Creative Testing Tactics to Improve Social Ad Performance
Struggling to see results from your social ads? It’s frustrating when your carefully crafted content isn’t delivering the impact you need. But don’t worry—by embracing creative testing, you can uncover exactly what makes your audience tick and transform more of your social assets into top performers.
In this post, we’ll explore a variety of creative testing tactics that you can implement to make your social ads stand out from the crowd. From crafting compelling visuals to experimenting with different ad formats, we’ll provide actionable tips and examples to help you hit your marketing goals.
What is Creative Testing?
Creative testing is a systematic process of experimenting with different elements of your marketing materials to identify the most effective combinations. By testing different variables within your creative assets, you can gain insights into what resonates with your target audience and optimize your campaigns for maximum impact.
There are a wide variety of optimizations you can test to improve your outcomes such as…
- Increasing CTR on social media
- Improving video completion rate with hook testing
- Better email open rates through subject line testing
- Landing page bounce rate improvements
- Better ROAS with product imagery testing
These tests can incorporate different elements such as swapping out the products shown in a display ad, comparing two different angles of a product photo, promoting distinct offers, experimenting with different motion styles for display ads, tweaking the hook at the start of a TikTok ad, or even altering the phrasing of a call to action (CTA).
For every creative test, it’s important to focus on at least one measurable metric that aligns with your campaign goals. These metrics can include conversion or clickthrough rates (CTR), average order value (AOV), lower cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), or thumb stop rate—helping you determine which variations deliver the most effective results.
3 Methods to Test Your Creative
Testing your social media creative is essential for ensuring that your content resonates with your audience and drives results. Without proper testing, you risk missing out on valuable insights that could significantly improve your campaigns. By utilizing A/B tests, split tests, and multivariate tests, you can uncover which creative elements work best, refine your approach, and ultimately boost engagement, conversions, and return on investment (ROI).
A/B Tests
A/B testing is one of the simplest and most effective ways to test individual creative elements. In an A/B test, two versions of a single element—such as a headline, image, or call to action — are compared to determine which one performs better. Typically, one version acts as the control, while the other introduces a small variation. For example, you might test two different background colors or tweak the wording of a headline to see which drives more engagement.
One of the key benefits of A/B testing is its simplicity. Because it tests only one variable at a time, you can be confident that the performance difference is directly related to that specific change. This method makes it easier to draw clear conclusions about what works and what doesn’t. A/B testing is particularly useful when you want to optimize specific aspects of your creative, such as refining the wording of your CTA or identifying which images resonate most with your audience. By isolating and improving individual elements, you can incrementally boost the overall effectiveness of your campaigns.
Tinuiti A/B Tested Our Way to A+ Results for Boston Proper
If you’re wondering if A/B testing social media ads actually works, check out our recent success story with Boston Proper…
The Challenge:
Boston Proper, known for its fashion print catalogs, initially prioritized print over digital creative. Tinuiti partnered with them to shift focus, ensuring their digital assets for Facebook and Instagram were as compelling as their catalog content.
The Solution:
Over a year, Tinuiti ran A/B tests on Facebook and Instagram, experimenting with video vs. static ads, on-image text, copy length, and branding. Each product collection gave us fresh opportunities to test and optimize. We found that static, single-image ads with on-image text and concise copy performed best, beating out videos and GIFs.
The Results:
The standout ad, “Best Foot Forward,” featured a strong catalog image and brand-consistent messaging. This format became a staple, driving:
- +37% click-through rate
- +11% return on ad spend
The A/B testing process helped discover an evergreen format that consistently delivers top results for Boston Proper on social media.
Split Tests
While A/B testing focuses on comparing variations of a single element, split testing evaluates entirely different versions of creative, which often include multiple variables. For instance, rather than tweaking a single headline or image, you might compare two completely different ad concepts or messages, each shown to separate audiences. This method offers more significant insights, as it helps you understand which overall creative direction performs better.
