At Direct Persuasion, we approach ad creative differently than the typical advertiser. Usually, creative is an afterthought–something you have to put together quickly, and the same few variants run for months on end.

But that’s not how we do it. We constantly challenge ourselves to run more creative and copy variations than the rest. For example, at its peak in prospecting spend, one of our clients had OVER 620 ad variants live on Facebook simultaneously. We totaled up the top three Democrat advertisers in the same space, and their combined total was 560 ads. This means we were running 60 MORE ADS for our one client than our three other competitors combined. 

Still don’t believe us? Here’s the proof in our latest case study.

At peak scale for this client, our team produced:

• 1000+ creatives
• 5600+ copies
• 100+ unique programs
• 350+ landing pages

Besides adding a TON of names to our client’s list, we had a secondary goal in mind. To create super variants, find ad programs that would get the most conversions and identify the elements in them that boosted performance. 

We could then use these super variants as a base when testing a new program. In addition, since we knew the creative worked in the past with our top-performing programs, we would be able to determine if the ad program was successful based on these benchmarks.

You can also scale your production efforts much faster when you have super variants. If you have successful templates that you know will get conversions, your designers can easily edit the variants and get new content out the door quicker. Rather than reinventing the design wheel each time, we were starting with designs we know worked and can determine a program’s success. 

Having templatized designs also allows you to get content ready quicker when news breaks, which is always a win for fundraising efforts. Instead of having to start from scratch, our designers were able to quickly edit variants we already had and get them into approvals for the client. This cut down our turnaround time MASSIVELY–we went from getting ads up a few days after news broke to having fresh content live on the platform within 2 hours. 

Below is an example from one of our top programs at the time–” Should Joe Biden Resign?” We started simple: one design variant we knew had gotten a high number of conversions for our top-performing program. Then, once we had proof of concept that the program was successful, we started testing multiple design variations to figure out what design elements were successful. The image below included the top three design variants we combined to create a super variant. 

Next time you’re planning your creative strategy, don’t just test your program variants. Ensure you’re also studying the data to determine which creative design elements increase your conversions.