A/B Testing: 5 Effective Ways to Optimize FB Ads : Ankita Mankotia

With Facebook being one of the commonly used social media networks throughout the world, brands and businesses are marketing extensively through it. A/B testing of your Facebook ads is the best way to test the efficiency of those.

However, it can be a tedious process if you aren’t familiar with the Facebook Ads platform.

This blog provides you with 5 effective ways to optimize your Facebook marketing via A/B testing Facebook ads. But before that, let’s get into the basics.

What is meant by A/B testing Facebook ads?

A/B testing is a marketing experiment wherein two elements of a marketing campaign are compared against each other to identify the best performer. Studies say that a good A/B test can increase your ROI by 10X.

You can A/B test any variable of your marketing collaterals. You can test CTAs, colors, fonts, copy, titles, etc. of Facebook ads, blog posts, landing pages, images, videos, emails, etc. Even the minutest detail of your copy or design can dramatically improve the performance of your campaign.

Other than the design, you can also A/B test different demographics, audiences, placements, product sets, and more.

So, AB testing Facebook ads has become one of the leading digital marketing trends.

What will you gain by A/B testing Facebook ads?

Advertising can be a volatile undertaking. If you design ad campaigns based on your instinct, it can lead to a calamity as it isn’t easy to evaluate an audience based on assumptions. You need real data derived from analytics and testing.

Investing a significant amount of money and effort into a campaign that hasn’t been tested or tracked can make you wonder why it isn’t working or whether it could be improved.

Here are more reasons why you should go for A/B testing Facebook ads.

Lead quality improvement: A Facebook ad campaign that has been tested can lower the number of generic visitors, and thus, improve the quality of leads.
A better understanding of audience: When you keep A/B testing your Facebook ad campaigns, you’ll gain an immense understanding of what works and what doesn’t with your audience. This will help you optimize future campaigns better.
Better opportunities: Facebook utilizes the EdgeRank algorithm to determine whether your posts display on news feeds. Only those posts that are frequently commented, shared, and liked will display on news feeds. A/B testing helps here by enabling you to share the right content.

What elements of a Facebook Ad can be A/B tested?

Often the answer to this question is “all elements, but testing all elements of an ad would be unrealistic and go out of hand. So, we’ve listed the major elements that would bring you the biggest gains.

Ad design elements: Headlines, placement, ad copy, image, landing page copy, and design.
Ad targeting: Country, gender, buying behavior, relationship status, age, custom audiences, and educational qualification.
Others: Ad type, optimization (engagement, conversions, and clicks), bidding (lowest cost with or without cap), etc.

5 Effective Ways to Optimize Facebook Ads through A/B Testing

1. Test different concepts

When you are A/B testing Facebook ads, it would be already difficult to get adequate test sample sizes for generating significant results. So, you should prioritize testing distinguishable concepts for the single create an element you’re testing.

For instance, if you’re testing an image, don’t just change one element of the image- go for a completely different one.

If you’re testing a video, don’t simply change only the final scene- rather begin your video with a different value proposition, or test a short video against a long one.

If you’re testing a headline, don’t just alter a single word of it. Here are certain things you should try instead-

You should test a headline with a question against one that doesn’t ask a question.
Testing headlines that focus on two different product/service benefits of yours.
Test a headline with a power word (for example, free, discount, etc.) in it against one that doesn’t have one.
Test a scarcity-based headline against a non-scarcity-based headline.
Try a long headline against a short, to-the-point headline.

2. Test only one element at a time

Unlike split testing where you test multiple elements at a go, A/B testing tests only two variants of a single element.

So, while you are A/B testing a Facebook ad, make sure that you’re testing only one creative element at a time. This will help you attribute the results to that particular change.

If you change multiple variables at a time, you’ll be perplexed as to which change that you made has resulted in the ad’s new performance. That is, which change had an effect on the behavior of the viewer and which ones did not.

This implies that you can’t derive insights therefrom and apply them to your future campaigns. So, just keep it simple.

Test only a change of headline, CTA, body copy, visual imagery, background color, or font alone at a time.

This way, you’ll keep finding what works with your audience and what doesn’t. Over time, you can combine the impact of multiple winning changes from experiments to witness a significant improvement of a new experience over the previous one.

3. Deal with ad fatigue

Oftentimes, even the ads that performed the best may exhibit fewer impressions, lowered click-through rate, and less engagement. This is because of a phenomenon known as ad fatigue, where your audience loses interest and stops engaging with your ads as a result of viewing your ad so often.

This results in decreased campaign efficiency and lowered ROI.

One way to address fatigue is by creating multiple ads and rotating them. All these versions can deliver the same content but should differ in design or text. This way, your content will stay fresh.

Further, you can A/B test to find the best performers so that you can serve those to your visitors.

And after these ads are exhausted, that is, when ad fatigue occurs again, you would need to replace your ongoing ads once more. You would have to find the next best ad creative to be used for your forthcoming campaign.

You’ll have to A/B test something that you already know works against something new.

You can add new creativity to the mix by testing new ideas and concepts. This is suitable especially if you have a big budget.

4. Prevent audience overlaps

Your audience should be big enough to support your test, and shouldn’t be the same for any other Facebook campaign of yours being run simultaneously.

A/B testing Facebook ads come with the big advantage of preventing audience overlap. That is, ensuring that the same audience isn’t viewing multiple ad variants.

This is a plus because if multiple variants of an ad are presented to an audience, the results could be affected. Thus, by preventing audience overlap, Facebook ad A/B testing prevents contaminated test results and allows you to be certain about the best performing variant.

Further, depending on the results of A/B testing, brands can optimize their creativity for future campaigns. So, enable prevent audience overlaps when you are A/B testing Facebook ads.

5. Employ an ideal time frame

When setting a time schedule for your ad being A/B tested in Facebook, you should choose a time frame for it in Ads Manager. Facebook allows you to run an A/B testing campaign for a maximum of 30 days.

For it to produce the most reliable results, Facebook recommends a minimum duration of 7 days for running each test. For tests run for a shorter period than this can generate inconclusive results.

You should also take into consideration your business vertical and objective when deciding upon the ideal testing time frame.

For instance, if you know that an average customer of yours takes about 8 days to convert after viewing your ad, you should run your test for a longer duration (say, 10 days). This will allow sufficient time for these anticipated typical conversions to occur.

Conclusion

A/B testing Facebook ads can help you succeed in marketing yourself through Facebook, where an enormous chunk of your potential customers is spending their time.

We’ve listed 5 proven strategies to optimize Facebook ads through A/B testing. They can help you witness higher impressions, improved engagement rates, and increased click-through rates. Do employ them to find success in your future campaigns.

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