Consumer behavior and ad platform algorithms never stop evolving. What drove engagement and conversions last month might not move the needle today. To keep your campaigns effective and your strategies sharp, you’ll need more than intuition—you’ll also need a repeatable, data-driven approach to testing creative at scale. At Tuff, we specialize in growth marketing, and our proven framework for creative testing is designed to deliver insights that translate directly into revenue.

The Strategic Value of Creative Testing

For growth-minded marketing teams, creative testing isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. With millions of dollars at stake, every creative decision must be validated through data. Our method of testing empowers your team to identify what truly works and double down on strategies that yield the best return on investment. In an era where marketing budgets are scrutinized more than ever, creative testing ensures that your spend isn’t just well-allocated—it’s optimized.

By investing in a robust creative testing framework, marketing teams can achieve more efficient ad spend, improved campaign performance, and a deeper understanding of what drives their audience to action.

How to Build a Scalable Creative Testing Framework

We know your marketing ecosystem is complex. Managing diverse campaigns, handling significant budgets, and meeting the expectations of stakeholders demands a sophisticated approach. At Tuff, we’ve developed a streamlined testing framework that delivers clarity and impact. Here’s how you can put it into action.

Step 1: Conduct Research and Develop a Hypothesis 🔬

Your first step isn’t launching ads—it’s analyzing data. Dive deep into historical performance to identify patterns and opportunities. What type of imagery has historically driven the highest click-through rates? Does a specific message style or call-to-action consistently outperform others?

🙇 Example from Tuff: When we reviewed performance data for a B2B SaaS client, we found that ads featuring real employees, particularly the founder, had 35% higher engagement compared to more product-centric visuals. This led us to a hypothesis: “If we feature the founder prominently in our creative, we’ll see an uptick in click-through rates and conversions.” From there, we developed a series of ad variations to put this theory to the test.

The stronger your hypothesis, the more actionable your insights. At Tuff, we never base hypotheses on guesswork—only on concrete data.

Step 2: Define Crystal-Clear Success Metrics

Before you even think about running your test, lock down your metrics. Which KPIs will you use to determine whether a creative variation is a success or failure? For our campaigns, we often look at metrics like CTR, conversion rate, CPA, and return on ad spend (ROAS).

🙇 Example: In the founder-focused campaign, we zeroed in on CTR and volume of conversions as our North Star metrics. We set historical benchmarks to understand whether our creative was an incremental improvement or a game-changer.

Tip: Don’t get lost in the data. Focus on metrics that directly impact your bottom line. This keeps your creative analysis relevant and actionable.

Step 3: Address Critical Questions Before Execution

A well-executed test starts with answering these foundational questions:

1. How Much Budget Should You Allocate? For large-scale testing, dedicate 10-15% of your total monthly ad budget to experimentation. This budget gives you the bandwidth to test multiple creative concepts without sacrificing the performance of your primary campaigns.
2. How Long Should the Test Run? The duration depends on the size of your audience and the budget. Large audiences paired with significant budgets can yield statistically significant data in 7-10 days. Niche audiences may require a full two weeks.
3. Which Audience Should You Target? Choose a top-performing, upper-funnel audience for faster, more reliable data. This approach not only speeds up your learning but ensures you’re testing on an audience segment that matters.

Marketers need to move quickly but thoughtfully. Making informed decisions about budget and audience can make or break the success of your test.

Step 4: Build a Well-Structured Campaign for Reliable Data

At scale, even small inefficiencies can lead to big problems. Here’s how to set up your campaign for maximum clarity:

1. Create a Dedicated Campaign: House all creative variations within one campaign to control variables and simplify your reporting.
2. Configure Ad Sets Thoughtfully: Each ad set should represent one variation. Distribute your budget evenly to ensure a fair test. This prevents any single creative from dominating the budget and skewing results.
3. Leverage Advanced A/B Testing Tools: Meta’s A/B testing feature is a game-changer. It divides your audience evenly and prevents overlap, ensuring each creative variation gets equal exposure. The cleaner your data, the more confident you can be in your conclusions.

