The Creative Process I Use To Make Winning Meta Ads Over And Over Again transcript

I have an ad creative process that I think almost every brand should be using in some way to generate ads that sell products for their brands. And I'm going to tell it to you right now. I think it will really help you by turning the ad creative process less into a [music] blank slate try and find anything that will work and more into something repeatable and narrowed down and replicable for your brand to create winning ads all the time.

Here is the core idea that I want to get across in this shorter episode today. Okay. The core idea is that many brands approach ad creative with way too broad of possibilities anytime they sit down to make ads, right? They they they have way too broad of possibilities of what they are trying to accomplish with their ads. And you can get a lot farther a lot faster by getting really good at a narrower bunch of ad formats and styles.

Getting really awesome at changing the messaging within those formats and styles and changing the visuals of course, but really nailing those formats and styles and then repeatedly doing that over and over and over again. So at HF Growth, like what we do, right, is we are kind of constantly on the hunt for replicable ad formats. You know, like there's just a million ads that all kinds of brands are doing all the time.

And I see them and I think that's great, but like I don't want to just be like every time a growth strategist or creative strategist at AJF Growth is making ads for a client, I don't want them to go and think like, hm, what kind of ads should I make today? Instead, they narrow in on the message because the message is always the thing that matters most. And we do a bunch of work to make sure we focus on generating high quality messages that sell products that we know are resonating with customers.

And then we think, well, what is the best packaging for that message for me to make as much of that as possible? And the sweet spot of ad creation is anytime you can generate ads that cost the least money to make at the production level, that take cost the least time to make at the production level as well, and that have the highest impact. That combo of low time cost, low dollar cost, right? And again, production costs get expensive. somebody has to pick up a really nice camera and go shoot something amazing or hire a really really good creator or whatever.

Those kinds of things. And then at the same time, it can be really effective in a theoretical world where you're able to generate ads all the time that have those attributes. High performing, low cost, lowc cost to make, fast to make, and of course, they like represent your brand well. And by the way, I would never skimp on that. Like I think the creative you make ought to represent the brand well. If you can hit those things at the same time, you have a playbook there for creating replicable ads.

So what then you must go do is look for ads that check those boxes and treat then your ad creative process like a supply chain. This is the reason why I think by the way that AJF Growth is really really good at making ad creative. We are not great at making every kind of ad that could possibly be made in the world and I'm okay with that. There's lots of ad formats that I see from other brands that AJF Growth is not going to make for our clients.

We're just not. And it's not because we don't think they work or something like that. because we haven't developed particular expertise in those styles to be able to generate them at scale relative to their performance impact at scale effectively. And that's okay with me. And this is the thing you have to do in this process. You have to become okay with the idea that there's sort of like a weird ad creative FOMO that happens where brands like see all kinds of creative that's out there and go, we got to make stuff like that.

And what I would say is like resist that FOMO. Instead, become okay with the idea that you are not going to make every ad type. There are lots of ads that you're going to see that you're going to think are cool and inspirational and you're going to be impressed by, but that you'll never actually make. And what we're doing all the time basically is we're on the hunt for more formats, more templates, more styles that can look and feel and sound a little different than things that we've made in the past and ideally very different because we want as much variation within all this as possible.

Okay? And yet we look at it and say, "Oh, we can replicate that ad and we can replicate it at scale over and over and over again so that I can go to a client and say, "Here's a format that we think works. I'm going to make a hundred ads in these formats." Now, now listen, I'm not saying make iterations. I don't think iterations are a good idea. I think a great ad format is something that you can make where it changes all the time.

Like anybody who's ever made a I'll give you a simple example, right? the post-it note ad. We don't really make many of these anymore, but the post-it note ad, you could actually take that idea of a post-it note ad and do it a million different ways and it would look really different, right? You could take the actual post-it note, but the magic of the Post-it note ad might be the bright color of the Post-it note sticking out on a feed, but I think it's probably mostly just the way that like the text is written into the image itself, right?

So, we call this a text and context ad. The copy is not overlaid on top of an image. It's actually in the image and you take a picture of the of the image with copy on it. Well, you could do that with a million things. You could put it on a letterboard. You can go write it on chalk. You can go walk down to the beach and write out your ad in the sand. Hire someone to do skywriting. Now, that would probably be very expensive, okay?

