I met with a client about their Google Adwords campaigns and we discussed making some changes since we needed to set their ads apart from the competition.
After I brought everyone up to speed on how Adwords work, one of the senior members of our meeting said “We should make two ads per campaign. After a couple of weeks, we check the click through results and tweak the under performing ad and repost it as the new second ad.” I said “That sounds like a good idea and that’s how we generally set up all of our PPC campaigns”. He said that it actually is a very common practice called an A / B split testing that they use with post cards and direct mail all the time. Why wouldn’t it work in this case? According to Marketing Experiments Journal
“A / B Testing yields the most valuable results only when you test repeatedly. A one-shot test will tell you very little. But when you make a consistent habit of testing, cumulative tests over time can have a dramatic impact on the success of your site.”*
When we engage with you on a Pay Per Click campaign. We will first need to understand the keywords that you believe are needed to get potential clients to the site. We will also do research using Google Webmaster Tools and Google Adwords keyword tool. After our research is concluded we come back to you with our finding and work with you to decide which keywords have the most potential for your business. Then we will create the campaign and tweak your content to work with what our keyword research suggests.
*After some further research I have come to the conclusion that this process should be used much more often than it is. Like my client above said, it should be used with post cards and direct mail to test offer language and it can also be used with telemarketing and voice mail marketing. I am also going to try it on my voice mail recording. A/B split testing should also be used on your websites call to action (no brainer).
If you would like to try out A / B split testing give this a try: create two different email signatures with some kind of offer in them (i.e. To learn how to get business results using the internet sign-up for a retained services and For timely internet marketing sign-up for all in one marketing and development plan). Create two different landing pages for your offer. After two to three weeks of sending out emails with the different signatures check which landing page gets the most clicks. You’ve found the type of offer you should use for your signature. Don’t stop there.
If one of the lines greatly outperformed the other, tweak the better performing offer and run the test again.
If the gap between the two offers was not that great, tweak the lesser performing offer and run the test again.
The key to A / B testing success is to continually be testing and tweaking.
