by Kelly LeMay
With just a few days of testing up front, you can save weeks and hundreds of dollars in the long run.
There’s one phrase that is said inside the offices of Elite Digital Group more than any other phrase. Our office is usually pretty fast-paced, so you might guess it would be something like “where’s my coffee??!!” or “holy fudge-nuggets” (we regularly have children in the office, so we need to keep water cooler banter G-rated at all/most times). While you may hear all of those things around our office, our favorite phrase is… “Let’s test it!”
At any given moment of any given day, we are testing hundreds of things – ad headlines, ad images, email subject lines, you name it.
If we are the experts, why do we test so much? Shouldn’t we know what works and what doesn’t? Absolutely, we have gobs of ideas for winning copy, books galore with templated headlines – we even have an entire wall in our office dedicated to winning Facebook ad copy. But when it comes down to it, we can’t predict results. (If we could, we’d be long gone to Fiji, drinks in hand, surfing the waves of a winning PowerBall ticket). While that picturesque dream of fun in the sun may not be a reality (nor should it be with my complexion) we CAN create educated tests.
I’m going to share with you one of my favorite, super easy ways to run a quick test to gather good data. Let’s say you have created a killer lead magnet… it’s chock-full of awesome content, fill-in-the-blank templates, and revenue-generating ideas. Only one problem, a lead magnet THIS EPIC deserves a title to match, right?
Before you decide on a title and start spending money on Facebook to drive traffic, you want to make sure you’ve got the right title. Because, if you launch your ads and they aren’t gaining traction, it could be because of the title, it could be your ad copy, or even the imagery. So if you figure out the winning title before launching a campaign, that’s one less thing you’ll need to worry about down the road (and less dollars thrown down the drain).
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Come up with 5 titles for your lead magnet. I realize coming up with 5 amazing titles might be difficult, but after you get titles 1 & 2 under your belt, you start thinking outside of the box. Often ideas 3-5 are you most creative and successful ideas.
Step 2: Set up a Facebook ad campaign for engagement. Inside the ad set, create 5 versions of an ad leading to your opt-in page. Each ad should have the same top copy, the same image, the same link description… where the testing comes in is the headline. This is where you will try each of the 5 titles that you created. For the test, it doesn’t really matter what the name of the report is on the landing page.
Step 3: Target your fans with the ads and decide on a budget. You can spend as little as $5 per day, however the test will likely take longer that way.
Step 4: Once you have at least 100 clicks for the campaign you can begin to analyze the results. Remember, we were only testing the headline here, so the important stats will be engagement-related (clicks, comments, shares), not necessarily conversions. Determine which headline copy had the most engagement – if the results are inconclusive, you may need to test a little longer. Once you have a winning headline, make that the title of your lead magnet!
This testing method can be used for anything from a report title to an important email subject line. With just a few days of testing up front, you can save weeks and hundreds of dollars in the long run.
Ready to try it? Share your results in our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/MarketingInsidersElite/.