The advantage of split testing lies in its ability to evaluate more substantial changes, such as testing two different ad formats—like video versus static images—or comparing different themes, such as a humorous versus an emotional appeal. Split testing is particularly valuable in the earliest stages of campaign planning when you’re unsure which creative concept will resonate with your audience or when you want to explore bolder differences in approach. It provides a broader view of your asset’s performance and can help you identify the best overarching creative strategy for your campaigns.
Multivariate Tests
Multivariate testing (MVT) takes things a step further by allowing you to test multiple variables simultaneously. Instead of testing one element in isolation, as in A/B testing, multivariate testing examines various combinations of creative elements—such as images, headlines, and CTAs—to see which combination performs best. This type of testing is particularly useful when you want to understand how different components of your creative work together.
One of the primary benefits of multivariate testing is its efficiency. Rather than running several consecutive A/B tests to evaluate different variables, you can test all of them at once, saving time and resources. Multivariate testing also provides deeper insights into how different elements interact.
For example, you may discover that a particular image works best with a specific headline but underperforms with another. This method is ideal for brands looking to optimize their creative holistically, allowing you to fine-tune multiple elements in one go.
Bliss Point by Tinuiti, our proprietary tech, includes a Creative Insights tool that delves into the granular level of each attribute of an ad. By examining visual elements like color and typography, auditory elements such as music and voiceover, and other tactics, we can isolate the intricate elements driving a creative’s success. Learn more about Bliss Point here.
By using these three methods—A/B testing, split testing, and multivariate testing—you can continually refine your social media creative. Each method offers unique advantages depending on your goals, whether you’re focusing on incremental changes, testing bold creative shifts, or optimizing multiple elements simultaneously.
Why Should Marketers Start Testing Creative?
If you’re not testing your social creative, you could be missing out on a variety of optimization opportunities.
“If you aren’t running regular creative testing, you are likely wasting your ad dollars on ineffective creative and even worse – wasting your creative team’s time on assets that won’t scale. Creative testing provides clarity for future asset creation so your team’s spend less time producing assets that only spend a few dollars.”
Meredith Unger Creative Strategist at Tinuiti
Check out our top reasons why marketers should prioritize creative testing…
Optimize ad performance: By identifying the creative elements that resonate most with your target audience, you can ensure that your ads are driving the desired results, whether it’s increasing website traffic, generating leads, or boosting sales.
Reduce ad fatigue: Creative testing helps prevent audience fatigue by introducing new and engaging content regularly. When users are exposed to a variety of creative assets, they are less likely to become desensitized to your messaging.
Gain customer insights: By analyzing the performance of different creative elements, you can gain valuable insights into your customers’ preferences, behaviors, and pain points. This information can be used to inform future marketing strategies and product development efforts.
Save time and money: Creative testing allows you to optimize your marketing budget by shifting investments toward assets that are proven to deliver the best results. By avoiding wasted spend on ineffective creative, you can achieve greater efficiency and ROI.
Discover general strategic insights: Creative testing can provide valuable guidance for future campaigns beyond the specific experiment being conducted. By understanding what works and what doesn’t, you can develop more effective and targeted marketing strategies that align with your overall business goals.
How to Test Your Own Creative, Step-by-Step
When it comes to creative testing, consistency is key. You need a repeatable framework that allows you to refine and iterate your assets over time. Following a structured process will help ensure your tests are data-driven, measurable, and lead to actionable insights. Here’s the step-by-step process we recommend:
Analyze Your Current Strategy
Before diving into creative testing, it’s critical to evaluate your current strategy. Identifying opportunities for improvement should be your starting point. A good opportunity might look like:
- A particular ad or visual that’s underperforming compared to others
- New creative elements that haven’t been tested before
- Patterns in user behavior that suggest areas for optimization
Once you’ve identified these opportunities, the next step is to choose an asset or variable to test. This could be anything from an image or video format to ad copy or even CTA placement.
Set Goals
Every creative test needs clear, measurable goals. Using the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) can help keep your objectives focused. For example:
- Specific: “Increase CTR by 10% using new creative assets.”
- Measurable: Track performance using engagement metrics, conversions, or other key performance indicators.
- Achievable: Ensure your goals are reasonable based on past performance.
