A polar travel company debated using the word "cruise"—great for SEO but disliked by its target audience. The advice was to A/B test ad campaigns with different names (e.g., "cruises" vs. "expeditions") to get data on what resonates, resolving the internal debate.

Related Insights

Instead of brainstorming subjectively and then seeking data to support a favorite idea, start with audience insights. Analyzing what content people already engage with defines the creative sandbox, leading to more effective campaigns from the outset and avoiding resource-draining failures.

To get C-suite buy-in for long-term brand investment, marketers should run small, ring-fenced test campaigns. By isolating a market segment and layering brand tactics on top of demand generation, you can demonstrably prove superior growth compared to a control group, de-risking a larger investment.

Many marketers equate CRO with just A/B testing. However, a successful program is built on two pillars: research (gathering quantitative and qualitative data) and testing (experimentation). Overlooking the research phase leads to uninformed tests and poor results, as it provides the necessary insights for what to test.

Acknowledging that "relevance" is subjective shouldn't lead to creating generic, one-size-fits-all campaigns. Instead, it demands a high-volume creative strategy that produces dozens of distinct assets, each tailored to be hyper-relevant to a specific consumer segment or "demand state."

Don't attempt traditional A/B testing on a low-traffic website; the results will be statistically invalid. Instead, use qualitative user testing methods like preference tests. This approach provides directional data to guide decisions, which is far more reliable than guesswork or a flawed A/B test.

Tushy's growth and brand teams collaborate to ensure ads drive performance without damaging long-term brand equity. They moved away from certain high-performing creative after asking if it created the right 'memory structure' for an increasingly premium product, prioritizing long-term perception over short-term wins.

Shift the mindset from a brand vs. performance dichotomy. All marketing should be measured for performance. For brand initiatives, use metrics like branded search volume per dollar spent to quantify impact and tie "fluffy" activities to tangible growth outcomes.

For channels without massive viewership, testing titles and thumbnails simultaneously creates too many variables for statistically relevant results. A YouTube liaison advises testing wildly different concepts for either the title *or* the thumbnail, but not both at once, to get clear, actionable data.

John Morgan deliberately chose 'forthepeople.com' because it also perfectly encapsulated his firm's mission and brand slogan. This strategy ensures every ad reinforces the core brand message, consolidating the URL, brand, and mission into a single, powerful, and easily remembered concept that never needs to be said twice.

The best use of pre-testing creative concepts isn't as a negative filter to eliminate poor ideas early. Instead, it should be framed as a positive process to identify the most promising concepts, which can then be developed further, taking good ideas and making them great.