HSMAI’s Marketing Advisory Board Tactical Workgroup has produced a series of resources focused on leveraging Facebook — which 70 percent of travelers use every week — to help drive revenue recovery. The first resource focused on how to use dynamic ads. The next one addresses creative testing ideas.
THE ISSUE
When planning media strategy, we often don’t know what will work best in terms of creative type, objective, optimization strategy, and other variables. This is true for all parts of the funnel — from awareness and consideration to prospecting and retargeting. We can hypothesize and guess what works best, but without answers rooted in data, we’ll never be certain.
IT’S IMPORTANT BECAUSE …
With limited media budgets, it’s important that every dollar is spent in the most efficient and effective way possible. Without understanding what works best with data-backed results, we are guessing which variable to leverage for the long-run.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Split tests are easy to set up, quick (you may get results in a few days), don’t require high investment, and incur no added costs. In addition to split tests, advertisers can run lift tests that measure incrementality at the conversion level. Lastly, advertisers can run brand survey tests to assess the incremental effect on brand metrics like ad recall or perception.
Guidance in Ads Manager ensures that the budget is aligned to gain statistically significant results. Apart from the one variable, ensure there are no other differences between the cells. Budget should be divided evenly between each cell.
To get started, you’ll need an ad account in Ads Manager. Depending on which type of test is chosen, you will have to determine:
- Which variable to split test (creative, optimization, etc)
- Which pixel event to measure incrementality for via conversion lift
- Which brand questions to ask for a brand survey.
STEP BY STEP
- Get inspiration: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/experiment-test-and-learn.
- Learn about testing: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1915029282150425?id=2564729006895902.
- Set up a split test: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1159714227408868.
EXPECTED COST
The setup of one split test takes five minutes. You can set your budget as low or as high as desired. Once there are statistically significant learnings, the Ads Manager buying platform will tell you.