The FieldTest Creative Guide: Understanding Your Options and How to Use Them.
Whether you are a veteran performance advertiser or are just kicking off your very first self-promotional campaign, one thing all digital marketers have in common is the need for effective ad creative. It may seem self-evident that you cannot run an ad campaign without the ads themselves, but for many marketers the wealth of marketing options available to them can be difficult to parse and create a sort of ‘decision paralysis’ that ultimately hampers their ability to run effective ad campaigns.
We here at FieldTest know that no two ad campaigns are quite alike, and have always prioritized marketer freedom in order to ensure that every brand has the tools they need to succeed. We also know that along with the tools to make your own choices comes a responsibility for us to provide guidance on how to use them properly so you can rest assured you are making the right choices for your brand.
With that in mind, we put together this comprehensive guide to every creative option we offer on FieldTest and beyond, we hope this empowers you to make smart decisions with your marketing that lead to genuine connections with your customers and of course increased sales.
Let’s start at the top:
Part 1: Understanding your sales funnel
When designing your advertising creative it is important to understand the larger concepts at play in marketing - namely the concept of the Marketing Funnel. This is the framework for nearly all marketing, digital or otherwise and provides key insights into how you should deploy creatives to maximum effect. If you’re not familiar with the marketing funnel, it goes like so:
Top of Funnel - Awareness
You start your marketing at the top of your funnel, where it is the widest. This is called the Awareness stage. Here you are looking to get your product in front of as many interested consumers as possible. This creates ‘awareness’ of your brand and product and sews the seeds of interest among your targeted audiences.
When consumers engage with your awareness ads they will typically perform some form of trackable behavior - clicking onto your ad, navigating to your website, following you on your social media, etc - this will lead you to the next funnel stage.
(Note: Not all all awareness ads have performance based metrics to report. Consider the value of a billboard on the side of the highway. You may never know exactly how many people saw it and thought about how well your product fit their needs, but that doesn’t change the effectiveness of the ad!)
Middle of Funnel - Consideration
You The next step in the marketing funnel is the middle stage or Consideration. In this stage consumers are aware of your brand (get it?) and are considering their shopping options. Here you will use creative that speaks not just about how great your brand is, but how it can fulfill the needs of your customers in relation to your competition.
Your creative isn’t the only tool in the toolbox in this stage. You will pair these creatives with powerful marketing technology such as lookalike audiences in order to maximize their impact (read more about those here)
Bottom of Funnel - Conversion
Your bottom of funnel is called the conversion stage for a reason, it is where you will push all of the consumers you have been courting to convert. This stage has a few things to consider:
First, your ad copy should focus exclusively on selling your product. No use trying to convince people that your product is right for them when they’ve already been convinced in your upper and mid-funnel stages, now is the time to offer them hard sell language like discounts and bundle deals in order to give the the final push to convert.
Second, you will want to prioritize pricing and performance in this stage. This means smaller ad units and lower bids while using FieldTest retargeting to serve ads only to those who have expressed interest in your brand and products. By combining these two strategies with effective upper funnel marketing you are sure to unlock a groundswell of sales.
Understanding the sales funnel is crucial to understanding how to put the rest of our creative offerings to use. It might seem complicated at first, but once you see the pieces in action it all becomes much easier to understand.
If you’d like more info on the subject check out our blog posts on each funnel stage:
Awareness Consideration Conversion
Part 2: Display Ad Options on FieldTest
FieldTest set out to make our platform a one stop shop for digital marketers, covering everything from static banners to video to a full-featured ad creator allowing brands to promote themselves with nothing but a website. With so many options it can be difficult for some marketers to know where to start, or where to expand once the basics are covered. This section will go over all of the ad units accepted on FieldTest, how they should be used and what should be taken into consideration when implementing them into your ad campaigns. We’ll also throw in some helpful tips to make sure you have everything you need to succeed.
FieldTest Supported Display Formats:
These banners are all supported by the FieldTest Upload Ads tool and will help you build powerful marketing campaigns at any funnel stage.
160x600 : Wide Skyscraper
The 160x600 is a popular ad format, often called the ‘skyscraper’. A tall, relatively thin vertical ad format, it is often found in the sidebars of popular news and content sites.
These are useful in all funnel stages, but are particularly useful in awareness where there is a premium on large, visually interesting ads.
300x250 : Medium Rectangle
The 300x250 is the most popular ad format, chosen for its versatility and low cost. It can be found across a bevy of publishers. If you have seen online ads, you’ve probably seen a 300x250.
These are useful in all funnel stages, but don’t forget to change the messaging in your ads to fit with the appropriate stage.
728x90 : Leaderboard
This 728x90 banner is also known as the leaderboard, ensures your brand is the first thing that visitors will see when they load the page. Positioned at the top of the page as well as mid-stream, this is a powerful banner.
Remember that this ad is designed to be displayed on desktop screens so try not to use them on mobile campaigns.
