A few years ago (before DTC advertising became the norm and TikTok changed the way we view videos), creative strategy was a relatively obscure term.
Today — it's the number one priority for top-performing marketing teams.
Why is this happening?
Creative strategy covers everything in between — research, analytics, planning, briefing.
As technology and AI make the actual execution of performance advertising easier, the value of creative strategy becomes even more important.
But there’s a glaring juxtaposition in the term “creative strategy.”
“Creative” implies → fun, whimsical, thought-provoking!
“Strategy” means → data, numbers, KPIs 😬
Disclaimer: You can probably tell which one I identify with based on the biased descriptions above… but that’s the problem — we identify with one or the other.
Right brain or left brain. There is no inbetween.
And yet, if you want to make good ads… you have to be good at both.
This is where creative strategy finds its home.
Motion’s Evan Lee worked as our Head of Creative Strategy back in 2021 and he’s been defining the role ever since.
On one hand we have our media buying folks, who are more analytical and data-driven.
And on the other side we have our creative folks who are exactly that — creative and conceptual.
They need to operate in lock-step to succeed, but there's a natural gap in how they work.
So when we refer to creative strategy we’re talking about bringing together the two sides of the brain so you're generating the most revenue possible.
To bridge both teams together, and to create a system that constantly generates high-performing ads, you’ll need a strong creative strategy in place.
Let’s break down how to craft the best creative strategy for your team.
Creative strategy is an approach to performance marketing designed to help you continuously refine your ad creatives for better performance.
The goal of a great creative strategy is to increase the speed and velocity of ad production and roll-out, in order to unearth new opportunities for bigger wins in terms of ROI.
A solid creative strategy provides a framework that unites analytical data and creative teams.
Creative is the number one lever for success on paid social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Algorithms revolve around which creatives resonate with which audiences, rather than being controlled by the media buyer.
This means identifying and analyzing data from your ad creatives is crucial for improving ad performance.
DTC heavyweights, like cookware brand Hexclad, scale advertising spend with a robust creative strategy that allows them to identify:
With this information, they can iterate on winning concepts and produce a constant flow of new ad creatives for their media buying team.
The creative strategy flywheel is a system for building a repeatable and sustainable process for performance advertising.
Growth teams rely on the flywheel to create a clear workflow that connects media buying and creative teams.
Creative strategy research involves the art of analyzing the customer and customer journey, before and after the purchase, to determine which ad creatives to make next.
The ultimate creative strategist, Dara Denney, has worked with brands like Speedo, Laura Geller, and Daily Harvest to develop a four-pronged approach to creative strategy research including:
Reputation-wise, press is the highest form of social proof. You’ll be able to quickly understand brand perception from these articles.
Mine sites like Reddit, and scroll through comments on both organic and paid social content, to understand how customers speak about the product in an informal setting.
Competitor analysis can answer questions like:
The easiest way to perform competitor research is by searching through Meta’s Ad Library.
Beyond messaging, look at which platforms your competitors spend ad money on, as well. This gives you insight on where your ideal customer base lives and where your marketing efforts should go.
Next, pull data from past creatives to inform your strategy:
Motion’s creative analytics platform provides all this data — and more. So you can create more winning ads by identifying key drivers of creative performance.
Building upon your research in Step 1, ideate on creative concepts that could work for Meta, TikTok, and Youtube.
Great creative strategists like Alex Cooper start their research by exploring customer pain points.
Try using AI tools like Perplexity or Gigabrain to gather information in an instant with prompts like:
Then, come up with ideas for various creative ad hooks and angles.
Hooks are the initial attention-grabbers in your ad, designed to capture your customer’s attention quickly.
Angles are the perspective you take to present your product. Meant to maintain interest and guide the viewer towards a conversion.
Use your user personas to help you craft ads for various audiences. Address each particular customers’ concerns, emotions, and lifestyle to resonate with a particular group.
Jess Bachman (Creative Strategy Director and Co-Founder of FireTeam) encourages you to harness the power of creative inputs.
Search through ad libraries of other brands, watch TV, scroll your social feed, read books … the more you surround yourself with creative outlets, the more success you’ll have in creating your own.
