If you’ve been working in marketing for a while, you probably understand the importance of testing, at least on a theoretical level. When it comes to all things digital, website testing can help you optimize all your processes. But in the real world, when is there ever time to test? Unfortunately, failing to test means you’re relying on blind chance that your marketing plan will work. By failing to take the time to test your strategy in order to improve it, you could be costing your company tons of time and resources.
At our Orlando marketing agency, we believe testing is one of the most important aspects of marketing, yet I see many marketers that allocate only a fraction of their budgeted resources to testing. If you’re not testing your marketing strategies, then you are missing out on chances to greatly optimize and improve your marketing and advertising activities.
If you haven’t already, I implore you to sign your business up for Google Analytics. It is incredibly easy to sign up for Google Analytics, and companies that have not already implemented this data are at a disadvantage in understanding their audiences, user activities and the effectiveness of their marketing strategy. Then, start changing things on your websites to see if you can notice improvements. Does simply changing the verbiage of a call to action increase your site’s conversion rate? You’ll never know unless you test!
Engagement metrics such as pages-per-visit, time on page and micro-conversions are great for measuring your whether people are investing their time and energy into your content strategy. Setting up goals is a great way to help track what you’re doing. This can be an email metric, an actual financial conversion or filling out a lead form. And, if you aren’t seeing results, then try making minor adjustments to the site content to see what helps.[quote]Sometimes something as simple as changing the color of a call to action button on a landing page can help to increase clicks.[/quote]
Facebook also shares data about the demographics of your users, and by pulling out the demographic data from Facebook it becomes easier to design a comprehensive content strategy. Sharing metrics can also help gage the effectiveness of individual pieces of content. Compare something humorous to something simply informative. Do you see a difference in response? If so, then perhaps you’re learning that your readers’tastes, and knowing what resonates with your audience can help improve your conversions over time.
You can also help boost the reach of your content by investing in your content marketing. Promoted tweets and sponsored stories are great ways to amplify your efforts. Extremely focused keywords can be very cheap, leading to a very cheep per-visit rate. These stories should be interesting, rather than self-promotional. As much as possible, it should seem thoughtful and organic. Test these by trying variations of different posts, and see which ones maximize results. Most platforms that offer promoted options also offer analytics to help review the effectiveness of your paid media.
In testing the effectiveness of your marketing, marketers should also plan to invest in A/B testing. A/B testing involves replicating the exact same test, with a single variable that looks different to different audiences. Ideally, it works best to try only one variable at a time, but we know that in the fast-paced world of marketing, that’s not always possible. Still, any insights you glean from A/B testing can help validate ideas about how your audience reacts to different messaging and imagery. One of the easiest places to start A/B testing is with email marketing. MailChimp.com and ConstantContact.com both make A/B testing easy.
Failure to test can cost companies thousands of dollars per year. By making sure you content is optimized for your audience, you can persuade even more people to use your product or invest in your service. At our averting agency in Orlando, we believe that if you want to be the best, you have to test! The resources it takes to test early on can help save your company money in the long-term.
BIGEYE offers a plethora of website testing services including website conversion optimization where we can help you to establish goals, launch A/B testing, deliver monthly reporting and analysis and more. Contact us today to get started!
