Working with DTC e-commerce brands, I get to speak to brand owners, CMOs and audit ad accounts a few times a week. There are some common mistakes I see but regarding creatives…
When we talk about creatives, most brands say that they know creatives are important, yet they do nothing about it. Or not enough.
Even if they do enough creative testing, I still see that they don’t understand what creative testing actually means.
I think about creative testing in 2 levels.
Level #1; test different concepts, ideas, angles. Even if the audience has a very specific taste, people have different styles. At this level, we’re trying to find what resonates with the audience, what makes them click, what makes them make a purchase. Here, engagement metrics are secondary. Our primary objective is to find ads that convert.
Level #2; iterate on winners. Say there’s 1 static and 1 video that got the most conversions, profitably. Now it’s time to make variations and see if we can make the winners better. For static, playing with the colors is the most basic. For video, adjusting the hook, making it shorter or longer, a bit different could make good variations. Here I focus more on engagement metrics like ctr, hook rate, hold rate. Because we know these ads get conversions, we’re trying to see if we can get more for the buck.
With brands, I see mistakes on both levels. Brands that haven’t achieved level 1 haven’t fully grasped the importance of ad creatives. Brands that haven’t achieved level 2 have an idea of what creative testing means, but it’s not 100% there.
As a brand, another thing you need to understand about creative testing is that you need to be quick and sometimes dirty. If you get stuck in details like the shade of a color, you’re being a roadblock to your paid ads success in an indirect way. I say even if it’s not perfect, let’s see if it’s even worth running first. If we get promising results, we can always make it perfect later on.
To me, a part of the goal of creative testing is to not bore people. Make them interesting. Find what’s interesting for the audience. Another part of the goal is to resonate with as many people as possible. Like I said, people have different styles. We all drink water, but not everyone likes the color orange (I know it’s a terrible example but you get the point).
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