It'd be very hard to do very well, but you know, you could make a banner. You could make a poster, etc. All of those things would be within the same format, which is like text and context. There's a there's copy in the ad, and you could make a million variations of that, and you could get really really good at making that ad, right? We do this with certain like long form explainer formats. Okay? Now, this is something that takes a little more time, right?

We we take the long form explainer ad and we make a million variations of it and we say like okay there's like there's so many storytelling frameworks we can use for this explainer where all the time we're thinking the same way hook first body and education second validation after that guarantee offer those kinds of things all make sense in this ad format and you organize the information that way but you could actually do a lot of different things for how to do that.

You could do the founder ad, you can do an influencer version of that ad. You can do the version of that ad where there's actually no talking head at all. It's just entirely VO, right? Whether that's AI VO or or an actual human recording the VO and you can change a story. You can do myth versus truth and you can do a listical five reasons why. This is the best product ever, right? And maybe the five reasons why becomes the hook.

You could do the very straightforward product version. This is the X. This is the product. This is product from brand and here's why it's great. Okay? There's a million of those formats. What we look for is how do we take those, identify them, and then replicate them as much as we possibly can. And then all the time we are on the hunt, like I said, we're looking in the wild on social media feeds and on brands that we like and things like that for formats that we say we can replicate that, we can do that and add it to our list.

And the net result of that is that our ad creative approach actually in some ways doesn't look that varied. We have a relatively constrained library of ad formats that we work from. It isn't that huge, but within that, we're now so good at those ad types that we are repeatedly seeing our brands have newer ads that we make within those formats that are winners over and over and over again. And we look at that and say, we can make that ad.

And so we can make it for all of our clients. And of course, some ad formats and some styles and some messages, whatever, work better for some than others, right? that the three minute long form explainer works better for a brand that has a lot that they need to explain about their product and has deep details about it. Okay, real problem solutionoriented brands whereas maybe something much shorter and simpler with just a bunch of text on screen or even just just you know really product focused imagery works better for a fashion brand or something like that.

Okay, there's there's all kinds of things in between but that basic idea of pursuing a bunch of different a number of different formats and getting great at them is what I want you to So here here's like the really practical application for you right now. If you are thinking about ad format, ads that you want to make for your brands, start looking for brands that you can make for ads that you can make relatively quickly and easily and simply and templatize them.

Library them somewhere, right? Create a library of them somewhere and start figuring out how to replicate those over and over. And at some point, here's what you are going to tell yourself. I promise you, you're going to tell yourself, "We're not creating enough variation. These are boring." Whatever. That's the FOMO voice coming in until it stops performing. Resist the FOMO voice. Tell it to go away because it is not helping you do the thing you are trying to do, which is sell more products, generate more interest in your brand, generate really clicks to your brand for people to have deeper experiences with your brand.

This is one of those episodes that I really have aimed in my head at disciplined operators thinking intelligently about their whole P&L. Not getting caught up in hype about what they see out there, but instead thinking about how do we bring real rigor and discipline and process to everything we do. It's the kind of operator for whom rich panel is a great fit. If you're still using Gorgeous, if you're still using Zenesk, what are you doing?

Go jump on a call with Rich Panel. Rich Panel guarantees that they can save you 30% on your customer service help desk software bill. And so that's alone a reason to take the call, especially at this time of year when things have maybe slowed down, cooled down a little bit. Go talk with them and see are they the right fit for your customer service help desk software. They probably are because Rich Panel was built AI first from the ground up services brands of all sizes.

So they have nine figure clients like Ridgewallet all the way down to like brands just starting. That's the customer service help desk software that I'm going to be using. Multiple of my clients in the 8 figureure space have used rich panel and have seen them be a great fit for them. They also see an average of a 30% reduction in tickets, customer service tickets for people who switch over to them from gorgeous or from Zenesk.

And so it's just really really good software built to scale with you at an affordable price and that is the reason you should do it. They can also transfer you over from different software to them in two weeks or less. They know you don't have time to waste [music] on this. Go get on a call. See how fast. See how easy it is. See how good the software is. Take a tour of it yourself. See the AI uh agent. Now, this is the thing.

