Welcome to our AMA with Adam Fricke, our Head of Creative at Tuff. 

Adam leads our Performance Creative team, collaborating closely with our media team, designers, animators, and UX copywriters. With his expertise, he’s spearheaded creative strategy and testing for numerous early-stage startups and scaleups. His focus? Enhancing media results, cutting down on customer acquisition costs, pinpointing value propositions, and most importantly, crafting ad creatives that drive real conversions.

Below, Adam talks about winning ad creative, creative testing, and how to make the most of your budgets. 

Why do you think there’s a surge in businesses, ranging from multi-million dollar established brands to small startups, seeking assistance with creative testing lately?

It’s easy to spend your budget on reaching the right audience with the wrong message. Here’s why:

1. Marketing and advertising are more accessible now, with more businesses vying for consumer attention. Standing out is tougher than ever, so it’s crucial to keep refining your advertising strategies.
2. Consumer behaviors change constantly, especially with tech advancements and cultural shifts. What worked yesterday might not work today. Creative testing helps businesses keep up by figuring out which ad creatives connect best with their audience.

Whether you’re new to paid ads or a big spender, performance creative is key for getting results.

How can a business determine whether investing in creative testing is worth it or not? 

Creative testing can really boost your ad results, but it’s crucial to weigh the investment. We use this performance creative ROI calculator to gauge if it’s right for your marketing budget. Typically, if you see a 5-10% improvement in CPA, performance creative becomes a powerful growth tool.

On a broader scale, every business should think about the consequences of skipping creative testing. In today’s fast-moving digital world, staying stagnant means falling behind. Neglecting creative testing risks losing relevance, market share, and ultimately, revenue. It’s not just about short-term gains; it’s about future-proofing your strategy for long-term success.

Is there a notable difference in the approach to creative testing between early-stage startups and well-established brands? Or do they follow similar methods?

For early-stage startups, stretching tight budgets means they have to be smart about creative testing. They should focus on lean and agile methods like A/B testing and quick changes to find winning ad ideas without spending too much. Getting creative right is super important for ad success, but the lessons learned can also improve messaging and product promotion across all marketing, like on websites and in emails. As a startup marketing agency, we’re pros at testing different messages to find what works best for your brand.

Big brands usually know their products and market really well. For them, using performance-focused ad creative helps make every ad dollar count.

Whether you’re just starting out or already a big name, using data and trying out new ideas in your ads can pay off big time. Stay flexible, keep learning, and focus on getting better, not being perfect. That’s the way forward for everyone.

What would you say to a company that believes “any creative will do?”

Good ad creative isn’t just about showing off what you’re selling. It’s about telling a story that grabs people, makes them feel something, and really connects with them. When your creative is spot on, it can grab attention, make people love your brand, and get them to do what you want, like clicking or buying.

Testing out different creatives is key. It helps you figure out what really clicks with your audience so you can tweak your message, images, and overall strategy to make the biggest impact possible.

In what ways can effective creative testing contribute to the overall success of a business, regardless of its size or industry?

• Better bang for your buck: When businesses find and fine-tune top-performing ad creatives, they get more out of their ad money, scoring a higher return on investment.
• Brand boost (and more loyal customers): Great ad creatives help businesses build a shiny brand image and connect better with their audience. That means happier, more loyal customers who spread the word.
• More sales: Testing out different creative bits like what you say, show, and ask for can uncover the magic combo that gets people to buy.
• Get to know your audience: Creative testing clues businesses in on what their customers like, do, and need. That means they can tailor their messages and pictures to hit the sweet spot.
• Smooth sailing for customers: When businesses match their ad creatives to each step of the customer journey, it’s like rolling out the red carpet. Customers love it, getting involved more and feeling happier overall.

Want to connect with Adam? Shoot him a message on LinkedIn. You can also see some of the cool stuff his team’s been up to in our performance creative guide or check out examples in our Ad Library here. Happy browsing!

Ellen Jantsch

Ellen is the founder at Tuff and one of the team’s core growth marketers. She is a versatile marketer with expertise in multiple channels – from ppc to seo to email to others – responsible for the experiments and testing.  She is happiest when she’s on the ski hill or outside pointing her mountain bike downhill.

