Ecommerce Creative Reset

The agency I worked at in 2020 had just signed this ecommerce brand, and I was getting a product launch ready for it. The brand was getting about a 2% click-through rate and paying around $80 per acquisition, which lost it money.

The brand had already tested a lot of angles and copy. Its videos were the old ones: it kept running the same edits over and over after they'd stopped working for it.

Creative is usually the biggest factor on Facebook, because people scroll without reading. So we made a new set of videos in four different styles: a short animation, a review, a straight pitch, and a plain slideshow of product images. They ran side by side. Then I took the winning video apart. It showed the product in the first three seconds, pulled people in with a bright animation, and used different music. I sent those notes back and asked for updated versions. The plain slideshow turned out to be one of the two winners, so I had the two blended into one video, and the blend won.

• Facebook Ads
• Video creative in four styles
• Side-by-side creative tests
• Winner breakdown sent back to the creative team

Click-through ran from 1.2% on the losing videos to 4.5% on the winners, and cost per acquisition dropped from about $80 to about $45. The updated winners held at 5% or more after the feedback round.

The brand got cheaper sales and a reason behind each winner: the product in the first three seconds, a bright opening and different music. Those are notes a creative team can brief from.

Judge creative by cost per sale, then ask why the winner won. Here the answer was specific enough to brief, and the plain slideshow was one of the winners.