Clean, unbiased data leads to clear, actionable insights. Our structured approach ensures that you’re not just gathering data—you’re gathering the right data.

Step 5: Analyze the Results with Precision

Once your test has run its course, it’s time to dig into the metrics. Did your winning creative truly outperform the others? Are the results statistically significant, or could they be due to chance?

🙇 Example Results: In the founder-focused campaign, we observed a 23% lift in CTR and an 18% increase in conversions compared to the next best variation. Compared to our historical benchmarks, this winning creative also delivered a 9% reduction in CPA. The data was clear: Founder-led visuals resonate deeply with our audience and drive more profitable results.
Don’t just celebrate your wins. Document why they worked and consider how to scale these learnings across your entire marketing operation.

Step 6: Document Findings and Make Optimization Ongoing

Your testing doesn’t end once you have a winner. To keep improving, treat each test as a learning opportunity. Document what worked, what didn’t, and why. Share these insights across teams to build a knowledge base that can inform future campaigns.

Make optimization a habit. At Tuff, we regularly revisit our creative strategy, using new data to inform our next round of testing. This cycle of continuous improvement keeps our clients ahead of the curve.

Navigating Challenges in Creative Testing

Even with a solid plan, testing at scale comes with hurdles. Here’s how to address common obstacles:

1. Stakeholder Alignment: Big campaigns often involve multiple stakeholders, so it’s important to align on what we want to learn before testing begins. Are we validating messaging, testing new creative formats, or exploring audience behavior? Clear goals at the start help everyone understand why strategies and briefs are set up a certain way. Use simple reporting tools to keep communication transparent and show how the data connects to those goals.
2. Data Fatigue: Analyzing vast amounts of data can be overwhelming. Simplify your focus to a few key metrics that matter most to your business objectives.
3. Audience Overlap and Fatigue: Avoid overexposing the same audience to multiple variations. Rotate your creative regularly to keep content fresh and engaging.

Tuff’s Approach: We use segmentation strategies and rotate creative frequently to avoid fatigue while keeping messaging aligned with campaign goals.

Scaling Insights Across the Org

Once you’ve nailed down what works, it’s time to scale. Apply successful creative elements to different campaigns, regions, or even departments. Share your wins and learnings broadly to maximize their impact.

🙇 Scaling Example: We worked with a global retail brand to expand a winning social media campaign into email and paid search. By maintaining consistent messaging and visuals, the brand experienced a 15% lift in overall campaign performance.

Elevate Your Creative Testing for Growth

We believe that strategic, data-driven creative testing is the key to unlocking your marketing team’s full potential. Our framework is designed to maximize efficiency, deliver insights that drive growth, and make sure every dollar of your ad budget is working for you. If you’re ready to transform how you approach creative, let’s talk. Tuff is here to help you scale smarter and faster.

Book a call with us!

The post Creative Testing at Scale: A Framework for Marketing Leaders appeared first on Tuff.

With attention spans shortening and the fast-paced world of social media speeding up, figuring out what type of marketing works for your audience can be tricky. As a growth marketing agency, we dissect all sorts of data points every day to single out which metric(s) will tell us what we need to know. The more specific we can get, the easier it is to improve what we have and plan out what we need. 

Growth on TikTok is a new marketing tactic for many businesses. Determining 1) whether the platform works for your business (and if you’ll find your target audience there), and 2) what kind of content they want to see, can be very difficult in the beginning. That’s where ad hook rates come in. 

Ad hook rates (AKA thumb stop rates) are vital to benchmarking success on TikTok. They’re a reliable way to evaluate video performance and whether your ads actually stop thumbs from scrolling past them. Calculated by 2 second video views divided by impressions, it is a key indicator of what’s successfully capturing your audience’s attention.