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With the rise of AI and other tech tools, creating content quickly and affordably has become more accessible than ever. But here’s the kicker: is all this content actually making an impact?

At Tuff, we’re embracing AI across our creative process, from testing multiple variations swiftly to streamlining everything from concepting to final assets. This not only allows us to pass savings to our clients but also enables us to serve our clients faster and more efficiently, without compromising on quality.

However, there’s one crucial piece that can’t be overlooked: a solid creative strategy. Without it, your content won’t consistently engage your audience or drive revenue, no matter how much you produce or how efficient the process is. Sure, AI has improved our creative process and outputs, but without a strong creative strategy, success can still elude us.

In this post, I want to dive into why we believe that authentic, low-fi assets can actually outperform their slicker counterparts when it comes to developing ad creative that will  maximize your media dollars.

The Cost of Playing it Safe

As organic reach declines, the natural response is to pump out more content faster and cheaper to increase your chances of being seen. Doubling down on paid media often goes hand in hand with this approach. But the reality is that pouring resources into run-of-the-mill content doesn’t necessarily lead to revenue. It just drives your waves of messages into a sea of sameness, regardless of your audience targeting and budget. 

In crowded online (and offline) spaces, generic content blends into the background making standing out tougher than ever. At Tuff, we’ve seen firsthand the power of breaking the mold.

The Rise of Authenticity

One of the most exciting content trend developments we’re seeing is in B2B marketing. Influencers and user-generated content (UGC), once reserved for consumer brands, are now becoming staples in B2B creative. Why? Because behind every business is a human decision maker who responds to visuals and messaging just like you would. In a space flooded with charts, graphs, jargon, and salesy buzzwords, it’s genuine human connection that stands out. By partnering with influencers and content creators to embrace UGC, B2B brands can build trust and connect with their audience in meaningful ways.

B2B Ads With Personality: A Case Study with goHappy

Let me give you a very specific example using one of our existing clients, goHappy. Rather than sticking static assets, we decided to level up by collaborating with a content creator to test a couple of user-generated videos tailored specifically to their audience. Our main priorities with these assets were nailing the messaging and ensuring standout creative design.

• Strategic Messaging: By utilizing goHappy’s persona research and applying insights gleaned from our previous message testing results, we had a solid head start in understanding what types of tedious HR tasks our audience struggles with and some of the language they’re responding to in ads. We also knew that the average HR manager appreciates work related humor, so video scripts were written with some spicy HR memes in mind.
• Creative Design: Nothing humanizes HR like adding some personality. We turned to a UGC content creator marketplace called Twirl to help source a creator that would deliver our scripts in an engaging way. (Our creator, Amanda, even has HR experience, so we knew it was a perfect match!) From there, the Tuff motion team added gifs, goHappy branded motion graphics, and sound effects to her footage to bring additional life to the videos.

The results speak for themselves. After introducing the following 3 video assets to our LinkedIn ad creative mix, we were able to improve goHappy’s CPL by 34% in just 30 days.

Putting People First: Practical Steps for Your Strategy

Now, goHappy is just a single example, and there are numerous ways to infuse your ad creative with a human touch and authenticity. Here are some practical tips, based on what we’ve seen work across our client accounts, that you can start implementing today:

1. Know Your Audience: Dive deep into who your audience is and what their day-to-day struggles are. Aim to help them solve their problems, not sell them your platform. Lean into value propositions, customer research, and agile message testing to determine what your customers care about and how to get their attention. Create Intentionally: Consider the most impactful ways to get your message across to your audience. If it’s a quick message, a static graphic is great. If it requires some explanation, video is your friend. Keep in mind that your viewer is always a human, even in B2B.
2. Test and Learn: Experiment with different approaches and learn from what works (and what doesn’t). As long as you have a creative testing framework, no under-performing content is wasteful. A nimble approach allows you to adapt and evolve your strategy over time.
3. Embrace Technology: Use tools and automation to streamline your content production process. This gives you more time for strategic thinking and ensures your messaging stays human-centric. Currently, we’re finding great support from tools like Envato, Stocksy, Adobe Stock, Pexels, Unsplash, and Artlist.io.

