When it comes to testing and experimentation, there’s always a risk-reward scenario. You could go with what you know and what feels right or you could try something new and see how it pans out. It could really improve conversions, but it could also go the other way.
I’m always reminded of the saying “Amateurs guess, professionals know”. This applies especially to Internet Marketing.
With digital marketing, testing is a low-cost, fast way to learn. The ability to start, stop, or change your method is easy and applying what you learn so that you can capture the greatest opportunity can also happen very quickly.
When you are marketing on the internet, the cycle of launching, measuring, and optimising can happen quickly and continuously. The more proficiently you manage this cycle the stronger your results will be. Never be afraid to try and possibly fail – whether you’re testing a new creative message, a new communications platform, a new sales promotion, or another strategy. The long term benefits of split testing can quickly and easily outweigh the short term costs.
Here are a few testing ideas to apply in 2010:
- Use Google Website Optimizer to test your web site content (e.g. headline, copy, images) or design alternatives for your landing page. This tool will help you quickly identify and implement the combinations that drive most conversions.
- Use YouTube as a focus group. Besides monitoring views, ratings, and comments, you can use YouTube Insight to learn what’s resonating, and where. Based on what you learn, invest in your ‘winning’ content by driving traffic via sponsored videos, altering your associated messaging in search campaigns, and ramping up geo-targeting in the areas where your video over-indexes in popularity. You may even consider testing that video as a TV spot if your budget will stretch that far.
- If you’re not yet using display ads yet, make an effort in 2010 to test them out. Use the Display Ad Builder in Google Adwords to build display, rich media, and video ads quickly by incorporating your own text, images, and logo into one of the professionally designed templates. This allows you to test a creative message and learn what works best before investing in a deeper level of creative support.
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