Research done right ft. Sarah Levinger

Research is the first stage in the creative strategy flywheel. Everything builds off the work you do in this stage, so it’s important to get it right.

Sarah Levinger is a Consumer Behavior Analyst and Paid Creative Consultant with over 10 years of experience. She's worked with brands like True Classic, Forbes, and Obvi.

At our Creative Strategy Summit, Sarah delivered an incredible talk breaking down her approach to market research. 

Want to increase conversions, drive more sales, and beat your competitors? 

Start with research. Read on for a breakdown of key points like:

• How to frame your exploration
• Underrated research tools
• Doing the opposite of your competitors

You can also check out the full recording below ⬇️

What do you want to know? 🤔

First, decide what information you want to gain from your research. Are you curious about messaging, or trying to decide which channel(s) to focus on?

Emotional drivers are Sarah’s top focus.

What are the emotional responses that drive customers to purchase your product? Playing into them makes your ads stronger.

Here are some research subjects Sarah shared during the summit:

The “nice to know” list is still worth exploring, just lower priorities for Sarah. 

Choosing the right research tool 🔬

Next, decide where to find your data. What tool(s) will you use to conduct your research? 

Pinterest Trends: Pinterest lets users curate boards based on their interests. Their trends tool is massively underrated. 

Let’s say you’re a fashion brand. Scrolling through the growing trends list, you can see that “fall outfits”, “Halloween outfits”, and “pumpkin patch” are trending.

It’s early October so none of these trends are surprising. The power of Pinterest is only unlocked when you click on one of these trends. 

Looking at “fall outfits,” we can see the interest over time, related trends, and a demographic breakdown. In this case, “fall outfits” is being used by an audience that is 90% female and 82% are aged 18-34.

The “Popular Pins” section at the bottom might be my favorite feature.

Click on this section and you can scroll a nearly endless list of pins that Pinterest users have picked out related to the trend – in this case fall outfit inspo.

As you scroll, think about:

• Where and how are they posing?
• What patterns are you seeing in these outfits?
• Can you build similar outfits with your products?

Pinterest also suggests modifiers at the top which you can click to add to the search. Fall outfits + professional + women looks very different from fall outfits + casual + men, so use tags to narrow down to your brand’s demographic.

These popular pins are a great indicator of what your audience is looking for right now.
SparkToro: SparkToro is great for understanding your audience. Go to the site and change “searches for the keyword” to “visits the website.” Type in your brand’s website and hit search.

On top of standard demographic info, SparkToro will tell you things like: 

• What podcasts do they listen to?
• Who do they follow on social media?
• What other websites do your users visit?
• What kind of keywords do they search for?

All this data can help you understand who your customers are and what they’re seeking from you. It can also inform ideal partnerships or collaborations you might want to explore. 

Reddit: Reddit is great for getting an accurate view of how people see your brand or product. Reddit threads are generally unbiased and unfiltered, so expect to see a mix of superfans and haters.

Scouring Reddit threads can take a lot of time though. Sarah suggests saving time by using ChatGPT to analzye threads with the CustomGPT “Access Link.”

Log in to your ChatGPT account and click “Explore GPTs” in the top left corner. Search for “access link” and it should be the first result.

Here's a sample prompt Sarah used to walk us through the workflow:

→ Analyze this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Biohackers/comments/1c1judt/skincare_is_confusing_what_is_actually_science/

→ And tell me: 

1. What people think about the industry
2. What they’re most afraid of
3. What their biggest problems are
4. How they feel about those problems

This gives a general overview, but also gets into fears, complaints, and motivators.

Tweak this prompt to fit the thread you want analyzed, but keep the emotional themes.

Research what your competitors are doing

Another aspect of ad research is looking at your competitors. 

• What ad formats are they using? 
• What’s their media mix breakdown?
• What landing pages are they driving to?

We’ve recently launched a completely free tool that can answer all of these questions. It’s called Brand Intel, and it’s part of Creative Research.

Click Brand Intel (also in the top left corner) and you can search for any brand advertising on Meta’s ad platform.

One of Sarah’s hottest takes was on the subject of competitor research – she said that you should look at your competitors accounts for examples of what not to do, rather than copying their best performers.

This actually makes a lot of sense. You don’t want to compete with a similar product AND a similar marketing strategy. Your ads should be a differentiator.

How to find ad inspiration 🖼️

If you can’t look to competitors for ad inspo, where should you go? Think about ecomm brands that make great ads, that inspire you with their marketing. 

Look them up in Brand Intel (or Facebook/TikTok’s ad libraries) and scroll through their ads to see if anything jumps out at you.
Then, use one of our other free Creative Research tools, Swipe File, to save those ads. You can save them from Brand Intel, or download the chrome extension to save ads from Facebook or TikTok’s ad libraries.

You can also create different boards to organize and easily share the ads you’ve found with your team.

Ads we like this week 😎

In addition to Swipe File and Brand Intel, Creative Research includes curated ad collections that are available to all users. There are expert collections from some of Motion’s power users in addition to collections based on ad formats.

Here are some ads from these collections that caught my eye:

Ad collection: Static Gods

This ad may not look like much, but it ran for 381 days. 

What I like about this ad is that it’s designed to get people commenting, even if they’re not buying. Getting tons of comments signals to Meta that this is an engaging ad, which is generally good for performance. 

It also helps Fashion Nova show up in the feed and be part of a conversation that’s relevant to their audience.

Ad collection: Motion Top 50

I love this ad. Blueland gives you a reason not to buy their product upfront, in the headline. Then they explain why this downside exists, practically turning it into a selling point.

No product is perfect, and even if you had a perfect product, customers wouldn’t believe you. Customers always wonder, “what’s the catch?”

Tell them the catch to build trust and give yourself the chance to justify it.

Ad collection: Problem Identified

This super blunt ad from Our Place ran for 244 days. It’s such a simple format, but it does a great job of making the problem very clear: toxins in your cookware.

You created your product for a reason. There was a problem you wanted to solve. So don’t be shy about pointing out the problem!

Did you like these ads? Find more great examples in the collections tab of Creative Research.

Explore Creative Research

Tying it all together 🧵

Research informs all stages of creating an ad, so it’s important to get it right. The basic steps we covered are:

• Define what you need to know
• Decide where/how you’ll find that info
• Conduct your research and compile your data

And above all, make sure you turn your data into action. Don’t gather information just to have it – use it to differentiate your brand and make winning ads.