Some people are going to object to this idea and say, "What about artisanship in your brand? What about real creativity? What about creating a brand that's going to have a lasting impact?" And my answer is for most brands that actually doesn't primarily and mostly happen at the ad level. If you are comparing yourself to Nike when you are thinking about your ads and what Nike is trying to accomplish with their ads, which is like deep, you know, really great storytelling that leaves this big impact on you and something like that.

Let me just tell you something. You're not Nike. Not only at the level of your budget, which is a huge part of the question, but with what you were trying to accomplish with your advertising. you operator of seven or eight figure e-commerce brand are actually trying to get somebody to click and buy your products right now. Okay, that's what you are trying to accomplish and that's not what Nike is trying to accomplish.

And therefore, if I was running Nike, I probably wouldn't run the kinds of ads that I'm talking about right now. But I'm not running Nike and neither are you. And what your brand needs to do is to think about how do I accomplish a repeatable process for a high variety of high quality ads at scale. Okay, that's what you are trying to actually accomplish and to sell products while you do at a cost that makes sense while keeping your opex low because at the end of the day, a low opex with a high performing ad account is the way that you generate a bunch of profit for your growing e-commerce business.

Okay. Now, as your brand grows, there's all kinds of ways to add complexity to this. One of my favorite ways to see brands do this. One of the things that we actually invite and love in our ad creative process is when brands go and they start bringing in multiple creative agencies as they grow. And the reason I love this and I actually I mean I recently had just in fact this week just released an episode with Jess Bachmann from Fireteam.

I joyfully and gladly promote Jess and Fire Team on my podcast. They are not a competitor to us despite that we both offer some creative services. Do you know why? It is because Jess's team is awesome at making ads that we are bad at. Okay? And I think we are awesome at making ads that Jess's team is pretty bad at. Or at least I haven't seen the evidence that he's good at it. Maybe maybe he would be able to show me otherwise.

Okay? And that to me is symbiotic. And that's the way that creative agencies and ad agencies and teams ought to be working, which is like forget trying to be awesome at everything. Instead, just like anybody would tell you about almost any task in business or in in life in general, get really awesome at a few things. And when it's time to get better at more things, start bringing in other people who are great at those.

Don't feel like you have to have every skill yourself. And so larger brands, as they go, start making larger investments with influencers and creators and all these. And that's the way to create more variation. But it's sequencing, right? Earlier on in your story, you don't need to go do all of that stuff. That's not what's going to get you where you're going. And not just earlier on, but even in the sort of middle phases of things, start generating a bunch of creative that works, that you can do at scale, and that you get really, really good at.

That's again what we do for brands. If you are trying to generate the kind of creative I'm talking about in this episode, you should do it with my friends at Behindthescenes Studio. BTSstudio.co is the place to go. Well, Behind the Scenes Studio is the team based in the Philippines that I use for my creative to be an extension of my team. So that as I am generating creative strategy for my clients, the the team at BTS Studio is doing the design and edit work.

They're really built as an agency, design and video editing agency, creative agency, specifically for e-commerce, specifically for meta ads. So they're not just like an all-purpose thing. They really have dialed in on how do we generate high quality, high-erforming, highly varied meta ads at scale. We're really following a lot of the Andrew Ferris playbook because we work so closely handinhand with them. So if you are a brand that needs an extension of your creative team, extension of creative resources with a real focus on meta that is reasonably priced and can generate a bunch of high performing high-quality creative for you as you are trying to grow.

You should go to behindthescenes studio and check them out. Go to btsstudio.co btsstudio.co and get on a call. See if they're the right fit for you and for what they offer and for what you need. btsstudio.co. huge fan of AC and her team over there. Go check them out. One of the things I think that we offer a lot of brands is an actual creative methodology that is just like like most brands just don't have it. They just don't have a way of actually thinking about replicating creative over and over.

They they're instead, like I said, they're just sort of grabbing whatever works all the time. So then to come back to my earlier question, where does artisanship come in in this? And where does creativity and making a brand that's going to have a lasting impact? Where does all that come in? Well, it comes in at other parts of the business among other things. It comes into the level of your product. It comes in at the level of your organic social feed, which is more of an owned channel where there's you're trying to sell a little bit less and you are doing a little more storytelling.

