When you’re not quite happy with the traffic you’re getting, it’s time to take a look at the bare bones of your marketing campaign. From the colors you’ve chosen to the headlines of your web pages and articles, to the language you use when writing your blogs – everything needs to be maximized and all elements should work together to accomplish the common goal; in this case, more traffic. When you want to boost your internet marketing campaigns, and you’ve tried everything else, it might pay to try split testing. Split testing is used by marketers all over the world, particularly the experts, because there is no better way to gauge the effectiveness of a campaign, or improve it, than to test each of the individual components one by one.
What Is Split Testing?
You don’t have to be an expert to try split testing. In fact, even novices are encouraged to use testing in an attempt to boost traffic. To begin, let’s use an example. Let’s say that you have a marketing segment that you’re about to send a mass email out to. In email A, you have the subject line, “Open now to get a free online marketing report.” Email B has the subject line, “Free report inside.” You then send email A to 50% of that segmented marketing group, and you send email B to the other half. You then gauge how each email performed. If email A received more open rates and responses, you’ll know which subject line is more effective. This is the idea behind split testing and it can literally be used for every element of your marketing campaigns.
Why Split Testing is Effective
Instead of sending surveys out to your audience and getting feedback, you can test how various elements perform in real-time. This type of data is invaluable to the online marketer. By being able to monitor the results of split testing experiments, you can see what’s working and what’s not; and you can alter your marketing campaigns to be that much more targeted for your audience.
The following are some ways you can try split testing to make your campaigns even more prosperous than they currently are.
The Tools You’ll Need
The whole concept of online split testing wouldn’t be possible without the advent of analytics software. Using Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, YouTube Analytics and other tracking platforms, we are able to view the cold-hard data that tells us if our testing is actually working. Without those numbers, our tests would be more like guesses.
Website Testing
We will start with website split testing using the content management system WordPress. WordPress makes it easy to create multiple, identical pages, which is essential if you’re going to try split testing.
To illustrate how website testing is performed, we’ll use an example of a web page that asks for the visitor’s name and email address. The page is a simple sales letter with a single graphic and an opt-in box. The page is getting good traffic, but you’re not getting the conversions you want. This is where split testing comes in handy.
If we were to create a secondary page that looks identical to the first, only we added a YouTube video asking visitors to leave their information, we might see far more conversions.
To test these pages, we will choose a traffic source. Pay-Per-Click marketing works perfectly for split testing because you can control the availability and visibility of your ads down to the time of day. Choose the same time each day and alternate days, only show one page or the other. Then, gauge your progress. Make sure you have a constant, such as the same time each day. You can try other times, other colors on the home page or other titles; really, anything you want.
That’s the beauty of testing and why so many marketers use it. You can test every inch of your online marketing campaigns to make them extra precise.
Other Opportunities to Try Split Testing
Now that you have the concept of split testing down, start implementing the concept with your own campaigns. Test your landing pages, your emails, your ads, even the tone with which you write with; everything is fodder for the ambitious split tester.
Using analytics software, and the tracking software built into your favorite social media channels, start monitoring the numbers and split test every element of your campaigns; and let your audience tell you exactly how your campaigns should be put together.