Ad Hook Rate = 2-Second Video Views / Impressions

Think of it like this: Of all the people who were presented with your video ad, what percentage of them stuck around for at least 2 seconds? The first few seconds of an ad are really what determines whether someone will give you their attention at all, making the “hook” arguably the most important part. We consistently see that raising the ad hook rate improves the rest of the performance metrics. So the more people who stick around for 2+ seconds, the more people will watch the full ad, click, and eventually, convert. Here’s what that looks like.

Ad Hook Rate in Action

In order to better understand TikTok ad creative performance, we took a 6-month look (January 1 – June 30, 2022) across 11 TikTok accounts we manage. The average ad hook rate across accounts was 30.66%, with several in the 40% to 45% range. This means that for most partners, less than a third of the people who saw their ad watched the video for 2 seconds or more. 

After taking a deeper dive into the accounts that had the highest ad hook rates, we noticed some interesting trends. 

Insight: Client 1 was able to get the main message of who they are and what they do across within the first 2 seconds of the video. See an excellent example of this here.

What to do: Test, test, test! Testing the same video concept with slight tweaks helped Client 1 find the best version of their ad (AKA what was resonating the most with potential clients). In this instance, we found that user generated content worked better than stock video.  After analyzing hook rates further, we also were able to determine that videos that proposed a question to draw in users had better hook rates compared to other video concepts that were more drawn out in getting their message across.

Insight: Client 2 utilized trending music and saw significantly higher hook rates in their video ads by doing so. Videos that used stock background music or even no music at all had significantly lower hook rates. Check out an example here.

What to do: Stay up to date with what’s trending on the TikTok platform. A study done by SEMrush found that “more than half of viral TikTok videos used music as their primary backing sound in the first three seconds.” The addition of trendy music to your video ads help draw potential customers in and keep them engaged throughout the remainder of the video.

Insight: Client 3 found success with the use of text overlays and voiceovers. Right at the start of the video, it got the attention of their audience and brought them on a “journey” through their product. See this storytelling journey in action here.

What to do: By using text overlays and a voiceover, the audience could see and hear the full user journey. Create an engaging journey that draws the audience in and makes them want to continue watching until the end. 

What This Means for TikTok Ad Creative 

In the digital world of social advertising, using key metrics like ad hook rate can be an incredibly useful tool to take your marketing strategy to the next level. Utilizing this simple metric can give you a better idea of what content resonates with your audience the most, helping you create an effective creative strategy and ultimately increase performance in the long run. If TikTok is something you are interested in (or struggling with), reach out and talk to us!

The post Benchmarking TikTok Video Ad Hook Rates appeared first on Tuff.

We sometimes get questions about how other clients work with Tuff to reach their growth goals — so we’re sharing some stories to help bring our services to life.

Author’s note: This post was originally published in 2018, it has since been updated for 2022! 

Thnks is a platform designed to help users build business relationships by sending thoughtful gestures of appreciation. With a curated catalog of gifts, personalized messages, and more, Thnks is helping sales organizations, marketing groups, customer success teams, and more grow their business.

Why Thnks Tapped Into Paid Social Acquisition

Any company looking to grow through paid social has to consider a few things before getting started.

First, you have to work towards building your audience in the right channel. Secondly, understand that it takes time.

Scaling growth requires you to be rigorous about the channels you experiment with in the early stages of your business. It might seem easy to find one right away and then dump all your money into that one tactic but that almost never happens. Testing, analyzing, and optimizing is a great three-prong approach to finding the recipe for success.

We found the most success with user acquisition for Thnks with social ads, specifically Facebook. With a wide range of targeting options to help businesses find the right niche to reach their target audience,  Facebook ads can be a highly cost-effective channel for customer acquisition. We launched Facebook and Instagram campaigns with highly specific interest and demographic targeting with ads that were relevant to those audiences. Our goal was to help grow overall user growth, while also finding efficiencies along the way. 

