Still guessing which ads are working? Let Tier 11 build the creative strategy and measurement system behind your Meta ads: https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now
Anyone can generate an AI ad in 30 seconds. So why does so much of it flop? Because AI can’t tell you the dominant emotion your customer is carrying the first time they meet your brand. That emotion is the checkpoint every creative piece has to pass through.
I sat down with Miranda Ivey, creative strategist at Tier 11, to walk through the messaging extraction process we run with every client. We cover why we have clients read “radio ads” out loud, how to bridge the gap between brand guidelines and the way customers actually talk, and how to stay creatively diverse enough for Andromeda.
Miranda also shares the report we use to find winning ads. You’ll leave with a repeatable way to turn emotion into ad concepts, plus a measurement system that goes beyond last-click conversions.
In this episode:
- The messaging extraction call that uncovers the emotional drivers
- Why AI-generated ads fail without a clear customer emotion behind them
- How “radio ads” help clients visualize pain points before production starts
- What to do when brand guidelines clash with customers’ resonance
- How to build creative diversity for Meta’s Andromeda algorithm
- How to measure ad performance using the top 25% of spend by format
- Tracking the right creative metrics
- Measuring creative success rates beyond conversions
Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast channel:
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Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK
Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1
Connect with Miranda Ivey:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandaivey
Connect with Ralph Burns:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
- Hire Tier 11 – https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?
Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review!
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Why the Most Important Step in Your Creative Strategy Has Nothing to Do With Creative
00:00:00:01 – 00:00:08:22
Miranda Ivey
What we have noticed is a lot of times people carry around their water bottles for the convenience of it, but also for the status.
00:00:09:00 – 00:00:31:11
Ralph Burns
You know, anyone can generate an AI add in 30s or less, but here’s what AI can’t give you the dominant emotion your customer is carrying when they encounter your brand or your product for the very first time. That emotion is the gate in which every piece of creative must pass through.
00:00:31:14 – 00:00:44:07
Miranda Ivey
So normally what we do is we go through this thing called the messaging extraction. And so we hop on a call with the client, but also.
00:00:44:09 – 00:01:16:09
Ralph Burns
Hello and welcome to the Professional Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of Tierra 11. And if you are struggling with that, probably today is going to be the most important show that you have ever watched, listened to, because we have creative strategist extraordinaire Miranda Ivey, otherwise known as Mur, which is great because it’s sort of short for media efficiency ratio, but which we talk about here so many times
00:01:16:11 – 00:01:17:07
Ralph Burns
on the show.
00:01:17:07 – 00:01:37:11
Ralph Burns
Miranda Ivey or Mur, we’re just going to call you from here on out. It’s the right way to pronouncing it. Welcome to perpetual traffic. It’s been way too long. We’ve wanted to have you on this show for months and months and months. So welcome. And I know you’re going to dazzle the crowd with all of the things that we’re going to try to explain here that are so darn hard to explain,
00:01:37:17 – 00:01:39:06
Ralph Burns
revolving around creative strategy.
00:01:39:06 – 00:01:40:21
Ralph Burns
So welcome to the show.
00:01:40:23 – 00:01:44:03
Miranda Ivey
Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited.
00:01:44:05 – 00:02:11:10
Ralph Burns
So, we have never had a creative strategist on this show, and I think there’s a reason for that is that when you talk about how to be creative, how to create creative strategy, so much of it is by intuition or it’s the hardest thing to describe, like how does somebody become creative? Oh, like, you know, you get the compliment, oh, you’re so creative.
00:02:11:10 – 00:02:13:01
Ralph Burns
Like I’m not creative. Like,
00:02:13:01 – 00:02:32:12
Ralph Burns
how do you become creative? Can you teach being creative like, I don’t I don’t know, like we were just talking about how you get creative inspiration and how you do it is different than the other creative strategists that are here at your 11. Or for anyone who has any sort of creativity as part of their job role, or just things that they want to do on their own,
00:02:32:15 – 00:02:35:20
Ralph Burns
you know, outside of work, personal, professional doesn’t matter.
00:02:35:21 – 00:02:39:01
Ralph Burns
Point is, is like we’re trying to describe
00:02:39:03 – 00:03:15:13
Ralph Burns
framework that largely has been intuitively done by people like yourself. And the challenge is that right now, creative strategy and strategy just in general, is the most important thing when it comes to performance marketing or even brand plus performance or brand that how meta wants to describe it. And we’ve built a framework for this which we’ve talked about, which is called the messaging engine, which is part of our onboarding.
00:03:15:13 – 00:03:45:08
Ralph Burns
And every client goes through it, and then that feeds everything. That then turns out to be creative. And then we put paid advertising behind it, or it’s used for their social posts. But it’s hard to describe that. Yeah, there’s a 5 or 6 step process, but there’s lots of differences in between there. And we’re going to try and describe that here today, because it’s one of the big things that I see businesses lacking, even, you know, big fortune 500 companies to companies that are, you know, 5 to 10 million.
00:03:45:09 – 00:04:12:04
Ralph Burns
Like they all struggle with strategy when it comes to how to portray their product or service into the market. And so much of that depends today, especially if you’re advertising on the meta platform comes back to creative. So with that as sort of the pretext for today’s show, like how do you describe, like your role in this whole thing that you do day in and day out to somebody who maybe isn’t in the advertising additional marketing world?
