Advertising creative production methodology

I believe that many of my friends have also seen many methodologies for producing information flow materials on the market, but to be honest, there are only a handful of them that are useful, or they are particularly limited and difficult to reuse. Today's article provides some personal understanding from the underlying logic of material production - products, people, scenarios, forms of expression, etc., hoping to further help everyone.

1. What might be the problem with the method of breaking down running material that you have learned?

All articles on the market about information flow emphasize the importance of materials, but as for the question of how to produce good materials, everyone’s strategies are still relatively scattered, and everyone’s analysis dimensions are all based on structure or form alone.

For example, we will divide the copy into sections according to the content, and give a formula for running volume such as "arousing curiosity + crowd demand + differentiated selling points + ingredient knowledge + guiding conversion"

For example, we will give suggestions based on the playback time. We should grab the first 3 seconds to attract attention, and the 5-20 seconds should be short and fast to show the product. It is best not to exceed 30 seconds...

For example, I will give suggestions based on the video screen, such as making it clear, harmonious, distinctive, simple and direct...

For example, they will give suggestions in the form of videos, with paper balls thrown at the beginning, table slamming, interviews, bosses asking employees, major warnings...

For example, they will directly tell you how to find videos with high volume, how to reshoot, and how to avoid the system's judgment of plagiarism...

Of course, these all make sense to a certain extent, but they do not solve a fundamental problem, that is, if these are really effective, why your account does not grow when you follow them? Some people say that it might be a remake of the video, and there are still differences in many details, which I admit.

1. There should be no survivor bias in judging high-quality materials

I think the more fundamental problem is that there should be no survivor bias in the analysis and summary of what materials can be sold in large quantities.

For example, the video that is currently increasing traffic in the account uses the copywriting structure of "arousing curiosity + crowd demand + differentiated selling points + ingredient knowledge + guiding conversion". He starts by slamming the table, and it only has 25 seconds. Then, you dare to conclude that this is the formula for increasing traffic?

If you think about the basic knowledge of statistics, you will know that the derivation of conclusions requires a large number of samples. If there are 20 materials of template A in the account, but only 1 of them is running, then it cannot be said that template A is of high quality. In other words, if 3 or even 5 out of 10 materials produced according to Template B have good effects, then we can say that Template B is indeed a high-volume template. So next time if someone gives you a reference running template, but his case only has one video, you need to judge carefully.

2. Good materials are obtained through a large number of tests, and what needs to be improved is efficiency

Indeed, materials produced according to certain templates or formats will have better effects. But good materials are often tested. We all know that there may be only one or two materials with particularly high sales volume among 100 materials tested in an account, or even none at all. After learning a reference for a high-volume material, you may reshoot it once or twice but the result may not be good so you give up. However, you may need to reshoot it 10 or 30 times and keep iterating before you find that high-volume point.

So what is important here? First, don't deliberately produce a small amount of material and then have high hopes for it. Second, be careful to avoid repeated testing of all failed materials (more on this below). Each material has a test mark. Don't make repeated mistakes, otherwise it will be useless no matter how much you produce. Third, improve efficiency, the efficiency of copywriting output, the efficiency of script structure, and the efficiency of confirming the form of materials.

2. How to ensure quality, avoid duplication, and produce script copy efficiently and continuously?

The core idea is that we know so many "precautions" in material production, but it is really difficult for us to take all aspects into consideration when writing scripts, so we need to systematically organize and programmatically output all the content we can think of.

The production-testing-optimization path of video materials involves the products, groups, forms of expression and even actors in the copy, and it is necessary to create a systematic testing matrix. As the delivery progresses, you will know whether it can still be delivered and how to make adjustments next.

First of all, you need to build a copywriting library. Many people may not care about this, or do not pay much attention to this point, and think that it is enough to copy the copywriting from their peers. However, copywriting is often the soul of a material, and the optimization ability to write good copywriting is a scarce ability.

1. Industry and product information/selling point analysis

The first step in writing copy is to understand the industry in which the product is being marketed, as well as the product itself.

When thinking about the selling points of a product, you can make some classifications, from coarse to fine.

Here we need to think briefly about whether our product needs to "awaken needs". For example, when it comes to decoration, people who have a need for decoration have an urgent need and there is no need to remind them that they need decoration. However, for educational products, some users may have never considered learning certain skills and are unfamiliar with the field you are targeting. What about medical beauty? Different projects may be different. You can do some awakening for skin care, but it is difficult to persuade people for surgical projects no matter how much you persuade them.

Ok, how do we break down the selling points? We know that when writing copywriting, we should avoid being self-indulgent, have a user perspective, and be solid rather than vague (you can read more books on copywriting)

For example, the product we launched is an entrepreneurship training course

First of all, there are three major selling points:

①Good teachers ②Good course content ③Good institution.

Then answer these three selling points:

What's good about teachers? What’s good about the course content? What is good about the organization?

For example, the course content is good.

①Highly practical and can be operated

②The course is valuable and contains a lot of valuable information

③The course system is very complete

④Low learning threshold, easy to learn even with zero foundation

Then, think further about the above four points.

