You may have heard the term “split testing”, but how does it relate to you and your business? Should you use split testing? And how does it work?
In this article, we’re going to explain what split testing is, why you should be using it, and how you can use it to help optimize your digital marketing strategy to convert more sales.
What Is Split Testing?
Split testing is a crucial part of any well-devised digital marketing strategy. Split testing is where you A/B test a particular part of your digital marketing strategy. It could be your on-site content, Facebook ads, website design, or your sales funnel. It’s one of the best ways to optimize your marketing strategy. As you’ll be able to see what version of a particular piece of content, webpage, or ad is working best. Plus which one converts the most sales for your business.
Most successful businesses understand and use split testing as a regular part of their marketing strategies. Even Obama hired A/B testing experts to help his presidential campaign to increase supporters and donations. This gave massive results. Online signups increased by 161%, and online donations increased by 49%.
Software company WorkZone also used split testing. They improved the number of leads generated by customer reviews massively. All the did was a simple color change in one of their pages. Changing one section into black and white allowing the form sections colors to stand out. This resulted in a 34% increase in leads.
The power of split testing is unquestionable. But why should you be using it for your business?
Why You Should Be Using It
Although split testing seems awesome, you may be thinking whether it’s worth applying to your business’s marketing strategy. But no matter the size or type of business you’re running, split testing will always help you to improve leads, conversions, and brand awareness.
Split testing is arguably one of the most profitable marketing strategies in the world, as you’ll be forced to ensure you’re getting the most out of each digital marketing tool. Your website, sales funnels, and online ads should all be split tested and optimized regularly to ensure you’re getting the best ROI.
Examples of How to Use It
There are many different ways you can split test each part of your marketing strategy and a huge range of tools that you can use to help.
Change your website layout. How your customers or potential new clients navigate around your site is extremely important. Your site’s UX (user experience) has a significant influence on who decides to do business with you.
Using tools such as Crazy Egg will help you to see how your website’s visitors are using your site. You can then make a split test version of your website based on Crazy Egg’s suggestions.
Change your online ads’ titles and copy. Changing the copy or titles of your Google or Facebook ads can have a massive influence on click-thru rates. Using tools such as Google Analytics and Keyword Planner, you’ll be able to see what keywords are working for your ads, which ones will work better, and you’ll have the option to use the built-in split testing tools.
The same goes for Facebook and other social media ad platforms — look at the copy used in your ads and make a variation that’s more visually appealing, using power words and more convincing language.
Experiment with different colors. Colors can make a massive difference in conversion and click-thru rates — as shown in Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.
The jury is still out on what colors work best, as it really depends on your audience, your type of business, and many other variables. It would help if you tried split testing your website or ads with different color schemes and experiment to see which colors work best.
Keeping Your Marketing Strategy Fresh
Split testing isn’t just used to see what looks better. It’s there to thoroughly test your marketing strategy to ensure you’re the best return on your investment.
Outline which areas of your marketing strategy you want to improve and begin to split test them using the techniques and tools mentioned in this article.
To learn more about how you can keep your marketing strategy up to date, check out the latest posts on the Intentionally Inspirational blog.
Written by Lewis James