Losing money on digital ads usually isn't because
the ads themselves don't work. It happens because
we hit that boost button way too fast. We're
operating completely without a compass. Oh, totally.
We treat it like a casino. Right. Throw money
down and hope the algorithm figures it out for
us. Welcome to the deep dive. If you've ever
felt like your advertising budget is just disappearing
into a black hole, this is absolutely for you.
Yeah. It's a painful feeling. It really is. Today,
we are exploring a complete AI advertising strategy
workflow. We're using Claude Code. We'll look
at how to stop the guessing game completely.
We're mapping out customer pain points. Right.
And we're going to build an agency in a box,
one that creates actual campaign structure before
a single dollar is spent. Because that invisible
structure behind the scenes is, well, it's everything.
Yeah. The visual ad you see on your phone. Yeah.
That's really just the tiny tip of a massive
strategic iceberg. Exactly. Let's start by unpacking
the real problem businesses face today. The guessing
game. Right. We tend to treat ad platforms like
a magical vending machine. Yep. You've got a
product you poured your soul into. So you jump
onto Meta. You throw 50 bucks at a campaign.
And you just wait for the sales to roll in. But
they don't. No, they usually don't. And when
those sales inevitably don't happen, we immediately
look for a scapegoat. People always want to blame
the platform. Yeah. It's much easier than blaming
their own lack of preparation. You hear it all
the time, right? People declare that Meta is
completely dead. Oh, constantly. Or they say
TikTok traffic is too low quality. They complain
LinkedIn is too expensive unless you're some
massive enterprise company. Right. But I mean,
the platform is almost never the actual bottleneck.
No. The algorithm is just doing exactly what
you told it to do. Which is usually nothing specific.
Exactly. Yeah. The fundamental problem is a total
lack of strategic direction. It's kind of like
walking into a pitch black room. You throw a
handful of darts and just hope you hit a customer's
wallet. What we actually need is to turn on the
stadium lights. We need to use a sniper rifle.
That's a much better way to look at it. Or, you
know, think of it like building a house. Okay.
You would just buy a bunch of bricks, throw them
in a yard, and expect a mansion. Right. You need
a blueprint. Exactly. To hit your target, you
need a meticulous blueprint. You need to conduct
deep audience research. You have to build out
distinct customer personas and plan your platforms.
You literally have to map out a multi -stage
funnel before writing a single word. Let's ground
this. Let's use the razor company example from
our sources. Oh, that's a great example. If you
skip the strategy, a bad ad usually ends up saying
something incredibly generic. Right. It just
says, high quality razors delivered right to
your door. Which is grammatically fine. Sure.
But it's deeply boring. Right. I mean, it doesn't
actually give me a compelling reason to stop
scrolling. Yeah, it doesn't make me pull out
my credit card. Not at all. It completely fails
to agitate a real pain point. A good ad goes
so much deeper into the human experience. Exactly.
It talks about the frustration of massively overpaying
for name brands. Or the physical discomfort of
using dull blades. Yeah. Or my absolute favorite
angle we found in the source material, the sheer
indignity of waiting for a pharmacy employee
to unlock a plastic razor case. Oh, man. That
is the worst experience. It really is. Standing
there for 10 minutes, you're just trying to buy
a basic grooming product. It's universally infuriating.
So infuriating. And when you tap into that specific
frustration, your ad instantly resonates. But
finding those nuanced psychological angles, that
takes a massive amount of investigative work.
It takes serious brainpower. Yeah. And hours
of parsing through customer feedback. Right.
And that is exactly why most business owners
skip it. The research phase feels entirely overwhelming.
You just want to launch something today. Yeah.
Which naturally makes me wonder about the human
element here. Why do human marketers so consistently
skip this foundational step when we know it works?
Because proper strategy is incredibly tedious.
I mean, people are exhausted. They just want
the quick dopamine hit of seeing a live campaign
running on their dashboard. It feels like progress,
even if it's wasteful. We blame the platform
because building a real blueprint is hard. Yeah,
precisely. But this friction is exactly where
Claude Code fundamentally changes the paradigm.
