Last week I came across an interesting study by Optymzr - Why Ad Creative Is the Key to Unlocking Higher Conversions in 2023. The team decided to run a campaign for their free webinar. They created two batches of creatives - one creative with webinar and speaker details. The second batch was more generic creatives that didn’t promote anything about the webinar.
In this test, the targeting was kept constant and the only variable was the creative. The first batch of the creatives with clear messaging - why and who stood out.
However, can we confidently say that only creatives can drive the conversion? No. There are elements other than messaging that lead to conversion such as the media the vessel to drive the creative and the landing page where the remaining process gets completed.
Creatives definitely play a tremendous role in gaining attention and motivating action. But they can’t be the only factor to drive conversion.
Earlier this week I have written about the same in my last post: Digital fundraising for NGO - my learnings on acquiring new donors from Meta.
And here are some of my learnings on ad creatives from Meta:
ROUTES
Whether you are running a Click To Donate or a Lead Generation campaign you need to have a creative proposal ready with the creative routes. Without a strategy, it is a futile exercise and please don’t decide routes on the fly with the client on a call. And definitely not over a Whatsapp chat.
Should it be about the cause?
Before jumping into creating more videos, please be a donor and ask - “Why would people give or sign up for the campaign.” The campaign should communicate about the cause and not your organisation - “People give to the cause and the impact rather than to the organisation.”
Google Analytics?
Good time to take a look at the GA to study the traffic and what kind of searches are driving supporters to your website. GA is gold if you know how to make business sense of the data.
If you haven’t synced your website to GA to capture search then this is a good time to do so.
VISUALS - VIDEO and STATIC
For any kind of digital fundraising campaign, you want the audience to take action. Either signup or make a donation. So in both scenarios, clear visuals with clear shots play a great role. In fact, clear visuals from the ground have shown better responses.
Should we only have videos?
Meta loves videos. Videos convert well after the platform went crazy for short-form videos. But when it comes to fundraising the creatives convert because of the strong storytelling that creates the urge to take action.
Similarly, a static that sends a clear message is as good as a video. Additionally, statics are cheap and you can test them frequently as compared to videos.
If you are storytelling is not strong and fails to communicate about the cause then you will have a situation where you will be driving crazy landing page views but miserable conversion numbers.
What is the creative mix?
On Meta, I start a campaign with 5 creatives - 2 short videos of different lengths along with 3 statics. Later I assign them to Ad Set on Meta which is the audience that you have created. This way I keep the learning phase small.
Anything more than this will mean the algorithm takes more time to learn about the campaign and also the equal distribution of the budget becomes a challenge.
Should we show only happy faces?
NGOs have brand guidelines and following them is required but sticking to only happy faces will lead nowhere in achieving fundraising goals. If you aren’t showing the problems or the urgency of the campaign then people don’t have enough reason to donate.
We need to understand the difference between a brand and a fundraising campaign. Both should work together but only happy faces won’t lead anywhere.
COPY
In a world of videos is copy important do people read? I know many won’t agree but a copy is silver if not gold :)
So have the Meta ad copy - Primary Text(located at the top), Headline, Description, and Call To Action(CTA). I generally avoid description and stick with Primary Text, Headline, and CTA of course:)
Language in the copy?
If you are using English and targeting Indians try to communicate in a simple English language. You don’t want the donor to stop the process and look for a dictionary. Simple and to-the-point copy always does the job.
A/B TESTING
Do A/B testing for creatives and copy. For example, do a test for captions on creatives and see what are the results. Similarly, do language testing other than English only if you have a landing page available for the same language.
Furthermore, during an A/B test change only one variable at a time so that you can narrow down your results.
Additionally, give time for the algorithm to learn and make the changes accordingly. Remember every time you do a change the campaign goes into a learning phase. So when you start a campaign in the initial stages try avoiding making too many changes.
I am thinking if I have missed something :) I am still learning.
Now that I have shared my learnings on Meta ad creatives time for me to share my learnings on media but that is for another blog post :)
P.S. Meta Ads Library - is a collection of ad insights advertisers are running on Meta.