Tips for Generating Performance Ideas for DTC Ad Campaigns

Creative testing is your secret weapon on Meta. Here's my approach. (1) Crank Out Quality Ads - Produce as many ads as possible while maintaining high quality. Avoid creating low-quality ads just to increase volume. Have a hypothesis you want to test - whether it's a visual hook, trending audio, or a new creator - to gather learnings. (2) Track Every Ad - Use a standard naming convention to keep track of all your ads. This helps in analyzing performance over time. You don't want to look back in the last 90 days to try to see which hooks, scripts, creators, concepts, etc are your best building blocks. (3) Creative Diversity - Test various types of ads – static, video, UGC, 3D motion, AI-generated, and even "ugly" ads. The goal is to have a diverse set of creatives. They look different but also speak to different levels of awareness. Different offers, angles, headlines, scripts, etc. (4) Allocate Budget for Testing - Dedicate 10-25% of your marketing budget to creative testing. Increase this percentage if you're just starting out. Know that this will inflate your CPA but the winning creatives that come out will take your ad account to new levels. (5) Isolate Variables - Conduct 'ad set tests' to isolate variables. Ensure each test gets enough data, around 30 conversions in a week, to be more confident. If possible, you can test in lower cost GEOs, on Android, or Tiktok. (6) Monitor Spend - The ad that gets the most spend is a strong signal of its effectiveness. Keep an eye on where your budget is going. It's a good sign that this ad can scale if you port it over into your evergreen/BAU campaigns. (7) Always-On Testing - Testing should be a continuous process. Don’t stop after finding one winning ad. Keep the momentum going to discover new top performers. You need to build the muscle with constant reps. Creativity can be learned, I promise. It's fun too. (8) Volume Negates Luck - The more you test, the higher your chances of finding successful ads. This is just the reality now advertising on Meta and Tiktok. There is an exponential rise of video content on our screens. Trust me, it's going to get more difficult with AI-generated video. You need a reliable system to stand out and gain mind share. Solving this is the #1 opportunity for brands to grow efficiently heading into 2025. ___________________ P.S. - You can have both quality and quantity with Sovran

One of the most difficult tasks for any marketer is coming up with ideas for new content, and ad creatives are no different. Here are 5 tips I follow to come up with new ad creative ideas in minutes: 1. Communicate with your audience - Your audience is your best resource for ideas. The questions they ask are the best tools you have to come up with new ideas for conversion-driven content. - Use resources like product reviews and social media comments to see what people are curious about, and base your creatives on answering their questions. 2. Keep up with the industry Your competitors have similar goals, products and audiences as you - meaning you can draw inspiration from their creatives. Ask yourself: - “How are people reacting to this creative?” - “What elements do they like about it?” - “How can I put a spin on it for my brand and products?” 3. Leverage AI tools - There are more and more AI tools that can help you iterate previous ad creatives and give you new ideas based on your customer’s pain points. - One AI tool that I recommend is Atria. Atria has the world's largest ad library that you can use to generate new ideas for your ad creatives. 4. Explore “bad” ideas - We have a natural tendency to come up with lots of ideas, but throw out everything except those that are “perfect”. Instead, learn to get comfortable with ideas that might seem "bad". Tinker with them, adapt them, and turn them into something more interesting. - It’s okay to test out every idea you have, even if it might be bad. The good and bad ideas can give you more data to leverage when finding the creative that works. 5. Identify unique selling propositions - For every 1 product, there are 1000 different reasons why a customer might use them. Put yourself in their shoes, and imagine all the different reasons why someone might use your product. - Keep going back to your product or service and find new features or benefits that you can highlight to different target audiences. The best marketers know how to create a system around inspiration. Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, use these methods to take control of your imagination and creativity. You never know when one product review, one bad idea, or one AI tool may spark an ad creative idea that takes your brand to the next level. 

It's tough out there right now... But we still have accounts that scale aggressively no matter the circumstances. Here are the 4 main areas where we are putting all our efforts to drive performance forward: 1) Higher volume of creatives for testing every week. We're going through deep creative analysis and breakdowns using Motion (Creative Analytics) every week to find out what creatives performed from the previous batch and act as fast as possible on producing variations based on winners, plus net new concepts of ads. 2) Personalized creatives for each funnel stage. We are shifting our creative production efforts towards creating ads that speak to customers no matter at what stage in the funnel they are (educational-focused creatives - TOF, social proof and PR-focused creatives - MOF, and offer-focused creatives - BOF). 3) Offer testing We have an entire marketing calendar mapped out with every single sale and offer we are going to run/test in the following months. It helps keep everybody aligned across Paid Media, Paid Seach and Email to make sure we have everything from creatives, email designs, and landing pages built on time. 4) Optimizing post-click experience. We deploy a lot of resources to help clients push landing pages out as fast as possible I am working with the team to make sure everything makes sense for the customers we are driving into the funnel (from the experience of that creative to the landing page to the message we are communicating on the PDP and the offer we are putting in front of these customers).