“I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted; the problem is, I don't know which half” – retail magnate John Wanamaker said this about his marketing budget more than 100 years ago. However, there are now more opportunities to measure the impact of advertising on the audience and make it more effective. The RadASO team explains how to do creative testing.
Creative testing in marketing is a process that involves trying out different creative elements to determine which ones are most effective in achieving goals. It includes experimenting with various content formats, designs, messaging, and other aspects.
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The main goal of testing is to find the optimal combinations to increase your audience engagement, improve conversions, and overall effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
Here is an example for better understanding:
Let's imagine that a company has launched a new product – eco-friendly water bottles.
Then it needs to launch an advertising campaign on social media. The main goal is to attract as many leads as possible and increase sales. To do this, the team creates several variants of ads that differ in elements, i.e:
1. Images:
2. Title text:
3. Call to action (CTA):
Then, the company launches several ad groups, where each group is a combination of different images, headlines, and CTAs:
The next step is to analyze the results of each ad group by key metrics. Examples of metrics:
The final step is to determine the most effective variant, based on the collected data. For example, the team may find that the combination of image B, headline A, and CTA B has the highest CTR and conversions.
This example shows how creative advertising testing helps to identify the most effective elements of an advertising campaign.
Creative performance can improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and help you achieve your business goals.
5 reasons to start creative testing:
Expense optimization
By understanding which elements of advertising bring the best results for your brand, you can optimize your marketing spend. This will allow you to reduce the expenses on less effective ads and invest more in those that bring the highest ROI.
If you know which creatives (images, text, CTAs, etc.) work best, you can focus resources on the most effective options and increase the overall effectiveness of your campaigns.
Specific metrics make it possible to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaign elements.
Insights into target audience behavior are important for business. They can be used to create new ideas and personalized campaigns that will resonate with the audience.
Being the first to identify and implement effective strategies through testing is one of the competitive edges in the market.
Thus, testing helps to better understand audience preferences. Due to effective combinations, campaigns can be optimized, which in turn helps to achieve results and increase return on investment (ROI).
One of the most popular types of testing for your brand is a b testing, where two different variants (A and B) of the same element (for example, a headline, image, CTA) are tested on a part of the audience. This helps to determine which of the variants works better.
A/B testing involves creating two variants (A and B) of the same element. Variant A is called the control variant (usually the current or old version of the creative), and variant B is called the test variant. Then these variants are shown to different groups of users simultaneously and their effectiveness is compared by certain metrics.
Tools for A/B-testing. In Google, this is Google Ads Experiments. In ASO in App Store Product Page Optimization is used for this purpose, in Google Play - Store listing experiments.
Proper use of A/B testing will help you make an informed decision to achieve better results.
A/A/B testing is a method that compares two identical control (current) variants (A and A) with one variable variant (B).
A/B/B testing involves comparing one control (current) variant (A) with two identical modified variants (B1 and B2).
This type of testing helps to obtain more accurate confidence, as a larger sample reduces the possibility of random errors or mistakes in the results.
MVT is a simultaneous testing of several variants of different elements (for example, headlines, images, CTAs) to determine the most effective combination. It differs from A/B testing, which compares only two variants of the same element.
Multivariate testing involves creating several test variants for each element under test and their combinations. For example, if you are testing headlines, images, and CTAs, and there are three variants of each, the number of combinations will be 3x3x3=27.
It can include the following components:
Due to this type of testing, we can speed up the optimization best practices and find effective solutions to achieve business goals, as we have the ability to test creative elements and their combinations at the same time.
This tool allows you to measure the increase in advertising performance on Meta platforms. When you run a test, you create two similar audiences - a test audience and a control audience. People from the test audience see ads, while those from the control audience (also called the “control sample”) do not.
The test results provide answers to the following questions:
Requirements for testing by Meta:
You can create a test in the Experiments tool or using the Meta account representative (if you have one).
Note. To perform any testing, you need to have a sufficient amount of traffic. Then the test will be considered valid. The less traffic there is, the fewer test variants should participate in the test.
Clearly define the goals of testing. It can be an increase in conversions, a decrease in cost per click, a boost in engagement, etc. But it's worth remembering that even test creatives should be in line with the business concept.
Write down what creative elements you plan to use in the test: headlines, images, CTAs, text messages, page layouts, etc.
Develop several versions of each element. For example, if you plan to test headlines, create a few variations of them.
Set the success metrics you want to measure for each option: CTR, conversions, cost per conversion, engagement rate, etc.
A/B testing (split testing), A/A/B or A/B/B testing, multivariate testing (MVT), Conversion Rate Increase tool.
Divide your audience into groups and start testing. Check and make sure that the test is conducted for a reasonable period and with the necessary amount of traffic to obtain the correct data.
Gather and compare the results of the different options across the defined metrics. Analyze which options performed best.Based on the data, decide on the next stage of the action plan. For example, it can be either choosing the best option for use in campaigns or conducting additional testing of other hypotheses.
Implement the best creatives. Constantly monitor their effectiveness.
Creative testing is an ongoing process. Don't stop and keep testing new ideas and approaches to continuously improve your campaigns and reach new peaks.
To avoid these mistakes, you can increase the effectiveness of creative testing and get more relevant results that will help you make a decision:
To conclude, creative testing is a powerful tool for increasing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. A structured and clear approach to testing, setting goals and metrics, proper audience segmentation, and analyzing the results allow you to make informed decisions.
As a result, you can optimize strategies to achieve better results. Avoid common mistakes, improve conversions and marketing campaign performance, reduce costs, and deliver a better user experience.
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