The Dos and Don’ts of Digital Marketing: A/B Tests

When it comes to optimizing your marketing efforts, you need to know two things: the results of your efforts (whether good or bad) and how/why you got those results. Equipped with this knowledge, running marketing A/B tests becomes a powerful tool in determining what mix of factors are most impactful in moving the needle of your performance. 

Periodically running A/B tests around email headlines, calls to action, scheduling, etc. can help you develop better efficiency & ROI within your marketing campaigns by providing insight & direction in areas such as:

• defining your niche in the marketplace

• developing a voice

• optimizing ad copy

• updating and optimizing landing page content & functionality

Even though A/B tests can offer high value, it’s important to be intentional in your testing approach - don’t just test for the sake of testing! You can begin to diminish the value of A/B testing when you don’t have a plan in place - you can begin to test too many variables at once, test with low traffic volume, test too frequently, or fall into one of the biggest mistakes of all: testing a winning result too many times. 

Here are some of the ways you can tell if you’re beginning to over test your marketing:

• If one of your tested advertising variables has been continuously winning in A/B tests (especially over the course of several months or tests)

• If your campaign/ad/email/etc.’s overall performance is beginning to drop (ex. variation A is performing at the same level, but each B variation is performing worse than the last)

• If your current marketing numbers are significantly outperforming industry benchmarks (WordStream is a great resource for benchmark data)

Here are some of the negatives we’ve seen from too much A/B testing:

• Wasted Spend & Lower ROI - When running tests against a continuously winning variable, especially for extended periods of time, you can waste a serious portion of your advertising budget, causing lower ROI. It’s nice to get additional confirmation that your go-to version is still the king, but imagine how much better you would feel if its higher performance was realized over your full marketing budget (rather than to 50% it’s likely to spend during a test).

• Lost Opportunity- In the age of “going viral,” spreading your marketing budgets thinly across various tests can definitely lower your overall opportunity, and in a big way (especially for video advertising). This also happens when advertising in markets that see spikes in traffic around various times of the week, month, and year. 

• Other Aspects Of The Business Begin To Fail - When you become too fixated on one aspect of your business, it almost always causes a drop off in other areas. To see the maximum benefit from your marketing efforts, your entire business needs to be optimized so you can best capitalize on the opportunities your marketing drives!

At the end of the day, it’s a good practice to incorporate testing in your marketing and advertising strategies. With that said, don’t get hung up on it - accept the outcomes you see, and allow yourself the chance to equally work on all aspects of your business so you can maximize opportunity. Once your tested strategy begins seeing performance drops, jump back into A/B testing once again. With markets changing constantly & more rapidly than ever, you'll have plenty of opportunities to re-test soon!

Struggling with your A/B test data or identifying A/B tests you should run? Contact us today and we’ll get you covered!