what "strategy" even means (stop guessing to explode your ad win rate)

So in this video, I want to talk about what strategy even means for a creative strategist. Okay. We talk about that all the time. A lot of people know what the creativity part is and they may have a vague idea of what the strategy part is, but I think most people don't even really have a strategy. So in this video, I'm going to give you some really, really simple— I'm trying to make it as quick as possible— some really simple ideas that'll change the way that you think about doing strategy when you're coming up with ads, funnels, anything else. By the way, if you're new to this channel and don't know who I am, my name is Luke Ihott. My business partner Mario and I are copywriters who have each sold over $100 million worth of stuff with our copy. And honestly, a lot more than that. We have a community of over 412 creative strategists, marketers, and brand owners called Genesis. We help people make winning ads, funnels, and a lot of money. We run the Creative Cartel where we work with creative strategists for brands like this that are managing over $1 billion in spend, or they're not managing, but they're basically brands that do that. And some of the top creative strategists for those brands. Here's a wall of some of our recent wins. You can see we have different business owners, creative strategists. We help people land clients easily, help people get winning ads and do all kinds of amazing things. And you can get down below this document if you want to kind of check our pedigree and check out some of the other resources that we have or join Genesis. There's a link down below. And the whole point of that is just to show you that we know a little bit of what we do. And this is what we teach people when we're talking about the strategy component for Create a Strategy. Okay, so let's break this down. So first, again, strategy is the second half of Create a Strategy. And so it may make sense to go back to what does the fucking word mean, right? And here's a bunch of different strategies. Strategy is setting yourself apart from the competition. The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. I actually think that's extremely important. Strategy is choice. It means saying no to certain kinds of things. So it's a type of decision. It's to concentrate on what is important on those few objectives that can give us comparative advantage. So we're already starting to see it's about what sets us apart. It's about the choice and the decisions that we make. Oftentimes when that's no, it's concentrating on the yes. So what's really important? Compressing complexity into clarity. Strategy equals how to win. Strategy is choosing what not to do. Is choice. Strategy is choice. I want to look at just a couple more. A plan of action intended to accomplish a specific goal. Pick a general direction, implement it like hell. I think it's important, right? I mean, I think these basic quotes contain all the secrets of the universe, right? Because there's truth in a lot of them that really matter. So as we can see, strategy is about winning. Strategy about choosing what to focus your attention on. It's the allocation of scarce resources. It's about what you're saying no to. It's about a general direction that you just execute insanely. And all of those start to kind of create a picture of what strategy is, especially when we're doing ads. Now, the reason that this video is powerful is because what I intend to do is to take your unconscious decisions. So if strategy has to do with decisions, as I believe it does, you are already making thousands of unconscious decisions every time that you sit down to write ads for a client or you're running them for your own brand. Most of those have a logic and make sense. However, some of them don't, and you're never really going to know that as long as those decisions are unconscious. So what I'm going to try to do is to illuminate your decisions and take them from the unconscious to the conscious, right? That way you can see your own method and then you can choose what your method, what method makes most sense for you. So hopefully this makes sense, because I'm not saying that my strategy is by any means the best strategy, and it's definitely not the best strategy for you. Only you're going to be able to figure that out for your situation and your brand. However, what I'm going to show you is a strategy that is coherent and legible. It's something that you can read. And so hopefully this inspires you, and it's probably going to have a lot of aspects of what you do. And so it's going to bring your unconscious stuff to the conscious awareness, so then you can start to play around with those elements and choose accordingly. 