The Branded Ads System Behind 170+ Ecommerce Brands

[00:00:00] Nisha: the biggest way I've seen our creative service evolve is that, and this is sort of the unlock for us and where we are now, is really letting performance data run the show. I think creative strategy formerly could have included a lot of guesswork or lot of opinions based around what people like or don't like.

[00:00:23] And obviously we know everybody has their own unique individual opinions about what they like and don't like. But what we're really doing today is making recommendations based on what's winning, so what's working. So it doesn't necessarily always matter if it's something that is liked, as long as it's performing in the account.

[00:00:40] Richard Gaffin: This episode of the E-Commerce Playbook is brought to you by Omnis Send. If you're serious about growing your brand through email and SMS marketing, Omnis Send has your back. It combines powerful automation, smart segmentation, and realtime performance insights, all in a platform that's intuitive and built specifically for e-commerce With prebuilt workflows, dynamic signup forms, and full multichannel capabilities, Omnis Send helps brands scale without unnecessary complexity.

[00:01:08] Join over 125,000 eCommerce marketers who rely on Omnis. Send every day. Head to omnis send.com/ctc and start on the free plan today. That's omni send.com/ctc.

[00:01:23] Richard: Hey, folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, director of digital product strategy here at Common Thread Collective, and I'm joined today by another podcast first-timer Nisha Formawi, who is our senior branded ads manager here at Common Thread Collective. And Nisha's joining us today to talk a little bit about our system for generating a lot of good branded ads quickly.

[00:01:44] We've talked on this podcast about creative a lot, particularly thinking about volume and diversity and all those kinds of things. But I think today we're, we're coming to you having in a lot of ways, kind of cracked some of the operational the solution to building a creative operational pipeline here.

[00:02:01] And so we wanted to talk to Nisha a little bit about how we did that, how our system works, and just generally speaking, how you should think about branded ads in the kind of broader spectrum of ad creative out there. So but, but first off, Nisha, how are you doing?

[00:02:13] Nisha: I'm good. I'm excited to be here

[00:02:15] Richard: Yeah, likewise. We're, we're, we're happy to have you because I think this is again, as I was a former creative strategist, I worked in creative here at CTC for, don't know, like probably f- four or five years. It's been too long. But in that time, the sort of figuring out how to manage the relationship between creative production volume and then actual creative ideation was always very, very difficult.

[00:02:37] I think now in this kind of brave new world of, of not just AI, but also kind of the way that we've been kind of through the paces of putting together an operational pipeline, we finally cracked something here. So, talk to us a little bit about just kind of what you do and, and maybe set us up a little bit about what branded ads looks like here at CTC.

[00:02:55] Nisha: Okay, so talking a little bit about kind of the process of how we would start with a new client at the branded ad service at CTC. We'd start by getting, first of all, meta access. What we really believe in is performance data running the show.

[00:03:09] So once we have that access, we'll hop on a kickoff call with the client, make introductions, get to know them, get to know a little bit more about the brand, and kind of take into account any previous work that they've done around personas, pain points previous experience with other ad agencies, et cetera, and kind of get the lay of the land.

[00:03:28] From there, we will deliver an ad plan within 24 hours. So we use that meta access to pull a 90-day report of their top-performing creative. And we also layer in all of the information that's shared with us on the kickoff call. That ad plan gets delivered to their client Slack channel within 24 hours, and they're able to make revisions.

[00:03:49] We're able to pull in the support of a growth strategist as well, or a profit engineer to help kind of take a look at the ad plan, review it together, provide any tweaks, revisions based on what they know about the ad account. And then once that ad plan is in a good place, we move it into production. Production on our end takes about a week, and then they'll receive a review link in the client Slack channel letting them know the ads are ready for review.

[00:04:14] It's all in one very efficient, streamlined platform. They can leave revisions, feedback, rejections. They can make edit requests all in one place. Revisions take about 72 hours, and once an- all ads in an ad group are approved, we automatically load them into the ad log so that they're ready to go live in the ad account.

[00:04:33] So that entire process, like on our end, as long as the client is sort of able to stick to the timeline and quick reviews, could take as little as 10 business days, and that is with one round of revisions included. So we're working very quickly and very efficiently in terms of like timeline and process.