By prioritizing a people-first approach and embracing a nimble testing strategy, you can create content that stands out and drives real results. Whether you’re a big brand or a scrappy startup, these insights apply to businesses of all sizes. By putting people at the heart of your strategy, you can cut through the noise and make meaningful connections that drive growth.

The post Authenticity: A Critical Component for Effective Ad Creative in the AI Era appeared first on Tuff.

Gone are the days when generic, one-size-fits-all advertising and ad creative works for businesses. Today’s consumers demand personalization and relevant messaging that resonates with them. As the amount of data and ad clutter grows, it can be difficult to break through the noise. You have to resonate with your target consumer in a way that makes them feel less like a consumer and more like a…person.

But deploying personalized marketing strategies at scale can seem daunting, if not impossible. Especially when you’re spending thousands of dollars across multiple channels where user behaviors differ drastically.

This is where performance creative comes in. Brands can and should build interconnected creative strategies across multiple paid media channels. The ultimate goal is to prioritize creative resources on the ad archetypes you know work. In this post, we’ll explore what performance creative is, how it works, and why it’s essential for modern marketing.

Know your ad creative audience

Effective performance creative starts with a deep understanding of your target audience. Collecting demographic data on your audience is table stakes–for performance creative to be effective, you have to understand the psychographics that drive purchase decisions.

What are your audience’s pain points? How does your product or service solve them? What motivates your audience to take the action you desire? Why might your audience choose you over a competitor? 

Audience research that’s actionable, not fluffy

Audience research can take many shapes and forms. At Tuff, we thrive with partners who have already validated product-market fit and are looking to scale. This normally means that our partners have already done the work to build out specific audience personas. We bolt on to really understand where those audiences live online, and which messages are most likely to drive the target audience to take action at different points throughout the funnel. Once we have thoroughly understood our partner’s audience and verified the existing data, the next step is to go deeper into their online presence and customer interactions. We believe in gathering insights from multiple sources to build a comprehensive understanding of the target audience.

Here’s how to further refine your audience research process:

• Verify website, social following, and ad channel demographic data. Sometimes, a brand’s target audience as outlined in an audience persona doc isn’t actually who’s visiting their site. Gut-check the data to see if there’s a discrepancy, and if there is, identify why.
• Speak with sales and customer success. To really know your audience, you have to build relationships with the folks on your team who interact with them the most. They have a constant feedback loop, with boots-on-the-ground access to discuss pain points, common challenges, and macro factors that impact purchase decisions.
• Research voice of the customer data. There are several social listening tools you can lean on for this kind of research. Most often, we tackle this at Tuff with scrappy, but effective Google Sheet templates. When we onboard a new partner, we conduct a VoC exercise, where we compile all of the online reviews about a product or service into one spreadsheet. Then, we identify common themes in those reviews and map that back to a larger messaging strategy.

By leveraging data and insights from deep audience research, you can create personalized ads that speak directly to your consumers’ needs and interests. Achieving this high level of personalization requires various strategies, like customized messaging, tailored imagery, and dynamic video content that adapts to user behavior across certain channels.

But the value prop you lean into for each audience persona might look different. How do you identify which messages drive the best results from upper to bottom-funnel campaign types? That’s when a strategic approach to creative testing comes into play. Let’s dive in.

Ad creative testing and optimization 

Personalization is just the beginning. Effective performance creative also involves testing and optimization. By measuring the performance of your ads and adjusting your strategy as needed, you can ensure that your creative resonates with your audience and drives results. 

This level of agility and responsiveness is essential in a rapidly changing advertising landscape, where even small tweaks to creative can have a significant impact on performance.

Take, for example, some of the work the Tuff team has done for Sabio, an online coding bootcamp based in LA. Our acquisition costs on Meta started to increase after making as many in-platform campaign optimizations as we could: testing new campaign events, rotating in fresh audiences, and testing bid cap strategies, just to name a few. 

Our Strategy

We pulled in our performance creative team to analyze historically top-performing ads and generate insights to inform a new round of ad creative for our campaigns, knowing that this was one of the last levers we could pull to improve performance on Meta. 

Note: This data has been altered for the purposes of this blog, but you get this gist.