00:04:12:04 – 00:04:18:21
Ralph Burns
And how would you actually sort of simplify it so that they say, oh, that actually makes sense?
00:04:18:23 – 00:04:26:19
Miranda Ivey
Yeah. I have been trying to think of how I would describe that to somebody who really doesn’t have any context to
00:04:27:00 – 00:04:29:12
Miranda Ivey
paid advertising or just industry in general.
00:04:29:14 – 00:04:35:04
Miranda Ivey
And what I’ve been saying lately is just, I am the one who writes the ads that you see
00:04:35:09 – 00:04:43:02
Miranda Ivey
when you’re scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. And that’s kind of just like the elevator pitch of what I’ve come down to to say.
00:04:43:04 – 00:05:09:20
Ralph Burns
Right, right. But it’s like, that’s the output. Like there is, there is. I mean, there’s technically there’s really five steps, but there’s probably 25 steps that go on for that actually happens before somebody actually sees the ad, because, I mean, anybody can go to any AI generator and create, you know, creative and put that into their news, put that into their ad account and start running ads to it.
00:05:09:20 – 00:05:24:15
Ralph Burns
But what we found is that that is a lot of times it’s just AI slop. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s just throwing, you know, spaghetti against the wall and you’re going to get the same result at the end of the day. So like take me through like from beginning to end, maybe like
00:05:24:17 – 00:05:36:00
Ralph Burns
either a new client or somebody who we’ve worked with in the past and we decided we just need sort of a refresh and we’re going to start from scratch to look at their business in a completely different way.
00:05:36:01 – 00:05:49:17
Ralph Burns
Take me through that, that process, maybe step by step as much as you possibly can, because I know a lot of it is intuitive and a lot of it is like there’s variations of it based upon the client and their product in the market.
00:05:49:19 – 00:05:53:03
Miranda Ivey
Yeah. So really, I guess I would go through
00:05:53:03 – 00:06:01:04
Miranda Ivey
a client that we’ve had for a while, and we really just want to refresh what we’re doing with their creative strategy as a whole.
00:06:01:09 – 00:06:08:19
Miranda Ivey
So normally what we do is we go through this thing called the messaging extraction. And so we hop on a call with
00:06:08:19 – 00:06:18:06
Miranda Ivey
the client, but also people within that business that speak to the customer every single day, like they know the business in and out.
00:06:18:06 – 00:06:30:10
Miranda Ivey
They know the customer in and out. They hear about it every single day. And so that’s generally where we just invite it to be more of a conversation and really just asking the questions that
00:06:30:12 – 00:06:34:03
Miranda Ivey
are leading to some sort of emotional tie.
00:06:34:05 – 00:06:42:03
Miranda Ivey
For some, it’s hope. For some, it’s like having certain frustrations with X, Y and Z, and they need more convenience with, you know, Z.
00:06:42:05 – 00:06:42:21
Miranda Ivey
But
00:06:42:23 – 00:06:59:13
Miranda Ivey
really hopping on those calls and just getting down into the nitty gritty of things that really can’t be emphasized by just sending a Google doc to them with a bunch of questions on it, just really hearing it from the people who are in it every single day is super helpful.
00:06:59:17 – 00:07:02:11
Miranda Ivey
And so from there, we essentially
00:07:02:11 – 00:07:07:02
Miranda Ivey
take that into creative concepts, and we have that be
00:07:07:02 – 00:07:15:18
Miranda Ivey
the core ideas or the core concepts that we are wanting to build these ads off of, because those are the things that we are seeing
00:07:15:21 – 00:07:18:10
Miranda Ivey
them run into every single day with their customers,
00:07:18:10 – 00:07:22:01
Miranda Ivey
and even people who may not know that they are that businesses customer.
00:07:22:01 – 00:07:27:21
Miranda Ivey
So once the messaging extraction meeting is complete with the clients,
00:07:27:21 – 00:07:38:11
Miranda Ivey
we will then turn those into radio ads. And so those concepts we usually just give them the hook. The description, the funnel that it falls under
00:07:38:14 – 00:07:58:15
Miranda Ivey
and the thread. A lot of that being aware or emotional for the most part. And we actually have the client read it aloud to us because we find that when the client is the one reading it back to us, they start to see it more come to life because they’re able to see it more in their in their head.
00:07:58:16 – 00:08:07:05
Miranda Ivey
They actually see it from how the customer customer views it, rather than just how they’re viewing the customer viewing
00:08:07:10 – 00:08:12:00
Miranda Ivey
So that’s really cool to, to just kind of see them and see those gears turning in their heads
00:08:12:00 – 00:08:24:11
Miranda Ivey
in real time. And so from there, we take whatever has been approved. And if it evokes an emotional response, whether it’s reassurance, whether it’s that hope, whether it’s relief,
00:08:24:14 – 00:08:27:11
Miranda Ivey
we send it through into the ideation process.
00:08:27:11 – 00:08:46:20
Miranda Ivey
And this kind of ties back to what you were saying before of like, okay, well, how how does one be creative? Like how does one ideate those types of things? And it really just it also depends on the context within all of that. Sometimes it’s easy for me to go on YouTube and I have this idea in my head, but I’m like, I need a visual for it.
