Due to this, I believe that every growth marketing engine should have a proper creative testing framework in place — be it a seed-stage startup or a behemoth like Google. The Foundation: If you want to leverage the power of creativity and succeed with paid social marketing, you’re thinking right. It would help to have a creative testing framework: A structured, consistent way to test new creative assets.
Here’s a breakdown of the pieces a creative testing framework needs to be successful:
- A defined testing schedule.
- A structured theme approach.
- A channel-specific strategy.
Testing creative should be a constant and iterative process that follows a defined testing schedule. A goal and structure can be as simple as pushing five new creative assets per week. Inversely, it can be as complex as trying 60 new assets consisting of multiple themes and copy variations. The innovative testing should lean toward a lower spending account due to limited event signal and vice versa with a higher spending account. The most important aspect is that the testing continues to move the needle as you search for your next “champion” asset.
After setting a testing schedule, define the core themes of your business and vertical rather than testing a plethora of random ideas. This applies to your product or service’s creative asset, copy, and critical value props. Think of this as a wireframe that you either expand or trim throughout testing sprints. As you analyze the innovative data, you’ll find it easier to decide what to double down on or cut from testing with this structure.
For a fitness app like MyFitnessPal, it can be structured as follows:
- Themes (product screenshots, images of people using it, UGC testimonials, before/after photos).
- Messaging (segmented value props, promo, FUD).
Ensuring a channel-specific approach is vital, as each will differ in creative best practices and testing capabilities. What works on Facebook may not work on Snapchat or other paid social channels. Don’t be discouraged if inventive between channels perform differently, although I recommend parity testing. If you already have the creative asset for one track, resizing and formatting the remaining media doesn’t hurt.
Determining wins
Equally crucial to the creative is proper event selection and a statistically significant threshold to abide by throughout all testing. When selecting an event for innovative testing, using your north-star metric is not always possible, depending on how high your CACs are. For example, if you’re selling a high-ticket item and the CACs are in the hundreds, it would take enormous spending to reach stat-sig on each creative asset. Instead, pick an event that’s more upper-funnel and a strong indicator of a user’s likelihood of converting.
Selecting a consistent percentage across all creative testing is essential when deciding which statistically significant portion to use. As a rule of thumb, I like to use a certainty of 80%+ because it allows for enough confirmation and the ability to make quicker decisions. A great (and free) online calculator is Neil Patel’s A/B Testing Significance Calculator.
Make or break
You’re scrolling through a social feed, and a sleek gold pendant catches your eye, but all the messaging has is the brand name and product specifications. It hooked your attention, but what did it do to reel you in? Think about it: What are you doing to connect and reel people in with “creative” — the make-or-break factor in paid social growth marketing?
Circumventing iOS 14.5 data loss
Creative testing is only getting more challenging for mobile campaigns as iOS 14.5 obfuscates user data, but that doesn’t equal impossible and means we need to get craftier. Various hacks can be implemented to help gain a clear insight into how creativity is performing — some may not last forever, and others may be timeless.
Amid all the privacy restrictions, we still have access to a vast population of users on Android that we should take advantage of. Instead of running all creative tests on iOS, Android can be used as a straightforward way to gather insights, as privacy restrictions haven’t rolled out on those devices yet. The data collected from Android tests can be taken directionally and applied to iOS campaigns. It’s only a matter of time until Android data is also at the mercy of data restrictions, so use this workaround to inform iOS campaigns now.
If running Android campaigns isn’t viable, another quick and easy solution is to throw up a website lead form to gauge the conversion rate from a creative asset to a completed form. The user experience will certainly not be nearly as unique as Evergreen, but this can be used to gain insight for a short period (and a small percentage of the budget). When crafting the lead form, think of questions that qualify and would indicate someone completing your north-star event on the evergreen experience. After running people through the lead form, communications can be sent to convert them, so ad dollars are being put to good use.
