Have you ever been unable to pick an image for a Facebook ad? Or maybe you’re stuck deciding on a catchy tagline? If you plan on beginning a marketing campaign and have several ideas about how you want to design a landing page, you can create different landing page variants for each idea. A/B testing can be an invaluable testing method for marketers across all industries.
The test, which compares consumer behavior, allows marketing teams to analyze how targeted audiences respond to specific pieces of content. To succeed in a digital world, businesses need to understand how to correctly perform and measure A/B testing to drive business growth and optimize ROI.
While sounding complicated, A/B test methodology is actually a very straightforward process. Also known as split testing, A/B tests compare different versions of a piece of content. Despite its name, this test compares as many pages or ads as desired. The comparison method allows your business to gauge motivation and reaction behaviors against independent variables such as time, ad copy, beautiful images, and a plethora of other variables. This data helps your marketing team determine what version effectively elicits a certain behavior from your targeted audience. As a result, marketers can ascertain the types of content that their audiences enjoy, and create similar content moving forward.
How to Determine Sample Size for A/B Tests
The first thing you need to consider before running an A/B test involves determining your sample size for the test. The sample size appropriate for an A/B test depends on the element you wish to analyze. For instance, when running A/B test on a web page for your business’s website, use a sample size calculator such as Evanmiller.org, Optimizely.com, or Cardinal Path to help you plan out your sample size. Alternatively, you can wait until enough people visit the web page for your results to be significant.
If you want to use the A/B test to measure an email’s success, opt for a different sample size than the one that you used when analyzing the web page. Email marketing involves a restriction when tied to a recipient list, so plan your goals accordingly before running the test. By determining your strategy before running the A/B test, you can have a clear idea of how many people you want to target and influence; this will ultimately help determine an appropriate sample size. For email marketing, test versions against the smallest amount of people on your list within a statistically significant number. Doing so will allow you to send the better email to a larger amount of people on your list.
How to Conduct Your A/B Test
Consumers’ needs and habits evolve over time. Thus, you need to adapt to a changing audience when performing A/B testing. Focus on aspects of your target audience’s behavior, which tends to remain consistent over time. Discover what motivates your target audience; interests, earnings bracket, and any other key components, which influence purchasing habits. As the target audience changes, try implementing new calls-to-action. You can also recycle ideas to assess how copy, tag lines, and graphics resonate with your audience.
How to Track A/B Test Results
How many times should you run an A/B test before finalizing your results? Like any experiment, you can obtain more precise results from more trials. It is important to determine the best way to organize your tracking by using charts, graphs, or tables. Remember that the main goal of performing the A/B test is to determine which email or web page is the preferred method for your target market.
While sounding simple in nature, it involves strategy and analytics. Try creating a master spreadsheet to export the data that outlines your A/B tests, and separate columns for different trials and label each variation by letter. Be sure to highlight the date and time that you are running each test, as this can help you gather more insight about your target audience and their media behavior. Contact your email service provider or an analytic specialist program such as Get Data Driven to help tally your results.
Start Planning Your A/B Test Today
When it comes to determining the best version of your marketing content, the A/B test continues to dominate the business world. While the steps of the test seem simple, planning an outline before running the test ultimately yields better success. Consider not just the overall view of the recipients experience opening the email, web page of viewing the ad, but also how they will figure out what to do after, and how it will impact their future buying decisions. Do you have a strong CTA? The experts at Premiere Creative can help begin the process of your business’s A/B testing today. Give us a call at (973) 346-8100 to help you get started!