[00:04:50] Richard: Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about, like, how does this process differ from kind of previous, maybe previous iterations of the creative, like, operations pipeline either here at CTC or in other places you've worked?

[00:05:04] Nisha: Yeah, I think that the biggest way I've seen our creative service evolve is that, and this is sort of the unlock for us and where we are now, is really letting performance data run the show. I think creative strategy formerly could have included a lot of guesswork or lot of opinions based around what people like or don't like.

[00:05:28] And obviously we know everybody has their own unique individual opinions about what they like and don't like. But what we're really doing today is making recommendations based on what's winning, so what's working. So it doesn't necessarily always matter if it's something that is liked, as long as it's performing in the account.

[00:05:46] So our strategy today is really around creative diversity, finding personas, finding pain points, finding creative formats and the combination of all three of those things in order to generate the most creative diversity in every batch that we deliver. But also tying in that reporting component of what's been working in the account over the last 90 days so that we're really strategic when we're making those recommendations and those and those tests.

[00:06:13] Richard: Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about when you say that you allow performance data to run the show, what exactly-- what elements of the show is performance data running? How does that play into creative strategy in a way that it didn't before?

[00:06:29] Nisha: Yeah. So if so we kind of break it into these different pillars, right? So we're talking about like the product recommendation first and foremost. So yes, you have a number of the amount of ads that you need to run in your account. So that's like the volume piece, right? But what kind of ads should you be making?

[00:06:48] And I think that that's been you know, previously what I've seen be the biggest sort of pain point for clients is understanding, okay, you're giving me this number of the ads that you want me to make, but what kind of ads should I be making? And so when I talk about performance data running the show, what I really mean to say is we, when we're pulling those reports, we're looking at the top performing landing pages, and then we're scraping information from those product pages.

[00:07:13] So whether it be client reviews, descriptions any information that we can grab from the landing pages in order to inform the creative that we're building. So when somebody sees an ad and then they click through to the landing page, they're having a very like fluid experience and we're seeing that drive the highest level of conversion.

[00:07:32] Richard: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, I mean, I think an important thing to pull out from there is the fact that fundamentally it's the creative strategy is being done by AI kind of, right? In, in the sense of we have the tools to, like you're saying, scrape reviews, landing pages, benefits, all the sort of the talking points from the products that people are actually buying and the kind of feedback that we're actually getting in real life from real people on those products, and then transforming those into a creative strategy.

[00:08:03] And, and AI is sort of well-equipped to take you know, AI is an incredible editor in a lot of ways, and what it can do is take a lot of different reviews and turn them into a pretty straightforward, pretty clear set of creative strategy. So in, in terms of the execution then, what does that look like?

[00:08:19] Is that-- I mean, to what extent is it AI-enabled? How are you producing the actual or thinking through the actual visual element of it?

[00:08:26] Nisha: Yeah, you're exactly right. So our process is AI-enabled, which is what allows us to be as efficient, speed up those timelines, and have a great price point, come in at a great price point. I think the important thing to call out here is that we do have real humans designing the ads. So we're setting them up for success with those ad plans.

[00:08:45] We're getting alignment with the client and the profit engineer, the growth strategist, and then from there, we're having-- we're sharing all that information with our design team, and we have real humans building the ads. We do also have the option for clients tapped into whether or not they'd like to see AI-generated assets within those ad plans and within their final creative output.

[00:09:05] Some clients are very comfortable with it, and they really want to lean in, and they're very open to us creating totally new imagery for them. Other clients, I mean, on that direction, we've even done like custom scopes where we've done full-on like AI-generated photo shoots. But then on the other end of the spectrum, we have some clients that are very timid or apprehensive or they've worked with other previous agencies or even just tested different AI image generation themselves and, you know, the term AI slop comes up a lot.

[00:09:36] And so they're conservative and cautious around us really going all in, which is fine too. And in that case, we often recommend just let us test a couple see what you think, because we really believe in our abilities to generate great AI creative. And if they don't like it, they, they can reject those ads, and we can replace them with assets from the- their library.