It really does. We're moving away from treating
AI as a simple chatbot. We're turning it into
a structured, highly disciplined strategist.
It represents a massive shift in how we interact
with large language models. We're talking about
setting up a comprehensive agency in a box. right
on your local machine. Let's define the actual
technology driving this. This system operates
entirely inside Visual Studio Code. That is simply
a free coding workspace where AI reads files.
Right. It's just a digital environment. Yeah.
Gives the AI a place to organize its thoughts.
And it can review your documents without uploading
them to a public server. The fascinating part
is how it operates. It utilizes 15 distinct analytical
skills. And it relies on five parallel AI agents.
And parallel AI agents are just multiple AI programs
working on different tasks at once. Right. And
that parallel architecture is the secret sauce
here. It completely transforms a linear workflow
into a synchronized engine. I have to offer a
vulnerable admission here, though. Even after
studying all this prompt engineering, I still
wrestle with blank chat boxes myself. Really?
Yeah. I open a new browser tab, I just stare
at them and my mind goes blank on what to prompt.
Oh, you are definitely not alone. Blank canvas
syndrome is a huge hurdle. It is. When you have
infinite possibilities, you usually end up doing
nothing at all. Or you do something overly simplistic.
Right. If you just ask a normal web -based AI,
write me a Facebook ad for my razor company,
it fails miserably. Horribly. You get these generic,
overly enthusiastic slogans. Yeah. It usually
sounds like a very confused robot trying to sell
you soap. Because it lacks any strategic constraints.
Exactly. A standard chatbot is just guessing
at what sounds good. But with Claude Code...
Inside this workspace, you give it a highly strict
role. You force it to analyze your budgets, your
sales funnels, and your landing pages simultaneously.
By locking it into those parameters, the output
is incredible. Oh, yeah. It outputs fully realized
campaign structures. It writes tailored ad copy
for every specific social platform. Right. It
handles the mathematical budget allocation. It
even generates preliminary ROI projections. And
those projections often include your expected
ROAS. Let's clarify that term. ROAS is just the
revenue made per ad. dollars spent. Right. Which
helps you understand if the campaign is actually
sustainable. So looking at the architecture of
this engine, why must these five specific agents
run in parallel instead of just working sequentially
down a list? Because the strategic pieces are
heavily interdependent. And if they run sequentially,
the budget agent might allocate funds in a way
that doesn't align with the creative agent's
video concepts. Running them together ensures
your funnel mechanics and your ad copy match
up perfectly in real time. They build the puzzle
pieces at the exact same time. Exactly. Knowing
how the architecture functions in theory is great,
but the application is what matters. So what
actually happens when you press go on a real
world business? This is where the abstract concepts
finally become incredibly tangible. Let's dig
into the Dollar Shave Club demo from the source
material. Perfect. As a user, you open the workspace
and run one simple command. You just type slash
ads, ad strategy, dollarshaveclub .com. It is
remarkable that an entire agency workflow kicks
off from just that single line of text. It really
is. The moment you hit enter, the AI instantly
enters a deep discovery phase. It autonomously
browses the target website. It studies the underlying
business model. And then it generates a massive
strategic output report. Right. It starts by
grading your current setup, right? It gives you
a baseline to work from. It issues specific readiness
scores. And audience clarity scores. It tells
you exactly where your current messaging is weak.
But the most powerful part of the report is the
persona generation. Oh, absolutely. In this demo,
it created a highly specific buyer persona. It
called him the professional groomer. Let's unpack
him for a second. Who exactly is this guy? And
why does he matter? According to the AI's analysis,
he is male, generally 28 to 40 years old. Okay.
He lives in the suburbs, usually with the family.
