Perhaps you’ve gotten by making educated guesses about how to improve your marketing. Although basing your decision-making on instincts and general knowledge of your target market can float you for a while, it is still merely guesswork. While much of marketing is about constantly trying new things to see what works, there has to be a healthy balance of data-backed decision making so that you can avoid simply spinning your wheels (and wasting your marketing dollars).
If you’ve done some experimenting and testing in your marketing efforts already, you have probably come to the realization that you need to narrow down your strategy by focusing on which marketing assets perform best and which need improvement. Utilizing your data may be your answer. By taking control over your marketing using data to guide your decisions, you can confidently make changes to assets that are not converting and generate improved results.
A case for data-based decision making
Although you may have a strong idea of what your audience responds well to, no one can predict with 100% accuracy which messages your audience will respond to. Because there are no set rules for online marketing success, entrepreneurs have to learn from a lot of trial and error along the way — which is why testing the performance of your marketing efforts is crucial. Regular testing saves time in the long-run and helps entrepreneurs avoid dealing with endless rounds of trial and error. The value of testing lies in the ability to take control over your content and improve accordingly based on data-backed test results.
Interestingly, half of small businesses still aren’t focusing on optimization and it’s affecting their overall growth. Many small business owners assume that effective testing is expensive, complicated and, therefore, reserved for the big guys. However, studies show an exponential rise in overall success rates when testing on landing pages, paid digital media and email marketing is used. Testing is one of the most powerful and fundamental ways to improve metric results for your business.
Why modern marketers turn to split testing
Split testing is an easy and inexpensive way to gain the information you need to improve your response rates across a variety of marketing mediums. Entrepreneurs can quickly determine what their market prefers, allowing them to steadily improve their messaging and conversion rates. According to the Data-Driven Split Testing guide, “You should be testing everything all the time, because every minute you spend not testing something is a minute that you’re potentially taking a loss.” Split testing is a powerful way to improve your content engagement by gaining control over your results.
The more split tests you run, the more you’ll learn about your audience’s behaviors and preferences — allowing you to quickly make informed decisions about where to focus your time and money. According to marketing expert Dale Cudmore, “Split tests are a statistically backed method that tells you if a particular change, usually on your website, will lead to more profit. Even small improvements in your conversion rate can lead to tens of thousands in extra profit every year for the foreseeable future.”
There are countless split testing case studies that show the big difference in conversions that simple changes can make. For example, FSAstock.com, an ecommerce store that stocks Americans with FSA-eligible products and services, improved their revenue per visit when utilizing the testing function. They ran A/B split tests to eventually find that their tab-heavy navigation bar was too distracting for customers. After simplifying it, they saw a 53.8% increase in revenue on their page.
In another revealing example, a business named Extra Space Storage, a storage facility with over 1,000 facilities across the US, was looking to improve their conversion rate. They decided to test the color of their CTA button. Originally blue, the split test tried yellow and orange, too. In the end, the orange button outperformed the others with a conversion rate increase of 7.8%.
You too can gather insight and adjust you marketing efforts to increase conversion using this guide.
How will split testing benefit your business?
By running split tests, you will get:
- An easy way to find the best version of any online ad so you can spend your marketing dollars wisely and efficiently
- Actionable information about which CTAs perform best so you can make simple tweaks that will dramatically improve your sales
- Clear answers about which email subject lines work best so can choose the ones that your customers won’t be able to resist
- Insight into the performance of your copy so you can continuously improve it to attract more customers from your target market
- Solid data about which landing page layouts your customers prefer so you can increase form fills and get more leads than ever before
- A better understanding of the different ways to split test so that you can identify which is best for achieving your goal
For an easy-to-follow guide that will show you how to run simple yet effective split tests from start to finish, check out Data-Driven Split Testing.
