It happens to the best of us. You build an ad campaign; you go live, and…crickets. Sure, there are some responses, but nothing significant. What do you do next? How do you turn around an underperforming ad?

We thought we had the perfect formula in a recent campaign: Give our target audience a 10% discount towards our store in exchange for answering a few quick questions. We pushed our ad campaign live, and the results were less than perfect. We had an ok start, with an insignificant amount of responses. After only a day, responses slowed down significantly. We could have kept the campaign and accepted the results we received even though they were lower than expected. Instead, we decided to go back to the drawing board.

After re-evaluating our target audience, we decided to use a more stark yet emotional approach. Instead of offering a monetary incentive, we asked our audience a simple question: “Do you love Israel? Answer this 2 question survey.” Within hours our click rate had doubled, and we had far exceeded our goal receiving over 300 responses.

What we learned from re-evaluating our ad isn’t a new concept. Ads with emotional content are proven to perform twice as well compared to ones with more rational content. By re-thinking our strategy and channeling our audience’s love for Israel, we increased our click rate and achieved our goal.

When building an ad campaign, the results aren’t always predictable. The question is when things don’t work, do you stop? Or do you go back to the drawing board?

To learn more about testing and the psychology of giving, please contact us here