[00:09:57] Richard: Yeah. A-and one thing then I think that, that comes out of that, that you mentioned earlier a-and it made me think of it when you talked about AI vis-a-vis getting approval from clients. It sounds like the approval process is to some extent what you're getting, and you can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but what you're getting is buy-in from the client that whatever wins will, will pursue that, right?

[00:10:22] So even if it's like maybe off-brand or not exactly to their liking, doesn't even have to be AI, but it's not exactly the piece of creative they would allow to pass their sort of brand standards or whatever. If it's winning, we keep making something like it. And so talk to me about like, what i- what does that conversation look like?

[00:10:38] How are-- How do you get people to agree with that?

[00:10:41] Nisha: I think that is really the beauty of branded ads is we meet the client right where they're at. So we have the performance data to back up any of the recommendations that we're making and really drive the creative strategy and those ad plans. However, if that's not in alignment with what a client wants, the client ultimately has the final say to either tweak those plans ask us clarifying questions about why we've made those recommendations or provide you know, whatever refer- recommendations they would like us to make, and we can execute on that as well.

[00:11:15] I think that when we talk about branded ads and brand guidelines and fonts and colors and all that, I think that, again, it's just very specific to the client. They... Some clients are really married to their brand guidelines, and they want us to stick exactly the colors and fonts and everything that they've laid out in there.

[00:11:35] A lot of a lot of them will be spending, like, a lot of money to get those brand guidelines developed and so we wanna take that seriously and take that into account when developing their creative. And other clients don't have brand guidelines at all. They might be sharing a Word document with a couple, you know, links to font files and maybe a cou- a couple colors and a logo.

[00:11:55] And we can take that and really transform it into a brand identity based on, you know, some trial and error, being experimental, finding what works, and then continuing to refine and hone in on that

[00:12:05] Richard: Mm-hmm. I g- I guess part of what I'm trying to ask is like how do you deal with nitpicky clients basically?

[00:12:14] Nisha: We accept nitpicky clients. It's all built into our review platform. I think prior to having the review platform that we have now, we had the feedback loop sort of floating around in a lot of different places. We had living in email, we had it living in Slack, we had it living in Asana tasks, and then sharing that information with designers, and I think it was a big game of kind of telephone and pass the baton and make sure all the information gets to the right person correctly.

[00:12:42] But within the review platform that we have, it's very streamlined and very efficient. And so on the client side, as many point of contacts as they would like can go in and leave all of their feedback any edit requests that they have at the ad level. They can also leave feedback at the brand level.

[00:12:59] And once they hit this finalized review button in that platform, all of the feedback gets automatically sent to our design team. We have different systems on the back end that are kind of transcribing all of that feedback, turning them into action items for our team, and that's what allows us to be really efficient and turn those revisions around within 72 hours.

[00:13:18] And a new review link goes back to the client. So they can have as many rounds of revision as they like, they can as nitpicky as they like, but the idea is that that first round of creative we share with them, we're having the highest level of feedback on, and then from there it gets easier and easier and easier.

[00:13:34] One thing that I think really helps us to do this is, like I said, when we are you know, pulling all that information off of their website, it gets stored in the back end of our, our system. And so if we're experiencing a client that has multiple rounds of heavy amount of feedback, I like to just hop on a call with them and pull up, you know, the information that we have stored at the product level, all the personas we've dev- developed for that product, the descriptions, the benefits, and the pain points we're associating with those products, and get alignment there, 'cause that's the root of where we're developing all creative from.

[00:14:09] So if those things are off, then the creative's gonna be off. So we can always go back to the source and that helps a lot of the time to clear up any of the you know, heavy sort of rounds of revision or nitpicky clients.

[00:14:20] Richard: Yeah. No, that's, that's really smart. I mean, it, it sounds like part of it too is getting full client buy-in on the system, right? We're going to have this many rounds of reviews, and all the review and feedback is going to happen in this one place. And instead of kind of like catering maybe to the way the client already sort of does things or has done it in the past, we insist on doing it a certain way, and that's part of what creates-- makes it less-- makes it frictionless, I guess is the word I'm looking for.

[00:14:45] Nisha: Yeah. Yes

[00:14:47] Richard: cool. So let me I wanna jump into some specifics and, and get as specific as you can with this. But I wanted to-- we talk-- wanna talk a little bit about some outliers maybe on the branded s- ad side. So we've talked a lot about UGC, but of course, branded ads are a critical part of any kind of like healthy media mix or rather creative mix within an ad account.

