Creative Testing Campaigns Are Killing Your Ability To Scale transcript

if you're still running creative testing campaigns just imagine trying to put creative testing ads spend behind 3,000 ads now this is not all for one client obviously but you simply cannot spend the money on that many ads in the ad account to test them you can't do it it is cost prohibitive to distribute at that level on the other hand if meta is going to pick your winners for you based on extremely small amounts of spend um and and will take its signal take engagement signal really seriously for you if you've built a campaign setup so that meta will do that work for you first of all you now aside from even by the way the testing budget there's the the brain space budget right you just cannot stay on top of that many ads like no human can do it no human can tell how many of those are working you you instead have to only respond to massive winners and massive losers well really not even massive losers massive winners those are the ones you'll see in the ad account because they'll float to the top of your spend but you simply can't stay on stay on top of all of those ads because it will uh it will just be it will just be too much uh too much mental effort uh aside from the actual dollar cost of doing it so you have to build if you want to do this kind of strategy you have to be running manual bids and that's one way of framing this but you should also frame it the other way which is that manual bids allow you to do this strategy manual bids allow you to go into the creative production process with the knowledge that you're not you don't have to put serious ad dollars behind every ad that meta will rank these things for you based on whatever signals is getting and yes there will probably be some false negatives and yes there will probably be some false positives in there but I don't care I don't care at all because I am trying as I as I say as I said before to win the most hands at poker that I possibly can and yes there will be some hands that don't work out um even though I make the quote unquote right bet okay but that's okay with me because I'm going to win in the Aggregate and uh and that is that is well worth it to me for building this strategy so that's the um that's the that's one of the core ideas here that you have to do this the thing is it's also getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and I am building more process to try to create more volume here help my team create more volume not less and uh and this will so that means that the amount of AD production we are going to do is only going to go up and again that and I think that's going to be true for everybody I think AI is going to make this uh make us get to a point here where the the cost of AD production per ad continues to go down and down and down so because of that I think the uh I I think that you are going to have to get to a point where you're good at running manual bids and letting manual bids scale your ads for you otherwise this simply won't be viable and you will just be left in the dust on on the ability to create this kind of output so you you need to be running manual bids you need to dit your creative testing campaigns and you need to let them scale your ads for you and um that I'm almost framing as as if it's like some kind of a problem but it's not a problem it is the greatest it is so helpful that you can do this it is so useful that you can do this um it allows you to go and take way more risks in your creative uh production approach it allows you to try ideas that you wouldn't try otherwise um it allows you to not worry too much in advance about whether you think something will work or not instead you just uh put it in there and that is so freeing in the creative process because you just don't have to worry that you're going to blow money on a at it's not going to happen it suppresses that for you plus it amplifies your winners really really fast way better than you or I could if we were individually managing the account so it's just incredibly helpful I've got an episode of this podcast coming up that I I want you to subscribe to the show because I've got an episode coming up uh with Jacob posel I think is the way you say his last name from Common Thread Collective who is leading their buildout of the AI tools that Common Thread Collective is doing and he listened to my episode from a little while ago about uh the use of AI and ads which I still very much a live issue for me in terms of how best to use that he had some thoughts about it and so I said well don't tell me come on the podcast tell everybody because I think this is going to be a fast anything to figure out uh more and more how this plays into the total process uh but but yes you have to be running cost controls um and certainly what CTC is doing is trying to continue to build the uh ad creative process so that the cost goes down and down and down the volume goes up and up and up because you can run ads based on cost controls okay so number one you have to to be doing that it's crucial to this whole plan of 3500 ads in a month or whatever okay number two build processes for volume okay you do not get to 3,000 ads even if you have a certain amount of Manpower involved right uh overnight it has required us to build out the as side of things it's build it's using tools like frame to test ads and um and notion for briefing and there's there's a bunch of different little parts of this process for us that we've built our way we have to build processes for letting clients know how things get published there's an assuna to slack automation where every time an ad gets published it kicks a notification on slack so people see that it's we we group them by concept right so they don't see 3,000 slack notifications a month but um but all of these little things and then on the on the team side helping different people understand where their part of the process is to create more volume so there's there's part of it is that building it up over time having people involved who can help who are detail oriented administrative this is not me but who can help sort these sorts of things out and I'm so thankful for those people on my team because they just have made it so that we can serve my clients in a way that I think is much better than I possibly could do um you know if I was working alone or working with these other teams another thing we've been able to do by the way for the process for volume and this is also related to the cost controls issue is that of course that's our ad output for Brands but it's not all the content that's going into the ad account what about organic social content that they're making which I've talked about before as being potentially valuable influencer content creator content like um you know Tik Tok content that's that's going in there so there's all kinds of other content that's being made in the ad account and all of that is uh is also getting there and uh and getting into the ad account and so that also allows us to expand uh volume output from other sources on top of the volume that we're producing internally right it's also um you know International versions of ads and different bidding methods and things like that so some of these ads are being built four times in the ad account right uh before in different campaign setup and those kinds of things and so we're trying to build this ability to get a team all pulling on this in a way that you can actually produce the kind of volume that you want to produce here now what we are trying to do is say where are we still getting stuck okay and that sometimes is on the scripting level uh there's there's times when we can use more boil boiler plate for different parts of explainer ads for clients you know the offer in CTA is often the same for certain things there's um there's uh body copy that could be the same for a product across five different angles there's um there's uh there's also potentially a way to use tools to make it so that you know I know like canva has a tool where you can basically give canva five images and create one sort of copy setting and it will immediately put the copy across all five images I don't get down to that level of AD making usually but there's stuff like that tools to make it so that you can spin out still image variations and all these tools are getting better and faster all the time so one of the things I'm doing with help from some amazing clients among other people is working on building out more and more um uh places where we can find things that are that are slowing us down and go faster even on the ad building side I'm I'm starting to think more about this how can we as a team find any place where we're getting slowed down unnecessarily not slowed down by creative work I don't mind if we're getting slowed down by conceptual work that actually I think is in some ways okay because I want people to work through difficult creative challenges for for brands that actually requires thought work you know um what I want to see though is where there are tasks that are simple tasks that are just sort of busy work that we can continue to find ways to work on and and again I'm actually not even the one doing all of that kind of stuff I've got other people working with me who are built into that process but if you want to do this kind of output that is the kind of problem solving you have to do there are little places part of it just requires listening I mean I've definitely found that listening to people and saying like hey where where are you getting slowed down I mean do we need to get you faster internet like I mean there's all kinds of different things where you can you can see that problem you know um even creative reviews from clients are we getting slowed down in the turnaround time for when clients review and send feedback on ads and those kinds of things so um so finding all of those places and sort of ruthlessly seeking to eliminate them as you build the process really makes a difference because every one of those Kinks You Can unkink turns into a place to create more volume um for clients and and more output and that allows you to work through ideas faster [Music]