Mediaboss Marketing

I think it's safe to say that by about 2010, email marketing was a full-fledged marketing tactic. If your business wasn't using it to engage with consumers, then you may have been missing out on critical new lead opportunities. Today, I believe the golden egg is A/B testing. If youre not A/B testing, you may already be behind your direct competitors.

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a marketing experiment where two different versions of a campaign or a piece of content are tested on your audience to discern which performs better. In other words, version A is shown to some of your audience and version B is shown to the others.

One of the things we love most about A/B testing as a marketing tactic is that it doesnt discriminate it can work for any business. It doesnt matter what industry your business is in. It also doesnt matter whether your business is B2C or B2B or whether you offer products or services you can use A/B testing to learn more about your audience and make changes so that youre reaching them in the most effective way.

When To Use A/B Testing

When is the best time to A/B test? The short answer is always. The more realistic answer is whenever you can.

With the chaos that is managing a business and dealing with many moving parts, it may be unrealistic to commit to A/B testing on everything you put out. While conducting continual A/B testing is ideal, its important to set goals and be intentional about your testing.

Here are the pieces of content that I recommend definitely A/B testing:

Emails

Webpages

Facebook ads

Social media posts

Blog titles

Calls to action

You also may want to conduct A/B testing to determine the optimal length of content and the best time to publish it.

Essentially, you can split test everything that your target audience sees from your business, and the more you can do so, the better grip youll likely have on what engages your audience the most.

The Main Benefits Of A/B Testing

1. Improved Content Engagement

Each time you A/B test and then use those results to inform the decision you make for future content and campaigns, youre making smart improvements to your content that are proven to garner more engagement.

For example, our team A/B tested the graphics for a Facebook ad for one of our multifamily apartment community clients. The results showed us which image style and coloring was most effective on our audience. Version B of the ad graphic garnered over 2,000 more clicks and had 20% more engagement. Since then, we've switched the style of images to be similar to version B and have seen a steady increase in engagement with our Facebook ads.

2. Reduced Bounce Rates

If you notice that visitors are leaving, or bouncing, quickly after arriving on your website, then you can use A/B testing on the copy, blog post headlines, images and more to see what best catches the eyes of your visitors. Ultimately, this can help you keep visitors on your website longer and reduce bounce rates.

3. Increased Conversion Rates

With A/B testing, you can figure out what kind of content converts more website visitors into buyers. With this marketing tactic, its extremely easy to see what works with your audience and what doesnt.

How To Conduct Efficient A/B Testing

Step 1: Pick one variable to test.

We've found that A/B testing works best if only one element is different for each version. You could use a different image for a social media post but keep the caption and URL the same, or use a different headline for a blog post but keep the image and body copy the same.

Step 2: Divide your audience equally and randomly when possible.

You may not always have control over the audience who views your A/B testing content, but with content like emails, you can control and split the audience evenly. Our team uses marketing automation software, which automatically splits traffic between the different versions, for our A/B testing.

Step 3: Test versions simultaneously.

You may not be able to fully trust the results if you test two different versions at different points in time. Unless the variable you're testing is posting time, keep the test versions on the same schedule.

Step 4: Give tests time to run.

Allow your tests to run for enough time to produce useful results. For example, no matter what content we're A/B testing, the minimum amount of time we run a test is a month.

Step 5: Measure your results.

There are many metrics you can use to gauge how your content performs for instance, bounce rate, open rate, exit rate, engagement and number of conversions. Choose one or two that align best with your main goal, and see which version performs better. In our experience, when it comes to A/B testing email subject lines, the open rate is a helpful metric. With website copy, weve found that measuring bounce rate and exit rate tell us whether our target audience is engaged.

Further, determine whether the results are statistically significant (i.e., large enough to warrant a change).

Step 6: Take action based on results.

Use what you learn even if its that your original content performed better than any of your other tested versions. As well, dont make only one change; apply what you learn to multiple facets of your content.

Not much is free in the marketing and advertising world, but we've found that A/B testing is one of the most cost-effective solutions. The insights and knowledge you can gain about your audience's preferences are invaluable, and you can use them across all levels of the content you produce.

Pay attention to your results, and weave A/B testing into the fabric of your business.

See the article here:
A/B Testing: The Benefits And How To Use It Efficiently - Forbes