Have you ever wondered how to get more leads from your landing pages? Lower the bounce rate of visitors to your website? How about increasing clickthrough rates on your emails?
Bottom line, we all want to find ways to improve the results of our marketing efforts, and there’s one tool in the shed that can assist with each of these concerns — A/B testing in marketing.
But what is A/B testing, and why does it matter in terms of reaching our goals? In this article, we’re going to explore this concept and look at ways it can be applied. Ultimately, this is a data-driven approach to learning more about the audience and then refining our marketing strategies accordingly.
Let’s get started.
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What Is A/B Testing in Marketing?
A/B testing is the process of testing one strategy (A) against another strategy (B) to see which performs best. In marketing, this approach is used to help refine the content on website pages, paid advertising, email marketing, and other channels to align with the test results
The Benefits of A/B Testing in Marketing
Digital marketers are always looking for ways to boost performance of their efforts, and implementing A/B testing in marketing is a wise approach to improve your strategy at every step of the way. For example, here are some of the benefits of using A/B testing:
- Reveals customer motivations and preferences
- Delivers real data based on customer actions
- Assists in developing better user experiences
- Boosts performance of marketing
5 Examples of A/B Testing in Marketing You Can Try
Calls to Action
Testing different calls to action can help you see which words resonate most with your audience. For example, “Submit” is a standard CTA seen on many form submissions. Perhaps your audience would respond better with something like “Get Your Free Download” or “Save My Seat” depending on what you’re delivering. It’s a small change, but it could significantly impact the number of visitors who complete the action.
CTA Button Colors
You may not think testing the color of your CTA buttons matters all that much, but CTA button colors can affect website conversions. That’s because people respond to colors differently — red may signal “warning” to some, while “green” feels empowering. The only way to find out which colors your audience responds well to is to do A/B testing in marketing strategy. You can do it on landing pages, emails, and even website surveys.Headlines
Have you thought about testing the headers on your website pages? If your page has a high bounce rate, it could be helpful to A/B test header copy to see if you can clarify your message and help people to take action. You may even go a step further and test different sub headlines against each other to see if visitors respond better to one over the other.
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Even the images we use in marketing can influence how people respond on our landing pages or while reading emails. For example, let’s say you have an image of your product on your registration page. You might try testing a photo of a person using the product to see if you increase registrations. Sometimes, the simple act of testing an image against the control can prove more engaging and deliver increased sign-ups. You may also want to try testing a video against an image and see if you get better results.
Form Fields
One of the most common barriers to form submissions is too many form fields. You know, when you want to sign-up for an event, but they require at least 10 pieces of information from you? If you aren’t getting as many submissions as you had hoped, try reducing the number of form fields to see if it changes anything. Often, companies ask for too much information up front, so using fewer fields may prove valuable.
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Try A/B Testing in Marketing Today
Now that you have some ideas of what A/B testing in marketing is and how it works, give it a try on a landing page or in one of your next emails. You’ll learn more about your customers and improve the effectiveness of your marketing, too.
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