I love marketing. So much of it is like working in a laboratory trying to find the perfect formula or cure for a disease. While you may not need to get as deep into marketing tests as a professional agency, there are a few simple tests you can run in your own campaigns to see what works best. The easiest way to do it is with a “split test“. Let’s take a look at my favorite avenue – PPC – to see how to apply a split test.

The Key to a Successful Split Test

When scientists conduct experiments, they start with a base (known as the “control”) and then re-conduct the experiment only changing one variable and noting the difference in result.

In marketing, we do the same thing by having two ads that are identical with only one difference between them – an image, an offer, headline, etc. Just make sure you only change ONE thing.

PPC Split Tests

Let’s take a look at Pay-Per-Click.

Without getting too technical, it’s easy to perform a split test with PPC ads. All you have to do is create two different versions of the ad based on the same list of keywords (this happens by simply creating two ads in the same ad group on AdWords). Now you can see if an offer in the headline or a catchy line works better. Or maybe test a dollar discount vs. a percentage discount. Take a look at what I mean.

Compared to:

A small difference in the offer can be very interesting to watch. Now, whether one offer is more beneficial to you, that’s up to you do decide.

***Quick Tip*** If you are doing split tests between two ads, make sure that you have call extensions on the ads (making your phone number appear on them) so you can not only track how many overall clicks you get, but also how many calls came through.

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