Brainstorming with other creatives on your team is essential — it’s easier to add to an existing idea than to come up with an entirely new one.
At the FireTeam agency, they have a bi-weekly two-hour brainstorming session for their clients.
“We leave that meeting with around 40 new ideas for our clients. But this is collaborative and very much bouncing ideas around, not going at it solo.”
Process-wise, one thing they’ve done at their agency is to create a Slack channel called “Ad-spiration.” Team members drop in ads they like, random thoughts, or something from a movie or book that gave them a creative idea.
Then, they have a VA catalogue all the ideas and put them into Notion — then during the two-hour brainstorm meeting, they have a giant list of ideas to go through.
Better ad briefing equals better raw material.
Savannah Sanchez (the visionary behind The Social Savannah agency) does not leave anything open to interpretation when it comes to briefing creators.
“Many brands make the mistake of thinking—oh, we need to let the creators be creators and do their thing,” says Savannah.
You need to be very clear about your vision for the ad.
Savannah sends creators a stack of ad examples so they know what she is looking for.
She trains them how to do a good unboxing ad, how to do a good try-on ad, and how to effectively deliver lines.
She sends them shot lists with very specific instructions including visual ad examples with similar shots and the script lines they need to deliver.
It gives them everything they need to deliver an authentic testimonial and be a great creator for brands.
“You need to show them visually what you’re looking for,” says Savannah. “You need to communicate your vision in specific ways including storyboarding every shot.”
For example, Savannah will tell a creator things like:
“I need a shot of you trying on a shirt in front of the mirror, that’s shot #1.”
“Next, you need to unbox it on your bed and make sure you are filming it at 5 PM when the light is coming through your window.”
She storyboards every shot and provides clip examples showing them ‘This is what a good try-on looks like, this is what a good voice-over sounds like.’
“The visual examples are key,” says Savannah.
“You need to provide specific visuals and examples or there will be misalignment and endless revisions.”
It’s important to note—that preparing the brief, the ad examples, and the shot list, takes up a lot of Savannah’s time.
The creator’s filming is quick in comparison—it might take them 1-hour to nail the ad.
But this is the critical task of the creative strategist. You are the brains behind it all and you are hiring the creator to execute and put it all together.
You are paying the creator for their skillset of being great on camera and knowing how to film.
“But you aren’t paying the creator to be the creative strategist. I need to be the one to do the storyboards, to figure out what shots and lines are required and to make sure the vision is executed.”
Motion makes it easy to find past creative examples and share with creators or add to briefing docs. The visual-first design of our platform means everyone can understand the assignment — no weird jargon or convoluted metrics to decipher.
This is where the creative team takes over. They’ll develop assets and variations that reflect the insights and primary objectives in the brief.
The best creative strategists value speed at this point in the process. The more ads you can ship, the more learnings you’ll get.
Savannah aims to get new ads live in her client’s ad accounts every week.
“When I’m working with clients, the production timeline is Monday through Friday,” she told us.
“We shoot on Mondays and Tuesdays, with the creators completing the shot list with their iPhone. We edit on Wednesdays and Thursdays. And then I get the new ads to the clients every Friday.”
Performance marketing powerhouse Mirella Crespi (Founder of Creative Milkshake) uses AI generated voices and even AI talent to speed up content creation.
This enables rapid message testing and media buyers can roll out new iterations in a few minutes without waiting for creative teams.
Before launching your ads, double-check the content to make sure it aligns with the creative test from your hypothesis.
Using a tool like Motion, include images and videos to make your directives as clear as possible.
Lauren Schwartz (Owner & Creative Director of The Loft 325) notes that it’s crucial that your content support the briefs that you're actually going to be working on.
If your creative does not align with your initial intention, go back and update your hypothesis or request edits from the creator.
This ensures that your flywheel stays on track.
Once your media buying team launches the ads, use creative analysis tools like Motion to follow the story.
Our platform provides a dropdown menu where you can select a time-based view of new creatives launched.
You can set a “goal” to determine when an ad set has hit a certain spend threshold that you deem to be significant.
The next part is the most overlooked, but the most crucial.
With creative flying out the door, media buyers often miss critical opportunities for iterations.
