Photo by: Maksim Goncharenok

Are you aware that A/B testing your social media ads can save you both time and money while increasing your marketing campaign’s effectiveness?

What is A/B Testing?

When running A/B tests for your marketing campaign, you essentially use the same advertisement twice. The difference? You’ll end up making only one key change to your second ad. For instance, on Instagram, an A/B test entails running two identical ads with the same picture, the caveat being, one of those ads will include call to action 1, and the other ad will showcase call to action 2. From there, you can determine which of the two tests, A or B, achieved the desired results.

What is the Purpose of A/B Testing?

According to LOATAME, A/B tests provide data about your audiences and campaigns, which in turn, can aid in informed social media marketing decisions that help drive your marketing strategy more effectively. 

Real-World A/B Testing Success Example 

To give a real-world example of how powerful A/B testing your ads can be, let’s check out this case study where the company “Going”, a company that offers irresistible travel deals, was faced with the challenge of converting their visitors into premium plan subscribers. 

The Issue: Going’s original CTA (call-to-action) button read “sign up for free,” hoping that those who signed up would later upgrade to their premium plan. This unfortunately was not giving them the results they wanted.

The Fix: Going eventually tried A/B testing tools from Unbounce to assist in their CTA. The two variations they tested were “Sign up for free” and “Trial for free.” Sure enough, the latter variation proved successful, resulting in a 104% increase in their trial starts for the months to follow.

The 7 Steps to A/B Test Your Social Media Ads

To run a social media ad A/B test of your own, consider the following steps:

Step 1: Choose a Hypothesis and Pick a Variable to Test

Prior to A/B testing, it is crucial to create a hypothesis. 

Hypothetical Scenario: Let’s say that we want to run our A/B test on our Instagram account. Our current ad is a static image of an individual reading one of our books, and quite frankly, that ad isn’t getting much engagement whatsoever. What are we to do? We propose the idea of replacing the image with a high-quality video of someone getting a kick out of reading the same book. We predict that with the change to our ad, we will have a 15% higher click-through (CTR) rate in comparison to our current static image ad. 

By establishing this hypothesis, we have collected the following information:

• Hypothesis – We expect to increase our CTR by 15% with our new high-quality video ad. 
• Testable variable – CTR

Step 2: Creating Test Variations 

Once we’ve defined our hypothesis and picked our variable to test, we need to create our test variations. 

In this step, we’ll create two versions of our social media ad to promote on Instagram. To reiterate, the two versions of our Instagram ad will be:  

1. A static image in our first ad.
2. An interested-looking individual reading our book in a high-quality video in the second ad.

Running the two ads side-by-side will allow us to later analyze the performance of the two.

Step 3: Cultivate a Plan to Measure Results

Before launching your social media A/B test on Instagram, what do you intend to accomplish? Are you interested in measuring conversions, newsletter signups, or overall engagements? Or are you trying to increase CTR by 15% with your ad, like in our example from step 1?  

Step 4: Decide on Your Budget

How do you determine your budget for your marketing ad campaign A/B test? According to Social Media Marketing Mentee, if you put too much money into your ads, it’s possible that you’ll lose money on clicks without conversion. Furthermore, if you spend too little, your ads may not be seen by enough people. 

Six tips for helping you decide on your budget include: 

1. Setting a cost-per-acquisition goal
2. Starting small and scaling up
3. Using automated bidding
4. Considering what your campaign goals are
5. Thinking about who your target audience is
6. Using historical data 

Lastly, a helpful formula to calculate your ad budget is as follows: 

Budget = (CPA goal X Target number of conversions) / Average CPC (cost-per-click). 

So, for instance, say our CPA goal is $10 and we have a goal of receiving 50 conversions with an average CPC of $2. Our budget would end up being ($10 CPA goal X 50 conversions) / $2 Average CPC = $250.

Step 5: Set Your Timeline 

Simply put, how long would you like to run your A/B tests for your social media ads? Kate Theobald from Tuff suggests that your timeline is dependent on a handful of variables ranging from: 

• Business goals
• Ideal customer profiles
• Paid media budget
• Channel mix

Step 6: Running Your A/B Test

If you have stuck with us this long in our explanation of A/B testing your ads on social media, then we award you with a digital high-five!

When running your ad’s A/B test, be sure to run the two variations of the ad at the same time to a similar audience. By doing so, you can mitigate any misrepresented results. 

Step 7: Analyze Your Results and Repeat the Process

With the completion of your A/B test, it is finally time to analyze your results. 

This LinkedIn article recommends that using Instagram’s native analytics tools, like Insights, allows you to view your A/B test’s final results. The article also provides alternative third-party analyzing tools which include: 

• Sprout Social for more detailed reports on your A/B test
• Optimizely or VWO for evaluating the statistical significance of your ad’s A/B test results

Based on your results of the A/B test, what did you like and what didn’t you like? If your test didn’t go according to plan, adjusting your hypothesis and running another test can be your best bet in obtaining the results you desire. On the flip side, if you did achieve your goal, apply your more successful variation from your initial A/B test to future tests. 

Did I miss anything in explaining the steps of A/B testing your social media ad campaigns? Let me know in the comments!

 

Author: Sam Cuellar

Digital Marketing graduate from DePaul University, Social Media Strategist Intern at the National Institute for Social Media, and professional bass player with a passion for both social media marketing and music.