Ahead of the Digital Marketing Show Mid Term, the Digital Marketing Magazine spoke to John Miller, Digital Marketing Director for Shutterstock, about creative testing and how to effectively drive engagement and conversion.
See what he had to say below!
1. What is creative testing and why is it so important for businesses?
It's getting qualitative and quantitative feedback from customers for anything that represents your brand - advertising campaigns, website, content marketing programs. It could be as simple as testing two different colors on your call-to-action button to know which has a higher click through rate, understanding which words like "member" or "subscriber" are better for your audience as a copy test, or testing two different headlines to see which drives more clicks.
Creative testing lowers the risk of media investment, because a group of ideas can be built, tested, and analysed before committing fully to winners and cutting losers. You can have a portfolio of ad units - testing and iterating allows businesses to make effective design and copy decisions that increase revenues, as well as customer engagement and experience. We tell all of our team members when they start with Shutterstock "don't fall in love with any particular solution," because we test and iterate everything.
2. Where should businesses begin when they're looking to understand what drives engagement and conversion for them?
Start with one metric to move, or a representative user complaint. When you focus on fully understanding one metric and what sparks a positive change, you can start to build a mosaic of next steps, while getting stronger engagement and conversion.
Marketers should be clear upfront about defining engagement and conversion. By knowing what action you are looking for, you can better measure that action and isolate the creative variables to determine which, if any, are driving the desired actions. Today, there is significant value to extract from engagement actions, not just conversions. Understanding an engagement action's value to the business allows marketing professionals to understand if they can drive them in an affordable way.
The reality is that rules you create based on learnings don't last forever - so stay open and remember deep understanding is a foundation, but its certainly not set in stone.
3. How do mobile and web differ when it comes to creative testing? (and are there certain things marketers should be aware of?)
The goal is the same, to have users make decisions with as few steps as possible, but you can see huge differences between the two platforms, just like you see changes between channels and formats. Essentially, mobile and web have different design interfaces - so you are testing different variables between the two platforms. With mobile devices, we make decisions by swiping, pinching, and turning, typically on the web you want that click.
The biggest difference between the two is real estate. On mobile you really need to focus your attention and use dimensions wisely. Its definitely a craft, like writing your name on a grain of rice. Another constraint on mobile is file size. Many networks are only accepting very small files sizes to deliver ad units that load quickly to their audience. In recent years, the speed has greatly improved and faster load times generally results in better performance. This is a constraint on the web, as you should still consider load times, but it is less of a concern.
Finally, mobile is also dealing less in animated creative and more and more in video. Social has exploded on mobile and many advertisers are really starting to grasp video as a tool to build awareness, interest, and engagement.
4. How can marketers understand how different creative mediums engage an emotional response with their audience?
Everyone is looking for an emotional response, because studies have shown higher engagement when there is an emotional connection. You must first realise how the medium works and how the audience engages with it - study it. And recognise, if everyone is searching for that response - you have to be willing to go further - to stand-out.
Authentic imagery and music can help trigger emotions. We have a research department at Shutterstock that helps our largest clients - advertising and marketing agencies, Fortune 500 companies, find the imagery they need. Many times those lists are values or emotions they want to evoke vs. hard descriptions of images.
Ultimately performance metrics will determine if your creative had the desired effect, but I always enjoy showing creative to friends and co-workers in a neutral fashion. If the majority reacts as you intended, then you've probably done a good job, if they don't - then reconsider your approach. Take this tip with a grain of salt, since many times friends and co-workers are not the same as your customers.
5. What are the three key questions that marketers need to ask of their advertising when testing it?
With so many different digital mediums and touch points on the web today it's important to think about causation of your efforts and reverse engineer the process.
Does the advertisement align with my brand's position? Does the advertisement appeal to my intended target audience? Is the advertisement producing the results I wanted? What is the effect of this campaign I intend to have? It may be conversions or it may be simply brand awareness. What is the ad unit I need to create in order achieve this effect? What emotions do I need to inspire and which images and text can I use to invoke those emotions. Where can I place this ad unit to reach the correct audience? Who am I trying to reach with this ad unit and where can I buy media to run this campaign effectively?
Do you want to hear more from John Miller, Digital Marketing Director for Shutterstock? Join John, and speakers from Google, Three and Hootsuite, at the Digital Marketing Show Mid Term on the 13th May 2015. Book your place now!
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