Are You Optimizing Results with Creative Testing?

Written By

Off Madison Ave

Do your paid digital marketing programs actively include creative testing? If not, your campaigns likely aren’t performing to their full potential.

Off Madison Ave explains why testing is essential to creating a strategic digital marketing campaign in their recent blog about creative testing. Testing identifies what elements of creative work well and helps drive campaign goals, resulting in higher ROI.

Follow Off Madison Ave’s 5 tips for marketing campaign success:

1) Define clear goals

What is the brand position? Campaign goals? How will success be measured?

Testing protocols should align with campaign goals, which is why outlining clear, measurable goals is a necessary first step. Success can be measured with a variety of KPIs, including CTR, conversions and attributable revenue. Be sure to identify which KPIs are most relevant to assessing goal performance.

Pro Tip: When identifying KPIs, also establish the statistical significance that you’ll use to deem something a winner. Additionally, your team must give the test enough time to achieve that margin.

2) Keep it Simple

Many marketers make the mistake of changing multiple variables at once during creative testing. Narrow the focus of the test to one specific variable at a time. If you have too many variables, it is nearly impossible to identify which elements are driving results.

Just like the scientific research method, you need to select one specific variable and measure it against the control. Some elements you can test include: CTAs, headline copy, button color or copy, imagery and position of elements on a page.

3) Stay on brand

Testing should help improve and optimize existing branding and messaging, not replace it. The look and feel of the current brand should be clear, and the changes made during creative testing should align with the overall marketing strategy. New creative variations of the brand, such as a different button placement, is okay as long as it remains cohesive with the overall brand.

Pro Tip: Once you’ve identified variables that work well, update other creative based on the successful elements. This will help create consistency across all creative as well as optimize existing content for better performance.

Your creative testing isn’t done yet – learn other two creative testing tips on the Off Madison Ave blog.

Founded in 1998, Off Madison Ave is a full-service marketing communications firm located in Phoenix, Arizona. Off Madison Ave’s philosophy “Outthink. Outperform.” is powered by behavior design, an approach used by some of the most successful companies in the world to strategically and thoughtfully influence human behavior. The firm specializes in interactive marketing, new media, public relations, branding, media planning, advertising, and market research and strategies.