🍐 Peas in a pod
Pod testing has emerged as one of the most effective and efficient strategies to produce significant data for a brand’s team of marketers.
Pod testing is where a group of brands participates in a test (or several) and shares the results among themselves to benefit every brand in the pod!
Pilothouse simply had to try out a pod test with their brands and we’ve got the results to share with you in this week’s All Killer No Filler Podcast.
🙌 How it came to be
We’re joined by the Facebook Technical Director from Pilothouse who shared the results of three separate tests that involved brands looking to improve their Meta Ads campaign performance.
🤑 Bid vs Cost
Marketers often debate the pros and cons of prioritizing a bid cap or cost cap in their Meta strategy. Each cap comes with its own benefits, but Pilothouse wanted to find out what the most effective strategy was across multiple brands in their portfolio.
A bid cap allows marketers to manually set a maximum bid amount for Meta to spend on any one ad placement.
A cost cap is a predetermined average bid value that Meta uses to maximize a brand’s cost-per-acquisition.
Brands should utilize both strategies to find a balance that works for them. However, Pilothouse saw that brands that leaned heavily into the bid cap strategy performed exceptionally well compared to those with cost cap-focused campaigns.
Most notably, brands saw up to a 15% increase in return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) using a bid cap strategy when compared to brands using the cost cap strategy.
It’s hard to ignore results like that when a brand is looking to scale on Meta. 👀
The caveat here is that bid cap strategies are usually leveraged by experienced marketing teams because of the extensive knowledge required to determine the most cost-effective cap for a bid on Meta.
🔑 Anotha’ one
The second pod test put Meta’s automation to the test! Pilothouse tested the highest volume automated strategy against the cost-cap strategy we tried previously.
Both strategies involve Meta making automated bids based on the goals set by a brand.
Highest volume bids consider a total budget (rather than a cost-per-result approach like cost-cap does) and maximize a brand's results within the constraints of that budget.
Pilothouse found that cost-cap was outperformed again by a higher ROAS and better overall performance for brands who leaned into the highest volume approach.
🎨 A little more creative
Pilothouse’s last test encouraged brands to play with custom frames in their Meta Ads carousels.
The custom frames highlighted some notable features and data of the products being advertised, like:
- Unique selling points (USPs)
- Free shipping thresholds
- Amount of product sold (‘X amount already sold!’)
The top-performing custom frames, such as those promoting free shipping or limited availability, showed an impressive 21% lift in ROAS!
You can try out some custom frames for your brand’s ad campaign by following these steps:
- Open your Meta Ads Catalog
- Click ‘Creative Tools’ > ‘Edit creative’ > ‘Add a frame’
- Upload your custom frame as an image file like a .png
- Click ‘Upload’ > ‘Save’
🥡 The takeaways
The collaborative nature of pod testing enabled brands working with Pilothouse to make data-driven decisions and pivot their current outlook to boost the results of their advertising efforts.
Pod testing has proven to be a powerful tool in the belt of performance marketers through this series of comprehensive tests. So, maximize your spend and drive your results through the roof after checking out the full breakdown in this week’s AKNF podcast.
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