How to Build Brand-Aligned Creatives That Help Scale Campaigns

[00:00:00] Thinking about competitor advantage, I think is always my first question when talking to new clients. Mm-hmm. What makes you different? What sets you apart? Because if you can't really think about that, it's not gonna resonate within your ads and you're not going to, um, you know, make that conversion when compared to another competitor.

[00:00:22] All right, Emily, I know that testing is really big when it comes to paid social, so how do you maintain brand consistency across different ad formats, campaigns, audiences? All the above. Yeah, that's a super great question. I think that's a question that a lot of clients ask as account managers, just because oftentimes they have very strong brand values and brand identities, and they really wanna make sure that that translates into the ad creatives, whether that be on the feed placements or the story placements.

[00:00:52] And what we like to tell of our clients for creatives is that we. Build out direct response creatives to make sure that they are not only conversionally optimized, but that they also align with your specific brand guidelines. So whether that be logo placement, or colors or font size, we like to make sure that every single piece of creative that is pushed out on paid social is inaccurate.

[00:01:18] Representation of your brand. For feed and story placements, we like to ensure that every single placement is optimized for the maximum amount of real estate on the screen. If you have a one by one feed placement. And you put it onto the story, we tend to see a lot of blank space between the top and the bottom of the creative and really creates a inconsistent and a not good customer experience and customer journey.

[00:01:50] If you're scrolling through your stories and you see a creative that's really not in the right size for that story placement. You're not gonna get really great engagement. It doesn't feel professional. Yeah, not at all. So we like to make sure that all of our creatives are optimized for each of those placements, whether that be a one by one or a four by five in the feed or the story placements.

[00:02:13] And then within those placements, we like to take not only the brand guidelines, but also the industry best practices into account. A lot of our clients will come to us and want the logo on every single piece of their creative. While that is super important, we also like to remind clients that on some placements on both Facebook and Instagram, the logo's already gonna be there.

[00:02:36] So we don't want any overlapping, any distractions to really take away from that conversion optimized goal of the ads. Yeah, I think setting it in previews is really important. I've had clients say there's, you know, a blank space, they're at the top and I, you know, send them a preview of it. And there's a lot of overall covered up space that you wouldn't think of when you're just looking at a creative.

[00:02:56] And so I think, you know, the best practices is really. Important, but also in general, everything that you went through. I feel like that's the best way to keep it consistent. 'cause I know it's really important for us that we've gotten into more and more as the industry changes, is sort of tweaking each creative for the audience that we're talking to.

[00:03:14] But then also it's, you know, I would say the most imperative to make sure that the branding is consistent. Because if someone falls into different audiences, they can, you know, compare and say, you know, maybe I saw. One audience created it, but I saw another audience created it, but the connection is there and the brand recognition is there, and that's just gonna have an even bigger impact on the user.

[00:03:35] I think that's a super great call out, especially if individuals have their first touchpoint with one of our top of funnel paid social ads. Mm-hmm. Just that awareness, that education about the brand, and then they see our middle of funnel prospecting and bottom of funnel remarketing and conversions. We just wanna make sure that every single touch point that users have with the brands is.

[00:04:00] Not super random with three developments or colors or fonts. We like to make sure that everything is super consistent, like you said, to make sure that a very seamless customer journey and every single touch point that they do have with the brand is very aligned with their package and, um, creatives too.

[00:04:20] No, I think that's such a good call out, and especially when we're talking about clickthrough rates and how to optimize for clickthrough. I think that's specifically talking and thinking about where a customer is within their funnel and where where they are within their customer journey is really going to help.

[00:04:35] Keep that, click the rate high, keep that engagement high. Mm-hmm. If they've already heard, you know, information about the brand and they didn't, you know, convert on that, what can we tell them now and how can we speak to them at a different point in the funnel to make sure that they're consistently engaging, we're bringing them back into the fold.

[00:04:52] Um, but then of course, coming back to branding, making sure that that is always, always, always there. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think the audience call that you made earlier is a really great point to pull out because with a bunch of our different campaigns we do. Tailor our creatives to specific audience segments.

[00:05:13] So even though the creatives is tailored to each target audience, they should really reflect the organizational culture and mission of the brands, not just those product features and not just the specific stage of the funnel, rather the whole brand and their values there. So I think that was a really great call as well.

[00:05:35] Cool. This is completely random. Um, just something I saw, like thinking about creating emotional correct co creating an emotional connection through your advertising creative. I think that's something that's really important to think about when thinking about creative strategy is often when it comes. To e-comm, but also even lead gen in general, talking about the product specifically, sometimes doesn't have the same impact of talking about the solution.

[00:06:01] So if we have, you know, a t-shirt, it's not just like, oh, the T-shirt has a nice quality, but you're gonna look so good in this. You're gonna feel so good about yourself. People really respond to these, those emotional triggers. I, I find a lot more often than, um, just sort of scientific brand or scientific, like, you know.

[00:06:22] Like just product information. Um, so thinking about that and thinking about the mindset of the user as they're scrolling is definitely going to help with that. And that's something I say to my clients all the time. Think it. If you were scrolling through Instagram, think about if you saw this ad, how does it feel to you?

[00:06:39] Um, putting yourself into that, the, the shoes as a user, um, is really, really important. Yeah, that is a super great call, and I think that authentic messaging for the ad creatives really helps create that emotional connection with the user and with the brand that ultimately can be that deciding factor to whether a.

[00:06:59] Or whether or not they convert and take that final action that we want them to. Yeah, think outside the box. I mean, there's tons of tools out there to see, you know, what your competitors are doing, but if you're doing exactly what they're doing, then you, you're not gonna differentiate yourself. So what makes you different?

[00:07:15] Thinking about competitor advantage, I think is always my first question when talking to new clients. Mm-hmm. What makes you different? What sets you apart? Because if you can't really think about that, it's not gonna resonate within your ads and you're not going to. Um, you know, could make that conversion when compared to another competitor.

[00:07:33] That's a super great call out, and even when we do want our clients to think outta the box, we can still do that while staying in those brand guidelines and brand standards. I think there's a really happy medium of pushing the limit in terms of creative theme or idea, something a little bit more scroll stopping, but you can also have that while also keeping your.

[00:07:57] Brand, um, alignment the same. So I think that's something that I know you and I both like to talk about with our clients. Just how we can push the limit for outside the box creative ideas, but then also making sure that they do fall within those brand guidelines and standards. Yeah, there's a lot of space for testing within your brand guidelines and mm-hmm.

[00:08:18] It's important not to be stagnant and not. To be complacent because, um, the industry changes a lot and so keeping up with it. Um, but of course, I, I think there's some room, but I think that having consistent, like coloring consistent messaging is really what's going to, you know, keep you within that, that branding.

[00:08:36] Yeah. And especially when we do creative testing, I feel like some people don't realize that really small tweaks to the colors or the button or the placements could have a completely different, um, and significant mm-hmm. Impact. So, like you said, there are a lot of really interesting ways that we could test creatives to improve performance while also staying within that brand guideline package.

[00:09:15] So that's kind of the, the idea here. And, um, you know, you can put your catalog in in catalog in different format. You know, it could be just a single image or video, but what I found working best is to take care yourself.