Here’s where Motion automatically tells you what to do next to lift performance including when to iterate on hooks, improve CTR & fix landing page issues.
If you’re not using Motion, you can still evaluate these data points to find new opportunities for your ads. (It’s just a lot harder.)
Here are three analysis questions Mirella’s team uses to guide iterations.
1. Did it make them stop scrolling?
Start by looking at the 1-second retention. This is video play actions/impressions.
Each ad account is different but Mirella’s team looks for at least 90% retention rate in that first second.
“If you aren’t retaining people in the first second, there is something seriously wrong with the ad and nothing else you do such as improving the hook rate or CTR is going to matter if you can’t even get people to look at your ad for a second.”
You can go deeper in your creative analysis by looking at your Hook Rate (3s views/impressions). This should be around 30%.
2. Did it retain them after the hook?
Answer this by looking at your Hold Rate (aim for +25%), Average Watch Time, and Waterfall Rate (aka video drop-offs).
“I like to use Motion’s reports to see where the biggest drop-offs happen in a video, analyze the frame where you are losing people, and then try swapping out a visual or adding in a sound effect or cutting down the voiceover to boost engagement with the video,” says Mirella.
3. Did it generate interest & make them want to buy?
Look at CTR, CVR, CPA, & ROAS.
These metrics help you understand whether the creative is doing its ultimate job: selling people stuff!
This helps you spot any congruency issues between your ad and landing page that might be losing sales. To fix these, you can launch a custom landing page that better matches your ad or adjust the creative to better match the landing page.
Every creative test returns a new learning to spin back into the flywheel.
Here are three of our favorite analyses to use in Motion and what they mean:
Analysis #1: Thumbstop Ratio vs. CTR
This analysis answers two questions:
If your creative has a low thumbstop, but high CTR, test a different thumbnail or hook. Better yet, test both.
If your creative has a high thumbstop, but low CTR, try rewriting your offer or reworking the body of your ad after the initial thumbstop.
Analysis #2: CTR vs. 100% Video Plays
Looking further into the ad, this analysis tells us:
If your ad has a high video play rate, but low CTR, try adding in messages of scarcity, exclusivity, or urgency.
Add in some social proof & credibility as well (PR features usually work well).
Analysis #3: CTR vs. Click to Purchase Ratio
This analysis looks at purchasing decisions:
If your ad has high CTR, but low CVR, turn your attention to your landing page. Is it relevant to the creative you’re running? Make the experience cohesive.
Create a custom landing page to bring that winning messaging through to the entire customer experience.
If your ad has low CTR, but high CVR, check your spend by the breakdown of age and gender.
It’s often overlooked, but you may be able to iterate your ad creative language or tone to match a specific demographic more and lead to more clicks.
How often should you be running this creative cycle? What’s a normal amount of time to execute and go back around the circle testing new concepts?
This completely depends on two factors: The testing cycle and the creation cycle.
The testing cycle determines how long your creative needs to be live for it to be statistically relevant. This depends on how much you’re spending in-platform. Your media buyers will be able to tell you your testing cycle length.
The creation cycle determines how long your creative team needs to create new content. It would look something like this:
Let’s say that your media buying team says that it takes 14 days to gather statistically significant results from a creative test. Your creative team needs 3 days to create a new creative. Using that timeline, you should be pumping out new creative deliverables every 17 days.
What you’re left with is a sprint cycle.
Use this information to build a foundation for your creative strategy and set expectations for everyone on your team.
The importance of a proper creative strategy derives from the natural clash between the media buying and creative teams.
Each team is invaluable to brands, so having a proper creative strategy in place allows the marketing team to work in harmony and to keep their goals unified.
And the creative flywheel process is the blueprint to achieving that.
The creative team is in charge of coming up with new creative concepts. The media buying team is responsible for launching and analyzing the data behind the new concepts and iterations.
Creative strategy sometimes feels the connective tissue between wholly different aspects of a business.
But if you understand the art and science behind it, you’ll be able to put out work that isn’t only creatively satisfying, but produces continual improvement for performance.
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It originally appeared in Thumbstop—a free weekly newsletter filled with tips to help you ship winning Meta, TikTok, and YouTube ads.
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