The Three-Step Process

Step 1: Conduct user research and identify key audiences to target

Figuring out the right targeting is key to reaching the audiences most likely to convert. As an agency, you can lean on your client’s customer-facing team members. If you’re in-house, partner with your support team to learn more about your customers and their goals and interests. This background information is vital in crafting audiences that can attract and convert your target customer.

For our core audiences, we relied heavily on interest and demographic targeting. Knowing that sales and human resources are Thnks primary customers and highest converters, we did testing of different variations of demographic and interest targeting to create the perfect mix of both to find the ideal audiences. In addition to core interest- and demographic-based audiences, we also built out lookalike audiences using website traffic, used existing customer email lists as well as leveraged pixel data from our ads, and created lookalike audiences of people who successfully submitted leads or interacted with our ads.

Step 2: Develop custom creative for each audience

Once we were confident that our targeting options were set up to attract the right audience, we then had to look at the end product–the ads. Knowing that we were going to be targeting specific people in the sales and human resource fields, we needed to build ad creative and copy that spoke to those people.

The major difference between the two ad designs is that the sales creative relates to people in that specific role that are looking to prospect new clients and close deals. The human resource ad calls out use cases for people in the role to “welcome new employees”, keep current employees happy, and show them you care. These differences may not seem like a lot at first, but speaking directly to these audiences with this messaging showed an immediate lift in performance. 

Step 3: Analyze and improve

Looking back on your data and analyzing results is one of the most important steps of the whole process. Figuring out what is and isn’t working is the first step to being able to scale and grow users. Through this process, we were able to scale what was working and optimize away from what was not. As a result, we were able to scale Thnks users by 81% in just 30 days.

Sales Audience Growth:

Human Resource Audience Growth:

At the end of the day, there really is no secret sauce to finding success through paid acquisition.

It’s only with meticulous research on your target audiences, testing different creative and ad copy, and analyzing and optimizing based on your data you can find success. Growth is a journey, not an overnight magic trick. 

The post How To Scale User Growth Using Facebook Ads appeared first on Tuff.

Author’s Note: This post was updated on March 13, 2023, with updated data, resources, and templates for you to use. 

It is a simple truth that success in business requires success in advertising. As businesses evolve and learn to operate and diversify their channel mix, growth marketing becomes more important with each passing day. As a growth marketing agency, it is our job to test new channels with clear metrics, kill ones that do not work and scale up the channels that do. 

For many business owners, online advertising begins and ends with Google Ads and Facebook Ads. While LinkedIn Ads typically cost more, savvy businesses recognize the specialized benefits this platform offers.

If you need a new channel to generate leads and traffic, LinkedIn can present the ideal solution. With a reach of 900 million unique users, and a 5% growth rate in the 3 months leading up to January of 2023, Linkedin is one of the largest social media platforms. If you work in the B2B space, LinkedIn offers a goldmine of potential customers. According to data collected in 2022, Linkedin is the most used organic social media platform for B2B marketers at 96%.

LinkedIn Ads Cost: Is It Worth It?

Though LinkedIn stands as a juggernaut in the world of B2B commerce, its advertising opportunities can provide clear benefits for companies of all shapes and sizes. Whether you own or market for a university, nonprofit, or another type of organization, you can utilize LinkedIn for targeted goals to achieve success. 

Also, keep in mind that the ROI on your LinkedIn Ads cost is not only apparent in new customers, but also in potential employees. Any savvy business owner knows that finding the right applicant is less about dangling a hook, and more about finding the right spot and casting a net.

That said, B2B companies do represent the standard candidates for LinkedIn advertising. Before you commit resources to the platform, ask yourself whether a career-minded professional would have an interest in your service, product, or offer. If your answer is “yes,” then LinkedIn likely offers a good avenue for you to follow. 

Remember, people join and engage with LinkedIn to further their careers, network with other professionals, establish business contacts, and find new jobs. Whatever your offer or message, it needs to appeal to people engaged in these activities. 

How Do LinkedIn Ads Work?

