Here’s how we supported Rewiring America: We helped them test and validate early paid advertising efforts by providing cross-functional support, including design, content creation, tracking, campaign management, and more.
Rewiring America is the leading electrification nonprofit, focused on electrifying our homes, businesses, and communities. They develop accessible, actionable data and tools, and build coalitions and partnerships to make going electric easier for households and communities. Rewiring America helps Americans save money, tackle nationwide emissions goals, improve health, and build the next generation of the clean energy workforce.
Before teaming up with Tuff, Rewiring America hadn’t really explored paid media as a growth channel. They didn’t have any past data to show if paid efforts would work. Plus, since they hadn’t dabbled in paid strategies yet, they weren’t sure which value propositions and messages would connect best with their audience.
Enter Tuff ↓
Our experience with paid advertising covers a wide range, from handling initial campaigns for startups with tight budgets to managing large demand generation teams with substantial annual budgets. These situations are quite different. In this case study, we’ll focus on the early stages of paid advertising, highlighting important aspects from our work with Rewiring America that led to valuable insights while making efficient use of limited resources.
Before we spent any money on campaigns, we made sure to set up tracking using GA4, in-platform tools, and Rewiring America’s CRM. Understanding performance is crucial before investing any budget. Meanwhile, our UX copywriting team developed a strategy to test different messages and determine our core message themes. We identified six unique messaging themes that highlighted the distinct value propositions of Rewiring America.
With these value propositions in mind, and knowing exactly where we wanted to guide folks (to this IRA calculator), along with a straightforward call-to-action, we came up with a plan to try out various message themes and gather some data. Here’s how we approached testing various channels and messages quickly and efficiently:We aimed to run tests on at least two creative-forward channels. After considering factors like low CPMs, testing capabilities, and audience size, we chose Meta and YouTube. Both platforms offered the ability to conduct isolated tests within their campaign structures and reach large audiences to gather significant data.
Once we selected the platforms and allocated budgets based on costs and audience reach, our performance creative team created ad assets. For each value proposition, we crafted text to accompany the graphics, which would be used in both static and video versions of the creatives. With eight message themes and two templated concepts, we ended up with a total of 16 creative concepts.
After kicking off campaigns with a test budget, tweaking them daily within the platforms, and gathering data from each platform, here’s what we discovered after 30 days ↓
Out of the six value propositions we tested, three of them (Climate, Cost, and IRA Benefits) emerged as clear winners, showing stronger click-through rates (CTRs) and better on-site engagement metrics. We pinpointed these winners relatively quickly, particularly on Meta. We used this data to generate more ideas and create additional creatives centered around these themes. These will be instrumental in powering further campaigns on this platform as budgets grow and our focus shifts to drive lead generation further down the funnel.
The importance of validating our creative before rolling out higher spending, performance focused campaigns is that we can more confidently spend those ad dollars with an expectation of stronger performance. By focusing our messaging on Climate, Cost and IRA benefits themes we were able to get our CPA into Rewiring America’s aggressive CPA target in the first three months. By leading with a VP test we cut out months of creative testing and tens of thousands of ad spend in performance campaigns that would eventually yield the same insights.
You don’t need big budgets to test value propositions. With the right testing plan, even a few thousand dollars can give you valuable insights. It might seem like a lot for a small brand, but it pays off when you start growing.
Testing needs a systematic approach. Without it, you’re just wasting money! We made sure our testing plan had clear rules to isolate variables. Our campaign structure evenly spread the budget across ads, no matter how they performed.
Testing value propositions in a controlled way is a smart, low-cost way to kickstart a creative strategy and overall plan for acquiring customers. Start small, find what works, and then grow from there.
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