[00:15:06] So we wanna talk about what's working there. And just for those who haven't listened to the podcast before, when we talk about outliers, what we mean is a s- very small percentage of ads actually work, and the ones that do work, work exponentially better than everything else. And so part of what you're trying to do when you're crea- when you're developing creative, and particularly what you wanna f- be thinking about when you're operationalizing it, is creating as much as possible or a certain amount of volume of the right stuff in order to maximize the likelihood that you're going to have a hit.

[00:15:34] So we're gonna talk about some of those hits now. Give us a sense maybe of, of some outlier ads recently and kind of what we can-- maybe conclusions we could draw about them.

[00:15:44] Nisha: Yeah, I think what's important to note here is that it really is all about two things. I think, as you mentioned, volume and creative diversity. It's why our base package for branded ads starts at 20 ads. What we know is that st- statistically the industry standard is you're gonna get about a 5% win rate, and I think that that is being generous.

[00:16:07] And so 20 ads will give you like a statistically meaningful shot at finding one winner per batch. What we're trying to do is take the learnings from that winner each time and then apply the insights that we find there to develop the next batch. I think that what we've been able to build is a really streamlined process around finding those winners tracking the different components of what went into creating that winner, so product, persona, pain point creative format, and then strategy.

[00:16:43] So we have all of those different columns laid out in the ad plans that we deliver and we're tracking all of that. So when we go to develop the next round, we're able to identify what elements were present in that winning ad and create our next ad plan based on those different elements and seeing was it the product?

[00:17:03] Can we try the product against a new persona? Can we try the product against a same persona, new pain point? So we're just continuing to iterate on what works, but still trying and testing out new angles and

[00:17:15] Richard: Mm-hmm. So i- of those, maybe that set of hits that we're talking about, the set of outlier ads, are there any common threads between them in terms of creative, copy, approach? Like what-- Is there anything that ties them together or are they all just sort of different and brand specific?

[00:17:31] Nisha: Yeah, I think that it is very specific to every brand, but what we see, what I see pretty consistently is when you're able to get as specific as you possibly can around persona and pain point. I think when you see an ad that speaks directly to you you, you're more likely to engage with it. And oftentimes a new client who's maybe new to CTC will come in and they'll make a recommendation that they'd like to see more broad kind of messaging or more broad category.

[00:18:03] Like they just want an ad that would lead directly to their homepage speaking more about the brand in general. And I think what we found is when you're speaking to everyone about every product, you're really speaking to no one about no product. And so we like to hone in on very specific personas and very specific pain points.

[00:18:21] But like even, I mean, if you think about it in terms of let's say it's a protein powder. The way that you would address a, a new mom who is seeking energy, who wants a protein powder, who you know, is maybe stressed out, overwhelmed, underwater, and being fed a lot of information about all different kinds of protein powders and supplements on the market, you're speaking very differently to her than you are speaking to maybe a guy who's at the gym who's super educated on protein powders, who knows you know, exactly what he's looking for.

[00:18:52] So I think being able to just know exactly who your audience is and really think about that person, think about their problem, think about the product being the solution, and what would they wanna hear in human language, not kind of that, you know, AI slop copy that we've, we've hit on before. And when it speaks emotionally to them. I think when copy feels emotional, it has-- we see that driving the highest results and the, and the best performance.

[00:19:22] Richard: What do you mean by emotional?

[00:19:24] Nisha: I think problem and solution can feel very sterile sometimes. Like we talk about maybe like a low energy level, and then we talk about ingredients, right? That are scientifically backed and, you know, all, all of these different sort of benefits and kind of more sterile technical information.

[00:19:43] And that's often what you'll see on a product page. And so when we're pulling that information, we're trying to figure out, okay, what about those products and those benefits matter to that person and that pain point? And how is the product coming in to sort of save the day or be the solution there?

[00:20:00] We're not-- We're, we're leaning more and more away from that kind of sterile copy where it's, you know, product and here is listing out the three different benefits. We wanna unpack and understand why those benefits matter to that specific person and how it's solving their specific problem.