Though LinkedIn advertisements do not appear as obvious as ads through other platforms, an engaged user will encounter them on a daily basis. As typical with online advertising, LinkedIn Ads cost different amounts and exist in different forms. If you decide to advertise on this platform, you can choose between Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, Text Ads and Dynamic Ads.

Sponsored Content

The native advertisements users see most frequently, Sponsored Content operates on the LinkedIn Ads cost-bidding structure to surface in users’ news feeds. When it appears, a piece of Sponsored Content will look similar to any typical LinkedIn post. You can create Sponsored Content in a few different formats. 

Single image ads are typical feed ads composed of a single image paired with some text. A video ad allows you to substitute a short clip for the static image. Lastly, carousel ads consist of a swipeable series of images that allow advertisers to tell a story, display multiple offers, or provide an audience with business insights.

Some example of what sponsored content looks like👇

Sponsored Messaging

With Sponsored Messaging, you use LinkedIn Messaging to send advertisements to specified prospects. This program only targets people who engage with LinkedIn frequently. It also comes with delivery caps that increase the chance your messages actually get read. With the use of dynamic fields your message can pull in the person’s first and last name to make the ad feel more personal. Sponsored Messaging is ideal for a few types of goals, including:

• Reach your audience in a personalized way
• Keep potential clients engaged to drive qualified results
• Accelerate your lead pipeline

In addition to your unique goals, you can also choose between two different messaging ad formats- Message ads and Conversation ads:

• Message ads: Drive stronger engagement and responses than traditional emails. Message ads also offer one call to action button.
• Conversation ads: Turn conversation into quality conversions. Conversation ads offer multiple call to action buttons that can link to specific landing pages or lead generation forms.

Examples of what a Sponsored Message ad would look like👇

Text Ads

Text ads appear on a desktop in LinkedIn’s right column area. You can choose between four formats for these ads: horizontal, long, tall, and square. With text ads, you can directly target a premium audience to derive top-quality leads. Text ads also allow for tight control of how much your LinkedIn Ads cost. For example, this type of ad has no contract or commitment requirement. You only pay for ads that work via clicks or impressions.

Examples of what a Text Ad would look like👇

These ads capture immediate attention with ads automatically personalized for the individual user. Dynamic ads feature a LinkedIn member’s own profile data, including company name, profile data, job title, a photo, and more. Thanks to automation, you can launch dynamic campaigns quickly with individually populated ads across the LinkedIn desktop. Dynamic ads are ideal for a few types of goals, including:

• Personalizing the experience for your audience members.
• Automated individual campaign at scale
• Customizable ads for the specific market objective you are looking to capture.

Examples of what a Dynamic Ad would look like👇

Document Ads

Document ads are one of the newest offerings from Linkedin. These ads offer a preview of a document and require a user to submit information in the form of a lead to unlock the full document. Since a Linkedin user’s profile contains all of their professional information, the lead form fields will be automatically populated from the user’s profile.  

The document (in PDF, PPT, PPTX, DOC or DOCX formats) can be an E-book, a white paper, a guide or case study. The goal behind this ad format is to capture the interest of your audience while also educating them further on what the awesome capabilities your company has to offer. 

The cherry on top is the valuable information you received to follow up with the potential prospect who has expressed interest in your Document ad – For a more in depth dive into Document ads check out this blog here!

Examples of what a Document Ad would look like👇

What Is the LinkedIn Ads Cost Breakdown?

With LinkedIn, you customize the amount you spend and bid on ads. This means that LinkedIn Ads cost different amounts from campaign to campaign. Typically, advertisers on Linkedin pay an average price of $5.26 for every click. 

LinkedIn requires a minimum bid of $2 for CPC and cost-per-impression (CPM) campaigns. This results in averages of $5.26 for the clicks and $6.59 for every 1000 impressions your ads generate. Sponsored InMail presents the most expensive option, with an average of around $.80 for each send in the campaign.

Your actual LinkedIn Ads cost will depend on three factors.

