No matter who you are or what you do, your small business’ success doesn’t just lie with being great at your job. It also means being visible to the right people at the right time. It means ensuring that your marketing materials and ads get seen by the right kinds of people. The kinds of people who will buy your products or retain your services. The days of “spray and pray” marketing campaigns are long gone. To gain a competitive edge in the (almost) 2020s it takes digital savvy, a close eye on your analytics and a readiness to take a chance on different digital marketing techniques to get your campaigns noticed by your target audience.
If you’re running ads on Facebook and / or Instagram, you’re paying for the privilege. As such, you want to ensure that your ads are getting as much bang for their buck as possible. And by A/B split testing your ads, you can ensure exactly that.
What is A/B split testing?
In a world already teeming with acronyms and jargon, A/B testing (a term with its roots in web design) may seem like an off puttingly opaque term. But A/B split testing is far simpler than its name would have you believe. It’s simply the process of running two ads (or variations of the same ad) simultaneously and keeping a close eye on your analytics to see how well they perform relative to each other.
You can track how many clicks each ad gets as well as ascertaining how much conversation and buzz each variation of your ad or campaign generates.
Why is split testing important?
So, why would you want to do this? After all, you spent a lot of time and effort distilling your ideas into a single concept. You’ve spent ages coming up with a great idea and refining it… Do you really need two? While split testing may require some effort in terms of extra ideas, it can have a range of benefits for your business, ensuring engagement and tackling the ever-present problem of waste.
How? Glad you asked!
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of A/B split testing your paid ads…
It saves you money
If there’s one thing that all small to medium-sized businesses agree on it’s that saving money is never a bad thing. Split testing saves you money in a number of ways;
-
You can minimise risks by testing changes to campaigns before they become permanent
-
You can maximise traffic and visitor engagement
-
You can avoid wasting money on targeting the wrong people (more on that later)
-
You can increase conversions while reducing bounce rates.
Wait, does A/B testing really optimise conversion rates?
Oh yes! In fact, it’s one of the most effective forms of Conversion Rate Optimisation. When you have two carefully crafted versions of a campaign and a close eye on your analytics, it quickly becomes apparent what’s working and what isn’t. This makes for more converted more leads while also building greater value in your products or services.
The beauty of A/B testing is that once you’ve established what works you can make yet more tweaks, improving upon campaigns and experimenting with new ideas. So, you can get more paying customers out of every campaign and ensure that your ads get a much better return on your investment.
It helps you create better, more effective content
Creating marketing copy is equal parts art and science. And both disciplines require openness to experimentation. A/B testing different kinds of marketing copy and seeing what audiences respond to can help shape more effective and better targeted content in your ongoing campaigns. Meaning that your brand gets a reputation for effective and efficient marketing copy.
Sounds like a win to us!
It stops you from wasting your efforts on the wrong people
The beauty of advertising through Facebook and Instagram is that you can deliver campaigns to very specific groups with different age and income brackets and interests. But if your campaigns are designed to cast a wide net, they may end up in front of people who have absolutely no interest in your products and services. And never will.
Fortunately, you can also A/B split test audiences, targeting different groups to determine what kind of people respond most enthusiastically to your campaigns. This prevents you from wasting your time, money and effort targeting the wrong people.
With years of expertise in Facebook and Instagram marketing we can help you to take the guesswork out of implementing and managing your paid ad campaigns once and for all. We offer manual split testing as opposed to Facebook’s split testing option which affords our clients more control over their ads and allows them to maximise the return on their investment.
If you’re getting tired of shooting in the dark, get in touch with us today. We’d be delighted to help you restore impact and precision to your social media marketing!
