Speaker 1: What's up, marketers? I've been a media buyer for about seven years, and I've spent over $75 million across Facebook ads, TikTok ads, and Snapchat ads. And I've been hiring media buyers for about the last four years. And these are the things that separate the expert media buyers from everyone else. Seriously, this is the cheat code. I had to learn all of these things the hard way. So let's go ahead and dive in. Number one, expert media buyers know how and when to analyze breakdown data inside of Ads Manager. This is hugely important, and this is something I feel like I actually learned way later than I should have. Breakdowns essentially give you the ability to filter and view data in a series of breakdowns. Specifically, you have time, delivery, action, and dynamic creative element. And most commonly, I am actually looking at delivery because I want to see exactly how my ads are being delivered. The breakdowns I most commonly look at are age, gender, and placements, and sometimes even time of day, especially if my campaigns seem to have fallen off of a cliff randomly. What I'm looking at there is, did spend throttle at a weird time throughout the day? I have definitely seen this as a media buyer. And I'm cross-analyzing this data with amount spent because I want to see exactly how Facebook is spending my money. Now, I look at things like age and gender when I'm performing initial audits and as a gut check monthly, even weekly in some cases, to make sure that Facebook is spending the money on the right kinds of people. If you have a product that's normally geared to people in their early 20s, and then all of a sudden it starts spending at 55 plus, that is a major problem that you want to be ahead of. Expert media buyers know this. And I look at things like placements weekly, and especially for all creative tests, whether or not they're winners or losers. Because oftentimes you're going to see that specific creatives are going to deliver more towards Instagram or towards Facebook or towards feeds or stories or even reels. And that is very interesting data. As a media buyer, breakdown data essentially adds color to the story that is the ad account. Oftentimes, this is how I figure out why ads are working. Like we got really great performance randomly out of reels or stories placement, or even when they're not performing as well. Like if Facebook decides to start spending on a placement, that's not normally where it would spend the bulk of the cash. Number two, expert media buyers know how to properly analyze creatives. And specifically, they look beyond just the creatives that have the best ROAS. They can explain not only which creatives are performing the best, but why they are performing the best. And the way that they do that is by looking at additional metrics like video hook, video hold, unique outbound click-through rate, and even different types of engagement rates. Expert media buyers can hop in an ad account and within five minutes, tell me exactly what type of creatives perform best, which imagery and messaging has done the best job at hooking initial users, what imagery messaging and treatments do the best job at holding those users and increasing viewer retention rates, and even which creatives are stimulating the most conversation engagement on the actual ads, aka what's going down in the comment section. And the best media buyers can take all of that data and also make suggestions on future creatives or even iterations on current creatives. They also know that these metrics like video hook and video hold are custom metrics. This means that you actually have to manually input them into your ads manager dashboard. And if you want a tutorial on that, be sure to watch this video where I go through an entire deep dive of exactly what my dashboard column setup actually looks like and how to get those custom metrics. Number three, expert media buyers know how to develop a creative strategy. If you are even just a good media buyer, then you know how important and integral creative is to the overall performance of your ads. But expert media buyers know exactly how to create the kind of content that's going to make people convert. Expert media buyers know how to conduct reputation and competitor research. They know how to look into ads library, TikTok ads library, press hits, and even customer testimonials and take all of that information and develop a creative strategy that then results into a winning ad. And if you're thinking, well, this sounds like a creative strategist job, you're right. And the best media buyers are also creative strategists. If you want my step-by-step guide on exactly how teams at Thesis develop a creative strategy, be sure to check that out right here. I go through the whole process that we do with every single client in detail. Number four, expert media buyers have their own processes and can speak to them in detail. I'm actually convinced the reason why I got my first full-time media buying position was because I spoke to my own processes so well. Specifically, I prepared step-by-step details on the following scenarios. Number one, how I create a paid social strategy. So essentially, what types of platforms are going to be best for a potential client, what types of creatives, targeting, and even account structure. Number two, how I save a campaign that has stopped working. Number three, how I QA my own work or the work of others. And four, how I manage my workflow, or even just like how I manage my day as a media buyer. Now, the notes that you guys are seeing right now are the actual notes that I wrote down when I was prepping for that interview all those years ago, and it got me the job. Number five, expert media buyers know how outside factors can affect ad performance, and they anticipate those things for their clients. So they know how holidays, current events, and even just the weekend slump can affect overall ad performance, and they are proactive in suggesting budget increases or even decreases before these things happen. They also understand how negative comments can really pull down the overall performance on what was once a well-performing ad. So they dig into the comments section regularly, and while they themselves are not necessarily in charge of responding to those comments, they are able to communicate with the client to make sure that someone is responding to those comments to those users in the right way. Number six, expert media buyers are excellent communicators, and surprise, they have a system for that. They have a set structure for meetings, whether or not it's weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. I would recommend not weekly so that you can actually get some work done. But they also know how to keep up communications outside of the regular meeting cadence. The best media buyers at Thesis always give performance updates with key metrics and action items for the week every single Monday morning, and they do the exact same thing when closing out on Friday afternoon. This is in addition to meetings and any one-off questions in Slack. And another big note here is if performance is down, the media buyer is the one who lets the client know about that, not the other way around. Same for if performance is up, because they're recommending to scale. Clients should never be the one telling you that performance is bad. Number seven, expert media buyers have a simple account structure, but they have a heavy hand in creative strategy and landing page strategy. Now I know we talk a lot about creatives and how important it is to an account's performance, and expert media buyers also know that what happens after the click is just as important as well. The best media buyers know that you need to test sending traffic to the home page, to a collections page, or even to a PDP page. And they also know the importance of testing out different types of landing page strategies, like listicles, like overview pages, or even quizzes. I do not see nearly enough media buyers talking about this very important part of the equation. I know creative is sexy and it is super, super important, but so is your landing page strategy. Number eight, expert media buyers always have a plan for what is next. And this is no matter what is going on in your account, either great performance, bad performance, or business as usual performance, even though I feel like I don't often see business as usual performance. Great media buyers always know what they would like to test next in order to bring it to the next level. They always have a creative testing roadmap of things that they want to test next. They have an idea of what types of landing pages they'd like to test, and they know when to make suggestions on scaling or pulling back budgets. And the bonus one is that expert media buyers talk to one another. They know that they only truly get better if they have people challenge their beliefs and the way that they do things. Expert media buyers are always, always hungry to get better and improve their craft. And frankly, most of them are on Twitter. That's where I routinely have these conversations with other expert media buyers every single day. And I actually do have a list that you can follow right here so that you can get a jumpstart on following the right types of people on Twitter. And if you get on, be sure to add me. I'm totally happy to have these conversations with you guys over on Elon Musk's Twitter. And that's it. Thank you so much for watching this video. Please be sure to give it a like or subscribe if you learned something. These small actions really do help me out a lot as a creator. And I will see you guys next Monday. Later. Bye.