How is its practicality demonstrated? What are the specific dry goods? Why is the course system perfect? ​​Why are other people’s courses not perfect?

So you get the following text:

Why is it so practical and operational? Because the teacher guided us step by step in drawing growth maps, simulating business war cases on site, and having senior students lead the team in reviewing and summarizing and implementing action plans.

Why perfect? Because the course has been iteratively optimized for 7 years, it has been proven to be effective by the market, and there are success stories even for students with no experience.

I simply divided different copywriting into three stages, from the vague and general to the specific and detailed. This is to break down the selling points and also to write the copywriting.

As long as you have enough imagination and solid basic skills, you can further split it into fourth and fifth levels. You may say that you have written some of the texts here before, but if you have not organized them systematically, they may not be efficient and easy to miss.

In the end it will probably be something like this

2. Crowd Insights

Crowd insights seem easy, but it is actually very difficult to do well. Understanding the distribution of basic attributes of a crowd, such as age, region, gender, etc., is just a basic need. It cannot be considered an insight; it can only be called a portrait of the crowd.

Crowd insight requires us to think clearly about who our target audience is? Where is it? What are your interests? What kind of work and life scenarios might they have? As shown in the picture, if you can’t answer most of the questions, it’s not called crowd insight.

Here are some suggestions on how to understand our users:

① For e-commerce companies, you must read a lot of Taobao reviews of related products to understand the users’ purchasing motivations. Good reviews are because they are satisfied with something, while bad reviews are because they are not satisfied with something.

② For leads, you must ask more sales users about their situations, and it is best to even talk to dozens of users yourself;

③ Deeply experience the product, think about who will use it and why. If it is an app, there may be a community in it that you can learn more about;

④ After a certain amount of data is released, check the "influencer data" of the crowd portrait, sort by TGI from high to low (without looking at consumption), and observe what types of influencers users like to watch;

⑤ Read more industry research reports

That’s all for now. For other questions, please refer to the Q&A on how to conduct user research.

The key is to think carefully about users! ! Don't take it for granted! !

Finally, it comes down to copywriting, that is, some specific copywriting about user pain points, needs, and benefits. Only after the above research and analysis can you write what real users care about. Pain points can be classified, scenarios can be classified, and demand points can be classified...

3. Competitive product advertising research

After the above analysis of products and groups, you can look at the advertisements on the market again and improve your own copywriting system, while also having some focus.

When researching competitor ads, you must have a clear purpose and know the following:

• These selling points are talked about more by peers, and these pain points are talked about more by peers, so maybe they can increase sales.
• These selling points, user scenarios and pain points that my peers haven’t mentioned before may be my chance.
• My colleagues have told me this information, but I haven't considered it yet. I need to improve my copywriting library.

At the same time, at this stage, it is necessary to supplement scenario-based copywriting , that is, small modules that have not been written above, such as arousing curiosity, exaggerating the opening, guiding conversions, etc., and improve and upgrade them with reference to the forms of competitor's volume advertising. This requires continuous iteration and is not perfect right from the start.

The second step is to structure and classify scripts to create a test matrix and rhythm

Completing the first step is basically just writing the copy for the script. The copy you write will basically be 1-2 sentences. The more comprehensive your copywriting library is, the more ideas you will have when writing scripts, and the less afraid you will be of writing.

The specific way to write it is to assemble these sentences into modules, so that the running volume formula we learned before can begin to take effect.

For example, let's simply put together a few scripts:

Say the opposite of what you mean (opening) + pain point stimulation + effect presentation + attribute selling point + price discount

Don't use this sunscreen, I'm afraid you can't live without it. In the past, my skin would get sunburned within an hour of going out in the summer. Since I started using this sunscreen, my skin has been soft and not irritated the whole day after going out. This sunscreen uses Snow Mountain Gel, developed by XXX experts and launched in XX... You can enjoy a 30 yuan discount if you order now, so click the link below to place your order!

This script may be a bit silly, but just understand what it means.

Then, you can keep everything the same and immediately come up with another version of the copy for a different user scenario:

Don't use this sunscreen, I'm afraid you can't live without it. Whenever the sun is very strong outside, I have to wear a hat and a mask for fear of getting sunburned. Now I don’t have to worry about that anymore. This sunscreen uses Snow Mountain Gel, developed by XXX experts and launched in XX... You can enjoy a 30 yuan discount if you order now, so click the link below to place your order!

Then you may find that we don’t need to have that kind of “astonishing” copywriting ability or insight, but we only need to be able to “systematically” and “systematically” organize and plan the scripts we write. You will benefit a lot in terms of “output efficiency”, “review and analysis” and “creative iteration”.

Step 3: Combine the forms of expression to create a material test delivery matrix

The above only solves the copywriting problem of the video material script, but there is still one last link for the video material - the form of expression!

We all know that the same copy, different actors and different material forms can largely determine the effectiveness of the delivery.

So how can we add the test dimension of the material expression form to create a systematic advertising material testing matrix and launch it in a rhythmic and planned manner?

Author: Shen Zhanyong

Source: Zhihu