'Cause you're gonna have to adjust your strategy. All right. So the things that are most important is understanding your working elements. So you'll see what that means in a second. So what are the pieces that are the types of decisions that you're making? Then it's about using data gaps and patterns and then your own taste to make and test hypotheses and then creating your production plan, right? That's sort of my general different process. Okay. It's also about understanding that every ad is made up of messaging times creative. And for messaging, what I like to say is it's a mixture of segments/personas times an awareness level for that specific segment persona times a concept angle. Okay, some people blend these and then you could— another way you could say that is like the idea plus format, right, is how people talk about that. Okay, I like concept and angle. That's what we say, but done. All right, that's what your messaging is basically composed of. Some other elements in there may be things like Your mechanism, your hook, et cetera. Then your creative is basically, is it going to be image or is it gonna be video? If it's an image, is it branded? Is it native? Is it a templated one that's sort of in the middle of the awareness pyramid? If it's video, we have an acronym called CAST system, which stands for conceit, the actor, the style, the terrain, whatever. I have videos on that as well. The important thing is we just have a DNA for the, for our ads and I like to break 'em down by messaging and creative. And these are some of the big, Chunky things to pay attention to. Okay. Then when it comes to the elements and decisions that you're gonna make, typically you need to make a decision. And let's just keep this simple and say that you're writing 10 ads for a brand. It's a pretty simple, a pretty common arrangement, 10 ads per week for a brand. So how are you gonna spend your time? Like what 10 ads are you going to write that are gonna help people make money? Right? You were already making these decisions. Maybe I'm gonna swipe some, or I'm gonna come up with this, or I noticed this pattern, whatever. But really what you're doing is you're looking at working elements, you're looking at gaps and patterns, and then you're making decisions based on that. So the elements I pay attention to are iterations versus net new ads. So if I'm doing 10 ads, how many of these do I want to be iterations? How many of these do I want to be net new ads? Some people say that you just wanna focus on net new ads. Some people are still getting a lot of value from variations and iterations. So you get to decide what makes the most sense to you. I personally prefer a ratio of more net new ads and then strong variations that have a likelihood of of working with the algorithm to create like a big meaningful difference. Okay. And iterations are typically safer. The next one is your messaging, right? So what messaging levers can you pull, right? Could you try the same angle or same idea with a different segment of persona? Could you adjust awareness levels? Could you try new concepts and angles, et cetera? Then you have your creative, which we already talked about. Ideation. So inside of our program, we use something called the storming process, which stands for swipes, templates, organic, research, matrix, insight, internal vectors, new styles, and gambit, which is just like wildcard ideas. These are all the different sources of ideas, and it kind of forces you to have diversity, right? Because you're coming, you're pulling your ideas from tons of different sources. And then something called the production plan. This is just basically, if I'm writing 10 ads, how am I gonna structure these ads? And the final thing is what I call the spear versus net approach. So sometimes, And we'll come down to these in a little bit. Actually, we'll wait till we get down there. Okay, these are the working elements. I know I went through them fast. I'm gonna go through them a little bit slower. But these are the working elements that I'm gonna make my decisions around. Okay, so one of them is I use gaps plus patterns plus taste. So when I'm looking at an account, when I'm looking at writing new ads, one of the first things I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look at what gaps do I see. So, this basically means I'm gonna look at competitor swipes and then I'm gonna look at the overall structure. So, if I'm looking at an account, I'm looking at what are all the segments and personas they're targeting and I'm gonna ask myself, who are they not targeting, right? And who are they not targeting is an interesting question. Like, how do I know who are they not targeting, right? I have a video that's gonna help with this called Horizontal Scaling. However, it just starts by using this process of like, all right, well, what other outcomes could I focus on? What other demographics? We call something called facets. So like what other conditions? Maybe I could target people on GLP-1 or alcoholics or smokers or people who sit too long, right? Or this specific subsegment, maybe I could really focus on moves. Maybe I could do demographics, right? So maybe it could be black guys who have moves, right? And I could focus on that, right? And I can get bigger or smaller, whatever. So that's one gap that I could be paying attention to. You can also look for messaging gaps. So I could look at competitors and be like, oh, they're doing timeline ads or they're doing movie style ads or these skeleton ads, right? So that's more, that's a creative gap, right? We don't have any Pixar skeleton ads. We don't have any timeline ads. We don't have any unaware long-form statics. So I'm seeing a gap based on what I see the marketplace doing. So let me fill in the gap. The other one that's really important is patterns. So I'm looking at my account and I'm asking myself, what's working? All right. And then the way that you ask what's working is you just look at a bunch of ads together. You can use AI for this and you should use your brain because you're going to generate your own taste. And you're looking at what are the significant elements, right? So I have 10, let's say I have 20 ads that are working. What do these ads have in common, right? Some things will be in common, a lot of 'em won't. Oh, like 3 of these winning ads mention this specific concept, right? 