00:08:46:20 – 00:08:51:20
Miranda Ivey
So I go on YouTube and I try to find different clips of things that we can take for inspiration
00:08:51:23 – 00:08:56:12
Miranda Ivey
for production. Sometimes it’s going through motion and looking at just what
00:08:56:12 – 00:08:59:01
Miranda Ivey
all of their competitors are doing, see if there’s
00:08:59:01 – 00:09:02:02
Miranda Ivey
a pain point that their competitors are hitting on,
00:09:02:02 – 00:09:07:04
Miranda Ivey
that we could take a certain animation style from, or a certain layout or a certain design.
00:09:07:06 – 00:09:18:03
Miranda Ivey
Sometimes it’s scrolling through something as simple as Pinterest. Sometimes it’s just going outside on a walk and not even looking at my screen and just thinking on my feet.
00:09:18:08 – 00:09:27:18
Miranda Ivey
But the ideation process is is really fun because the world is kind of your Auster, as long as you stay within the branding of the client. And,
00:09:27:20 – 00:09:31:08
Miranda Ivey
from there we essentially send it into production.
00:09:31:09 – 00:09:34:06
Miranda Ivey
And that is the first batch of created that they receive.
00:09:34:06 – 00:10:12:05
Ralph Burns
It’s interesting that you’re mentioning something that I think is lost oftentimes in all of this advertising stuff, especially when it comes to direct response and performance marketing is the emotion that’s attached to either the pain point that the person is either feeling at that point in time or the desired end state. And I think we’ve got a couple of examples here where we’re talking about maybe we can even show a little bit of this because it’s, there’s a there’s a lot of steps to this.
00:10:12:06 – 00:10:48:12
Ralph Burns
I mean, I think the way that you described it is great, but there’s a lot of variability with each one of these steps. And it also depends largely on the product, like if you’re selling a water bottle versus selling a mental health treatment or anything in between, or a career change or, you know, a way to get your ideal, you know, you know, next job or whether you’re selling a, you know, $1,000 dog collar like each one of those, those are, you know, five individual clients within 2 or 11.
00:10:48:12 – 00:11:06:07
Ralph Burns
That just popped into my head right now. The point is, it’s like each one of them has a completely different journey. And I know there’s one that we’re probably thinking of is that, you know, we have weekly calls with them is that there is an incredible emotional attachment to it, because it’s such a serious disease state that needs treatment.
00:11:06:07 – 00:11:35:04
Ralph Burns
But even with like the water bottle of the dog collar, there’s still an emotional part to this which has to come from that extraction has to come from like that end user. Like why did they buy, why did they choose that particular company and what was their what was their emotional reason for buying it? It wasn’t just like a because like the majority of our buying decisions are based upon emotion, not necessarily logic.
00:11:35:05 – 00:11:52:17
Ralph Burns
And I know you know that I don’t know what percentage it is. Some people say it’s 90, ten, 80, 20, 50, 50. I’m not sure what it is, but I know it’s in there. And if you miss out on that emotional component, your ads end up don’t. They’re not resonating. And I think that’s an important part to this whole thing.
00:11:52:17 – 00:12:04:19
Ralph Burns
So how do you sort of generate that whether it’s, you know, something as utilitarian as a water bottle versus something that’s, you know, a treatment that could, you know, specifically change someone’s life?
00:12:04:19 – 00:12:10:17
Miranda Ivey
obviously context is is huge, whether it’s like, like you said, doing it for
00:12:10:17 – 00:12:19:10
Miranda Ivey
a products like a water bottle or for something like a treatment specific thing for depression or mental health.
00:12:19:14 – 00:12:25:13
Miranda Ivey
One of like the examples that I can give is like for.
00:12:25:15 – 00:12:39:09
Miranda Ivey
Mental health in particular, we really want to evoke that feeling of hope. They’re feeling deflated because everything that they have tried for their depression is just not working. And really just getting into
00:12:39:13 – 00:12:50:13
Miranda Ivey
the different pain points of what that customer is feeling, even if they haven’t necessarily admitted it to a doctor, or
00:12:50:13 – 00:12:53:10
Miranda Ivey
to like their closest friend for a water bottle.
00:12:53:10 – 00:13:12:18
Miranda Ivey
On the other hand, how do you put an emotional tie like that to a product? And what we have noticed is a lot of times people carry around their water bottles for the convenience of it, but also for the status. A lot of the times we see
00:13:12:18 – 00:13:21:03
Miranda Ivey
different companies, like water bottle companies that are super popular, like a Walla, Hydro Flask, companies like that,
00:13:21:06 – 00:13:34:02
Miranda Ivey
A lot of the times that is tied to a specific status. So, you know, people go into Pilates or people going out with their families and seeing it in motion, camping, whatever it might be.
00:13:34:07 – 00:13:36:12
Miranda Ivey
So that’s kind of like how we,
00:13:36:14 – 00:13:40:22
Miranda Ivey
try to look at all the different angles that we can take with those emotions.
00:13:41:00 – 00:13:45:21
Miranda Ivey
just seeing the themes that even their competitors are doing and trying to hit on as well.
00:13:45:23 – 00:13:48:19
Ralph Burns
Do you find that the.
00:13:48:20 – 00:14:24:15
Ralph Burns
People within the organization, maybe the director of marketing, the VP of marketing, or the CEO, is attuned to that emotional tie between the product and the real reason why people are buying, or are they far more on the well, this is this is how this treatment is done. Let’s talk about the specifics of it. And there’s multiple cases where I can think of this inside 211 where, you know, the the person who’s running the marketing may or may not be the best person to actually get the real messaging from.