He wants to look sharp for his career. But his
absolute primary driver is saving time. And having
that psychological profile. changes your copy
completely. Completely. You aren't just selling
a sharp piece of metal anymore. You are selling
time. You are selling a frictionless morning
routine for a guy who just wants his weekends
back. Once it understands that guy, it maps out
the entire architectural funnel. Right. It breaks
the customer journey down into four distinct
logical stages. Walk us through how it structures
those four stages, because beginners usually
get this entirely wrong. Yeah, they do. First
is the awareness stage. This copy strictly focuses
on introducing the hidden problem the user didn't
realize they had. Second is consideration. This
stage uses logic to explain why your specific
product is actually the superior solution. That
logical bridge is crucial. What comes after they
understand the solution? Third is the conversion
stage. This is where you finally push the hard,
specific offer to get the sale. And finally,
retargeting. This stage uses urgency or discounts
to bring back the people who clicked your site
but abandoned their cart. It separates the psychological
messaging perfectly. It really does. Inexperienced
marketers usually try to smash all four of those
complex stages into one single overwhelming Facebook
post. Yeah. Ask for marriage on the first date,
you know. Well, imagine scaling to five parallel
agents instantly mapping out a four stage funnel
for a brand new product to sex silence. It's
just staggering to think about the time saved.
But before we dig into how you actually install
this system, I have a quick question. Are these
AI ROI projections actually guaranteed returns?
Oh, absolutely not. You should never treat AI
projections as guaranteed money. They are strictly
starting baselines to help guide your initial
budget planning. You still need to gather real
campaign data once the ads are live. It gives
us a clear compass, not a magic crystal ball.
That is the perfect way to frame it. Let's take
a quick pause to hear from our sponsor, and then
we'll get into the actual installation. Sponsor.
Okay, we are back. We just mapped out this massive
multi -stage strategy. We did. So let's talk
about the actual engine running under the hood.
I want to demystify the technology so it doesn't
feel like magic. Sure. How do these various skills
actually constrain the AI? The entire engine
runs on what we call skill .md files. Let's define
that clearly. Those are plain text files that
give the AI strict rules. Right, because large
language models are naturally unpredictable.
These plain text files act as heavy guardrails.
You were giving Claude a strict, unbendable playbook
rather than just a loose conversational prompt.
Our sources break these skill files down into
four main categories. You have strategy, creative
copy, funnels, and landing page audits. Each
of those file categories is designed to solve
a totally different mechanical part of the advertising
campaign. Let's talk about the installation process
outlined here. You download Visual Studio Code.
You add the cloud code extension directly from
Anthropic. You drop these plain text skill files
into a local folder. You open a session and you
type the slash command. It sounds like a lot
of technical steps, but it's actually a very
linear, straightforward process. I have to push
back slightly on the accessibility here, though.
The research claims this is easy, but. Using
phrases like visual studio code and local extensions
sounds absolutely terrifying to a non -coder.
Ah, fair. Is a local plumber or a neighborhood
dentist really going to be able to set this up?
I completely understand why it sounds intimidating.
But they absolutely can use this. You truly do
not need to be a software developer. Visual Studio
Code is literally just a digital desk. It is
merely the piece of furniture where the AI sits,
opens its notebook, and reads your instructions.
So a freelance graphic designer or a local gym
owner can set this up on their laptop without
breaking anything. 100%. The scale of the budget
changes between a local gym and a massive software
company. but the technological foundation stays
the exact same. That makes the barrier to entry
feel much more approachable. Yeah. I do have
one question about those specific skill categories,
though. Why do we need a dedicated landing page
audit skill if the AI already wrote a high -performing
ad? Because the ad creative only does one job.
It gets the click. If a user clicks your brilliant
ad, but your website takes 10 seconds to load,
or it has a confusing checkout process, they
bounce immediately. The landing page is what
actually secures the revenue. A great ad is useless
if a broken website scares them away. Exactly.
If you don't fix the page, you are just setting
your budget on fire. So we have built the local
engine. We have run the deep analytical strategy.
Now we need the actual words. We need the visceral
language that will stop a distracted person from
scrolling right past your brand. This is where
we finally enter the creative output phase. The
documentation outlines another very specific
command for this. Right. You type slash ads hooks
dollarshaveclub .com. But there is a crucial
non -negotiable rule attached to this step. You
must never ask the AI for creative hooks before
the deep strategy is completely finished. Never.