Comes at the level of a great packaging and unboxing experience. It comes at the level of your website and your photography and these kinds of things. Okay? But at the end of the day, what the point of the ad is is to get people to all of that stuff. And if you can do that while generating really, really creative stuff or something like that, then awesome. But in general, that's just not what most brands actually need in order to accomplish.

I'm not saying your creative should be bad. Your creative should be good. Like this is the point. The point is for your creative to be good, you ought to lean on formats that you can execute excellently over and over again. And getting good requires repetitions and it requires doing things well over a long period of time. This again is where that creative supply chain concept comes in. The more you make something, the more you do it, the more you can hone in on what makes it good.

And so for us, what we look for to so that we do two things, right? So first we say we don't mind. First of all, we're going to resist FOMO. If a lot of our creative is within a semi-narrow band of formats, and it's not that narrow, right? We make plenty of variation in our formats. We're okay with that. As long as it sells product, we're okay with it. Okay? So, there's that. But secondly, the other answer to that is not to just go, ah, we got to make more different stuff.

It's to say it's to thoughtfully look around and say, what other kinds of creative can we now add to our template and add to our library? And one of the things I'm sort of optimistic about for the next couple years of AJF growth is more time building out and adding to creative frameworks and libraries and templates so that we can have ever expanding types of creative all the time. One thing we've actually found AI to be very very good at is to have access to all of that creative templating and all that creative library and then to actually recommend different styles and formats relative to the message.

Like for example, I did some new year new you content for a client recently. We have a storytelling framework that we call the time traveler warning. And the idea is like it's a sort of storytelling format for long form explainers where we say you're going to be one of two people in the next six months or whatever or in the next year. Okay? And our uh AI coowwriter was really good at saying, "Oh, you're making new year, new you content.

That's the message. Why don't you try it with the time traveler warning storytelling framework, which maybe you wouldn't have thought of otherwise, but of course it makes sense. Hey, you're going to be one of two people in March. you're gonna be the kind of person who actually followed through on their resolutions this year and actually became the kind of person they wanted or you're gonna have another year where you're the same old self and whatever you get the idea and AI is really really good at this.

So again building detail into that process so that you get really good at executing these kinds of things building that library out so that you have a really good set of things and finding ways to access and work within and build process on that is the kind of thing I'm talking about. The point is build less big ideas and instead get better at a narrow band. Then expand the band of ideas over time with real focus to do that.

Always within brand standards, always keeping a high quality, always attempting to create variety within those formats, which is actually more doable than you think. That's the way that you can actually go forward this year as you pursue more ad creative. As your brand grows and you have more money to invest, start thinking about, okay, now how do I use creators or influencers or other agencies to expand my creative formatting?

But for now, don't worry about it. You don't need to do that too much. Resist the FOMO of what other brands that you like are doing. Instead, get really good at what you're doing now and get and replicate them as often as you possibly can. This is one of those observations that was sort of part of my end of the year reflections because I was thinking so much about this kind of question about FOMO and what is driving brands to make sub-optimal decisions.

And I think creative is one of those things like that as I said in this episode. So, if you resonate with this, I'd love to hear about it. You can email me at podcastfgrowth.com. It's also a good place to go if you want to get in contact with me and AJFrowth about running your ads. This is what we are great at is generating formats that we see work over and over and over again. Resisting the call towards FOMO, really being disciplined about generating high performing creative for brands over and over and then expanding that only as we see success.

So you can go to afgrowth.com, tell me a little bit about your brand on the intake form there to get going or just email me podcastfgrowth.com is the place to do that. Like I said, you can also always reach out to me on X at Andrewj Ferris, which I'd love to hear from you from. Of course, you should follow up with my great sponsors, Behind the Scenes Studio. That's btsstudio.co to get your ads, your creative done excellently as well, especially within formats that they're great at.

They do an awesome job at that. And then Rich Panel. Rich Panel is an awesome piece of software. If you're one of those brands thinking about how to save costs, operate more intelligently, operate with more discipline in 2026, Rich Panel is a no-brainer. Go check them out right now. So, uh, thanks so much for watching or for listening. Subscribe wherever you're doing that of course and I will talk to you next