Is your pay per click or other advertising campaign as effective as it could be?
Chances are, that it could always use some improvement. No one is at 100% conversion rate online so there is always room for opportunity to improve, but only if you can identify that opportunity and act upon it. That is where split testing comes in.
Read on to find out exactly what split testing is, and how it can help your marketing efforts.
What Is Split Testing?
Split Testing refers to trying out more than one type of promotion at the same time. It might be that you run two types of advertisements at once. It could also be that you send out a pair of similar email newsletters, each to half of your database.
The same principal applies to a sales letter, a printed piece, your website landing pages or anything you use for marketing.
Why Bother Doing Twice The Work?
With just one banner ad, how you can tell what is really inducing someone to click on it? Is it the colour, or the animation, or the text, or the offer? There is no way to tell until you start isolating variables.
Say for instance you’ve created an advertisement for your pay per click campaign based on the best keywords and content that will induce web surfers to click on it. You may think it is successful. Perhaps you’ve seen an increase in traffic and your sales have jumped. Obviously the ad is doing what you wanted it to do.
Creating another ad that is very similar (a mirror ad) but moves the text around a bit may give you further information. If your current banner includes an offer for a 10% discount along the bottom of the box, create another banner that puts that offer at the top. This way you can see which one is more effective, and determine if the 10% discount, or another feature, is driving traffic and sales.
How To Perform Split Testing
In a pay per click campaign, you will want to run each of your ads for at least 30 clicks. Keep a spreadsheet that shows the click through rate you get for each one. If the second banner is more effective than the first, determine the change that made it so. Then take it a step further. Take the second ad, and tweak it again.
In the above example, perhaps you have determined that the prominence of the 10% discount is the feature driving traffic to your site. Your next ad running simultaneously could include the price of your most popular product. Make another comparison and then another ad.
The longer you keep up this process, the more you will be keyed in to the features that best attract customers. This is extremely valuable information that can be used in all your future marketing efforts.
Of course, Split Testing can be performed on your website, too. Try changing the headline, sub-headline, and first paragraph of your home page. Use the two different landing page URLs on each of two concurrent advertisements and see which one generates more conversions.
When it comes to marketing, too often our efforts are left up to hunches or supposition. Why not go about it in a more scientific manner and analyse what is really driving your sales?
Split Testing will set your promotions on the path to sales success.