Target Audience

Advertising on LinkedIn centers on competition between advertisers for a target audience. If you want to go after a high-demand audience, you will pay more for your advertising campaign. There are two reasons for this: the audience’s perceived value, along with the number of competitors for their attention.

Bid Amount

Of course, the amount of your bid also influences your LinkedIn Ads cost. Though you will never pay higher than your bid amount, you will pay some percentage of it. This occurs because LinkedIn’s advertising auctions require the winner to pay one cent more than the runner-up bid.

Ad Relevance Scores

The relevance and value of your ad plays a huge factor in your LinkedIn Ads cost. If you achieve a high score in regards to ad relevance, your expenses will actually decrease. This occurs because LinkedIn actively wants to provide engaging content to its users.

Your Budget and Bidding Options

Advertisers on LinkedIn have three options for the control of an advertising budget.

Total Budget: You set a total budget for the entire ad campaign. This works best for those who want to quickly deliver a campaign for a set amount of money. The minimum you can spend is $10 per campaign.

Daily Budget: Another type of budget with a $10 minimum, the daily budget suits those who want to design a campaign that runs on a continuous basis. Daily budgets give you more freedom when looking to scale up  campaigns. With a daily budget you can scale campaigns without interrupting performance. Whereas with a total budget you will have to duplicate your campaign to adjust budgets. This will send the campaigns back into the learning phase, and kill any momentum your campaign had.

Setting Bids: As discussed above, setting a bid means that you identify the maximum amount you will spend for impressions, clicks, or sends. You will never pay more than your bid. For this option, LinkedIn has established a $2 minimum for every click.

You have three options when you bid for LinkedIn Ads. The first is cost-per-click (CPC). This means that you pay when users click on your ad. If you want to drive traffic to a website or generate leads, this presents a great bidding option.

Cost-per-impression (CPM) ads are the second bidding option. With these, you spend money each time your ad generates 1000 impressions. An impression means that someone has seen your ad, but not necessarily interacted with it. This bidding option typically appeals to companies who want to increase brand awareness.

The final bidding option, cost-per-send (CPS) applies only to those engaged with Sponsored InMail. When you bid CPS, you set the maximum price you will pay for every user that receives your Sponsored InMail advertisement. Since this lands advertising directly in a user’s mailbox, it works best for companies who wish to target specific users with a product or service.

How Do LinkedIn Ads Compare to Other Platforms?

Put simply, LinkedIn Ads cost more than advertising on other platforms. For example, one study showed that the median CPC for Facebook Ads comes in at $0.97. The same study pinned LinkedIn at $5.26 CPC. Though this represents nearly a 10x multiplier, however, the leads found through LinkedIn tend to generate much more value. 

In addition to higher-quality leads and a better ROI, Linkedin converts at an astonishingly high rate compared to competitors. A recent Hubspot study showed, LinkedIn site visitors’ conversion rate is 277% higher than other competitors. If you operate in B2B sales or an industry that targets high-value professionals, these lucrative, quality conversions are exactly what you want. 

As for Google Ads, LinkedIn again proves its superiority for more targeted, niche marketing. In terms of costs, Google Ads cost between $1 and $2. However, this price can increase a great deal if you need to compete for popular keywords. Google Ads is also best utilized for intent-driven searches. This means that it delivers ads to users who search for a specific thing. 

LinkedIn, on the other hand, can catch people before they have shown intent. In other words, with LinkedIn, you can target potential consumers before they know they need your services or products. Since you establish audience criteria as part of your campaign, you benefit from refined targeting that exposes your business to entirely new markets.

Though LinkedIn Ads cost more than other social media outlets, they stand out on the strength of their audience. Furthermore, LinkedIn’s unrivaled options for specific targeting make each of its ad formats highly effective investments. No one wants to feel as if their advertising budget has gone to waste. If you know your market and are willing to spend some money, LinkedIn Ads will not disappoint!

The post How Much Do LinkedIn Ads Cost In 2023? appeared first on Tuff.