6 Ad Creation Insights from a TikTok Creator-First Advertiser

What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.

This newsletter is about leveling up your paid growth marketing skills by analyzing the best brands' paid strategy, tactics, positioning, and value props.

This newsletter is divided into:

• Sharing what I've learned

• Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers’ lessons with you (this issue)

• And I analyze & compare the best ads on the internet

I desire to bring my readers the best information about advertising — at zero cost. In keeping with this theme, I’d like to thank our sponsors Motion for today’s newsletter.

I paid for Savannah Sanchez's TikTok course but these 6 lessons were even more valuable than the entire course. She created ads for 100+ DTC brands in 2023 and 2024.

Without wasting time, I’m sharing the 6 best lessons I learned an advertiser:

1/ The geniuses are also stealing from the feed

Why aren’t you? Savannah shares that she’s made a dedicated practice to sit down and go through her feed to find ad angles and hooks. And her hooks are damn good!

She also recommends making a Slack channel/Instagram group chat where you’re sharing just inspo and ad ideas. If you don’t have one, make one. It should be more than you and your boss.

2/ How you organize your swipe file really matters

I didn’t think this would be as critical but it kinda makes sense.

She has been making a swipe file that will refer herself back to those ads. 

This way it is easier to refer back to an ad when you’re ideating.

I agree, I use Atria for exactly this reason (and more).

3/ Creator quality is the key difference to increasing probability of success

Savannah is great at talent spotting and as a result, works with great creators. She finds them on Instagram and TikTok, nothing fancy. But they are hidden gems, and they are not that expensive. 

Her secret is:

• Find a creator with fewer than 10K followers

• Spot their acting how well they are already doing (like authentically communicate)

• They are not blowing up rather getting good comments

• They have potential and then she trains them with examples:

  • Ad inspirations

  • Shot lists

  • Type ad styles/formats

  • Etc.

• But they need to already have good camera presence, talk authentically on camera, good lighting – these are things you can’t teach

• And lastly, thorough brief and script lines 

Now she has 40 creators who are genuinely good. 

4/ Don’t make creators the creative strategists

Most brands have this philosophy of letting the creator be the creator. They figure out the storyboard, shotlist, voiceover and how to execute.

But Savannah does the opposite. She knows creators are good at acting and shooting. Her 3-hour brief gets done in 30 minutes because it is so detailed.

These are two different roles, so let creators be the creators while you do the heavy lifting.

5/ Volume, speed & inputs are your best friends

Savannah ships more ads by increasing creative volume, gathering more data, and hitting winners faster. 

Her production timeline is streamlined: shoot on Mondays and Tuesdays, edit on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and deliver new ads every Friday.

By using iPhones and CapCut for filming and editing, Savannah avoids high-production costs, ensuring quicker ad output and faster data feedback. She emphasizes the importance of rapid iteration and continuous evaluation to achieve success.

Savannah says that brands make the mistake of spending too much time making sure the ad is as polished as possible, making it on-brand, and getting design approval. 

And then months have passed and you’re just starting to get statistically significant data about whether this ad concept was even worth doing in the first place.

Savannah’s team aims to get statistically significant spend behind an ad within seven days. 

If you want to beat the market, ship more and ship fast.

6/ Do it yourself

Something that I’ve realized since I started doing videos on TikTok and Instagram is that you get way more empathy, understanding and logistics of running good ads when you are doing the videos yourself.

Savannah says you can ace your creatives by starting out doing it yourself. How many of us do this? 

Honestly, I used to be so critical of creators but camera shy myself. Now, I have way more consideration because I've scripted, shot, edited and posted content myself.

So, wanna make great creatives? Start doing it yourself, even if the videos tank.

This way you’ll:

• Spot good creators

• Come up with the better scripts

• Think about shot lists more thoroughly 

• Speak to the creators more empathetically 

Counterintuitive, but so many benefits. 

If you want to learn the newest tips for TikTok and Meta, Savvanah is speaking at a Motion event again. Don't miss it! I love their events and always learn something new.

They have a new live event series called Make Ads That Convert (this is your reminder).

This free, virtual training series will take you deep into the mechanics of making Facebook and TikTok ads that convert like crazy.

It runs from May 23 to June 20, with new 1-hour live sessions dropping every week. 

Check out the details and get your free ticket here 👀

Each speaker has significant influence, having managed hundreds of millions in ad spend and transformed unknown DTC brands into household names. They are now teaming up to teach you everything! Sessions include:

1️⃣ Creative operations and planning

2️⃣ Speedy ad production

3️⃣ Must-try ad formats and inspiration

4️⃣ Creative analytics deep dive

5️⃣ Scaling spend with creative testing and big wins

BONUS: Attendees will receive the Make Ads That Convert workbook. 📕 A guide to help you put your learnings—making incredible ads, analyzing data, and scaling your accounts—into action.

Get Your Free Ticket 💜

Can’t make every session? No stress. Register anyway. You’ll get recordings, the Make Ads That Convert workbook, and secret bonuses 👀

Footnotes, credits and resource:

• Savvanah’s Twitter where she is active

• The video content I learned some key lessons from

All credit goes to Motion and Savvanah for this content.

Since we delved into her insights but not her ads, I found three proven ads she has been running as whitelisted ads that are worth emulating. I'm not going to analyze them, though.

For digital products, she said that the green screen format is working for her. So, let’s look at this ad:

Ad # 1 — Setting clear expectations in the hook

Ad # 2 — For a high ticket product

She did mentioned, multiple b-rolls with voice over is working well for her.

Ad # 3 - The perfume UGC mashup (because it is the hardest to sell without demonstration)

Looks like “I’m obsessed” ads are still working 😂 but on a serious note, the reactions is why the ad is working.

That’s all from this week.

Happy Growing with Paid Social (because Temu is allegedly not spending on Meta lately),

Aazar Shad

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