Reduces risk before you’ve spent all the budget

It’s (probably) the most common challenge we come across - clients juggling limited budgets to make sure creative lands with the right people. One of the most powerful ways to cut through and ensure your campaigns hit the mark is creative testing with a recruited panel of your dream buyers.

Creative testing helps teams determine which ads drive the best results, and helps us to understand if the message and visuals resonate with the people that matter the most - your buyers. Testing small batches of creative, early doors, helps us to identify the real winners, and any potential pitfalls before it's rolled out into a full scale (and full budget) campaign. This ensures creative lands as intended, minimising underperformers and protecting your marketing spend.

Removes guesswork and internal bias (and dodgy feedback)

Everyone can get attached to ideas or creative work - whether you're an in-house team, or working agency side. Creative testing provides the much needed external validation - or not, as the case may be.

It can show what actually resonates with the audience rather than what the team thinks will work best. This creates a more objective creative culture, preventing those ‘sample of one’ bits of feedback, helping to remove assumptions about what audiences think or know, and preventing those sometimes awkward chats with your creative team when you just don't like that one route.

Enables faster optimisation and scaling

Test-and-refine-style creative testing gives teams live insight into what’s working, and what isn’t. By analysing how and why different visuals, products, messages, or CTAs are viewed by target audiences, you can adapt efficiently: double down on the best ideas, and pause what’s underperforming. It’s especially valuable for fast-moving, always-on channels like social.

Supports long term brand growth, not just short term tactical wins

Yes, some really straightforward A/B testing can help you understand which option could deliver greater impact for a particular asset on a particular channel.

But some well thought-out qualitative creative testing can deliver so much more than that. It helps us understand what storytelling, visuals and messaging consistently inspires feelings of positivity about your brand, and why. If your team is armed with this knowledge, they can build a stronger, more consistent brand identity that drives performance and brand equity. Over time, this forms a creative insights playbook that can guide future campaigns and speeds up decision making.

Provides evidence for stakeholder buy-in

An all-important one to prevent potential headaches later down the line. We've done our fair share of creative testing and one thing is for sure - when in-house teams can show the data, and explain why something works, lands with target audiences, and how it will deliver resonance and recall, it’s A LOT easier to justify creative decisions, secure budget and earn leadership confidence for bolder or experimental campaigns.

Creative testing isn’t just about better ads, it’s about arming your teams with the knowledge they need to help create stronger brands, with campaigns that actually deliver. We'd love to chat with you about your next one.