300x600 : Half-Page Ad
The 300x600 is one of the largest format ads you can buy online without a full takeover making it an awareness powerhouse.
Be sure to note the selected device when using these banners, they are powerful large format ads but are too large for most mobile placements so they should only be used on desktop campaigns.
970x250 : Large Leaderboard
This ad unit, like the 728x90, is designed to appear at the top of content pages but offers you an even more massive plot of real estate to display awareness messaging.
These banners large size makes them a bit more expensive to publish, but offer nearly unmatched awareness potential.
320x50 : Mobile Leaderboard
The 320x50 is designed to replicate the format of other leaderboards such as the 970x250 and 728x90, but for mobile placements.
Unlike those formats, however, it offers limited space for messaging and makes a better downfunnel ad where it can be hyperfocused and optimized towards conversion.
336x280 : Large rectangle
The 336x280 is similar to the 300x250, but less ubiquitous and slightly larger, making it a versatile unit optimized for upper and mid-funnel use but perfectly applicable in the lower funnel as well.
1024x768 : Interstitial Landscape
The 1024x768 Interstitial Landscape ad is a large format banner intended mostly for tablet browsers, but with some desktop and mobile uses as well. These ads are highly effective, not only because of their large size allowing for better imagery and messaging, but for their dynamic and engaging placements.
768x1024 : Interstitial Portrait
Like its Landscape formatted brother, the 1024x768 Interstitial Portrait offers a large and dynamic ad unit for any funnel stage, but in a mobile and tablet friendly vertical format.
Definitely give these banners a try.
FieldTest Ad Builder: 300x250
The FieldTest ad builder provides a powerful option for brands who do not have any custom-designed banners or who want to supplement their campaigns with original, high powered content ads designed with versatility and deliverability in mind.
These 300x250 banners are presented in an engaging yet editorial style that is perfect for any stage in the sales funnel. Headlines are important in this style content ads so be sure to test a few messages when building them in order to find out what really clicks with your customers.
Part 3: Advanced Tips and Best Practices:
Banner ads are one of the most powerful tools any digital marketer has in their arsenal. Highly customizable and adaptable to any brand or marketing initiative, they give you an unmatched freedom to leverage your branding, imagery and messaging to create rel connections with your customers. Along with that freedom comes some challenges, and there are some concrete creative best practices to keep in mind when building yourdisplay banners.
Let’s go through some of the top tips to get you started right:
Creative Tip 1: Be sure to make your custom banners colorful, dynamic and engaging. This will ensure that your customers do not miss a single opportunity to connect with your brand. If your ad doesn’t draw the eye it will likely not lead to many real connections.
Creative Tip 2: If your banners contain a white background, consider putting a 1px stroke around the outside of your banner in order to create a clear divider between the banner and the page content. This is good creative practice and will make sure your ad is accepted and compliant for publishing.
Creative Tip 3: When building ads across any campaign, but especially when using the FieldTest Ad Builder, always A/B test your messaging and imagery. Marketing is deeply personal and sometimes it is difficult to accurately predict just exactly what will resonate with your customers. For example: If you have 2 images and 2 headlines to use in a particular funnel stage, make 4 ads from these and see what combination performs best. This will help you to get a better picture of who your customer is and what you can do to create better ads in the future. Never run just one ad!
Creative Tip 4: When building ad campaigns, particularly in the upper funnel, consider separating out your larger banner ads from your smaller ones in order to avoid any lopsided delivery. Our campaigns optimize to the best performing creatives and often smaller ads will find more places to run at lower costs and begin to eat away at the budget for larger banners. That’s not to say that larger banners with slightly higher CPMs aren’t worth running, they are an important part of building brand awareness, but you should build your campaigns in a way that will empower these ads to be delivered effectively so you don’t lose out on the benefits they provide.
Creative Tip 5: Want to create an ad that’s even more engaging? Try uploading a video or gif formatted ad. This works exactly the same as a static ad - drag and drop it into the ad uploader and we will do the rest - and provides an opportunity to further draw the eye of your customers and give them a positive content experience.
Final Thoughts
Your creative is the foundation for your marketing, nothing could be more important when building relationships with your customers. That’s why FieldTest works tirelessly to bring you the tools and knowledge you need to succeed. As the needs of digital marketers develop we will continue to add new features and tools to our marketing platform to accommodate, and when we do we will always ensure that brands have the know-how and guidance needed to put those tools to effective use.
If you are just starting your first campaign, we wish you nothing but the best of luck! Your marketing journey is just beginning but we’ll be here every step of the way to help facilitate your success. If you are a veteran marketer boning up on the fundamentals, we hope this guide was able to help illuminate something new and provide some insight that will help unlock new avenues for creative growth and deeper connection with your customers.
No matter who you are or what marketing goals you seek to accomplish, FieldTest makes it possible.
Get in touch to find out how FieldTest can empower you to build high performing ad campaigns and build deep connections with your customers.
