10 Things You Need to A/B Test Your Digital Ads
When going into digital marketing it is important to do A/B testing as part of the production process for any content because it will help improve the campaign in the future. Testing is one of the best ways to learn about the preferences of your target audience.
Before testing any content, you should lay out your purpose, hypothesis, and goal. These will give your test direction of where and how you will launch your tests. First, you need to identify the purpose of why you are going to conduct the test.
Second, make a hypothesis. It may not be possible to know what might be the outcome because you might be surprised with the results. Sometimes the expected results and hypothesis will be far from expected and that is good because from then on it will help you make guided decisions about what your audience preference will be.
Lastly, identify your goal. For every campaign, there should be a goal that you want to achieve to ensure that you are not wasting your time, resources, and effort in the long run. There should be a clear and measurable goal because otherwise, it will be difficult for you to track if you’ve already surpassed it or not.
After knowing your purpose, hypothesis, and goal it is safe to say that you are now ready to do the tests.
Here are ten things that you could consider to test in your digital advertising campaigns:
1. Message Testing
You can do this by simply making variations with the length of the message, promotional versus informational versus benefit-based messaging, and adding various ad extensions. Adding or having fewer words will not make much difference for your tests. However, you can try having a short and long version of your message to see which one will work best for your campaign. Next, you could also try making different perspectives for your content. This could be done without ever changing the main goal, you just need to find out if the audience will be hooked if they see the content as something informative, beneficial, or mainly promotional. Lastly, you could try with or without backlinks to see if they will be interested to see more when they see the link or not.
2. Landing Page element testing
You can play around with this test because there are almost endless possibilities when it comes to changing the elements in your landing page. Trying out different elements in your landing page might lead to surprising results. You can change the layout, form fields or buttons, and other elements. Experimenting with the elements will surely give you a good grasp of what your audience would want to see. It will also help you improve your page’s overall user experience and interface.
3. Imagery testing
It’s ideal to test a couple of different images, themes, concepts, and palettes for social media posts, channels, and landing pages. This will help you identify which image best resonates with your audience. It will be best to feature contrasting images or themes to see if your audience prefers a straightforward approach or if they would want to see a product. There are a lot of combinations that you can try but you need to choose only the ones that will best fit your campaign.
4. Ad Headlines
A catchy headline will take your ad to places and easily harvest attention. This will help increase your click-through rates. Instead of having only one, it will be best to come up with two or three headlines with different approaches. This can identify which one will capture your audience’s attention the most. If you are planning to launch a campaign on different channels, you should also remember that the tone of a single headline works with everything. You should consider the channel or platform that you are planning to post and put in mind the target audience in each because the approach in LinkedIn might not work as effectively in Facebook. The ad testing will be much more productive if you are going to generate variations of headlines for each platform.
5. Ad Copy
Content matters– a lot. After getting their attention with a catchy headline, you should make sure that the copy is just as good, or else they will lose interest right away. You can test your messaging in the copy by making different versions all with the same information. It should be concise and remember to add all of the target keywords for your campaign.
6. Creatives
The display of creativity is endless. Mix and match colors, layouts, images, and textures to see which works best for the audience. If you are ad testing a video, you might also want to consider using different filters or music. The results will help you make guided campaign decisions moving forward.
7. Ad Unit
You should also determine the ad unit of each campaign that you are planning to test. Identify if you’ll go for banners ads, interstitial ads, rewarded video ads, offerwall ads, and playable ads. These ad units behave differently. You may want to consider trying a few of them at a time to not max out your resources right away.
8. Time of the day
Each demographic behaves differently and you should be able to identify at what time of the day is your target audience most active online. There are already studies made but you will never for sure unless you test it for yourself. Post your campaign at different times of the day to see which will gain more attention. This is an important test because this will help you maximize your resources by targeting your audience at the time of the day where they are most likely to see your ad.
9. Days of the week
There are certain days where your target audience is not as active online. You will be amazed by how the audience behaves on a Monday compared to Fridays. You can place your ads on days where you think they will be most active if you have enough resources, it will be best to post on at least three to four days. Knowing when they are most active will surely increase your conversions and sales.
10. Call to actions
CTAs are just as important as the headline. This will help you close the deal with your audience. Make sure to have a strong call to action because it will drive your audience into making that call or purchase. A simple command like download or submit can usher your audience into deciding to connect. Make your CTAs as noticeable as possible.
Final thoughts
Digital advertising and ad campaigns can be daunting enough, how much more testing them to see which are the most effective. These tests can be arduous for startups and those who just set up a website and are starting to plan out campaigns. It’s ideal to consult Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and trusted agencies who have been in the industry and have variable knowledge in the art and science of ad testing. The future is here and it will be an excellent investment to hire or consult SMEs to make sure that you are on the right track to reach your goals.
Let us help you in testing your video content that’s integral to the success of your campaigns.