The catch here? Sabio’s legal team had given feedback that our top-performing creative message for the past 15 months – “$100k Career” – was no longer compliant and we had to move away from that specific marketing claim.

Our team immediately dove into discovery and research to find new value props and ad archetypes that were just as likely to drive student applications. We did this by leaning into real student testimonials and in-platform creative trends.  

Results

By leaning into student testimonials, we were able to still use the top-performing salary value prop within legal requirements. Staying nimble with our creative strategy and capitalizing on trending TikTok sounds led to stronger results, even when the creative was also used on Meta.

Below you’ll see the results from Meta campaigns after we rotated in new creative at the beginning of May—Cost Per Application decreased by 66% and CPC decreased by 56%. That’s huge!

Cross-channel creative strategy

Performance creative offers a significant advantage: creating a cohesive brand experience across multiple channels. This approach capitalizes on variations in user behavior unique to each channel. We’ve found that similar messages drive the most efficient conversions across almost all channels. The design itself, on the other hand, should lean into differences in user behavior by channel. Touchpoints across display, LinkedIn, Meta, YouTube, and potentially even connected TV, come together to build a holistic marketing strategy that resonates with your target audience wherever they are.

Cross-channel performance creative for soona

Take soona for example. We deployed performance creative to support campaigns across several channels–LinkedIn, display, Pinterest, and Meta. We tested messages that accounted for differences in user preferences and behavior across channels. 

That’s why our team built a testing strategy that took one ad archetype and created variable versions that all spoke to the same value prop: the virtual photoshoot company that’s gone viral.

Performance creative is a powerful tool for optimizing ad spend. Use data to focus your advertising efforts on the channels and tactics that are most effective. Maximize ROI and drive higher performance. This level of precision is essential in a world where ad spend is more competitive and more expensive every year.

Interested in learning more about how Tuff can help build creative testing strategies for your business? Hit us up! 

Kristin Dick

Kristin is a senior growth marketer and COO at Tuff. After working in a variety of agency landscapes, Kristin found her way to Tuff to work with teams who make make marketing decisions rooted in data and tied to revenue growth. When she’s not building growth strategies or working with the Tuff team to improve our processes, you’ll find her chasing her two kiddos around the house or playing fetch with her dogs.

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We’ve written blogs about the key components that make up performance creative and how to utilize this type of creative to generate results and we’ve written blogs about how to use targeting platforms to build super segmented audiences. But how do you merge the two together to make sure that you’re targeting the right people with the right creative?

This is where the fun part comes in – figuring out how to differentiate different creative for each stage of the lifecycle and growth marketing funnel.

The marketing funnel – what is it?

For several of our partners, it’s a priority to differentiate their advertising strategy and marketing dollars by each stage of the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel outlines a customer’s journey and helps categorize where in their journey they fall into, which then dictates the best way to reach them, market to them, and nurture them. The most prevalent stages of the funnel are:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision/Purchase/Conversion

As a growth marketing agency, our role is to apply strategies across the entire funnel by implementing data-driven process for launching structured experiments to drive a specific behavior/action. While it’s definitely possible to create audiences that target each part of the funnel separately directly in certain ads platforms, such as LinkedIn where our targeting can get really granular, we also tend to see our partners find more success when they use account-based marketing (ABM) audience tools such as 6sense, DemandBase, and more. This allows them to truly find which companies make sense to reach depending on their level of engagement with the company already (for instance, if someone has never been touched by a company, they’d fall into the awareness stage; whereas if they have interacted with the company in one way or another, they’d fall into Consideration.

How do you determine the type of ad creative to show at each stage?

If you’re choosing to segment your audience targeting by stages of the marketing funnel, it’s in your best interest to also prioritize producing content and creative, especially will ABM creative- otherwise, you’ll be showing people who are at very different places in their buying journey the exact same ads and you won’t truly be tailoring to the way they’re thinking. 

