Because of the different moving parts involved in the process, planning a creative experiment can be complicated. Therefore, to build a winning experiment, one needs to know the creative experimentation process and how to refine the idea and break it down into practical steps.
In this article, we will talk about seven easy steps that will help you plan a creative experiment by refining your experiment idea with the help of an experimentation roadmap.
Let’s get started.
1. Campaign Details
Listing out the campaign details from an upcoming campaign brief will help you organize your data collection process for the campaign. This will also help you evaluate the details and prioritize them according to your requirements and objectives. Moreover, this will ensure that you don’t forget any crucial elements.
Consider listing out the following information about the upcoming campaign that you will be pre-testing your creative and collecting insights for:
● Campaign Name
● Launch Date
● Campaign Problem, which describes the insight challenges
● The primary marketing or business objective of the campaign
● Primary and secondary metrics that will be used to measure the performance
● Ad Channel
● Ad Format
● Target Audience Name
● Interest Targeting
● Geo Targeting
● Age Targeting
● Gender Targeting
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| Campaign Brief Pillars |
2. Experiment Details
Based on the campaign details, you can list the details of the experiment you want to run. You can consider listing out the following information about the experiment:
● Experiment Name - Something memorable that represents the objective of the experiment.
● Experiment Start Date - When the experiment starts collecting data.
● Experiment End Date - When the experiment finishes collecting data from respondents.
● Experiment Hypothesis, which is based on existing research and data. Here, you can:
○ List the problem you are trying to resolve through an experiment hypothesis.
○ List the solution to the hypothesis problem and the rationale behind it.
○ List out the expected results if the hypothesis prediction turns out to be true and is accepted.
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| Creative Experiment Process |
3. Experiment Impact
Listing the expected impact from the experiment will help you prioritize your experiments and evaluate your performance against a set standard.
You can consider listing out the experiment impact either for the overall campaign as a whole or for specific aspects of the campaign.
For instance, you can list the expected result if the experiment can positively impact the return on investment. Whereas, for specific aspects of the campaign, such as new strategy or new audience, you can list the expected result of whether the experiment insights will drive the performance for that specific campaign detail.
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| Creative Experimentation Program |
4. Experiment Cost
Based on past creative experiments, you can list the expected experiment costs related to generating submissions during the campaign.
For example, to evaluate the total cost of submissions, you can consider the following:
● eCost per submission - Example, $5 per submission
● Target number of submissions - Example, 100 submissions
Here, the total cost of submissions will come out to be $500.
The estimated cost per submission, which is the same as one participant or respondent, depends on the size of the audience you are targeting on Facebook or Google.
The more segmented and specific the audience targeting, the smaller the audience, and hence the more expensive cost per submission.
5. Experiment Effort
In this step, you can list all the different activities that you will be running throughout the experiment. You can consider listing:
Different variations that will be tested out for the experiment and their details.
Will you be testing out creative that already exists that only need slight edits?
Will you be testing creative that is already to go?
Or, will you be testing assets that still need to be produced for the experiment?
This is where you would also detail out the effort in promotion fulfillment for the prize that will be given away. Keep in mind that you are running sweepstakes to attract the participants for your experiment.
Try to be as detailed as possible as this will also help you determine the experiment ROI.
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| Experiment Asset Preparation Effort |
6. Experiment ROI
The factors used to analyze the experiment ROI depend on what you’re tracking and the value of the experiment’s question you are able to answer. Here, you’ll be listing the details related to the metrics impacted and the expected results.
For example, if you run ads for your campaign, you can list the established baseline View Through Rate (VTR). After collecting insights from your experiment and acting on them, you should be aiming to increase this VTR compared to your baseline.
A study recently done by Facebook found that marketers who run at least 15 experiments related to their ads in one year, their performance goes up on average by 30%. If they run another 15 experiments the following year, their performance goes up by 45% (HBR: "Marketers Underuse Ad Experiments. That's a Big Mistake!").
7. Survey
Conducting a survey will help you collect data from your target audience to further establish a hypothesis to test.
In this step, you can list the information required for your survey questions along with metrics used to measure them.
Surveys can be used in the exploratory phase when you are seeking potential related problems to your core objective or suggested solutions that can then be organized and summarized.
Surveys can also be used as a follow up with an audience after an experiment has been conducted. In most cases experimentation leads to additional, valuable questions. These questions can be answered by following up with participants in your promotion via the emails you collected.
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| Source: 10 Things to Consider in Survey Design |
SweepLift Experiments
At SweepLift, we help marketers apply the scientific method to build their brand with the world’s first laboratory for creative experiments. By experimenting with Ad Creative in the lab, we create compelling ads that your audience will love. If this is of interest, we encourage you to contact us, and we will help you build ad creatives that resonate with your audience!
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