Before we start, let’s 🎮 a quick game about ad strategy and see if you can guess:
We have a 4-step process for growing ad accounts, but can you guess which step is most often skipped by brands struggling to balance profitability and growth?
· 👨🎨 Creative planning
· 📡 Campaigns monitoring and management
· 🔧 Campaigns optimization
· 📈 Actuals vs Forecast
Lock in your guess, and I’ll explain why each step is important for growing your ad account.
· Creative planning: diverse creative strategies such as seeding, user-generated content (UGC) and consumer-generated content (CGC) to keep campaigns fresh and engagement.
· Campaign monitoring and management: Continuously monitoring, analyzing data and organizing campaigns on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
· Campaigns optimization: Consistently updating forecasts, setting targets, and managing daily bids and ad spend based on dynamic side factors and contribution margins.
· Actual Performance vs Forecast: Comparing goals between forecasted and actual performance.
(Remember your guess?)
All of these steps are crucial, but which one is skipped the most?
If you guessed any of the steps, you might be right because each brand has its own unique challenges. However, we often find that brands tend to skip creative planning.
Too often, brands rush to launch more ads without a strict creative strategy. While they may have the data in place, without engaging and effective creatives, campaigns are likely to fall short. Creative planning includes not only the content generation and development of ads but also the testing of various options to find out what works best with your audience. Without this, even the most carefully managed campaigns can’t achieve their max performance.
Why is creative planning often overlooked? Brands sometimes believe that as long as the ads are running, the creative aspect will naturally fall into place. However, the reality is that without innovative and engaging creatives, campaigns lose their impact, leading to low performance and wasted ad spend.
….So we come to the question: how does the creative part relate to optimization? With limited resources and budget, how can you allocate more time for the creative part?
Let’s pause here and discuss Campaign Optimization and Forecasting
We see too many brands launching more ads without knowing the metrics that will make those ads profitable. Without starting with the right targets, nothing else will work effectively in your ad account (unless you’re very lucky).
Campaign optimization includes performance analysis, updating forecasts, setting data-driven targets, and managing daily ad spend in alignment with contribution margins. By doing so, you ensure that your ad budget is utilized effectively, minimizing waste and maximizing ROAS.
It’s no secret that this is a time-consuming part of the business cycle. So, why not automate and optimize this gap with the help of machine learning? By using open-source products like Adscorn , you can reduce the time and resources needed for this process, allowing you to focus more on the creative aspects. Check out our other article to get know how we reduced time and increased efficiency.
In summary, every step in our 4-step process is vital for the success of your ad strategy. By ensuring strong creative planning, strict campaign management, precise campaign optimization, and accurate monitoring of your campaigns, you can achieve a balanced approach that drives both profitability and growth.
Join us and share your feedback!👋
Join us on X for the latest news, recommendations, and client stories.