00:14:24:16 – 00:14:46:21
Ralph Burns
And it’s not always the case. And in some cases, you have very like people that are very in tune to it or whether they have personal experience with it all that sort of stuff. So there’s there’s always sort of exceptions, but where do you sort of find the best you the juice, so to speak, that sort of feeds everything that ties back that emotional response that you want to elicit.
00:14:46:22 – 00:14:49:19
Ralph Burns
Ultimately, in your advertising.
00:14:49:21 – 00:14:58:12
Miranda Ivey
It’s usually people who are speaking to their target customer every single day. So whether it’s people who are
00:14:58:12 – 00:15:04:03
Miranda Ivey
helping out with their social media and they’re commenting back with community engagement, whether it is,
00:15:04:06 – 00:15:19:13
Miranda Ivey
Clinicians that get to speak to those people every single day when they walk into the room and they’re hearing these stories and these like, pain points that they are going through, and they may not have been able to articulate what’s been going on with them or what their their issues have been
00:15:19:16 – 00:15:28:11
Miranda Ivey
up until that point. And so getting that insight from people who are directly in contact with the people that are interacting with that brand every single day
00:15:28:16 – 00:15:30:23
Miranda Ivey
has been super insightful.
00:15:31:01 – 00:15:35:03
Miranda Ivey
I also think it’s good for whenever the founders or the CEOs
00:15:35:03 – 00:15:39:13
Miranda Ivey
directors are on this call and say they don’t really have that emotional,
00:15:39:18 – 00:15:42:15
Miranda Ivey
or they don’t have that knowledge of that emotional tie
00:15:42:17 – 00:15:46:02
Miranda Ivey
for their customer, I think it’s really insightful for them to hear as well.
00:15:46:04 – 00:16:18:00
Ralph Burns
It’s probably surprising in a lot of cases. I mean, I’ve been on a few of these calls where, you know, there’s actually there is a break between what upper management wants in their ads versus the real reason why people buy. And sometimes it’s just for like how they actually how management and how, you know, the VP of marketing talks about the product versus how the, the patient or the customer or the client
00:16:18:00 – 00:16:20:23
Ralph Burns
actually talks about it like there’s this disconnect.
00:16:21:00 – 00:16:42:07
Ralph Burns
And I find that’s a big challenge is to like bridge that gap. And I can think of one specifically where I was on where it’s like, wait a second, your client does not talk about your product the way that you talk about the product. And sometimes that’s a really hard thing to navigate. How do you do that in those types of cases?
00:16:42:07 – 00:16:48:09
Ralph Burns
Because that’s I find on the extraction, cause that’s one of the more challenging things to sort of overcome. What’s your sense.
00:16:48:11 – 00:16:54:11
Miranda Ivey
For sure. It’s and it really just depends. It’s really by a case by case basis.
00:16:54:13 – 00:16:57:03
Miranda Ivey
And usually that is where we tend to see
00:16:57:07 – 00:17:05:20
Miranda Ivey
that fine line between branding versus what we are actually trying to evoke in the viewer.
00:17:06:00 – 00:17:20:12
Miranda Ivey
Because something can look very beautiful. It can be an amazing, like layout design, all of this stuff, but it may not be resonating to the emotional level of what we were actually needing to articulate in the ad that we were trying to sell.
00:17:20:14 – 00:17:46:07
Miranda Ivey
So it is very it really does vary on a case by case basis, but usually we try to work with the client and just see, okay, so what exactly are the parameters like, what can we not work with and what can we. And we try to get creative in that sense of okay, how can we iterate off of those parameters essentially
00:17:46:07 – 00:17:51:22
Miranda Ivey
and make something that will still adheres to what we’re trying to do for
00:17:51:22 – 00:17:53:16
Miranda Ivey
that emotional extraction?
00:17:53:18 – 00:17:55:10
Ralph Burns
I mean, I’ve seen a lot of cases,
00:17:55:10 – 00:18:12:01
Ralph Burns
not a lot of cases, but just like some cases on these types of calls where it’s like, well, that’s not a that’s not our brand. Our brand is this when in fact your your perception of the brand and why people buy from you might not actually be one and the same.
00:18:12:01 – 00:18:32:06
Ralph Burns
That might be part of the reason why they’re not buying, or why some of your campaigns right now aren’t resonating as, as, as much as they possibly could. So how do you navigate that sort of challenge, or is it you got to find a middle ground, like what’s your how do you kind of work through all that?
00:18:32:08 – 00:18:36:06
Miranda Ivey
Yeah, we really just try to find that middle ground with it honestly. Yeah.
00:18:36:08 – 00:18:43:20
Miranda Ivey
there’s several different ways that it can go. Like we could, you know, for those that are wanting to stay really strict and really
00:18:43:21 – 00:18:49:03
Miranda Ivey
specific to those, those brand parameters that they’re wanting to hold,
00:18:49:06 – 00:18:52:22
Miranda Ivey
and it’s like, okay, well, if we’re limited to this.
