How To Properly Use Data To Create Winning Ads

What data metrics you should be looking at and why!

Welcome to Your Content Should Sell, a newsletter that only gives you practicals about how to create content for your brand.

So many new faces here this week - thank you for being here.

What was a win for you this week as we finish the week?

For us, we had a video for our client, Halfday, rack in over 400k views!

I was refreshing the account all day on Saturday and Sunday, watching the views go up.

In a few weeks, we will give you more updates on this TikTok account we launched only two weeks ago.

This newsletter is sponsored by Motion. They believe in Goodo Studios' mission and vision - I am so grateful to them!

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Last week we discussed the role of the creative strategist.

As brands test more and more content, you need an easy way to look at the data to find what is working and what is not.

It is not as simple as what ad has the most Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

I am going to break down the metrics we look at for successful ads, how to get this data, and how to use tools like Motion to help craft your creative strategy.

Without further a due - let's jump in!

1. Metrics to watch

When you jump into Facebook ads - the platform is INTIMIDATING.

You can run reports on a bunch of different metrics and data.

I am not a media buyer, but the ads we create should work within the media buying strategy of the brand.

That being said, there are some metrics I look at to ensure the ad's quality is strong.

1. 3-second Video Plays (Hook Rate)Marketers and media buyers talk about how your ads need to hook the viewers. What they mean is that you need to get their attention within the first 3 seconds. The person will scroll away if you can't get their attention immediately.

2. Average View Duration (Hold Rate)Your video might be 30 seconds long, but how many people are really making it to the end of the ad? This metric allows you to see where people are losing interest and scrolling away in the ad.

3. Click Through Rate (CTR)You serve an ad for people to take action on, which should result in a click. We want to be able to see how many people are clicking through the ad. It doesn't mean they will buy, but at least we can see if they are interested to learn more.

4. Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)The goal is to get people to buy, so you want to see the return on your ad spend be positive, not negative. ROAS gives us a good view of purchases from an ad.Again, I am not a media buyer.

I know so much more goes into media buying, but from the creative side, these four metrics allow me to see if this ad is good at a high level.

2. How to get the data

You can pull your own reports directly from the ads manager, but then you manually have to compare all of that data which gets tedious.

We use Motion (also our sponsor today) to help us find the data we need only.

Facebook is super complicated, as I said before, but Motion makes visualizing the data easy.

All you have to do is load your Facebook account to Motion, and you can start pulling reports.

You can choose the time period and what stats you want to look at.You can compare ads against each other based on the metrics you choose.

Instead of going through each ad set and seeing what is working, Motion picks the winners.

Motion has made it easier for us to see the data so we can get back to creating.

Visualize Your Data For Creative Strategy

The biggest challenge for Goodo Studios to overcome is finding what ads are working.

The data can be overwhelming because I am not a media buyer.

Motion makes data easy to understand and finds the creative winners.

Goodbye, are the days of excel sheets that don't make sense.

You can easily search the ads based on common attributes.

I am a visual person (hello artist) so getting visualizations of data helps my team make decisions.

Supercharge your team’s workflow to bridge the gap between media buyers and creatives.

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3. Deeper insights using this data

The role of creative strategy is to take this data and come up with a hypothesis as to why the ads are working or not working.A lot of brands will just look at what "works" and try to create more of the same ad without going deeper on the other ads that didn't perform as well.

We will explain how you can use the basic metrics to pull out more insights for your creative strategy.

Compare metrics to get creative insights:

So if we just looked at the best video with a great hook rate, we might just do more of the same hooks.

But when we look at how videos are compared with the click-to-purchase ratio, we see a new narrative.

There is a video with a mediocre thumbstop rate, but something about this video makes people purchase.

The creative strategist should look into the video and come up with a few reasons why a lot of people purchased.

Could you take the highest thumbstop section and put at the beginning of the video with the highest click-to-purchase ratio? Would that create an ad that scales?!

Compare ad types:

Motion allows you to compare a lot of things that can help you and your creative strategy like ad types.

We can see carousels are crushing over images, maybe give some spend there or test more in that format.

This is the beauty of not just looking at data in excel sheets but visually seeing the data to get these insights easier.

Again, I am not a media buyer, so the Facebook ads manager is intimidating.

But pulling reports on Motion is a no-brainer.

I would be curious what other data you are looking at to help you with your creative strategy.

Let me know what reports you pull to help you create!

Again, a massive shoutout to Motion for sponsoring this newsletter.

Keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

PS. Take a look at Halfday's TikTok account, which has grown a ton in just two weeks on the platform.

In Other News

👰 David’s Bridal weds TikTok videos with commerce to drive click-throughs

🏕️ Walmart to open small general stores at Getaway outposts

📸 Instagram’s Chief Says it Will Halt its Full-Screen Format Test, Scale Back AI-Recommended Posts (LOL)

👫 Down To Chat: Killer landing pages and building community for a brand

Resources

We do get a commission from some of these links, but I wouldn't share anything that I didn't think was worth it to you.

Foreplay - I love saving all the amazing ads I have found. Foreplay allows you to save great Facebook ads with a click of one button on Chrome. It is incredible.

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