When you’re looking to get in front of people who are higher in the marketing funnel at the Awareness stage, the goal is to show them inspiring ads that are simple and get the point of the company/service/product across pretty easily but also are inspiring and tap into their emotions to hook them to learn more, thus journeying down the funnel. Once a person is in the Consideration stage, it’s important to begin to lean on educational ads – sometimes this means you may need to expand your assets to include more robust content or landing pages where you can provide more information with more time to explain. Finally, you want to leverage persuasive assets that will drive home that decision once a person is in the Decision stage. A good way to look at it is:

Inspire → educate → persuade 

It makes sense once you start to think more about it, right? But the hard part is what parts of an ABM creative asset can be customized to speak to that part of the funnel? 

Creative aspects to differentiate for each part of the funnel

For our partner, Multiverse, who designs and manages apprenticeship programs for US and UK-based companies, we were tasked with strategizing and executing their B2B efforts targeted to companies who would be interested in hiring Multiverse to create programs for them. Last year, we had a brainstorming session to chat through the particular companies/personas that fall into each stage of the funnel for them, and how they were looking to market to them. We took a look at a variety of aspects:

1. Content

You may hear the phrase “content is king 👑” quite often, and this is especially true when it comes to B2B marketing, and even more true when it comes to the main social ads platform we leverage with Multiverse – LinkedIn. No matter what stage of the funnel, content is extremely valuable for anyone in their journey with a business, but it’s really important to be intentional about the type of content you promote to each stage. For the Awareness stage, where people are just looking to learn about a company and gain more information, content is a huge incentive for them to engage. Therefore, we lean on gated content, whether that be directly gated in-platform or gated behind a landing page where people can learn even more information before submitting their information. Even once someone travels down the funnel toward Decision, content is still valuable and worth utilizing, and you’ll want to make sure you’re choosing content that is even more helpful to people who are about ready to make a decision in their buying journey.

2. Messaging

Arguably one of the most important parts of an ad is the strategic messaging behind it as this dictates the ad copy used and the text overlay in the creative, both of which make up the entire ad itself that people are seeing. When it comes to the Awareness stage, we like to lean on educational and informational messaging that will help someone brand new to the company get a general idea of what the company does or offers. For those in the Consideration stage, messaging that offers more specific selling points is useful. And finally, for those in the Decision stage, messages that are relevant to the journey this audience has already been through that will help bring the sale home are necessary.

For Multiverse, we came up with the following value propositions for each stage of the funnel as follows:

• Awareness = educational and informational about what Multiverse does and how it can solve a problem for a company
  • “Compete for the same pool of talent with other big tech companies”
  • “Create your OWN talent”
  • “Is outsourcing the best option for you? You can cultivate your own talent development in-house!”
• Consideration = more specific selling points
  • “Customized curriculum”
  • “Time and efficiency with value”
  • “Coaching support”
• Decision = relevant messages to bring the sale home
  • “Sense of urgency in solving problems in today’s economic climate”
  • “Avoid burnout of your current team and foster retention”
  • “Other companies are getting ahead of this and you should too”

3. Call-to-actions (CTAs) 

While they may be considered part of the messaging, call-to-actions are another way to personalize and differentiate an ad to a particular audience who is in a particular stage in the funnel. CTAs are easy to get to stick out too because you can make them pop on a creative asset but also, most platforms offer a button to customize with CTA text or you can choose from a drop-down of options. 

Keeping in mind the stage of the funnel the audience you’re targeting is in will help you make sure that you’re showing them the CTA that makes the most sense to them. The higher in the funnel they are (the newer in the journey), the softer the CTA. The further-down-the-funnel, the harder the CTA. Here are the CTAs we’ve rotated between for Multiverse:

• Awareness: get in touch, learn more, see how, discover
• Consideration: learn more, book a call today, see how
• Decision: let’s talk, get started

Real-life results from Multiverse

We began testing this “creative by lifecycle stage” approach with Multiverse’s audience segments, which were targeting companies that were likely to have needs for data apprenticeship programs based on the nature of their products or services. Our creative team designed 3 concepts for each stage of the funnel. Here is the top-performing concept from each of those stages in terms of click-through rate:

When looking at two months of performance, the campaigns’ CTR are as follows:

• Awareness: 0.32%
• Consideration: 0.34%
• Decision: 0.41%

Right away, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that CTR increased from top of the funnel to bottom of the funnel, which can very much speak to the more tailored the messaging became and “harder” the CTAs were as we traveled down the funnel to the Decision creative.

