Imagine you’re planning a dinner party for a special occasion. You ask your guests about their food preferences and allergies and get to work constructing a menu. As the date nears, you enlist family members to taste your creations and give feedback. This way, by the time the event approaches, you have a perfectly crafted meal designed to appeal to the palates of your guests.
This is, in essence, a form of creative testing, a part of meal planning—but also a core component of successful digital marketing. Whether you’re a fledgling startup founder or a business owner who’s been in the game for years, knowing how to better connect with your audience is likely part of your ongoing marketing strategy. One way to do this is through creative testing.
What is creative testing?
Creative testing, or ad creative testing, is a data-informed approach to building ad campaigns. It allows you to experiment with different creative elements to better understand what connects with your target audience. It’s a tried-and-true creative strategy that provides valuable customer insights designed to improve performance and drive conversions.
A form of beta testing, creative testing allows marketers to trial-run concepts and ideas for advertisements ahead of a wide-scale launch. Through the testing process, companies can identify effective creative strategies and use their findings to develop winning marketing campaigns that bolster their bottom line.
Benefits of creative testing
The creative testing process can help you fine-tune your ad campaign. Here are some benefits of creative tests:
It helps you understand your audience
The best way to keep an audience engaged is to understand their desires. Collecting data-focused insights through testing helps your creative team really understand what your target customers like and why they like it. You learn what makes your audience tick—and in turn, click.
It prevents creative fatigue
According to a 2023 study, digital advertising comprises $8 out of every $10 invested in ads. And consumers, flooded with the fruits of this ad spend across their digital platforms, are vulnerable to creative fatigue—when overexposure to repeated content leads to malaise and disinterest.
Ad fatigue can be a death knell to brands. Creative testing helps keep this at bay by identifying ways to stay innovative and interesting.
It allows you to allocate resources more effectively
Creative fatigue and misaligned ads can reduce conversions, meaning lost return on ad spend. When you have a better idea of how to appeal to your audience, you can spend money on advertising campaigns that give you the most bang for your buck.
How to set up a creative test
- Run a creative gap analysis
- Set your goals
- Develop and select creative assets
- Perform tests
- Analyze results and iterate
There’s no one-size-fits all approach to creative testing, but it typically involves a strategic multi-pronged approach. Here’s are a step-by-step guide:
1. Run a creative gap analysis
Before diving in, know your weaknesses and identify areas for growth. Do market research and take a comprehensive look at your performance across key areas, from ad placement to budget allocation. Conduct a deep dive on competitor ads, and note what’s working well for your peers and consider how you can adopt similar strategies to better convey your brand’s message.
2. Set your goals
Determine what you’d like to accomplish and how you believe it could be done. Do you want to better connect with Gen Z shoppers by testing meme video formats on TikTok? Are you hoping to increase conversion rates on Facebook by trying new ad copy? Set your intentions and let them guide you.
3. Develop and select creative assets
Whether you’re coming up with new creative from scratch or using existing campaigns, you need to strategically select your assets. Creative testing is an investment of your money, time, and resources, so you’ll want to plan accordingly.
4. Perform tests
There are three main ways to structure a creative test:
Split testing
Split testing, also known as A/B testing, allows marketers to analyze versions of a creative asset to see which performs better. For example, you might create two versions of a landing page with the call-to-action button in different places. This allows you to see which version gets more clicks from your target audience.
Multivariate testing
You can use multivariate testing to test pages and creative assets where multiple components have been changed. For instance, you might test out two entirely different landing pages. One with a single product image and a brightly colored CTA button, and one with a carousel of multiple product images, a CTA button in a muted color, and some copy explaining your brand story.
Conversion lift testing
You can conduct conversion lift testing by showing an ad to one audience group and not showing it to a control group. Study the results to see if there’s a difference in conversion rates between the two groups.
5. Analyze the results and iterate
Collect data using dashboards like Meta Ads Manager and Google Ads to analyze creative performance and glean insights to improve your marketing approach. Use these findings to continue to evolve your creative strategy.
Best practices for creative testing
There are many approaches to developing a creative test, but here are some best practices to keep in mind:
Form a hypothesis
Creative testing works best when you’ve done the work to identify potential gaps in your content. Form hypotheses and conduct specific tests that will give you the information you need. For example, if you hypothesize that your ads would be more appealing to younger consumers if they highlight your eco-friendly approach to manufacturing, you could then use conversion lift testing to validate this approach.
Develop multiple concepts
Creating multiple creative concepts allows you to maximize your experimentation and get the most out of your testing to optimize your marketing performance. While testing two concepts against each other can be helpful, you may want to consider testing three to four versions at once.
Understand that performance may dip
The trade-off with experimentation is that while it can lead to great success, it may also lead to failure. You’re discovering what works and what doesn’t, which could cause key performance indicators to drop. Don’t fret—this is temporary pain on the path to gain. You can use this information to inform future campaigns.
Be patient
Creative testing is an ongoing process, and you won’t have results overnight. Set a realistic timeframe that gives your assets room to grow so you can get the best possible results—at least a week is a good rule of thumb.
Creative testing FAQ
What are the methods of creative testing?
There are a variety of approaches to creative testing, but the most common methodologies are split testing, multivariate testing, and lift testing.
Who uses creative testing?
Ad creatives and creative teams across industries use creative testing to identify ways to strengthen their campaigns to better reach your target audience, prevent creative fatigue, and help increase sales.
What metrics should you track in creative testing?
The right metrics to track creative tests depend on the type of creative asset and platform on which you’re testing, but common metrics include: impressions, social engagement, conversions, average watch time, time on page, click-through rate, and return on investment, among others.
