If you’re a Meta advertiser, your ad strategy is everything. It’s more important now than it’s ever been before. Because advertisers have diminishing control, the ads are ultimately the best lever for impacting your results.
Meta Andromeda changed the rules. Creative diversification replaced micromanaged targeting as the lever advertisers can actually control.
But you can’t approach this on a whim. A good, successful ad strategy involves significant thought and planning. And whether or not it works goes far beyond whether you had a good image or video.
And truly, that may be the biggest misunderstanding regarding what a successful ad strategy looks like today. Most advertisers start with an image or video and work their way backward. But creative decisions should come several steps into this process.
What should a standard approach to Meta ad creation look like today? Well, there isn’t just one way. But I wrote this post as an attempt to standardize this as much as possible.
If you’re stuck and don’t know where to start when it comes to an ad strategy, use this post as a guide. You can make it simpler or more complicated, but this will be a good place to start.
1. Define Your Goal
While planning out your strategy should focus almost entirely on what is happening in the ad itself, we need to define our goal first. It helps ground a purpose for our ad copy and creative.
The performance goal tells the system what matters most. Everything else (targeting, placements, and even budget distribution) is secondary.
I strongly recommend focusing on a conversion-centered goal. It doesn’t need to be purchases, though that would be my preference. Otherwise, a lead is fine as well.
For this strategy, we’re creating a single campaign with one ad set. While there are always exceptions when you might segment your assets, the goal should be to consolidate when possible.
So, step one is to pick a goal, which is what you’d choose as your performance goal.
2. Define Your Distinct Buyer Personas
Now that we know our goal, let’s think about the distinct groups that would define our buyer personas. Assuming your goal is sales, who are the different types of people who might buy from you? Make a list.
Understand that this isn’t technically for targeting purposes. Back in the day, you might go through a similar exercise to pick interests and behaviors. But your targeting inputs are only used as suggestions now when optimizing for a conversion. Meta is very clear that your best lever for controlling targeting is within the ads now.
In other words, Meta doesn’t need your targeting inputs to show your ads to the people who will convert. But it does need you to feed the system creative that speaks to the right types of people.
And that starts with having a very clear understanding of who your ideal customer is. Who are the groups of people you want to inspire? What might their occupation be? Where would they live? Attempt to capture the demographics and potential roles of these people, as well as situational context.
Maybe there’s one distinct buyer persona. Or maybe there are multiple. Spend some time on this and make a list. These are the people you want to think about when creating your ads.
3. Map Pain Points to Product Solutions
Let’s assume that you have three different buyer personas. Create three sets of notes, one for each.
Under each persona, list out frustrations and challenges that these people face. What are their struggles? What are the common problems that are roadblocks or bottlenecks in their day?
Connect each of these pain points directly to a solution that your product can provide. How can your product solve these daily problems to make their life easier? Define the transformation or feeling after that problem is solved.
This is the “why” behind your ads.
4. Identify Proof or Demonstration to Support Solutions
Now that you have your buyer personas, their pain points, and your product solutions, let’s think about how you can demonstrate proof with your ads. This is how you’ll bring credibility to the promise of your product and show how it’s true.
There are many different ways that you can match a proof style to a persona and pain point. Here are some examples:
- Direct demonstration (before/after, tutorials)
- Social proof (reviews, testimonials, UGC)
- Authority proof (data, stats, expert endorsement)
- Aspirational (lifestyle transformation)
- Educational (problem explanation, how-to content)
- Comparison (vs. alternatives or old way)
So, your complete messaging arc would look like this:
Paint Point > Solution > Proof
5. Develop Message Variations per Persona
This will give you the skeleton of your ads. You know the target audience you’re writing for. You know the solution you want to focus on. And you’ve chosen a proof style to provide validation. Each of these is a different ad.
Let’s consider a very simple example. If you have one customer persona with two pain points you want to focus on with product solutions, that’s two ads. But maybe you’ve chosen two different proof styles to get the message across (testimonial and endorsement). That would give you four ads.
That’s on the simple side, but this can scale quickly. Don’t get overwhelmed. Even a single persona with one strong message is a great starting point.
Now you need your text. Meta gives you the ability to provide up to five primary text and five headline options for each ad. While I don’t want to require providing five of each, I recommend making use of as many options as you can.
But let’s assume you create five primary text and five headline options for each ad. In our simplified version of one persona with two pain points, each having two proof styles, you should use different sets of ad copy for each one.
In other words, the five primary text and five headlines you create for Ad #1 should be unique to that specific persona, pain point, solution, and proof style. I wouldn’t re-use it for the others.