How can you get started?

If this type of creative brainstorming and production sounds like something you need to tap into to make sure you’re approaching each stage of your funnel with the right ads, then take some time with your team that communicates with these audiences every day to see the type of messaging they resonate with and translate that exactly into the creative you’re serving to them. And, like we always say, the most important next step is to test, test, and test again!

The post Capture Demand and Visibility Across Customer Segments with Full-Funnel Message Testing appeared first on Tuff.

“Do you make creative?” This is the question (that we got over and over again) that planted the seed that eventually bloomed into the creative department here at Tuff. 

But, it was a question that we considered carefully before taking the plunge. There are a handful of other growth marketing agencies out there making “performance creative” but we knew that if we were to treat creative as an extension of our growth marketing services, we needed to make sure that everything we made answered to one queen: data!

So, that’s just what we did. And over time, we’ve built, refined, and perfected our creative analysis template and we’re excited to share it with you. It’s designed to hold our creative accountable—a way for us to make sure we axe the assets that aren’t contributing to driving clicks or revenue for our partners. And, ultimately, build out a suite of creative for our partners that centers on the stickiest messaging and drives the best possible traffic towards conversion.

Here are the two templates we reference in this article: 

• Full Creative Analysis Spreadsheet
• High-Level Creative Analysis Worksheet

The Alternative: Slow-Moving & Expensive

Branding and creative-first agencies serve a definitively important purpose in the marketing world: a solid and cohesive brand has the power to instill trust and lay a great foundation. It’s also a powerful tool for building your employer brand. But, check out the H1 of our Creative page, and it’ll tell you everything you need to know about why our creative team is different: “Creative doesn’t have to be a production.” 

We decided to take creative into our own hands after we, quite simply, realized that most branding agencies don’t have the tools or the in-house expertise to measure the actual effectiveness of their creative. It’s worth saying that almost every creative agency we’ve worked with (or at!) has incredibly insightful and talented people on their teams. But oftentimes, our growth team would submit a request for effective ad creative and, weeks (and sometimes thousands of dollars later) we’d get a file full of creative that, once we deployed it, had variable performance. 

Additionally, with the rise of emerging platforms like TikTok, user generated content is consistently showing the results we’re looking for (case in point, one of our all-time favorite posts: ​​Got a Crappy iPhone Video? You’ve Got the Perfect Facebook Ad). And, simply, UGC is a creative format that most traditional creative agencies aren’t set up to produce. 

The Short List of Questions to Vett an Agency’s Ability to Produce Effective Ad Creative

• Do they measure the effectiveness of creative as a part of their process?
• Are they able to use data to justify their creative decisions?
• Are they invested in their creative actually driving measurable results for your business?
• Can they produce assets in a variety of formats?

Why We Do a Creative Analysis

Beyond simply knowing what kind of ads to make next, we perform a creative analysis once every four to six weeks and apply our learning to all other areas of our growth marketing strategy. When we can take a step back and identify patterns among our best-performing assets (like messaging, colors, imagery and even format type), we can extend our learnings to improve landing pages, email, and more.

One of our favorite tools we lean heavily on whenever we’re strategizing new messages to test or new creative to make is the Value Props worksheet. At the outset of every partnership, we’ll fill out this worksheet and, originally, use it as a level set to make sure that the ways we’re planning to articulate points of differentiation and value aligns with the expectations and insights of our partners’ teams. But, creative analysis exercises help us treat this as a living document; consistently tweaking and refining it to reflect the messaging that’s driven the absolute best results. 

Beyond making the creative objectively better, the creative analysis exercise is a tool we use to also keep us laser focused on our main goal: drive results for our partners. And, when we center data in all of our creative work, it keeps the full creative team ego-less and unified.

How We Do a Creative Analysis

This is where left brains and right brains unite! Here’s how we conduct a creative analysis step by step.

