Does ad relevance matter?

I mentioned using a random image in my Facebook ads to see what would happen. The dog in a blanket robe.

Norma asks a great follow up question:

What about relevance, though? Did you track the conversion rate of the dog banner vs. the app banner?

Sadly both the dog and my app banner were beat in the last campaign.

The 100% stock image of a disorganized library won out in conversions. Neither the dog nor my app banner had a single conversion.

The campaign numbers were too low to call it a significant test but there was one lesson I learned from this.

We spend a lot of time on things that we think matter like getting the perfect ad image or the best product description. But until we launch and put those out into the market, we don't know if we're wasting our time or not.

The hours I spent getting my app banner just right for the ads might not have mattered at all.

It was far better to launch and get feedback from the actual market than to strive for perfection.

The only risk I took with the dog and library images are that they wouldn't perform and I'd lose a few dollars and a little bit of time.

Instead, the library image actually outperformed the others and gave me a surprising result. It's actually outperforming them both again in the follow-up campaign.

Sometimes the risks are higher and you should take the extra time to get everything perfect. I wouldn't do this sort of random test when working with customer data. But ads, the risk is so small.

Analyzing what actually happens is always better than trying to guess. That's why Repeat Customer Insights is such a powerful analytical tool. It tells you what you customers actually did so you can adapt your marketing to it.

Eric Davis