2 of these ads have this angle. Some of these ads have different ones. And then I make hypotheses about why that's the case. Maybe they're responding to this concept because of XYZ. Maybe they're responding to this idea because of this reason. Maybe they, maybe they, they don't care about the format. They're just responding to it because it's something that's new. So let's do more novel formats. And I'm making my hypotheses based on the patterns that I see. And the last one is taste. This is very subtle, unconscious element. And it happens as you work with a brand. Most people, if you work with a brand long enough and you get winners, you develop like a sixth sense of you're like, oh, I know this idea would work or this idea won't work. And you can't always explain why. Okay. Which is why it's really important that becomes your judgment that you're training yourself on. Okay. A type of instinct. So these are the elements that you're using when you're looking at an account. That are really powerful. Again, you're probably unconsciously doing these already, but now you can consciously ask yourself, all right, what message, what gaps am I looking at? What patterns am I looking at? And what decisions am I making just as a matter of taste? Then you go into your production plan. So how many ads or briefs will you create? Let's say that you're making 10. Then you ask yourself, what elements will you focus on? So variations and iterations, wildcard versus safer bets, gaps and patterns, whatever. So let's say I have 10 ads. And I may say, I wanna do 3x variations on this winner, right? And again, I'm using my gaps, my patterns, and my taste to help me. Because maybe for instance, I have a winner and I'm like, I think this messaging and this concept, this angle is really what's working for people. So what I wanna do is I wanna take this concept angle and I wanna reskin it with different types of formats, right? So I wanna turn this one into a podcast, into a street interview, into whatever sort of like, you know, skeleton timeline ad. Okay, because I believe that it's the idea that works, so any vehicle will work. And maybe I understand that these vehicles are working for other brands or within our brand, so I want to put those things together. Okay, then maybe I want to do some like, I noticed that we have a gap of underwear ads. Okay, then maybe I want to go into like the cholesterol market. So I want to do like, you know, 2 underwear ads, 2 cholesterol ads. Maybe I want to do 2 swipes because I have some like really cool swipes that I see. So, this is going to take us to 5, 7, 9, right? And let's say for instance I want to do like 1 swipe and 1 cholesterol ad. So, that's going to take us to 7. So, we have 3 more ads that we will write. And let's say for these 3 ads, we basically just say that these are wildcard ads, okay? Now, this comes back to this idea of the spear versus net approach. Which is really important. So sometimes you are going to want to go hunting for specific ideas. That's the SPEAR. You're hunting for specific ideas. So if I'm looking for ideas for cholesterol ads or if I'm looking for— let's say that I want to write an idea based on silver. I notice silver is coming up. I want to write an idea for that. That's going to be my SPEAR approach. So I'm really targeting specific ads. However, if I'm so hyperfixated and focused on an idea that I think is gonna work, I may completely walk over a swipe, a competitor, or a concept from organic where it's like, it's a fucking banger idea, right? Maybe it's something I've already done before. Maybe it's the same market, same whatever, but I'm like, this idea is so great, right? And I miss it because I'm so hyperfixated on what I think is the most important thing. So for me, I have a sense of humility where I want a little bit of fuzziness. I want a little bit of flexibility in my plan. So I'm just gonna allow myself to start looking at all the ideas. I'm gonna look at competitors. I'm gonna look at organic stuff and I'm gonna come up with a plethora of ideas. Okay, so one thing is if I have to write 10 ads, I at least want 30 ideas. Because if I have 10 ads, then I come up with 30 ideas, then I can pick the ones that I think are the best and I have a higher likelihood of winning. Okay, and then I have a— on the days when I'm not creative, I have a huge bank of ideas that I can use later. Okay, so net means just looking for the best ideas. I'm like casting a net to see what's out there. And so these 2 approaches, hunting things based on my analysis and strategy, and then just kind of looking at what's out there, is gonna, in my opinion, give me the best possible ideas. Okay. Here are some common moves to make. So let's say, for instance, that you're doing variations