The beauty and the curse of digital marketing lies in the amount of data you have to analyze to figure out what’s working and what isn’t for your business. No other medium is held to a higher standard than the Internet. With all of the traffic numbers and conversion numbers, how do you know where to start? Split testing isn’t a new concept but because of digital analytics, it’s a great way to test what your audience responds best to.
WHAT IS SPLIT TESTING?
Split or A/B testing is a way to test any one variable within your marketing messages. The important thing to remember with A/B testing is that you can only change one variable at a time. Let’s use email as an example. If you want to see what factors lead to a higher open rate, you need to keep the same creative and email copy; then split your email list in half randomly (randomly is important!) and send the same email to these groups with different subject lines. Then you can analyze open rates and see which subject line performed better. You can perform this task with many different types of digital media (Google AdWords, retargeting, email, PPC, and the list goes on and on) to analyze what works best. Also try changing out photos and copy, as well.
BENEFITS OF SPLIT TESTING
Put simply, split testing makes you a smarter marketer. It helps you understand what your customers respond to in messaging and ultimately lowers your cost per acquisition. Lowering your cost to acquire a new customer will increase your revenue. It helps you create better content, period. The ability to split test copy, images, creative, etc. digitally also affords you the opportunity to transfer those messages that worked into other various forms of media. Traditional media (TV, Radio, Billboard) are still effective at reaching your audience, imagine how much better it could work for you if you had spent some time split testing you message to see what gets a response.