00:18:53:01 – 00:18:58:15
Miranda Ivey
How can we get creative with it? Like, how can we make new concepts? How can we
00:18:58:20 – 00:19:04:08
Miranda Ivey
really push the box with with what we know the audience is needing to resonate with,
00:19:04:10 – 00:19:10:06
Miranda Ivey
as well as making it creative, diverse enough for Andromeda for it to count more than just one ad, because
00:19:10:06 – 00:19:12:15
Miranda Ivey
ads are now needing to
00:19:12:17 – 00:19:16:18
Miranda Ivey
more diverse than just changing out the background or changing out the photo with the
00:19:16:20 – 00:19:22:14
Miranda Ivey
So yeah, it really is just a middle ground of finding that sweet spot where it’s like, okay,
00:19:22:16 – 00:19:46:14
Miranda Ivey
we want to stay within, like these brand fonts and these colors and these even like text lockups that they may have for specific designs. And it’s like, okay, we will take that. We will put it into a carousel, we’ll put it into a video, we’ll put it into a GIF, we’ll take this and we’ll change it out completely
00:19:46:16 – 00:19:50:14
Miranda Ivey
with a different product, but we’ll put it in the same setting, like just different things.
00:19:50:14 – 00:19:54:16
Miranda Ivey
To that nature of seeing how we can get a little bit more flexible with,
00:19:54:20 – 00:19:57:17
Miranda Ivey
branding. That may not be as flexible for us.
00:19:57:17 – 00:20:20:19
Ralph Burns
it’s a delicate balance to say the least. So just reiterating so you sort of went through the process here. It’s it’s extraction concepts. You get, you know, some briefs that come out of that. And then in those briefs you say you create radio ads with hooks, descriptions like based upon the funnel, sort of the emotional thread, all of that.
00:20:20:20 – 00:20:40:21
Ralph Burns
He explained what a radio ad is to people who might not understand, like, is it, hey, literally that it sounds, but like, how do you guys describe that? And like that? I know that’s sort of the first iteration. Like you haven’t actually created anything, but you’re trying to formulate the overall concept for what will eventually become an ad.
00:20:40:23 – 00:20:44:09
Miranda Ivey
Yep, that’s exactly it. It’s literally the ad with no visuals.
00:20:44:09 – 00:20:47:20
Miranda Ivey
And so what we do is we have the client,
00:20:47:20 – 00:20:57:16
Miranda Ivey
we have it all in just a Google doc. And it’s as simple as it sounds really. It’s just hook description of what the client will read off, and then the emotional payoff of where that lies
00:20:57:16 – 00:20:58:19
Miranda Ivey
with those pain points.
00:20:58:19 – 00:21:05:10
Miranda Ivey
And so we will actually have the client just read all of those words off of the Google doc directly back to us.
00:21:05:13 – 00:21:10:02
Miranda Ivey
And from there, they can start to visualize those
00:21:10:07 – 00:21:15:17
Miranda Ivey
pain points that their customer is actually going through instead of just seeing it on, say,
00:21:15:19 – 00:21:22:08
Miranda Ivey
a social media strategy that someone put together of like, okay, well, here’s your client’s pain points or your customer’s pain points, and it’s like, okay.
00:21:22:09 – 00:21:26:07
Miranda Ivey
And it’s easy to see, but once you’re actually in it and you’re reading off the words and you’re like,
00:21:26:07 – 00:21:30:12
Miranda Ivey
oh, and you’re putting yourself in the customer’s shoes at that point, so
00:21:30:16 – 00:21:32:19
Miranda Ivey
they’re able to have a different
00:21:32:22 – 00:21:39:00
Miranda Ivey
emotions start to evoke in themselves for us to create those visuals to.
00:21:39:00 – 00:21:53:15
Ralph Burns
That’s when the the gears really start turning. That could be there. Be the gears start turning and saying, no, this doesn’t resonate with our brand or oh my God, I’ve been doing it wrong prior to this. And now I finally start to understand, like, that’s a.
00:21:53:16 – 00:21:54:00
Miranda Ivey
Exactly.
00:21:54:01 – 00:22:12:12
Ralph Burns
That’s a pivotal moment. And it’s interesting that it like, you know, when I’ve talked to a lot of the team about this is like that read back period like is vitally important. That’s when everything is kind of coming together at that point. Or I’m mistaken by saying that.
00:22:12:14 – 00:22:15:00
Miranda Ivey
No 100%.
00:22:15:02 – 00:22:38:12
Ralph Burns
Yeah. So then after that, then you do, you know, the sort of the ideation and then after like obviously there’s some inspiration that goes into that for you. It’s taking a walk or go, you know, looking at videos on YouTube or looking on Pinterest, looking at competitor information. And then you actually go into the production where it’s then now we have stuff to actually look at.
00:22:38:12 – 00:22:48:00
Ralph Burns
It’s looked at through software that we use for for client edits and reviews and internal review, and then ultimately an external review.
00:22:48:02 – 00:23:06:16
Ralph Burns
Anything there that stands out that’s super important for people to know. Or is it just really like, you know, not all these concepts, not all these, you know, pieces of creative are going to necessarily resonate after going through all this process, like what’s the success rate of it actually coming out the other end and then becoming a live ad?
00:23:06:16 – 00:23:10:22
Ralph Burns
Have you sort of thought about that or figured that out?
00:23:11:00 – 00:23:14:05
Miranda Ivey
Honestly, once we have the radio ads down,
00:23:14:05 – 00:23:19:08
Miranda Ivey
the messaging is just such a crucial part in creatives that I’ve come to find out from
00:23:19:12 – 00:23:32:08
Miranda Ivey
this whole process. And so once we have that down, it’s actually a lot of the creative, if not all of it has had a really good success rate in going through production and getting the client approval to put into the actual
00:23:32:08 – 00:23:39:03
Miranda Ivey
ad account, which has been great because it’s like once we nail down the messaging, it’s like, okay, that’s one thing that we are like, okay, we’re good to go.
