Digital Marketing Solutions: How You Can Use A/B Test to Improve Marketing Results

Why You Should A/B Test to Improve Marketing Results

As a digital marketing agency, we spend a lot of time breaking down the digital marketing strategies of companies spanning multiple industries. Each time, we notice one key strategy that helps elevate paid media services to a new level: A/B testing. 

A/B testing is often the difference between nailing a marketing campaign with record-setting conversions and failing to connect with your audience. 

So, I want to go over what A/B testing is, what its benefits are, and why you should start implementing it into every digital marketing strategy you use from here on out. 

What Is A/B Testing in Digital Marketing?

A/B testing is a fairly simple concept. It's when you create two pieces of marketing material with the same message or goals in mind, but with subtle differences in the presentation or wording, and you see which version performs the best in terms of making conversions. 

This doesn't just have to be used for ads, though. You can make two versions of the same webpage, content article, product description, etc, and use A/B testing to gauge the effectiveness of each.  

The Pros Of A/B Testing

There are a few reasons why A/B testing works. 

Pain Point Resolutions: Your site visitors don't come to your website on a wild whim. They come to achieve a goal such as buying your product, reading over your informative content, or engaging with your service. 

When you have a copy that is difficult to read, or you've hidden important buttons such as "Check Out" or your CTA, your visitors will go to someone else that is easier to engage with. 

Using A/B testing allows you to simultaneously test multiple versions of the same content in order to find the version that resolves your audience's pain points without providing a low-quality user experience. 

Fine-Tuning Your Content for Existing Users: While we all like to make new customers, it's important to cater to our existing customers as well. A/B testing lets you switch things up a bit and gradually fine-tune the way your existing audience consumes your material. 

If you notice long-time customers or users are bouncing off-site with one content sample, but they're sticking around longer with another, you can start implementing the subtle changes that helped your content perform better on a site-wide scale. 

Better yet, this almost completely removes the risk of scaring away visitors or lowering your reputation as an authority in your niche, because the tests are subtle and designed to gather information on very specific aspects of the content. 

In short, it's a lot less of a shock to long-time customers than completely redesigning your entire site overnight with haphazard changes. 

No-Guesswork Improvements: You probably try new strategies all the time with your business. After all, you have to try new things to keep growing. 

However, those changes usually don't have a lot of statistical data backing them up. You change your page layout because you think it looks nice. You change your CTA button's color because you think red is more eye-catching. 

A/B testing removes the guesswork from making those changes. As you run the test, you gather loads of concrete statistical data supporting or discouraging your potential changes, and when you do implement a change, you know it will work. 

In the long run, this saves you time, money, and a lot of headaches. 

Start A/B Testing Now

If you're not already using A/B testing to enhance your digital marketing strategy, I recommend implementing it immediately. 

It can slightly drive up the cost of content creation, ad campaigns, or whatever you're using it for due to it requiring multiple versions of the same content, but the benefits pay off exponentially. 

Whether you're looking to simply revamp your brand positioning statement, or commit to a site-wide redesign, A/B testing is the perfect way to get the job done right.