By themselves, creative concepts don’t drive sales. And as a creative director, it’s hard for me to say that – but it’s true.
Any agency can pitch you on creative concepts that sound great on paper. But if the one or two agreed upon concepts do not resonate with your target audience – that could result in 100’s of thousands of dollars down the drain.
What marketers really need is a systematic approach to developing data driven creative that continuously yields results…
Simply put, you need creative that converts.
So what if I told you that there was a smarter, and less expensive, way to generate high performing video creative for platforms like Facebook and Instagram?
At Playbook Media, we call it Creative Hacking.
Creative Hacking is a way to systematically edit existing creative assets, produce and test new creative, while using data to inform the next iteration, leading to unparalleled increases in performance.
Download Your Free Copy of Our Creative Hacking eBook
Before we get into the meat of Creative Hacking, let’s briefly go over some video creative best practices for Facebook and Instagram.
- Design for sound off
- Optimize for mobile devices
- “Thumb stopping” initial hook
- Format for particular ad placements
- Brand logo presented within the first few seconds
- Showcase the product and a unique value proposition
I could write 300 words describing each best practice in more detail but let’s not beat a dead horse by turning this into one of those unnecessary 2,000 word blog posts. Just know your best practices and implement them.
Now, once you master those best practices the real fun begins.
Remember our definition of Creative Hacking? We use the word “systematically.” So keep in mind that there is a method to the madness and it takes a lot of work (and organization) to see this process through.
The Process
Creative Audit: Review all your existing creative assets (statics, videos, emails etc) to get a sense of what you have to work with. Review creative performance data to know what works and doesn’t.
Testing Roadmap: Outline and prioritize your testing initiatives. This should include everything from timelines to test variables.
Edit & Produce: Repurpose your existing assets and/or shoot net new creative.
Iterations: After analyzing your data, take winning creative and continue to iterate to realize further gains.
Quick Tip: It’s always good to have a combination of statics and video ads running at all times. But if statics is all you have access to, that’s okay. Just turn that image – or a couple of images – into a video. Throw it into Premiere, add zooming, scaling effects and text overlay. Export as an .mp4 and now you have a video.
See Creative Hacking in Action
In this example, we open with 3 seconds of an old client explainer video. Then we used a stock image that was found in the client’s dropbox. Finally we cut to a logo on a color matte followed by an end card.
Click here to see the creative
Real Results
The first tests we launched didn’t really move the needle but once we started incorporating real customers and their testimonials CACs dropped by 54% week over week. As we scaled the Facebook Ad Account to over 8x spend, we were able to decrease CAC by 24% while increasing conversions by 996% – all within a three month period.
We continuously iterate on top performers, incorporate new creative elements and still see performance lifts.
As you can see, this stuff works – but there’s a lot more that goes into a successful Creative Hacking strategy. Download our FREE Creative Hacking eBook for a more detailed strategy, step by step framework and our “secret sauce” to designing high performing creative.