00:23:39:06 – 00:23:59:12
Miranda Ivey
But one thing in the creative process that is very interesting to me, and I’m always more so intrigued by than surprise, I guess you could say, is I will brief out a creative and, you know, creative is very subjective. And so I’ll brief it in with a certain idea of like how it may look, how it may look visually,
00:23:59:16 – 00:24:02:19
Miranda Ivey
and have it kind of playing out in my head, especially if it’s a video.
00:24:02:19 – 00:24:16:22
Miranda Ivey
And then once it goes through production, what comes out may not be necessarily exactly what I picture, but it may be better and it may be like, oh, this is a new direction that we could take this, that the editor
00:24:17:03 – 00:24:18:00
Miranda Ivey
who was on the
00:24:18:00 – 00:24:25:12
Miranda Ivey
on the brief saw in what I had breezed out and I’m like, oh, this is actually this is actually really good.
00:24:25:13 – 00:24:27:12
Miranda Ivey
I’m like, let’s move forward.
00:24:27:12 – 00:24:30:16
Miranda Ivey
And so we may have like some minor tweaks here and there, but
00:24:30:16 – 00:24:46:02
Miranda Ivey
the team is just so incredibly talented at what they do and what they produce. But then we send it off to the client and they’re just like, yeah, let’s do it. So yeah, that’s been something that I’m more so like really intrigued by,
00:24:46:02 – 00:24:48:14
Miranda Ivey
just in terms of how that creative process goes.
00:24:48:16 – 00:24:51:10
Miranda Ivey
But yeah, it’s great.
00:24:51:12 – 00:25:18:03
Ralph Burns
Yeah. It’s always it’s always cool when you, you have maybe an idea for it and then you send it to somebody else and they interpret it slightly differently, like we’re all, this is what makes us all human, right? So we don’t all think the same things have the same creative process, process information the same way. And when it comes out even better than you would visualized it, or you would actually sort of thought that it would look,
00:25:18:05 – 00:25:22:15
Ralph Burns
that’s a pretty, pretty nice place to be.
00:25:22:17 – 00:25:23:07
Ralph Burns
Yeah.
00:25:23:11 – 00:25:39:14
Ralph Burns
That’s what happens if you have a super good team, of course. And then obviously that goes out to the client and then they’re like, wow, this is, you know, much better than I even thought. I mean, I’m sure there’s plenty of cases where it’s all right, we need to send that back or there’s got to be, you know, there’s got to be edits or there’s always going to be that.
00:25:39:14 – 00:25:44:14
Ralph Burns
But I mean, by and large, like, you’re like, you’re thinking of something and creating, like
00:25:44:14 – 00:26:22:11
Ralph Burns
out of thin air. And then all of a sudden it becomes a thing that then produces a result, which ultimately gets measured. And I think that whole process now that I’m sort of thinking about is one of the reasons why I loved getting into this industry in the first place, because it’s like you can think of something and then have that kind of profound effect on whatever it is, like people making better career choices or, you know, if you view the selling the water bottles, you know, getting effective pain treatment, you know, depression treatment, like all of that, like
00:26:22:12 – 00:26:46:06
Ralph Burns
the like that persuasion all comes now comes back to creative. But at one point in time, somebody thought of that and then actually created it and then impacted people in a positive way. I don’t know, I don’t want to sound too Pollyanna, but that’s that’s the reason why I got into this industry to begin with, which is actually we’re sort of describing it now, and I’m like, wow, that’s actually the thing that I really love about all of this stuff.
00:26:46:06 – 00:26:50:07
Ralph Burns
And certainly I would guess that’s probably the case with you.
00:26:50:09 – 00:26:52:22
Miranda Ivey
Oh, most definitely. Yes. Yeah.
00:26:52:22 – 00:27:11:16
Miranda Ivey
as I’m thinking through, just like the overall process, I’m realizing like how much I do subconsciously as well. And I’m like, oh, like, I’ve never actually had to think step by step of how this process goes. But it really is just such a domino effect of one piece affects another, affects another, and it just continues to build off of each other.
00:27:11:16 – 00:27:13:14
Miranda Ivey
And we get like a really good end result with
00:27:13:18 – 00:27:31:21
Ralph Burns
So last but not least, I do want to talk about like how you measure this. So you’ve now sent it out into the wild. It’s like you’ve released your child. And he was like, hopefully, you know, they leave the nest and you’re keeping your fingers crossed. I hope they produce, you know, or at least you get the desired effect.
00:27:31:23 – 00:27:46:15
Ralph Burns
That was always sort of the thing. It’s like I would I remember when I was first starting this, I was like, I would launch my ads at night because I was working, you know, regular day job, and I couldn’t get back to my laptop until like 24 hours later. So I’d have to go work a full day.
00:27:46:15 – 00:28:03:21
Ralph Burns
And then I come back at like 10:00 at night, and then I’d see the result. And sometimes I was like, yeah, a lot of times I was like, oh shit, you know, because I mean, there’s a high failure rate. Of course this is, you know, 15 years ago. But it was like that, like anticipation, like you’ve created this thing.
