Unlocking Performance Max Potential with Audience-Aligned Creative for Woburn

Testing creative to reveal what truly motivates family audiences

To support peak summer demand, we ran a six-week Performance Max experiment designed to uncover what creative themes truly drive action. With parent audiences being Woburn’s most valuable segment, we tested two creative routes under controlled conditions: one using broad, zoo-themed visuals, and another featuring families engaging with the animals. The results revealed a clear pattern, where generic creative expanded reach and family-focused assets significantly boosted engagement and conversions. It demonstrated that aligning creative with audience intent drives stronger, more efficient performance.

What we did

Creative Testing

Performance Max Campaign Setup

Audience Segmentation

Paid Media Strategy & Execution

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Reach increase: generic wins vs family-focused

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CTR increase: family-focused wins vs generic

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Conversion rate increase: family-focused wins vs generic

The challenge

Woburn needed to reach a wide visitor base during the summer holidays while ensuring that families (their highest-value audience) received more relevant messaging. Previous activity relied mainly on generic creatives that delivered reach but lacked clarity on which visual themes genuinely motivated family audiences to act. The challenge was to determine whether more audience-specific creative could outperform generic assets when combined with precise targeting, and to understand the extent to which visual relevance shaped engagement and on-site behavioural intent.

Our approach

We structured the Performance Max campaign around defined audience layers, combining retargeting, custom intent signals and parent-focused demographics. Rather than relying on a single creative direction, we built two clearly differentiated campaign set ups.

 

One used general zoo and animal imagery to maximise reach, while the other featured family-focused visuals reflecting how children interact with the animals and the experience itself. 

 

Targeting controls, budgets and campaign settings were held consistent to isolate the impact of creative variation. This enabled a clean comparison, showing which creative themes aligned most strongly with user intent and drove higher-value actions.

The impact

The test demonstrated that creative alignment meaningfully influenced performance. Generic creatives provided reach, but family-focused imagery delivered substantially stronger engagement and conversion among parent audiences. This demonstrated that combining precise audience targeting with tailored creative generates more efficient results and brings higher-value visitors further down the funnel.