MultiBrief: How split testing can give a big boost to your digital marketing strategy

• Updated on: 2020-06-16
• Read original article here

As a digital/social media marketer helping your brand emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, you know that taking stock of where your ad planning stands is critical. A new report finds that73% of all businesses surveyedare working on strategic planning.

One powerfully effective way to evaluate your brand's strategy is with split testing. This is an easy technique to determine how well your marketing assets will truly perform.

Split testing (sometimes referred to as A/B SEO testing) is defined as comparing two versions of a webpage, email, or other marketing asset and seeing which version performs best, per Crazy Egg.

You present both versions to separate portions of your consumer group and those portioned customers instantly do the evaluating for you as you mine opinion of the dual ads' impact on the demographic you want it to reach. Essentially, you're coming up with a hypothesis or proposal that you want to float as a trial balloon — and when you float it via the split testing process, you get an excellent and immediate confirmation of whether your hunch or idea will actually translate into concrete action and positive responses from your audience.

1. You take a sample piece of content you've produced: email marketing copy, planned ad copy for your platforms, or a landing page, for example. You then produce it in two versions, with different design graphics, tweaked copy, or whatever ideas you have that you'd like to get consensus on.

2. You then introduce the two versions separately to two different online segments of your audience to seek feedback.

3. You measure that feedback through the lens of traffic, conversions, and clicks.

4. Then, you get the perfect snapshot of why one approach will garner more sales than the other. The possibilities then become endless for you in terms of how you want to adapt the info to your content and outreach approaches for the specific audience you're seeking to reach.

Split testing can also get incredibly granular, which is an added boon to your profit potential. Crazy Egg also shows that choosing the color red for a click button made the difference in terms of 21% more visits to one webpage.

Therefore, you can focus on gaining micro-insight into the points of your messaging that you really want to refine, and swiftly see which details need to be scrapped or revamped. You can focus split-testing techniques on areas such as testing headlines; evaluating the precise language of your copy; checking your CTAs; seeing where your graphics, site music, editing choices and image selections need improvement when it comes to omnichannel marketing; and subject line effectiveness for email marketing.

Cutting-edge technology you can use to get the most out of your split testing data is readily available. ClickFlow, for example, is indispensable. Single Grainreports that ClickFlowcan help you isolate the issues you may be having with low click-through rates by adding images to a page, then checking to see if those images improve your numbers.

Other great tools for split testing include utilizing Google Optimize and Google Ads. Do a research dive to identify the specific split testing tools that will best address your needs and areas of analytic interest. You can find the right tool to meet your goal, whether it's all about setting target numbers for you or working on your keyword selection.

Ultimately, split testing can help you evaluate each and every bug that may be holding your brand back from its full selling potential — and this is the perfect time to employ it.