On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Reza Khadjavi, CEO of Motion, a platform that supercharges your creative testing and reporting workflow from Ads Manager so you can focus on scaling creatives that convert.

Gone are the days where you could scale ad campaigns using just 3-4 images as creatives. The competition for attention and eyeballs has gotten so intense that stopping the scroll is easier said than done. And this was before the privacy-driven changes to the ecosystem. Knowing what works and why has become an even tougher nut to crack.

Through all these challenges it has become increasingly clear that creatives can make or break your ad campaigns. This previously overlooked component is now truly in focus. Building great creatives is more of a team effort than an individual one. You need to have clearly defined roles, workflows and tools to leverage the data available.

In this episode, Kunle and Reza talk about how top performing creative teams are structured. You will get to hear about what kind of tools are needed, what roles are in play and what are some of the best practices to adopt immediately. This is a great episode for performance marketers and marketing leaders.

Here is a summary of some of the most important points made,

• • Storytelling is a critical part of creatives
  • The biggest puzzle marketers have is knowing what worked and why
  • Ad Manager is inadequate to analyse data in large ad accounts
  • Media Buyer and Creative Strategist are key roles in a creative team
  • Every single creative team should implement a naming convention for their assets
  • An Ad set name should reflect the choices made in the set
  • Privacy-driven marketing is here to stay
  • There is no way to “hack” the algorithm (and never has been)

Covered Topics:

On today’s interview Kunle and Reza discuss,

• Genesis of Motion
• Why Reporting Tools in Ad Manager aren’t good enough
• Building a Creative Team in 2021
• Best Practices of Leading Teams
• Managing the Synergy Between Creatives and Landing Pages
• Key Components of Ad Set Names
• Living in a Privacy-Driven World

Timestamp:

• 11:00 – Reza’s Motion project:
  • Use a storytelling format for creatives
  • “Creatives are one of the most critical elements of a performance marketing strategy”
  • Goal was to solve common problems creative teams face
  • The biggest challenge was to figure out what works and why?
• 15:40 – Why you need a tool to manage the creative development process:
  • You can’t compare creatives across different types of campaigns
  • Teams with large accounts end up exporting ad data to spreadsheets for analysis
  • “The Creative team hates spreadsheets”
  • Analysing data using Motion is quicker than doing it in Spreadsheets
• 20:00 – What a Creative team looks like in 2021:
  • Roles are common across teams
  • Media Buyer and Creative Strategist are the core roles
  • Creative Strategists think about the Why behind the strategy
  • Then come the Content Creators and Motion/Graphic Designers
  • Brand Owner or Head of Marketing is the conductor of the process
  • “Compartmentalising Creative team roles make the process very effective”
• 28:00 – Who manages the strategy and content on Landing Pages?
  • “Customer reviews and ad comments help you find hooks for ads”
• 36:10 – How the team using Motion:
  • The media buyer usually builds reports and dashboards
• 39:50 – Best Practices of Leading Creative teams:
  • Good naming conventions are critical when you scale
  • Using codenames help to keep the names short and manageable
• 44:10 – Key components of an Ad set name:
  • Reflect some of the choices you’ve made
  • Mention Geography, Type of Audience, Targeting, Bidding Strategy, Stage of Funnel
• 46:00 – Key Components of an Ad name:
  • Ad format – Theme – Angle – Offer
• 50:10 – Impact of iOS 14 changes:
  • We’re not going back to how things were before
  • “Privacy-driven advertising is a trend to expect going forward”
  • “We need to stop thinking that the algorithm can be hacked”

Takeaways:

• Ad Manager is inadequate to analyse data in large ad accounts
• Media Buyer and Creative Strategist are key roles in a creative team
• Every single creative team should implement a naming convention for their assets
• Customer reviews and ad comments help you find hooks for ads
• An Ad set name should reflect the choices made in the set
• There is no way to “hack” the algorithm (and never has been)

Links & Resources

• Reza on LinkedIn

Tweetable Quotes:

“Customer reviews and ad comments help you find hooks for ads.”

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