves over the creatives that they're making. Notion is compatible with Facebook ads and TikTok ads, which is really huge as they start to scale up clients on that platform. I think that this tool is an absolute invest for scaling brands. As creative becomes more and more important for brands, so does the need for effective creative analysis and creative strategy. Notion is a powerhouse that extracts that data really easily so that my team can make more effective creative decisions and make better creative.
You can try Notion for free for two weeks using the link in the description bar. You can also download their free ebook, "How to Be a Creative Strategist." I actually have a little interview in there, so be sure to check it out. Again, a huge thanks to Notion for being my first sponsor ever on this channel.
Now, one caveat to Notion that I want to mention for my followers is that you do have to have a standardized naming convention to get the most out of the tool. So if you're interested in learning about thesis's naming convention and what I use with my personal clients, let me know, and I can definitely put that video on the roadmap for you guys.
Okay, let's get into the rest of the video. The third thing that you need to be a creative strategist is you need to have a set of tried and true ad creative strategies. Which means you need to know what kind of creative works. Sure, this is something that you will be continuously iterating on, but you need to have a bank of ad creative recipes that you know you can tap into at any time. And I'm actually going to show you the Notion boards that we use internally at thesis. I actually think they're going to be kind of mad at me for showing this to you because this is literally just the inside of our Notion boards.
So jumping into our actual Notion boards, we have two places where we house winning ad creative styles, I suppose. So we have TikTok recipes and then we also have creative strategies to test. Now, these I've already created two videos about both of these, which I've already mentioned, but I'll give you a really quick walkthrough for them.
So here we have different strategies and we also have tags like, is it an overall ad concept, or is it a hook, or is it more of a treatment? So like the robot voice, the stuff TikTok made me buy. I sometimes hear people talking about like, oh, the robot voice said it's like, it's more of like a treatment as opposed to an ad strategy, but I digress. So here we have like problem-solution ad. If you open up here, we actually have the recipe inside of it, and then some alternative hooks, external examples, and then examples here.
I know some people are a lot more visual, so we've also just made it so that we can scroll through the different ad strategies. And then like I said, we have one that's just ad creative strategies to test. And this is primarily something we're just going to test on all onboarding clients. So literally, when we're onboarding clients, we're testing out like these 10 strategies. And it's the same thing, and you've seen these ads ad nauseam on my channel. You just point out at UGC comparison, press screenshot, unboxing, Post-it, no videos, before and after. Uh, really, like you should be creating your own ad recipes that you know work across your clients, um, so that you can develop your own learnings. But really, after we're creating that initial creative strategy workflow document that houses all of our research, then we're looking at, okay, we get it. We have an idea of what type of messaging works and what our competitors doing. Where should we start first? And generally, we're looking at these creative strategies to test or these TikTok recipes as the places to start.
Now, if you want access to all that great information, you already have it. I've already given you the 10 TikTok ad strategies to try, as well as the 10 Facebook and Instagram ad strategies. So try those. They're literally pretty much all that is inside of those Notion boards. Also, be sure to check out the recipe to the perfect UGC ad. That will also be very helpful.
Number four, you need a creative roadmap. You need to know what ad creatives you're going to be developing next, and you need a place to document your creative learnings. And here is an actual client creative roadmap that I have. Super simple, just like outlining the testing concept, expected delivery date, the brief that I use to, you know, develop the strategy behind that ad creative, the finished assets link, whether or not it's approved or not approved, the date that it's launched, and the takeaways. Really, it is not that difficult, but keeping up with it is sort of a pain, and I totally recognize that. But being able to show this to your client, like, hey, this is what we have, these are the takeaways, even if they're really quick, it's kind of invaluable that they know what's coming down the pipeline. So I always recommend something like this. And if you have something that's more elaborate and more beautiful, then good on you, you should probably share it in the comments. This is another non-negotiable, but I find that lots of media buyers, creative writers, video editors, this is just something that feels like extra work that doesn't really feel worth it. But this is something that I've seen retain clients and is just really something you need to do if you're in a client-facing position. Again, this is the exact one to use at thesis, and the exact one that I use in my personal consulting. It is not fancy, and it really doesn't need to be. And I like to make sure that at all times, we're three to four strategies ahead at any given time, so that a client can look at this creative roadmap, be like, oh, okay, here's where we're going to be in three weeks or four weeks, because we deliver our creatives on a weekly basis.
And the fifth thing is, you need a creative strategist toolkit. And I'm going to show you all the tools that we use at thesis and in my personal consulting business right now.
Number one is of course Notion, and that's for our creative and analysis and our creative visualization reports. Half the time, I'm literally just screenshotting parts of these and dropping them into client reports. The clients, number one, really appreciate them. Makes me look good, makes the ad creative look good, it just made things so much easier.
Number two is Notion. I already showed you the inside of our Notion boards. You really do need a place to have a bank of ad creative strategies that you know works well. Again, these videos, if you want a really quick download from what I've found in my personal testing, but of course, you should also be doing your own testing for your brands.
Number three is Asana. I actually don't recommend this one, unfortunately. You do have to use a project management tool to manage your creative pipeline. There's just no way around it. I know that Asana uses Trello, I know that some other agencies use Monday.com. Anyone will do. I dislike Asana greatly though, but we use it.
And number four, we also use Foreplay, also known formally as Addison. This is legitimately a way to save ads that will never disappear. So if you ever took a link to the Facebook Ad Library, dropped it in a client report, or sent it to yourself and went back later to find that, oh, lo and behold, the ad is no longer there, AKA no longer running. This literally prevents that from happening. So what you can do is you can actually create ad boards that will just exist in perpetuity. And I honestly love it. Again, I use it at thesis, and I also use it in my personal consulting. What's cool too is you can also download MP4s of those files to make sharing way easier, and I often do that for this YouTube channel, which is how you can see all these cool ads.
And finally, we also use Frame for our creative approvals and edits. What I really like is you can toggle at different points of the video and leave really specific feedback for that point of the video. It's really helped us streamline getting not only feedback internally, but also from clients.
And that's it. If you found this video valuable or you learned anything, please give me a like or a subscribe. Those small actions really do help out this channel. And let me know what other videos you'd like to see. I am fielding a few requests over the next few weeks. Alright, thanks. See you next week. Bye.