I don’t know about you, but once I find a social advertising strategy that works, and I mean really works in driving my goals….I just can’t leave it alone. There’s always something we could test! New things we haven’t thought of! Things we could change! New audiences that we never even thought of finding! I love testing to see what resonates with specific audiences, to get to know them better, and serve them ads that just stop them in their tracks. I have been testing Facebook video ad content out the wazoo for the past few months – everything from length of video, CTA in the ad, ad content, ad copy on the video, ad copy in the headline and primary text, you name it. Personally, video typically drives the most revenue and engagement on Facebook for eCommerce, so why wouldn’t I want to optimize all creative to that standard? Once I exhausted all testing possibilities with video (for now), I naturally turned to static images since it had been lacking some love.
The Method
I like looking at my client’s website for any updates to language on the landing pages to make sure the word choices I use across all advertising channels resemble what the user would expect to see from the ad. These ads are selling home fitness equipment, so I need to persuade users to purchase home equipment over accessories. When I was getting some language ideas to test on static, I saw that we actually had quite a bit of positive reviews on some top performing products. This led me to test review ads on static image creative, and to refresh our social ads just in time for the holidays! I picked a few products I wanted to test, and within days we had some brand new static image creatives.
I kept all budgets, targeting, audiences, and placements for each campaign the exact same as what ran in the previous month. Of course, different months have their nuances, but this was right before the holiday season picked up and our slow period was still underway. After the ads were created, we also placed the review image on the product page website as a banner at the very top of the page, so users who clicked on the ad also saw it incorporated into the site and find the product.
Results
After letting these ads run for one month, here are the results below:
Although CPCs are much higher than the same ole creative we ran in the past, and CTR fell with these ads, overall these ads had great performance metrics in terms of driving transactions and engagement on the ads. Review ads brought in almost 50% more clicks to the website, which led to 5 more transactions and an increase in ROAS of over 154%. Those transaction numbers may seem very small, but the equipment that’s being advertised costs a lot more than typical eCommerce products on social. This was significant because we typically see image ads bring in approximately 1 – 2 purchases per month, and video ads really bring in the revenue on social. This tells me that people are extremely receptive to reading real reviews from real people, instead of me simply telling them how great the product is and why they should purchase it.
The biggest takeaway from the experiment is to never stop trying to innovate your creative assets, find ways to switch up your messaging to keep it fresh, and don’t be afraid to test in these strange times! Your advertising strategy will never grow and adapt if you’re not open to new ideas that strike. Times have changed for online eCommerce and how users conduct their shopping. It’s more important than ever to find that message that stands out amongst the vast sea of ads a user sees each day. It’s not easy finding that message and making it stand out, but sometimes the best message comes from your loyal customer base. Use it while you have it!