[00:20:18] Richard: Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, I think we definitely-- Like, it's definitely something that people talk about historically in copywriting anyway, that you have to be specific to certain audiences. But I think, like, what this does is, A, it's able to, using the AI scraping, able to pull exactly who those personas are and get really, really clear on what the sp-specific problems are.

[00:20:36] And in that way, you can then kind of reproduce that in, in an ad format relatively easily. But yeah, I think, like, we-- So I talked about this a couple weeks ago maybe, but I had a conversation with Adrian maybe even last year already, where she was just talking about how the f-way she thinks about hooks fundamentally is each one should be something as kind of blunt even as like, are you a mom of young children who jogs in the morning?

[00:21:01] the hook. And then other hook being, are you a mom of older children who jogs in the evening or whatever. Just, like, call out the person as specifically as you possibly can, and then say, maybe tack on, who struggles with I don't know, low energy or whatever the case may be. And as you, as you can clearly call the person by as closely as to their specific situation as possible, that's what's going to grab attention, and that's what makes a winner.

[00:21:26] So I think this is kind of an interesting way to approach that and a, and a novel way to do it quickly. I was gonna s-say too, one thing I wanna call out just for the audience here is one thing that you mentioned is this sort of assumed 5% hit rate, which may even be a little high, but unless... I'm not a math guy, but with 20 ads produced, what we're-- what the expectation should be is that one of them is going to work.

[00:21:47] And even then, that might not even happen. And when we set that expectation, I think gives us the kind of runway to then continue to, to produce ads over a period of time to get closer and closer to actually finding one or two or three hits and consistently producing winners. But I just think it's important to know, like, in the context is like, if we make you 20 ads, maybe one of them w-will go-- is going to work, and that's what you should expect, and that's a good thing to approach this with.

[00:22:13] Nisha: Exactly, and I think with volume, it's just taking us longer, to your point, to find the winners because if we maybe get one for every batch of 20 then it's just gonna take us longer to find those winners, which is gonna take us longer to develop the insights to create more winners. So the, the higher the volume, the quick- quicker we're able to gain those insights, find the winners, and continue applying that to the next round of ads.

[00:22:40] Richard: Yeah. Okay. Well, so I, I think that, yeah, this has been, been really interesting and I think helpful to unpack a little bit about like how, how we approach these things. Are there any pieces of like... Like, if you could leave the audience with one piece of tactical advice about how to approach their own creative operations, what would you, what would you say?

[00:22:57] What would that piece of advice be?

[00:23:00] Nisha: I think we-- what I see most often is maybe clients stuck in a mindset of the persona and pain point work that they've done, maybe with an outside agency or maybe internally, or maybe with the use of AI. And they're kind of locked in on these, like, five key personas for their brand. And while that's great information, and like I said, we use all that to kind of layer in and, and feed the development of the personas we develop, we're thinking about personas and pain points on the product level.

[00:23:34] So I think that that's a big unlock, and I think that that's, like, a big miss that I see a lot of brands how they're operating right now is they're developing personas based on their brand, which it's great to know who you're speaking to. But I think when you're talking about create, creating ads and getting as specifically with copy and creative that, that we're talking about, you really need to be able to develop personas per product and not stick to those.

[00:23:57] So if, let's say you, we, what we do is we develop five per product at a time, and then three pain points per persona, so that gives us 15 unique combinations. If 14 of those don't work, we remove them from the system and we keep trying something new. We're not locked in on just speaking to, you know, five different people at a brand level.

[00:24:20] We're, we're always trying to see who we could speak to next.

[00:24:23] Richard: Yeah. All right. No, that, that's, that's, that's super helpful. And, and one other piece of advice I'll add is that you should get in contact with us so that Nisha and her team can build you ad creative. So one of the reasons we're even doing this podcast is because they've gotten so fast, so efficient at creating great creative that they actually just have more space for clients than they had originally expected.

[00:24:42] So we got room if you want to talk to us about doing that with you. Commonthreadco.com, hit the Hire Us button, let us know you're interested in our creative services and Nisha and her team will jump in and start making hits for you. So thanks for joining us, Nisha, and, and everybody listening out there, take care, and we'll see you next time.

[00:25:00] Nisha: Thank you