00:28:03:23 – 00:28:20:21
Ralph Burns
Now, how do you measure it? Because it’s not all measured based upon just conversions now. And I know you and Thomas and Thomas has been on the show a couple of times now, sort of reveal a little bit of how you guys do it. Maybe you can even just screen share this just quickly here and we can blur out, you know, client names and so forth.
00:28:20:21 – 00:28:42:02
Ralph Burns
But it’s super interesting how you guys measure success because it’s not necessarily, oh, this ad got the most conversions because we know that’s the ad. That’s probably the bottom of the funnel ad, which did the heavy lifting to get the conversion, but it was all the ads in front of it that led to that ad getting that conversion.
00:28:42:02 – 00:28:55:05
Ralph Burns
So how do you look at that? How do you measure it? And then how do you say, okay, well, that one, we should iterate on that one. We should maybe set to the side like all of that. What’s your what’s your strategy when it comes to all that.
00:28:55:07 – 00:28:57:00
Miranda Ivey
No. Yeah that’s exactly it.
00:28:57:00 – 00:29:00:12
Miranda Ivey
And how we have been divvying this up more
00:29:00:14 – 00:29:15:00
Miranda Ivey
or splitting this out is we’ll take the top 25% of spend in the account and divide that out by format. So we’ll have the top 25% of spend for video, and then the top 25% of spend for statics,
00:29:15:05 – 00:29:21:11
Miranda Ivey
because it’s exactly like you said, a lot of the bottom of the bundle is probably going to be the ones that are getting the most conversions,
00:29:21:11 – 00:29:31:01
Miranda Ivey
but we want to see more of that information that will let us know the metrics that tie into that emotional extraction and that emotional messaging.
00:29:31:01 – 00:29:42:10
Miranda Ivey
And so what we’ve been looking at is from those top 25% of spend with those ads, we actually measure a few metrics across the board.
00:29:42:13 – 00:29:47:23
Miranda Ivey
So we measure hook rates, hold rates, click through rates, watch rates.
00:29:48:02 – 00:30:09:03
Miranda Ivey
And I think obviously their goal metrics and things of that nature and then how much spend it got. And then from there we take all of those metrics and we list it out on a table with each ad from that top 25%, and we see how many crossover hits each one got.
00:30:09:05 – 00:30:17:22
Miranda Ivey
And then from those crossover hits, we determine which adds our the top performers on whichever one got the most hits.
00:30:17:22 – 00:30:24:01
Ralph Burns
So Murray is going to show this sort of visually through a report that I believe is through a client that we
00:30:24:03 – 00:30:36:20
Ralph Burns
met with just this past week. And to see this head on over to Perpetual Traffic YouTube and subscribe to the channel, of course. So yeah. So take it away. So what are we looking at here.
00:30:36:22 – 00:30:44:20
Miranda Ivey
Yeah. So as you can see here we have this highlighted. So each add these are all of the top 25% by spend for video.
00:30:45:01 – 00:30:46:18
Miranda Ivey
So we have the ad names here.
00:30:46:18 – 00:30:56:15
Miranda Ivey
How much spend is over here. Their hook rates their whole rates watch rates click through rates which is outbound. And then there’s one else which is Leeds and Stuck which is booked calls.
00:30:56:15 – 00:30:59:04
Miranda Ivey
And so for each
00:30:59:04 – 00:31:09:13
Miranda Ivey
column you can see three highlighted here. So you can see that this particular these particular ads are falling within that top three for that metric. So
00:31:09:13 – 00:31:12:08
Miranda Ivey
then you can see for example this one
00:31:12:08 – 00:31:18:08
Miranda Ivey
on this line here, this one hit on the top three for that metric with four of the metrics out of six.
00:31:18:08 – 00:31:25:07
Miranda Ivey
So we had that as a hit rate of four. And then the same thing for this one up here, it got
00:31:25:07 – 00:31:38:23
Miranda Ivey
the top three for that metric for three of them. And so we have that hit rate as three. And so this is how we’re determining what is actually moving the needle in the account.
00:31:38:23 – 00:31:45:08
Miranda Ivey
But we’re also seeing more insight on the things that we’re wanting to know what to iterate off of.
00:31:45:08 – 00:31:48:04
Miranda Ivey
Whether it’s that hold rate, whether it’s the hook rate,
00:31:48:08 – 00:31:52:13
Miranda Ivey
whether it’s the watch rate, things like that. So we’re just able to get more insight
00:31:52:13 – 00:31:58:10
Miranda Ivey
from what creative is driving performance, not just what is getting the most conversions.
00:31:58:11 – 00:32:00:13
Ralph Burns
this is super good. And if you’re watching
00:32:00:13 – 00:32:16:03
Ralph Burns
over on Perpetual Traffic Forward YouTube, you’re going to see some pretty insanely high hook and hold rates and watch as far as like average watch is concerned here. And then click through rates like we’re looking at 76%, 54%, 21 second watch rate,
00:32:16:06 – 00:32:18:17
Ralph Burns
8% click through rate. Like oh my god.
00:32:18:18 – 00:32:23:12
Ralph Burns
Like that’s not crazy. That’s crazy good.
00:32:23:12 – 00:32:27:14
Ralph Burns
Which I would not expect a novice to be able to produce that. But
00:32:27:17 – 00:32:42:06
Ralph Burns
that’s why, you know, if you’re not, then you should head on over to apply. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The point is, like we’re not measuring. This is always the question that I ask any growth strategist and anyone.
