Creative Strategies for DTC Growth on Meta

Building Creative that Converts for DTC Brands

So creative has changed a lot for DTC brands, especially in the last 12 months. We’ve seen big changes in ad platforms and what’s driving success for businesses. What are you seeing brands do that’s really winning?

A core theme is incorporating your brand aesthetic and being really strategic. It’s about understanding the different reasons why people are buying from you and building a strategy around those motivations. Then, going hard on volume within those different angles, per se.

Make sure you’re really understanding why your customer is buying from you and why your product appeals to a particular persona. Build a strategy around that and ensure your brand is authentic and clear in the creative. So, it’s not just a scrappy UGC video; it’s about integrating strategy, brand visuals, and focusing on why people would buy.

I guess that requires a brand to have a lot more content to use in the first place, right?

Absolutely, yeah. When it comes to production, it’s essential to be intentional with what you’re capturing, keeping the customer in mind. For many DTC brands, the customer hasn’t been front and centre—they’ve focused mostly on capturing the product. But now, whether it’s UGC, creator content, or production, the focus should be on why customers will buy from you.

Do you think brands can capture that content within existing shoots from a brand perspective, or is it something you do separately?

For performance marketing, I think it’s helpful to have separate shoots, if I’m honest. If you can integrate it into a wider brand shoot, then absolutely, there’s value there. But I don’t think you should sacrifice a brand shoot solely for performance or organic content.

The more intentional you are with creative production, tailoring it to the platform and purpose, the better results you’ll see.

This seems to lead into what’s working well for DTC brands in digital: people want diverse content. The visuals drive changes in ad results—it’s not just copy tests. Yes, copy is important, and you need to test to find the right message, but actually, driving creative diversity from the start is key. Rather than just changing a background, it’s about capturing a whole different take that can engage audiences and keep ads from fatiguing quickly.

Yeah.

Creative Diversity: The Key to Scaling on Meta

Why is creative diversity the key to unlocking greater efficiency for Meta?

The short answer is you ultimately want to be reaching different pockets of customers. Now that the Meta ad platform—and increasingly, social platforms in general—are largely creative-driven in their targeting, the way you reach new people is by targeting them with different messages, different angles, and diverse creative.

So, you need a broad spectrum of creative diversity if you want to tap into your total addressable market, rather than just funnelling your ad spend through to one subset of your customer base. Historically, media planners and buyers thought about who they were targeting first, like targeting specific interests on Meta or narrowing down to show them specific content because they, say, read Vogue and are aged 24 to 34. But targeting doesn’t work that way on digital anymore.

Now, it’s more about your content determining who sees your ads within a broad audience. It’s like the approach has been flipped on its head. To reach new people, you actually need to say different things that appeal to different people. That’s what enables you to reach more people at the same cost per conversion, ultimately allowing you to scale and get more from your budget.

It’s a mindset shift from a technical definition of “this person” to a focus on messaging and creative. The question becomes, how can we reach that person with our messaging and creative? This shift forces more focus on strategy, creative production, ideation, clever editing, and really having a specialist who understands how to make content work within the platform’s constraints.

It’s a big change, and it fits within performance marketing as a whole. It’s less about just “performance” and more about true marketing. You need to be a good marketer to succeed now, and I think that’s the standout thing I’m seeing in the last 12 months.