Creative Iterations in 5 Easy Steps

Imagine this, you signed up a new client or company. The company has high hopes that you’ll get their CAC down and ROAS up.

And guess what? You actually find the winning creative within a month and bring the CAC down and ROAS up.

But then 2 months go by and the CAC has not gone down further the new creatives are in fatigue mode. You are following the ultimate creative testing methodology and yet you have not found a winning creative.

You start questioning your abilities and process. Perhaps it does take longer to find the next winning creative.

So, what do you do? You’re scared out of your mind. You’re feeling the sting of imposter syndrome.

Well, I have a solution. It’s called a systematic creative iteration process.

It’s a way to keep bringing new creatives based on your winning creative until you find the next superstar creative.

It’s a smart process designed to bridge the gap.

How did I come up with it?

I asked 50+ marketers how they do systematic creative iterations. While many of the secrets are in the mastermind calls and details, you still get to learn some of them because you joined this newsletter.

Secrets like these aren’t shared in this newsletter but only with The Performers:

The example ads are in this post thread in our Slack group:

Join The Performers to get these kinds of secrets.

Anyway, let’s move on.

So here’s how to iterate on your creative process:

1. Step one, try changing the audience

Sure, this is not an entirely creative process but changing the audience and location can improve the metrics.

I’ve tried these targeting methods and got good results other than lookalike % and interest-based:

• City-based offering

• Instagram placement only

And what’s more, you can find the other four types (here but not necessarily audience testing only).

You can also find some other tactics here:

• 7 winning Facebook Ads tactics to get your results instantly

• 5 Meta targeting tactics to give your campaigns unfair advantage

Now that we’re good on targeting and tactics, let’s take a look at what I usually do.

2. Decide if it is a winning creative based on these metrics

If your cost per acquisition, return of ad spend, click-through rates, hook/thumb-stopping rate, hold rate, average watch time, and CPC.

Let’s take the hook rate for example:

An ad with a high thumb-stopping rate indicates an effective hook. However, if the hold rate is low, and the CTR and conversion rate (CVR) are not as high? or good? expected, it suggests room for enhancement.

Then, I usually formulate a few hypotheses:

If the drop-off occurs after the second five or six, revisiting the ad and replacing a boring talking head segment with more visually captivating content could be a potential solution. This hypothesis suggests that modifying the frames at specific timestamps will increase the hold rate.

Then I determine the focus areas:

The creative analysis process typically involves generating multiple hypotheses for improvement. These hypotheses could involve altering the text overlay, switching visuals, or even using a different voiceover. It’s basically figuring out which metrics to move and then assessing what outcomes I am trying to improve with that.

3. What to iterate then?

Depending on the winning creative, you can decide what exactly to iterate.

For example, this was my winning creative:

I turned it into a gif:

And then I asked my UGC creator to turn it into a short video too.

But then I also did something else.

I changed the copy and reworked the format to get more attention.

I also changed the Apple notes a little too (example here, but from a different ad account):

4. How else can you iterate?

Good question. I recently joined a Meta webinar and learned a few more ways to iterate.

They suggested the following tips:

• Change offers and formats

• Turn different ad formats into catalogs and reels

• But most importantly, test different type of benefits:

5. How to work with iteration on UGC videos

Savannah Sanchez gave some examples here of how she does it with hook variations:

Here’s the advice from Alex Cooper (one of the UGC agencies)

He wrote 9 editor iterations:

1. Add winning hooks from other ads - either replace or insert

2. Start the ad from different points - can any other clips be used as hooks?

3. Length changes - try a shorter version

4. Mashup - use this ad as the ‘base unit’ and weave in clips from other creatives

5. Mashup - Keep the VO but make mashup weaving in B-roll from other creators

6. Summarize the script and turn it into a robot VO and add it to a B-roll mashup

7. Get multiple people to re-record the winning script/concept (ideally of different races)

8. Have a creator/multiple creators greenscreens

9. Whitelist the ad through the creator's page

I hope this gives you a lot of ideas to fix & iterate on your creative. But most importantly, look at the data and make iterations based on it.

Note: One of our mastermind members, Daphne Tideman, said in one of the live calls that it is risky to iterate on winning ads because you may never find as good a CPA for other or newer videos. So, her recommendation is, to never rely on one winning ad, instead have multiple ads.

Here’s another blog that talks about creative iteration in-depth, so you can get a better idea of how it works.

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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