If you want to know your audience better than ever, creative testing is the way to go. Running ads on a hunch and hoping for the best can work, but it’s not as effective as testing insights.
There is just one hang-up: Creative testing is intimidating. Tight budgets, limited asset libraries, and busy schedules often leave little room for conducting effective testing. Sometimes it gets pushed aside completely.
Although this might feel like a huge hurdle, we’re here to show you it doesn’t have to be. Let’s jump into some thought-starters to help you refresh your e-commerce creative testing strategies and discover how Creative Automation can help.
Do Your Homework
It all starts with knowing your assets. If you want your team to move quickly and test on the fly, then it’s time for a deep dive.
Take stock of your asset library
You may be surprised by what you already have on hand. This is the time to dive deep into your company server or DAM and look into the troves of videos, photos, and other media that’s been hiding. Once you get familiar with your inventory of assets, you can start imagining the best ways to bring them to life in your lower-funnel campaigns.
Go scissorhands on your video assets
Testing the effectiveness of video assets isn’t just about running the static version against the filmed or animated one, you need to go for a modular approach already in the production process. This can be done in two easy steps:
- Break down the desired narrative into different building blocks (for example: product in use, product unboxing, lifestyle scenes that relate to the brand or showcase the user, product benefit supers or animations, introduction of the brand in the scene, introduction of the offer in the scene, etc.
- Run different combinations of those scenes to find what moves the needle
You can also try this approach with existing video assets/ scenes provided that they give you enough material to work with.
Mine the internet for copy gems
Lightning strikes maybe once, maybe twice…but three times? Well, that’s a different story. Writer’s block is real and it can be difficult to overcome. If you’re stumped on ideas, look online for inspiration. Check Twitter feeds, Amazon reviews, or even Reddit to see what people are saying about your industry, brand, or product. It’s a great way to pick up new phrases and get a quick pulse check. Then take those new terms, tones, (and even emojis) and weave them into your messaging.
Let fans do the work for you
If you’ve been in the e-commerce space for a while, odds are you have some loyal superfans. User-generated content is a great way to rack up new content without much heavy lifting and bring your digital ads to life in a more engaging way. From selfies to quotes of positive reviews, weaving customer stories into your digital brand narrative can help build brand equity with new shoppers.
Begin Discovery
Once you have a solid foundation of your assets, you can start discovering what and where your audience likes to engage with your brand. Let’s jump into some thought starters to get you inspired.
Spice it up with seasonal creatives
Creative testing doesn’t have to be just a copy exercise or design tweak. Experimenting with seasonal creative templates can be an exciting way to test your evergreen content against something more time-sensitive. If your brand has quarterly refreshes or special holidays that resonate with shoppers, then this strategy works well for testing creative performance along with combatting the dreaded user ad fatigue.
Test audience-specific strategies
In the most successful testing setups, performance teams work in lock-step with their creative partners to create testing approaches that mirror the audience strategies and targeting. For example, a certain creative approach may do poorly in one audience segment but be wildly successful in another. Design is only one part of the equation when it comes to audience-specific creative tests, try to differentiate your messaging per audience, too. For example, you could try to see if time-sensitive offers work better against a certain segment compared to showcasing the absolute discount.
Play with placement
People are on their phones now more than ever, constantly toggling back and forth between social apps. If you want to get your ads in front of the most eyeballs, you need to account for multiple platforms. For example, you could try running the same creative on Facebook and test it against Pinterest. That way you can maximize the same assets and purely read performance based on the platform. Of course, you can always test different ads on one platform or multiple platforms. If you’re feeling bold, try experimenting with long-form ad content on TikTok or Instagram.
Test Faster with Celtra
Budgets, time constraints, and limited assets can make creative testing a real challenge for marketing teams. One solution is Creative Automation for Dynamic Product Ads. It allows growth marketing and creative teams to transform DPAs into high-quality, on-brand creative at scale across the funnel. Creative Automation allows you to maximize your assets and make copy changes on the fly. With DPAs by Celtra, you can run more creative testing on product ads and drive performance with your lower-funnel assets.
Ready to learn more? Visit our dedicated DPA website, listen to our Brand-Side podcast, and get in touch if you want to test faster and bring the power of your brand to performance ads.