- Relevant: Align goals with broader business or campaign objectives.
- Time-bound: Set a time frame (e.g., 2 weeks) to evaluate success.
Common metrics you might want to track include click-through rate, conversion rate, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend.
Develop a Specific Hypothesis
Once your goals are set, create a specific hypothesis around the variable you’re testing. For example:
- “If we replace the current static image with a video, then the engagement rate will increase by 20%.”
A clear hypothesis helps narrow your focus and determine which variable is being measured, ensuring results are easy to interpret.
Select and Segment Your Audience
Creative tests are only as good as the audience you run them on. Make sure to segment your audience effectively to get the most accurate results. Consider factors like:
- Demographics: Age, gender, location
- Behavioral traits: Purchase history, interests, engagement patterns
- Custom segments: Create custom audiences based on past interactions or lookalikes of top-performing customers
Testing the same creative across different segments allows you to identify what resonates most with each group.
Run the Test and Verify the Results
Once everything is set, launch your test and let it run for a predetermined period. Remember, you should not stop the test until you’ve reached statistical significance. If you stop too early, you risk drawing incorrect conclusions based on insufficient data. If you don’t hit significance, consider rerunning the test with a larger audience.
Finally, remember that this process should be repeated regularly. Each test builds on the previous one, helping you continuously refine your strategy and create the most effective campaigns possible.
6 Best Practices for Creative Testing
Creative testing is essential to optimizing paid advertising efforts. By systematically experimenting with different versions of ad creatives, businesses can uncover what resonates most with their audience and maximizes ROI. Below are some best practices to guide your creative testing process:
Start Small and Simple
To avoid overwhelming yourself and your team, start with small, simple tests. Test one or two variables at a time to focus on understanding what specific elements drive performance. Whether you’re testing headlines, images, or calls-to-action, keeping things straightforward will help identify what works without adding unnecessary complexity.
Use Clear Naming Conventions
An organized naming convention is critical when running multiple tests across different creatives. By establishing a system to name your tests based on factors like date, platform, or specific elements being tested, you can easily track and evaluate results. Clear labels will save time when analyzing performance and help ensure everyone on your team is aligned.
Watch Your Ad Frequency
Ad fatigue can set in if you repeatedly show the same creative to your audience. Keep an eye on ad frequency to avoid oversaturation. Testing different creatives will help you rotate your ads more efficiently, keeping your audience engaged while preventing performance decline due to fatigue.
Set Aside a Dedicated Test Budget
Testing paid ads means investing resources, so it’s essential to allocate a specific budget for creative testing. This ensures that you’re able to gather meaningful data without jeopardizing your primary ad spend. Consider the cost as an investment in long-term ad performance improvements.
Involve Multiple Marketing Stakeholders
For the best results, creative testing should be a collaborative effort. It’s crucial to involve both your creative team and demand generation teams to ensure consistency in messaging. Additionally, paid and organic teams should work together to see if there are learnings from one campaign that can apply to the other, fostering cross-functional collaboration and better overall results.
“Keeping a testing tracker up-to-date with all your learnings across creative channels is crucial to tracking and sharing insights. At Tinuiti we often will test a theory on one channel, share the insights and then test again on another to see if the results carry over. This allows all teams to speak the same language when it comes to how our brand is perceived by the audience no matter where they find us from TikTok to paid search and drive greater efficiency on all channels.”
Meredith Unger Creative Strategist, Tinuiti
Test Your Learnings on Other Channels
What works on one platform might also be effective on another. While TikTok and Meta require different approaches and creative fatigue rates, some insights from creative testing on one platform can be useful for another. Always keep an open mind and be willing to apply learnings across channels to maximize your creative testing efforts.
By following these best practices, you’ll be well-equipped to run efficient and effective creative tests that drive continuous improvement and better overall ad performance.
Conclusion
Creative testing is a powerful tool for refining your ad strategy and driving better results. By implementing these best practices, you can unlock valuable insights and ensure your campaigns resonate with your audience.
Ready to unlock your social ad potential? Let our experts at Tinuiti help you create a testing strategy that delivers results. Contact us today for more information.
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