A/B testing is nothing new to the digital marketing industry, but it may be new to small businesses, or thought of as a practice only large companies can afford. Split testing banner ads is for everyone and should be done by everyone, be it a one-person company or publicly traded giant. This is incredibly important and cost effective in the digital world.
Since there’s no magic bullet to display advertising, testing allows us to run multiple variants to see which banner ad attracts the best results so you can make better decisions with data to receive better results. Without testing, you won’t have data to make better decisions or learn about how your marketing dollars can go further.
Here are three tests you can start to implement and learn how you can improve performance of your banner ad campaign.
It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. You can try a few messages out in your campaign and measure success on how well your audience responds.
Ad copy is your headline and body copy. The sample below only had a headline change. The rest is identical. You can even test the rest of the ad copy such as features, benefits or bullet points on your ad. While keeping your message clear and concise, the goal is to test and improve the performance of your message.
Click through rate (CTR) is the rate of a potential customer seeing the ad and then clicking on that ad to receive more information. Increasing the CTR will bring in more potential customers, and should result in more sales. Small changes to your banner ad can mean big changes in CTR.
CTA’s are one of the most important elements of any banner ad design. You want to have a call to action that is clear, concise, and tells the user what to do when they see your ad. By testing various CTA’s, you can effectively improve your campaign performance.
What you think may work for your audience may not be what you think. Try testing out a few CTA’s to see what gets you more results. Try something soft such as: ‘Learn More’ or ‘Click Here’ versus something more aggressive such as: ‘Order Now’ or ‘Buy Now’.
Try it and you’ll see different results. Just make sure you are not testing other variants on your banner ads, or you won’t know which element is responsible for the campaign improvement.
In the example below, notice the subtle change below on the CTA?
Other parts of the banner ad that can be tested are the visual elements included. Using the same copy but different images, colors, backgrounds or fonts may yield wildly different results. Does the ad get better results with different visuals? Great! Try testing other variants. Keep trying. The goal is to get the highest CTR possible.
Split testing gives you the data you need to know whether or not your banner ads are performing as well as they could be. More data is always better, and helps you make better decisions when it comes to marketing your business.
Implementing some simple tests can dramatically improve your results and revenue. So don’t wait, get testing, get data, get smarter and make better marketing decisions by testing your results!
If you need help crafting the perfect banner or have any tips or ideas you’d like to contribute, give us a shout or drop us a note.
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