How To Use A/B Testing In Digital Marketing Campaigns

How To Use A/B Testing In Digital Marketing Campaigns

 

Website copy across multiple pages should work together to create a cohesive experience. This means that the wording of the site, as well as the information, is the same no matter what page the user is on. It is OK to have different offers based on different campaigns or promotions, but the tone, company voice, and key messages should always be the same.

 

The reason for this is because if users are getting different messages on separate pages on your site, then they may become confused or frustrated and leave the site or not complete a conversion.

Examples of this include:

  1. A product offer that is portrayed on the home page is carried through to the product page
  2. The company tagline/mission statement/main selling points are the same across all pages
  3. Tutorial pages link to one another with applicable references
  4. Conference or event agendas are different
  5. Sponsors or offerings aren’t the same on all applicable pages

A/B Testing In Digital Marketing Campaigns

Here we see several examples for where A/B testing can be used:

  1. CTAs: For example, a green CTA box versus a red CTA box, or different offers, such as 50% off versus $50 off for a $100 item.
  2. Headlines: You could write two different headlines for a blog post and test both of them to see which one gets more click-throughs.
  3. Graphic elements: You could test illustrations against stock imagery and see which works best for your audience.
  4. Wording & content: Which works better for your audience, a long landing offer page or a short and concise one?
  5. Type of promotion or offer: For example ‘Buy one get one free’ versus ‘$50 off when you spend over $100’.

Some CMS, like WordPress, have plugins that will do the A/B testing for you or there are tools like Optimizely that you can set up to run an A/B test on your site.

Remember: It’s important to only test one element at a time!

 

 

A/B testing can be ineffective if too many tests are running at once: running more than one A/B test on a website doesn’t give us a clear picture of what actually worked.

The steps of A/B testing in Digital Marketing are:

  1. Pick one variable to test: this could be something like CTA button colour, page layout, campaign offer (e.g. $50 versus 10% off, even though they are the same value).
  2. Choose your goal: what do you want to accomplish with this test? Choosing a specific goal will help you determine whether or not making these changes permanent will make a difference. An example of a goal would be: “Increase conversions 5% in the next 8 weeks.” Make sure it is specific and actionable.
  3. Set up your control and your challenger: only test one thing at a time, and always have a “control,” where the element doesn’t change. This is so you can make sure that the specific element actually makes a difference or not. For instance, if you wanted to test your offer, you would keep your “control” as your existing offer, say, $50. That would be the “A” in the A/B test. Then, you test the “B” part of the test, the challenger, like 10%.
  4. Split your sample groups equally and randomly: you must have the same sample size in order to have a proper test. If one side was bigger than the other, then it may have the advantage.
  5. Determine your sample size: figure out how big your sample sizes are going to be. This is dependent on what you’re testing. For instance, if it was through email, the number of email subscribers helps determine the sample size (e.g. If you have 1000 email subscribers with a 4% click-through rate on average, you can assume 40 people will click through to the landing page you’re testing. This would mean 20 would be shown test A (the control) and 20 would be show test B (the challenge), on average. In most cases, the A/B test software randomizes or alternates it.

For instance, if we tested both the promotional offer and the headline of the landing page at the same time, and at got a higher conversion rate, we don’t know if it was the headline OR the promotional offer that actually caused the higher conversion rate.

 

 

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