1. Pull the data

When analyzing results, there are a lot of variables to take into account. Depending on the objective of the campaign, we will pull different data points to check out performance. We look at Facebook for metrics like cost per link click, click-through rate and amount spent and then look deeper into user behavior in Google Analytics for metrics like time on site, bounce rate and pages/session. This is where organized naming conventions come in handy! When working in Google Analytics, we add a secondary dimension of the ad content and then use the advanced filter to look at the data by creative asset and audience. Not only is it crucial to look at creative performance but it is also crucial to understand audience performance and why certain messages resonated with certain people. 

If we are analyzing video content, we also take a peek at how much of the video users watched, when they dropped off and what the messaging was before. 

2. Analyze the findings

Sitting among a suite of growth marketing tactics and strategies, creative is its own unique beast. So, analyzing the data and coming away with insights that can incrementally improve results can be a bit of an imperfect science. Sometimes the results are obvious: like motion outperformed stills. But other times, the takeaways aren’t as clear.

This is where it helps to enlist a creative brain (or two) to take a step back, and check out the spread. Here, it’s all about finding distinct patterns/similarities among the top performers. While it’s not always comprehensive (and sometimes necessitates a deeper look) check out our quick list of questions we ask to help us compare the top performers with the underperformers:

Among the top performers…

• Which messages are featured? (Revisit the value props sheet here)
• What creative format do we see? (Carousels, videos, GIFs, etc)
• What kind of imagery do we see? (Lifestyle, illustrated, portraits, etc)
• Is there a color pattern? Is one brand color featured more prominently?
• Are there any other noticeable shared elements? (humor, testimonials, offers, etc)

3. Create a game plan for a fresh round

Here’s where it all comes together! Once you’ve got your list of findings and your full team (including your partners) are in general agreement about the patterns among the top and bottom performers, it’s time to outline a game plan for the next round.

Again, this is where it’s handy to have a creative brain on your team to synthesize all of these findings and create a fresh brief that lays the groundwork for new concepts and ideas that uplift what’s working, ditches what’s not, and introduces a few new ideas to layer on. Over time, and after a handful of these exercises, you’ll have a growing list of messaging, creative formats, imagery, colors, and other shared elements that you know are going to generate the results you want to see.  

Creative: It Can and SHOULD Bow to Data

If there’s one major takeaway from this article: there’s no room for creative egos when it comes to making ad creative that uplift growth marketing strategies. Even the most amazing, high-quality, expensive video can simply flop. And that stings. But instead of allocating more spend, trying new audiences, and trying to coerce some performance, sometimes (most often) the right course of action is to just scrap it and try something else! 

Ready to get ruthless with your creative and see real results? Let’s chat!

The post Bow Down to Data: How We Use Metrics to Dictate Creative (+ Creative Analysis Templates) appeared first on Tuff.

When balancing the main components of a growth marketing tactic (strategy + targeting + creative), there comes a time when many organizations find themselves in a chicken-and-egg scenario: which comes first? Is it the campaign strategy and targeting that should dictate creative? Or should great creative—backed by battle-tested value props and watertight messaging—lead the way into a strategy that can really bring it to life; serving it to the right people, and driving up conversion?

The short answer: it depends. (I know, I know).

In a perfect world, the world in which giants like Verison, Budweiser, Nike, and other Super-Bowl-ready players operate, there’s an endless well of data at the ready to inform all of the above. And you’d know what creative works best on which channel paired with which optimized audiences, etcetera, etcetera. But! If you’re here, you’re likely looking for a growth marketing agency that can operate with trim budgets, run efficient tests, and use scrappy creative to drive quick wins and set the stage for scaling. 

So, before we talk about creative, we’ll need to broach the topic: what kind of creative do you already have at your disposal? Your answer to this question might help you hone in on which channels are your best starting point. Here’s our quick guide:

Making the Most of Creative You Already Have

Before you jump headlong into creating a full new library of creative for the channels on which you’d like to run ads, revisit your existing assets with a fresh lens! How about that product shoot you shot last year? What’s left in the B-Roll folder? Revisit that brand video you commissioned for your sales team. Check in with your videographer to see if you might be able to snag some other shots out of his archives to repurpose instead of planning a full new shoot. 

Still Photography/Images:

• Suitable for: Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, Gmail Ads, Display Advertising, Email Marketing
• Make them ad-ready: Hire a freelance designer (we love UpWork) or get your own hands dirty with a drag-and-drop tool like Canva. Add simple on-image copy and your logo in an unobtrusive way so it’s super easy for a user to understand who you are and what you do in a flash. 

