Jan 30 2008
Does your Web Marketing Strategy Involve Split Testing?
Split testing should be an ultimate focus in your marketing strategy. It will help you become more successful, and may even generate more money in as soon as a day. In my years of marketing experience, it has always amazed me how many people are not aware of this very simple concept. If you don’t know what split testing is, let me explain.
Split testing, aka Multivariate testing, is a marketing process by which more than one component is run against each other in a real life environment. What this means is that you take two pages, two advertisement, or two ad descriptions and you run them against each other head to head to see which ones preforms better. Multivariate testing usually has a defined period of time, that is long enough to defy any sort of coincidental results . After this period of time is complete, you will analyze the results of your test to see which one fared better in the real marketplace.
The key ingredient to being a successful split tester is a reliable reporting method. Without reliable reporting, you will cannot be confident that your statistics represent the overall market. Many marketing avenues such as Google’s Adwords have spilt testing features built into it them. You can split test landing pages, you can also split test ad copy. If you are not doing either of these, you should not feel confident that you have an optimized campaign.
The key theory behind split testing is that you are never happy with the successes that you are currently having. If you can run two similar ads against each other at the same time, you may be able to find that the ad you are running is only second best to the one you just created. If you have a large enough, and equal (demographics, gender, race, etc.), sample size you will be able to compare statistics like the ones below.
Ad Copy A - Clicks 18 Impressions 498 Conversions 11
Ad Copy B- Clicks 6 Impressions 502 Conversions 3
Using these sample statistics it should be obvious that Ad copy A preformed much better than Ad Copy B. If I were running this campaign, I would toss out Ad Copy B and start again. My new goal is to come up with an ad copy that can outpreform Ad Copy A.
I become very competitive with my split testing. I am always trying to outdo myself, almost to the point of obsession. That is what separates a good marketer from a great marketer. Try this in your campaigns, you will realize that split testing has become a critical component to your web marketing strategy.
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One Response to “Does your Web Marketing Strategy Involve Split Testing?”
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Just to clarify, “multivariate testing” is slightly different from “split testing”. Multivariate testing involves testing several different elements at once, such as a headline, picture and the call to action.
You’re right, testing is a key ingredient and it’s helped me achieve some high conversion rates for my products.
Paul Hancox | SameTrafficMoreSales.com