By Owen Fay . Posted on July 6, 2022Are you running A/B tests on your Google or Facebook ads but struggle to get the volume needed to give you confidence in one campaign over another?
Many companies and marketing teams deal with this issue. You need proof that your ads are effective, whether the goal is boosting revenue, building brand recognition, or generating leads. Testing your ads is the only way to truly know how effective they are. A/B testing can be a great way to determine what ads or campaign is converting the most users or achieving the goal of you as. But, if you are in a high CPC industry or just don’t have the budget to get the volume you need you might be waiting weeks or months to find the best ads.
Instead of waiting until after you launch your ads to find the best version of your ads, test pre-live. Rapid testing with Poll the People allows you to do just that. Our tests are completed in less than 60 minutes, with feedback from hundreds of users, for less than the competition. Not to mention the money you’ll save compared to traditional A/B testing.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss what to do if you don’t have enough volume to do standard A/B tests and why Poll the People is the solution to your problems.
Why Traditional A/B Testing is an Issue
Traditional A/B testing, in a live environment, has been the most popular way to validate decisions and understand what ads you should focus on.
The biggest issue with this form of testing is if your ads are run in a highly competitive industry the cost per click can be high. This makes your A/B tests extremely expensive, you might spend thousands, allocated to some ads that work and some that don’t. You’ll essentially be wasting half of your budget on ads that your users don’t like.
Additionally, if your ads don’t get enough volume or impressions, it might take weeks or months to gain enough information to make a decision.
As you can see traditional A/B testing has some major issues, for small to medium-sized businesses or agencies the roadblocks often lead to skipping the testing process and just hoping you’re running the right ads.
There has to be a better way! That’s exactly what we thought when we started Poll the People.
The Alternative to Traditional A/B Testing
Poll the People offers a great alternative that eliminates the major issues with live A/B testing. Our pre-live testing environments allow you to make decisions based on real user feedback to only run the ads that work.
We provide users with templates for testing everything from Google ads headlines to the creative you use in Facebook or LinkedIn ads. Additionally, if you are looking to optimize Google ad headlines, we launched a now tool that generates powerful ads for you.
You put two versions of your ads to the test, against each other to determine what users prefer, and will engage with or understand.
With tests completing in under an hour, you will have your insights fast. Instead of spending thousands on testing, each response costs about $1, you’ll only spend a few hundred dollars to find the best ads in minutes.
It’s clear that spending less time and money validating campaigns is a much better way to find the best ads.
How to Test Ads with Poll the People
Ad testing should start once you launch your product or service. You want to get sales once you launch the business, so ads are important. But, everything about your ads will be new to your audience; you’ll want to conduct a test that gives you general feedback on your branding, messaging, and creative.
This will help you find the best way to create ads that resonate with the users. Your tests should become more specific as the business and product move through the life cycle.
In the introduction stage, you’ll want to test for believability or relevance by testing different copies or images. Once your business hits the maturity stage, you might just be testing the color or changes of a few words.
Running several tests throughout the business’s life cycle is a great way to optimize ads continuously and follows an agile market research method. It gives you a valuable and manageable system for making data-backed decisions.
Now that we know why and how you should test your ads, we can jump into the process of testing the ads. If you want an overview guide to running a usability A/B test, take a look at this.
1. Pick The Ad You Want To Test
You can test many different types of ads or parts of your ads, and it could be a video, image, copy, audio, or a combination of elements. When you choose the type of ad you want to run, consider where users will see them. For example, an ad on Facebook will be different from a Google Search Ad. Considering the platform you’re launching on goes a long way in creating a successful ad.
Poll the People allows you to test copy, creative (images, audio, video), or a full ad with curated templates that help you run a successful test.
The platform allows you to test multiple versions of your ads and has users vote on the version they like the most. Unlike traditional A/B testing, participants then have to give a detailed explanation as to why they chose one option over the other. This method allows you to find the best ad, understand why it is the better ad and use that insight moving forward.
2. Find The Question You Want to Ask.
What makes one ad better than another? Appeal, uniqueness, believability, and relevance are major factors in making a good ad.
Appeal – is the ad visually and textually engaging to your audience?
Uniqueness – does your ad stand out from the crowd?
Believability – is the ad credible?
Relevance – does the ad fill the user’s needs and wants?
Intent – Will the ad motivate your audience to buy?
You can measure these factors by asking the right questions in your test. Keeping these questions in mind gives you clear goals for testing your ad. Asking questions like “How believable is this ad?” or “Does this ad motivate you to buy the product?” will help you understand how to improve your ads.
Depending on the goal of your ad, you’ll want to focus on different key metrics. If you want to focus on differentiation, then the uniqueness of your ad is most important. If you want to focus on brand recognition, the ad’s appeal is more important.
3. Sending Your Test
Many traditional market research platforms require you to either send your test to your own audience or spend a lot of time and money on the platform’s audience. It might be hard to get statistically significant data with your audience or be a long and expensive process by paying for an audience.
Luckily, Poll the People is different; our tests can be created, launched, and gather statistically significant data in under an hour. Testing with a dedicated panel of users is less expensive than traditional platforms at $1.00 per response.
Our market research panel allows you to specify how many respondents you need and receive valuable insights fast and cost-effectively, making an ad test even more sensible for your business. This method allows you to spend less than a focus group or personal interviews while also requiring participants to give in-depth explanations like a focus group or interview.
4. Analyze The Results
Once you have created, launched, and received your feedback, you’re ready to dive into the results. Poll the People provides an easy-to-digest dashboard that gives you the winner with the quantitative data on the votes.
You can also filter the users who chose version A from those who chose version B and analyze their responses as to why. This will let you understand what was liked about the ad and what wasn’t.
The feedback is valuable because some of the negative feedback might give you improvements to your ad that could be very helpful. The positive feedback will allow you to continue to make successful ads with the layout or features the audience likes most.
Conclusion
Now you’ve learned what to do if you are struggling to get the volume or have a limited budget for traditional A/B ad tests, you are ready to start making better ads. We have explained why ad testing is so important, as well as how to run your test, and have some good insight to help you find your best ads. You don’t have to worry about launching high-risk ads again.
Once you are ready to start optimizing your digital ads sign up for free on Poll the People today. If you want to learn more check out our blog and example pages.
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