00:32:42:07 – 00:32:46:00
Ralph Burns
One of the biggest questions that we get all the time is
00:32:46:00 – 00:33:06:06
Ralph Burns
how do I know which is my best ad? And the the answer is really? First off, it depends. But secondly, now with Andromeda, it’s really it’s a combination of a lot of different factors here. It’s almost like 4 or 5 different factors. I mean, there are the results in the second and third to last column there.
00:33:06:06 – 00:33:42:16
Ralph Burns
But the point is, is like there’s a lot of other factors that go into, all right, how are we actually generating interest at top of funnel to get people to become aware of this particular service. And then Andromeda is smart enough to say, okay, well, if you’re really engaging with them with these crazy levels of hook and hold and watch rates, I’m going to show them another ad that’s related to it, but maybe not the same in order to ultimately get them further down the funnel to ultimately take the action, which is, you know, the book, a scheduled call in this particular case.
00:33:42:16 – 00:33:44:15
Ralph Burns
Pretty darn impressive. Well,
00:33:44:17 – 00:33:55:20
Ralph Burns
know this was we were talking about this in the pre-record. We’re like, how do you describe what I do? And it’s like, we’ve been doing this for almost 15 years now.
00:33:55:20 – 00:34:06:20
Ralph Burns
like I said, I don’t think I’ve ever described the creative process on the show. And I know it’s like almost an impossible ask for somebody like yourself to say, like what goes on in your brain to be able to create, like, stuff like this.
00:34:06:20 – 00:34:09:16
Ralph Burns
But that first off is,
00:34:09:21 – 00:34:38:08
Ralph Burns
I think what we tried to do as best as possible here. And I think, yes, there is a step by step methodology and there’s a framework that we use in every client, but there’s a lot of variability, and it even varies by creative strategists. Because as much as we want to systematize everything in a business, there’s still going to be variability not only by the business itself, but by the human who’s actually doing it.
00:34:38:10 – 00:34:55:18
Miranda Ivey
No, definitely. There’s definitely a lot of nuances. And with the creative strategists interior 11, there’s times where we will just go to each other, and that’s part of the creative ideation process of like, hey, do you have an idea for X, Y and Z? And then we kind of bounce off of each other too. So it’s a really good collaborative process in that too.
00:34:55:19 – 00:35:08:08
Ralph Burns
Yeah. Which makes it a lot of fun. And of course, you know, Thomas has no say in any of this stuff, right? It’s just how you write. He’s he’s claiming credit for a lot. The couple times that he’s on the show. But you know, he’s just.
00:35:08:09 – 00:35:15:23
Miranda Ivey
No I me and him collaborate weekly on these ads. So I will give him the props where it is a needed for sure.
00:35:16:01 – 00:35:32:15
Ralph Burns
That’s good. It’s good. He’s just drunk with celebrity now. But he’s been making the show three times. Well, having said that, we’d love to have you come back. We were supposed to talk about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, which is coming up pretty soon. I’d love to have you back on to get through. You know, some of your thoughts on that and how you approach things.
00:35:32:15 – 00:35:35:20
Ralph Burns
We’re obviously we’re hard at work with
00:35:35:20 – 00:35:43:21
Ralph Burns
many of our clients with that specifically, and I think it’s a super relevant topic, but I think even more so, like this is a,
00:35:43:23 – 00:35:53:05
Ralph Burns
this is a framework that works year round and not just through that particular time of year. And so I really appreciate you coming on and trying to explain it as best as possible.
00:35:53:05 – 00:35:57:03
Ralph Burns
And I think we I think we did a pretty good job overall, but
00:35:57:03 – 00:35:59:21
Ralph Burns
we’d love to have you back and even go through it further. But
00:35:59:21 – 00:36:00:11
Ralph Burns
this was amazing
00:36:00:17 – 00:36:03:06
Miranda Ivey
Cool. Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.
00:36:03:06 – 00:36:06:22
Ralph Burns
And of course, for all of you who are listening here today,
00:36:06:22 – 00:36:28:06
Ralph Burns
definitely check us out. Over on the YouTube channel, you’ll see some of the things that we talked about here between myself and Myr. And that’s over at Perpetual Traffic. Com, YouTube. And of course, if you’re a long time listener to the show and you want to give us a rating or review, especially over on Spotify, we seem to be getting a lot of downloads on Spotify recently, which is very, very cool.
00:36:28:11 – 00:36:45:10
Ralph Burns
You can comment over there and leave us a rating. So much appreciated, because it allows us to get this stuff out to a wider audience, to teach people how to do this stuff the right way, through metrics that matter and growth that scales, and ultimately through a creative process here that we tried to describe as best as possible.
00:36:45:10 – 00:36:46:14
Ralph Burns
And
00:36:46:16 – 00:36:52:23
Ralph Burns
and of course, if you need our help on any of this, you can check us out over at to 11 forward apply. So
00:36:53:01 – 00:37:00:19
Ralph Burns
so much cool stuff. So many knowledge bombs dropped here today on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.
00:37:00:21 – 00:37:02:02
Miranda Ivey
Thank you.
00:37:02:03 – 00:37:11:11
Ralph Burns
Like I said, all the links are going to be able to show notes over at Perpetual Traffic. And until next show. Ladies and gentlemen.