In terms of how to approach the primary text variations, consider this a way of trying different angles to accomplish the same goal and reach the same group of people. This could be as simple as having short, medium, and long text options. Or use different tones like direct, aspirational, and data-driven.
6. Match Multiple Creative Formats to Each Message Set
So now we have our ads, but we’re missing the most important visual: The creative itself.
There are three primary options here:
- Static image
- Video
- Carousel (images or videos)
There are three different ways that you could approach this…
Separate ads for each format.
So, you could create one ad that utilizes a static image, one a video, and one a carousel. In theory, you could use the same text for all three.
Customize creative by placement
One problem with the first option is that you can’t use a static image for every placement. You also can’t use a video or carousel for every placement. Some placements require a video while others a static image. Or in some cases, one format may simply be better for a placement (videos for Reels).
So something you can do is take a single ad and leverage different format types by customizing your creative by placement. You could technically feature a video on Reels and a static image on Feeds, for example.
Use Flexible Format
Assuming you’re using a Sales campaign, you could also choose Flexible Format. While the customization options are limited, this would allow you to provide up to 10 images or videos for a single ad, rather than creating 10 different ads. Meta will optimize to show a different creative option depending on the person and placement. A carousel version will also be shown.
Flexible Format exists because Meta wants variety. It’s imperfect, but it shows how much emphasis Meta now puts on giving the system more creative options.
While I’m generally a fan of Flexible Format, it can also create a lot of frustration because of the lack of control and customization. I generally recommend the first two options, and Flexible Format is more situational.
But this is a key for Meta’s desire for creative diversification. You want to give Meta different options that can be used for different types of people, depending on the placement.
You should also consider which proof style (demo, testimonial, lifestyle, etc.) will be best demonstrated with which format.
7. Adapt Creative for Placement Variations
Nearly everything’s been completed now. You’ve planned out your ad copy and creative, but you’re missing a very important consideration: People consume content differently depending on the placement.
Part of this can be explained simply with the different aspect ratios (9×16, 4×5, 1×1). The Reels and Stories placements should typically utilize 9×16 while Facebook or Instagram feeds would be 4×5 (or at least 1×1).
But this isn’t only about aspect ratios. Different placements have different time minimums and maximums for videos. While a 15 second video would work everywhere, you might want to create longer versions for the placements that can support it.
8. Assemble and Publish Your Ads
Allow me to reiterate because this is going to be a different approach than most people have used historically. We’re not creating separate campaigns and ad sets for different ad strategies. We aren’t testing specific ad copy and creative combinations.
We are consolidating. Prioritize doing all of this within a single campaign with one ad set (optimized for conversions, targeting broadly, and utilizing all placements). You will have ads for all of your buyer personas, pain points, and formats in this one campaign and ad set.
It doesn’t matter if Meta favors one or two. Your goal isn’t to have every ad delivered equally. Your goal is to build a diverse set of creative so that Meta has the options to show the right version to the right person in the right placement.
This is one of the biggest shifts for advertisers from old to new. The old rulebook said to split everything into tiny tests. The new rulebook says to consolidate, diversify, and let the system decide.
9. Measure, Learn, and Iterate
Now that your ads are running, give the ad set time to accumulate meaningful data. Don’t make judgments after a day or two of delivery.
And even then, resist the urge to make too much of individual ad performance. Do not be overly concerned about how one ad is performing over another, or how budget is distributed between ads. Let go of any emotional connection to these ads and let it ride.
Now focus on the aggregate performance of the ad set, not of the individual ads. Andromeda doesn’t just optimize ads individually, it optimizes the mix. That’s why aggregate performance is what matters.
Is the ad set giving you the results that you want? Then don’t touch the ads within it.
Some ads will certainly get prioritized while others will get less distribution. This can also change from day to day or week to week. But remember that even an ad that gets fewer impressions or credit for fewer conversions may still contribute to the aggregate results. That ad may have been seen before a customer eventually converted on another ad.
If your ad set is performing well in aggregate, there’s no need to make any changes. But if you’re not getting good results overall, it suggests that your current copy and creative options aren’t resonating strongly enough.
Learn from what Meta favored and what did generate results. Apply what you’ve learned to the next full set of ads: New text, creative angles, and formats.
It’s important to understand that ad creation is a cycle. Your first set of ads is unlikely to generate the best results you could get. But run those ads, learn from the aggregate results, and create a new set of ads based on that information.
Your Turn
As I said earlier in this post, consider this a general guide to get you started. But you can make this as simple or complicated as you need it to be. The main thing is that you have a plan that centers on appealing to your ideal customer with a solution to their problem.
The old rulebook is dead. This checklist is how you adapt to the new one. Is there anything you’d add?
Let me know in the comments below!