Owned assets (meaning images, illustrations, or other graphics that have been created specifically for your brand) are typically much more impactful and drive better results than stock photography. But, that doesn’t mean you should rule out stock! 

GIFs or Simple Motion

• Suitable for: Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Gmail Ads, Display Advertising, Email Marketing
• Make them ad-ready: Ensure your freelance designer from UpWork has the ability to accomplish simple animations in After Effects or a similar program. Canva also has some simple, easy-to-use motion templates as well. The same advice goes for GIFs or simple motion in your video — make sure it’s super easy for your audience to get the message. If possible, even keep the copy to 5 words or less. 

Super simple motion, like animated text flashing over a still image or a 3 second looping video almost always performs better than still imagery across all the above channels.

Video

• Suitable for: TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Gmail Ads (as longer as they’re under 30 seconds long)
• Make them ad-ready: Swing back by Upwork and find yourself a scrappy video editor that can help you recreate ad-ready assets. Ensure product placement (or super strong branded elements) appear within the first 3 seconds and that your video does not run longer than 30 seconds in length.

No matter if you’ve got a branded video, YouTube reviews, or a scrappy library of shot-on-iPhone video, it’s definitely worth splicing, dicing, resizing, and testing video against your still assets.  

🚨 Important! Before you start drawing up your strategy, investigating your targeting options, and setting aside budget, be sure to check out this Creative Ad Specs cheat sheet to make sure your files are large enough and are either in the right aspect ratio or can easily be reconfigured.

Pro tip: you’ll (likely) see better results quicker if—instead of creating brand-new creative—you instead focus on resizing your existing assets to fit each placement. 

How to Create High-Performance, Channel-Specific Ad Creative

If you only take ONE thing away from this whole article: don’t bust your budget on creative. Our approach (and, truly, the only way we can get behind creative production): test, test, test. Then, only then, consider investing in more high-value/bigger-production creative after you’ve gotten an opportunity to really hone in on the messaging and visuals that drive down cost per click (CPC) and drive up conversion rate (CVR).

Here at Tuff, when we take on creative production on behalf of—or alongside—one of our partners, here’s the approach we take:

The Tuff Timeline: Creating, Deploying, and Learning From Creative

When you hire a revenue and conversion-first growth marketing agency like Tuff, before we dig into pre-production, we’ll ensure the first weeks of our engagement are centered on rapid, actionable testing so that we can confidently make new creative that really resonates (and is worth the cost).

Days 1-3

Before we spend a dollar, we’ll start by digging into your target audience and validating/battle testing your value props. Based on the site experience, your sales materials, and what we can learn from you, are we confident that we can make creative that can hit the right people with the right message at the right time? 

Days 3-5

From there, we’ll get into concepting. If “fair, modern and inexpensive insurance” are the strongest high-level value props (for example), we’ll build creative ideas around them and workshop them with you to make sure we’re aligned.

We’ll create three very distinct concepts to test against each other so we’ll be able to understand—from a high level—which works and which don’t work as well.

Days 5-15 (depending on complexity of the creative)

Then, we’ll get into production. We’ve got a Rolodex of photographers, videographers, and designers to quickly and efficiently produce great creative.

We’ll produce 1-2 different pieces of creative underneath each of the three distinct concepts (for a total of 3-6 pieces of creative) every 6 weeks until we hone in on winners and double down there.

Days 30-60

Finally, and most importantly, we’ll put that creative through the wringer by conducting a full creative analysis that measures its effectiveness using two major data points:

• CPC (is it grabby/compelling enough to get a quick click?)
• CPL (is the ad-to-site experience seamless enough that the creative helps smooth their path towards conversion?)

From there, we’ll emerge with insights about what’s performing, what’s not, and a game plan for a fresh round of production (the timing on this cycle is totally dependent on ad spend and audience size).

Ready to Get Started?

Whether you’re ready to break out and start testing what kind of creative drives the best results for your growth or you need to enlist the help of a team that can take that burden off your hands, we’d love to hear about it!

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