A/B Testing Content for Product and Lifestyle Visuals

Here's how testing content for product and lifestyle visuals can help you target your audiences' values and turn casual browsers into paying customers.

The post A/B Testing Content for Product and Lifestyle Visuals appeared first on The Shutterstock Blog.

Here’s how testing content for product and lifestyle visuals can help you target your audiences’ values and turn casual browsers into paying customers.

Brand marketers have to determine the best ways to express their businesses interests and values in visual content. Is it best to show products in use, or to illustrate lifestyle-focused settings?

The question of product versus lifestyle is at the heart of each brand’s content strategy. Steve Olenski, a regular Forbes contributor dubbed “The CMO Whisperer,” invites marketers to ask a critical question about their brand identities:

“Is my brand a lifestyle brand, or a product brand?”

The answer to that question reenforces brand positioning. Your brand positioning shapes brand identity and influences all marketing campaign visuals. Once you’ve defined your positioning and your identity, you can share those values through visuals in paid media campaigns.

The Value of A/B Testing Content

Image via Georgejmclittle.

The ads promoted by your marketing team push your brand identity outward to your target audience. Ads on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Google’s paid search expand the reach and visibility of your content. This helps you capture the attention of new potential consumers.

However, advertising is never going to work flawlessly right out of the gate. You could have a truly unique brand identity with a powerful message that boldly captures attention. But until you can convert traffic from your ads into qualified leads or prospects, your customer base won’t grow to scalable levels.

In addition to a unique brand identity, you need insights into what creative details best resonate with your audience. Testing content through A/B or split tests allows you to reach a broader audience segment and compare their reactions. You can use these tests to analyze reactions to different versions of your content. This helps you optimize your content and create better-performing ads that deliver results.

Nuances to Consider When Testing Content

Image via welcomia.

When your team is ready to conduct thorough A/B content testing, brainstorm factors or nuances to test. Noted content marketer and author Neil Patel advises marketers to first set realistic goals for A/B campaigns, and then test creative nuances that will best achieve those goals.

Some elements of your ads that are obvious to test include:

• Headlines for your ads
• How frequently you run your campaigns
• The depth and breadth of audience targeting
• Which CTAs drive engagement with your ads

For the purposes of optimizing your content strategy, the most important factor to test is the image or video you use as the hero of the ad. Most people scroll through social and digital news feeds on their mobile devices. That means there’s very little screen space as people scroll through feeds.

The hero images or videos you use in your ads take up the majority of real estate on mobile screens. Your content is what stands out as people scroll through their feeds. If the content is bold enough to capture their attention, they’ll stop to check it out. Even better, if the content is inspirational or aligns with their unique tastes, they’ll click and engage with your ad.

As your ads become more engaging to your audience, social and digital platforms will increase the reach and visibility of your campaigns. For example, algorithms on both Facebook and Instagram measure people’s reactions to content. Those reactions ensure people receive ads that are most likely to resonate with their unique tastes and interests. Use content creation guides for Facebook and Instagram to optimize ad campaigns across those platforms to align with how their algorithms.

Consumer Experiences with Content

Image via Bannafarsai_Stock.

So which type of content is best for your brand? How can you enhance the performance of your ads for optimal audience engagement?

Returning to Steve Olenski’s all-important question, are you a product brand or a lifestyle brand? If your brand identity revolves around your products, it makes sense to test ad campaigns featuring product-heavy content. In contrast, if your brand is tapping into a culture or building one of your own, lifestyle content is most likely to earn you early wins with your ads.

Alex Frias, Cofounder, and President of Track Marketing Group has a very profound position on how to create ads that resonate with audiences.

“Even if it’s the perfect ad — being served up to the perfectly targeted person — marketers need to do more: they need to create the perfect experience for their consumers.”

The consumer experience with content is what matters. Experiences are memorable and instill feelings of brand recall, affinity, and loyalty into consumer minds. Content should fundamentally service the consumer experience to generate new interest in your brand.

To achieve that demand, you need to put your content into the context of your consumers. As Giselle Abramovich, Senior Content Strategist of CMO.com describes it, “in the age of customer experience, content in context is king.”

Testing Content with Products in Lifestyle Settings

Image via Alena Ozerova.

Place the consumer experience at the center of your content strategy, and test various versions of your product and lifestyle content. Analyze the performance of your initial results using tools like Facebook Ads Manager along with web analytics platforms like Google Analytics or Search Console. Use your numbers to determine which ads are running smoothly and which ones need work.

For argument’s sake, let’s say that the initial batch of testing shows equal or near-equal engagement on both product and lifestyle content. Let’s also say, for the sake of argument, that the engagement rates are lower than expected. They’re good, but unlikely to scale to sustainable levels.

This could be all the incentive you need to test the response to your products in lifestyle settings. Consumers are more likely to become paying customers if they can envision how your brand’s products positively impact their day to day lives. Use your ad content to visually show people how your products seamlessly integrate into their lives.

The visual will stick and the message will resonate. This all comes after you’ve crafted a unique brand identity, gained insight into your target audience, and learned from your initial batch of A/B and split testing content. You can use all of this data to optimize your ads with optimal content that naturally integrates your products into lifestyle environments.

Top image via Krasovski Dmitri.

Want to learn more about marketing? Check out these articles:

• 5 Reasons Why Infographics Still Matter in Content Marketing
• 7 Retail Marketing Predictions to Watch for in 2018
• Using Custom Content to Make Your Brand’s Story Resonate
• What Small Businesses Can Achieve by Embracing Marketing Technology
• Tips for Optimizing Your Pinterest Ads with A/B Testing

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The post A/B Testing Content for Product and Lifestyle Visuals appeared first on The Shutterstock Blog.

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