By Owen Fay . Posted on July 29, 2022As many marketers and ad managers know testing your ads is a great way to find the best ads to launch on any platform. It is one of the best methods for figuring out what your audience wants and creating ads that match their intent. The problem is that the majority of marketers simply use live A/B testing to validate designs and choose the advertisements they want to run.
While it can be a great way to choose your ads if you have the time and budget, not everyone has those resources. Especially in a high CPC environment an A/B ad test on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google can cost hundreds or thousands and take weeks to get results.
A lot of small, medium, and even larger companies don’t have to time or budget to commit to testing all of their ads with traditional methods.
The alternative, usability A/B testing works for any business and can be done for just about anything, which is what we love most about it. It makes no difference if you run a B2B or B2C company or whether you sell goods or services. There are numerous testing tools, though, most of them are challenging to use, expensive, and take a lot of time.
In this blog, we will explain the major roadblocks that happen with traditional A/B testing ads and a great alternative.
The Issues With Traditional A/B Testing
Traditional A/B testing on Facebook and LinkedIn or Ad experiments with Google Ads are both very popular ways to test ad designs and validate ad direction. But, as we discussed if you test in a highly competitive industry or lack to volume necessary to gather quick results, you are using a lot of valuable resources.
With live ad testing, most platforms allow you to set a budget for the experiment but that doesn’t guarantee you get enough volume to create statistical significance. On the other hand, if you have a larger budget that will allow you to get significant results there is no guarantee that your test will take only a few days or weeks, you might be waiting a long time for the results.
A lot of companies and marketing teams struggle with these issues, but we all want proof that the ads are effective. Instead of just dealing with these issues there are alternatives that give you results in just hours and cost a fraction of the price.
The Alternative
Rapid ad testing with Poll the People is the best way to get around the high cost and time commitment of other ad testing methods.
Nowadays, there is fierce competition in practically every business as new competitors enter the market almost daily. Any competitive advantage you can get goes a long way.
You gain an advantage by only investing in a usability A/B testing procedure with real users with the goal of providing users with what they want. Testing helps in the development of resources that surpass user expectations and result in ads that are optimized.
To help people make decisions more quickly, simply, and affordably, Poll the People was developed as a usability A/B testing platform. We specialize in testing for advertisers and designers who want to maximize ideas, designs, usability, and user experience. We remove the complexity and risk of traditional usability testing so that anyone may evaluate their resources prior to going live.
It shouldn’t take days or weeks to make data-backed decisions to optimize your business; it should only take minutes.
Our platform allows businesses of any size to test ads before launching a campaign, our tests take less than 60 minutes and responses cost only $1. Our pre-live testing environment allows you to make decisions based on real user feedback to only launch ads that truly work.
We provide users with templates for testing everything from Google ads headlines to the creative you use in Facebook or LinkedIn ads. A tester puts two versions of their ads to the test just like a traditional A/B test, asks participants to compare designs, give feedback on their experiences and let the business understand what ad is the most effective.
With tests completing in under an hour, you will have your insights fast, instead of spending thousands on testing, each response costs about $1, and you’ll end up spending a fraction of what you would on live testing.
It’s clear that spending less time and money to gather valuable user insights to validate campaigns is a much better way to find the best ads to run.
How to Test Ads with Poll the People
There are several tools available for usability testing. Most of them are challenging to use, expensive, and take a lot of time. The good news is that one of them, our tool Poll the People, is unique. We have plans that fit businesses of all sizes to accomplish their testing goals and a free pay-as-you-go option to test out the platform.
Now that we understand the importance of testing ads and a great alternative to live A/B testing, we can jump into the process of creating and running a test. If you want a high-level overview of usability A/B testing, take a look at this.
Identify The Resources You Are Going to Test
You can test many different types of ads or parts of your ads, and it could be a headline, image, copy, or a combination of elements. When you choose the type of ad you want to run, consider where they will be posted. For example, an ad on YouTube will be different from a Google Search Ad. Considering the platform you’re posting 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 the 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 and understand why it is the better ad and use that insight moving forward.
Learn more about how the platform works and start testing your way to success.
Create Test Questions
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.
Launching 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 also 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 similar to a focus group or interview.
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 will 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
Usability A/B testing your advertising might help you improve the effectiveness of your campaign even before you launch. Using our straightforward process, you can quickly evaluate elements such as headlines, body copy, images, or full ads. Test your ads with different variations, and find out whether the ads you have created will work for your target audience.
Traditional A/B testing comes with a high cost and takes a lot of time, it can cause a lot of problems for organizations that need rapid feedback and want to optimize ads without worrying about the budget.
By going to Poll the People’s website right now, you can complete every step we’ve outlined for you to run your own usability A/B tests. Usability testing has the potential to be one of the best tools for any business, regardless of industry. If you are looking for real examples of a test run on our platform with results take a look at our example page. Once you are ready to start optimizing your Ads and lowering your CPC, sign up for free and launch a test.
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