5 Things to Set Up Correctly Before A/B Testing

A/B testing is the process of comparing two versions of an ad and measuring which one performs better. For ads, this is the most efficient way to test.
But there are things you should look at before you start testing.

Your Offers and Audience

Make sure you’re advertising the most relevant offer to audiences based on their level of engagement.

• Unique Value Propositions (UVP) or Lead Magnets: free, valuable offers for audiences that have never engaged with your business. This is rule #3 for Ten Golden Rules: create a unique value proposition or something of high value to get your site visitors to engage or interact with your website.Example: Free eBook to engage prospective customers
• Tripwires: low risk, high value offer for audiences that have engaged with your business but never paid you for anything.Example: $0.99 Domain – Low risk, high value offer to convince prospective buyers to open their wallets
• Core Offer: your company’s bread and butter; the good or service that will drive the majority of your revenue stream.
  Example: Core Offer set at MSRP
• Upsells, Cross Sells, Subscriptions/Rebills: supplemental offers made to people who have bought your business’ core offer. These serve to widen your business’ profit margins on a transactional basis.
  Example: Cross selling other offers that complement a Core Offer

Using web technology and a properly documented business strategy, you should always be proposing the correct offer to the correct segment of your audience.
If you don’t have offers for people at each level of engagement with your business (lead magnets (also called UVPs), tripwires, core offers, upsells, cross sells, subscriptions/rebills), you should focus on building those out before bothering with test ad creative.

Your Landing Pages

A landing page is the page your visitors are led to when they access your site through a hyperlink on another page. This is usually your homepage, but can be other pages as well. Your landing page is much more likely to affect conversion rates and sales than ad creative ever will, so it’s important to make sure your landing page is as fast, lean and relevant as possible to your campaigns’ targeted audience and offers.
The best campaigns bring people to specialized relevant pages on a website vs. the home pages. For example, for a Halloween costume website, if someone searches for Harry Potter costumes, you should send them to the Harry Potter pages, not the home page.

 

Your Campaign Targeting Options

When you set up your campaign, make sure you’ve set up the correct targeting options for your campaigns and blocked out any low-performing targeting:

• Geographic Targeting: (National>Regional>State>Country>Metro>City> ZIP code)
• Day Parting (day of week, hour of day)
• Demographic Targeting (age range, gender, parental status)

Your Ad Extensions

Ad extensions are extra pieces of information about your business—a phone number or a link to a specific page on your website—which you can add to your ads.
Ad extensions are free to add and generally improve the ads click through rates or add new functionality.
Inserting ad extensions to your ads can help capture more real estate when they’re served up, making them look better and increasing click through rates.

The Lifetime Value of your Audience

Instead of testing ad creative for incremental gains, you’re better off investigating ways to increase the lifetime value of every sale or conversion by building additional upsells, cross sells, and rebilling/subscriptions into your business model.
The more revenue you can generate per new buyer, the more you can afford to spend per acquisition and, in the end, more market share you can fight for.
 
To learn more about A/B testing and AdWords, Contact the pros at Ten Golden Rules by calling (561) 620-9121.