Creative Testing: Jetson Probiotics
First, let’s consider this video…
Jetson Probiotics was one of my clients at Common Thread Collective. They had invested tens of thousands of dollars into producing this one video. It was groundbreaking for them, and it was also their only lead.
Jetson’s business model also seemed to be in a bit of a precarious situation to say the least — their main avenue for acquiring new customers was through Facebook ads. They needed to hit a daily target of new subscribers to their probiotics products, and they needed to obtain each new subscriber at a specific CAC (Cost Per New Customer Acquisition) target. The video you see above was the only ad that was able to obtain new customers at this target cost… and over the course of 2020, this ad slowly started to fatigue, and CAC for their entire Facebook account gradually became too high.
I was the Creative Strategist on a 4-person team, which included a Paid Media Buyer, a Growth Strategist, and a graphic designer/video editor. My strategy was to iterate and scale by applying mobile-first best practices (since 98% of Facebook users access the app through their phone).
We made 4 different versions, testing different opening shots based on different core claims, and launched them at once with the intent of not only trying to hit the CAC target, but also learn something new. Each version was named according to the variable changed.
click on the images below to watch each video!
B004_V1_Header1
B004_V3_Header3
B004_V2_Header2
B004_V4_Header4
What are mobile-first best practices?
Since our intended audience will be viewing these ads from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, Pinterest, etc. (and each platform has its own quirks), creative choices are informed by these key considerations:
Tiny Screens: Since 99% of people access social media through their phone, we adjust image framing, aspect ratio, and font sizes, knowing that they’ll likely be watching from a small screen in a vertical position. The last thing we want is someone scrolling away because the image/text is just too dang small for them to read. This is especially relevant for brands that speak to older folks.
Design for Sound Off: Majority of people on social media also default to having sound off, so that’s why it’s important to add captions. Of course, this varies by platform. Tiktok and Youtube content, for example, should be designed for sound on.
Significant Viewer Dropoff: Most people don’t stick around to see the entire video, especially if it’s obvious that they’re watching an ad. The first 3-seconds are the most important, and by the time someone hits the 10-15 second mark, they should know the core value proposition of the brand and the product.
So… How did the ads perform? And what did we learn?
The wild (and perhaps also a little scary) thing about performance marketing is the amount of data we have at our fingertips. All 4 video iterations brought overall account CAC down, saving the account, but B004_V1_Header1 had the most scale.
To compare the original video to B004_V1_Header1:
Within a 1 month period, V1_Header1 was able to hit the same amount of spend (meaning acquire the same amount of new customers) that the original video did in 5 months, at a higher efficiency. The funnel metrics tell a very interesting story as well, as the opener with “It makes me poop faster” has a 48% Attention metric (of the people who were served this ad, 48% watched the first 3 seconds). Click-through-rate (CTR) is also higher.
I hope this case study illustrates a bit of my methodology and thought process when it comes to making paid social creative.