What exactly is A/B testing?
A/B testing or split testing is a technique to find out the best-performing ad ( in terms of headline, copy/text, images, and call-to-actions) that works best for your Facebook advertising campaigns. In other words, A/B testing compares two similar ads yet having different versions of other attributes like headlines, images, etc. so that you can pick the best-performing ads over the non-performing ones.
Why Split testing or A/B testing is necessary?
Although A/B testing or split testing is not mandatory for advertisers to run for their Facebook advertising campaigns it is the most effective way to successful campaigns.
What are the things that you can test on your ads?
First of all, you need to decide what exactly you want to test in your ads. There could be several things that you may want to consider for A/B testing of your ads, so I leave it up to you however I have listed the different parameters in 2 categories:
1. Design/Look of your ads: This may include an image, title, ad copy, description, call-to-action, or landing page.
2. Ads targeting: It could be country, city, language, age, gender, relationship status, precise interests, behaviors, mobile devices, school, work, etc.
Different ways of splitting Facebook ads?
The ad copy
You can use up to 90 characters to create an ad copy and you never know which copy works better than the other ones. So, the most common way of splitting ads is to create different copies. You may keep other parameters like the landing page, image, call to action, etc. same but switch over the ad copy to a different one each time you create a new ad.
The image
We know that an image is worth a thousand words but are those words being liked by your target audience? The only way to determine the best imagery that your audience will like is to do an A/B test for your images. Again, you can keep other parameters the same but just change the ad image each time when you create a new ad.
You may try using different images, or the same image with slight modifications like text or without text, logo or without logo, human faces or without human faces, and the list goes on.
Destination
When you know that your CTR is good and the cost per click or CPM is good, but you get very low or no conversions from your Facebook advertising campaigns, then it would be a great idea to test your ads with different destinations or in other words different landing pages.
For landing page testing, you may try different versions like more texts vs fewer texts, more images vs fewer images, and small forms vs large forms.
Demographic
There could be some cases where your ads (image, ad copy, landing page, etc.) are good but you are not targeting the right audience. For eg., one of your ads may perform well for the age group 30-40 years but you are spending most of your money on 50-60 age group people. The only solution is to test each of your ads with different demographics.
PricingĀ model
If you are advertising based on cost per click (CPC), you may try for cost per mile (CPM) which is also known as cost per thousand. There could be some cases where the cost of your advertising is overspent using the CPC model with less or no returns however there could be chances where your campaign performs well with the CPM model. So, you can always try CPC vs CPM.
Final Words
Splitting your Facebook ads for different scenarios (as mentioned above) may involve a lot of work but it’s worth testing because at the end of the day, your money will be spent wisely and you will definitely yield profit.