Why is that specific sequence so critical to
the workflow? Because if you ask for the catchy
hooks first, the AI has no foundation. You just
get generic clickbait garbage. Truly, scroll
-stopping hooks only come from deep customer
insight. And the strategy document provides that
exact insight. That makes complete sense. The
AI needs to read the strategy first to understand
the psychology. Once it does, it generates 20
to 25 distinct hooks, and it intentionally bases
them on core psychological angles. It leans heavily
into powerful human drivers, like frustration,
burning curiosity, or undeniable social proof.
Let's look at the specific creative examples
generated in the source material. Yeah, let's
do it. The first one is categorized as the locked
razor case hook. I genuinely love this angle.
It is so relatable. The AI wrote this hook. You
shouldn't need to wait 10 minutes for someone
to open a razor case. It is incredibly visceral.
I mean, almost everyone has experienced that
exact annoyance at a pharmacy. It taps into pure,
unfiltered frustration. The second example takes
a slightly different angle. It's the dull blade
hook. The copy reads, the moment you drag a three
-week -old blade across your face and accept
the burn. Again, it paints a very vivid, painful
picture. It targets a specific physical reality
that men accept just because they're too lazy
to go buy new blades. But the context of where
you place these words matters deeply. Oh, absolutely.
You can't just slap that exact sentence onto
every single social network and expect it to
work. Right. And the AI agents are specifically
programmed. to know this. If you are running
ads on Meta, the AI knows you need split screen
visual scripts. If you are on TikTok, it knows
you need a rapid three second problem and solution
setup. Exactly. If you are on YouTube, it scripts
a sharp arresting first sentence before the user
can hit the skip button. The engine formats the
core psychological hook to match the native language
of each specific environment. But we need to
highlight a massive warning explicitly stated
in our research. Yes. Clawed code is an incredibly
powerful first draft machine. It is absolutely
not the final step of the process. It reliably
gets you to the 80 % mark, but you still have
to step in and do the rest. human beings must
rigorously edit this final output right you have
to infuse the ai structure with real gritty customer
language right you find the specific words by
reading through niche reddit threads or analyzing
your one star reviews or digging through your
customer support tickets the ai is incredibly
smart but it doesn't actually know what razor
burn feels like on a tuesday morning which brings
up a fairly critical question about automation
If this AI system is so strategically brilliant,
why not just connect it via API and let it post
the finished ads directly to the platforms? Because
the AI doesn't truly feel human frustration,
joy, or relief. It just mathematically mimics
those concepts. Human beings have to provide
the final layer of empathy to make sure the emotional
tone actually rings true to another human. AI
gives us speed, but humans provide the necessary
empathy. That is the essential partnership. The
machine builds the house, but you have to make
it a home. Let's step back and synthesize everything
we've covered today. We have traversed a massive
amount of ground in this deep dive. We really
have. We went from staring blankly at a blinking
cursor all the way to generating platform -specific
psychological hooks. Digital advertising feels
like a total gamble when you don't have a reliable
system. You end up throwing money at a wall and
just praying the algorithm takes pity on you.
Right. But implementing a local engine like Cloud
Code completely changes that paradigm. It provides
the architectural rigor that most businesses
lack. It takes the chaotic guesswork. out of
the equation entirely by building that invisible
structure we talked about at the top of the show.
It starts with the deep, sometimes uncomfortable
psychology of your actual buyer. It moves mathematically
down to the exact budget allocation across different
platforms. It ensures that every single ad you
run has a distinct, measurable purpose within
a logical funnel. It stops you from hitting that
dangerous boost button without a plan. I want
you to pull up the last digital ad you ran for
your business. Look at the copy in the target.
getting closely? Yeah. Did you know exactly who
that specific message was for? Did you know precisely
what stage of the funnel it belonged to? If the
honest answer is no, you were probably just throwing
darts in the dark. If an AI agent can now build
our entire strategic framework in a matter of
seconds, does that mean the future of marketing
relies entirely on our human capacity to feel
and our ability to beautifully edit that final
10 % beat? Something to think about. Out to your
music.