and iterations. Here's— there's a bunch of things you can do, but here's some common ones. So you can just swap the format and the style. That's very common, and it works extremely well. You can take a winning message and transfer it to a new segment or persona. It's really important to understand segments and personas. I think we have the best frameworks for that. We call it ODF, and I'll have a video on horizontal scaling, so look out for that. You can also swipe from competitors. It's just fucking really common. You can remix winning concepts and angles, so you can take a winning concept and angle, and then you can just come with iterations based on that. Swiping from organic is really powerful. Bottom of funnel ads. Always work. So, things that are a little closer to, like, solution-aware ones tend to work really well. Internal vectors, which is just looking at patterns and gaps within your ideas. And then new hook stacks, etc. These are some common moves to make just to kind of give you an idea of some of the things you may focus on. Okay. The other thing we have is we have storming. So, storming is really powerful because storming connects us back to this net approach, right. So, sometimes You're going and hunting for ideas and you wanna know where you can hunt for those ideas. Well, you can use storming. And sometimes you just wanna look for the best possible ideas and this is a process that will allow you to do it. So these are, to me, the best sources of ideas that you can find. So you can look at competitor swipes. You can go and look at templates. So these are proven ad structures that have worked across time. You can go to organic, really underrated. So go and look at what's trending on Instagram and borrow those hooks. You can do research, which for me is a lot of basically comments is a huge one as well as forums. But I love comments on ads and also reviews is a great place to find new ideas. Matrix just basically means that you're looking for gaps in your messaging or your creative. Internal vectors basically just means that you take your ads and you say, what are all the patterns in these ads? Oh, a lot of them are talking about, you know, this certain mechanism or this certain thing or this certain feature. So let's highlight that feature, right? And then there's new styles. Which are things like mostly looking for patterns and gaps in terms of the creative, right? So, you're like, oh, these styles are trending. Let's do something else. And then Gambit is just basically your own idea. So, these are sources of new ideas for ads that I think are really powerful and pretty comprehensive, okay? And then you have your basic workflow. So, like I said, you come up with your production plan. You do, here's 50 possible ideas. And then you go and you write those 10. So, Just to give one more example, let's say that I need to write 10 ads. So, what I may decide to do is I may decide, yeah, I'm doing variations, right? So, we're doing 3 variations because that seems like it's a safe bet. We're going to do 2 swipes because those always seem to work. We're going to do 2 segment persona swipes, right? So, that takes us to about 7 new ads and then we'll do 3 wildcard. And this means that then I'm gonna go through my storming process and I'm gonna be looking for ideas that will fit what I've already designed and just wildcard ideas. And maybe what I'll do is I'll come up with 30 great ideas. And then from these 30 great ideas, I'll come back to my production plan based on my decisions here and I'll organize these into the 10 best ideas. And now I have a logic and a thinking process for it and my decisions are really clear. I'm clear about what gaps I'm seeing, what patterns I'm seeing, and what decisions I'm making based on just my regular taste. I'm clear about how I got this idea based on hunting for the idea versus just looking for the best idea. I'm really clear about diversifying my sources. I'm really clear about my messaging and creative. I'm really clear about how many iterations I wanted to do versus net new ads. And then I have a lot of confidence that these are the 10 best ideas. And what's really important is I can also document my hypothesis, which is awesome. So if I'm working with a client, I can explain my thinking. I can literally document it and look back at my thinking across time. And eventually these hypotheses start to stack and you can see which ones won and which ones didn't. And now you can actually do something that's close to a scientific method of advertising. Okay. So hopefully this gave you some insights into the strategic component of creative strategy. If you have any other questions or think topics, videos you want me to do, Comment them down below. Down below you can purchase something called Copy Blocks, which is $27. It really is like a foundation of writing copy. You can book a call if you wanna join our mentorship program where we do feedback and we have a bunch of different AI tools that will support you in this process. And there's a bunch of other free resources down below. Like if you wanna get access to this document, sign up to the email list and you'll get that and many more things. So hopefully this video was helpful. Let me know down below what else you wanna see and I'll see you in the next video.