There are various ways that marketers determine the right messaging and content to provide their consumers.
Ranging from A/B testing to multivariate and more, the key to any successful marketing campaign is to create content and test it for effectiveness in both messaging and outcomes.
Some of the best-performing testing strategies to consider in your marketing campaigns include;
- A/B Testing
- User Testing
- Usability Testing
- Multivariate
- Polls and Contests
- Content Testing
- Incrementality
A/B Testing:
For online marketers, such as YouTube and Facebook marketers, there is more flexibility and, thus, more variations that can be included in A/B tests. For example, YouTube now allows content creators to monetize their videos with licensed music, adding variations in their testing and campaigns.
Regardless of the testing and marketing campaigns, there are four primary tweaks to consider in your testing campaign.
- Headlines
- Images
- Opt-in Forms
- Call-to-action
The primary objective of A/B testing is to analyze which version, the “A” or “B” variant, gets the desired results.
User Testing:
User testing is a broad term for various testing methods, including creating polls, contests, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other audience-directed questions and input.
You could conduct in-person q&a or utilize an online Q&A tool to help with your canvassing. Having people respond in person allows you to read their body language and visual cues, though offering online responses allows for (maybe) more honest answers.
Of course, the concern with online Q&As is that people may “troll” your questions and not answer honestly or truthfully, which will skew your data.
The benefit to user testing is that you can get direct insights into the types of content and products your intended target is interested in and better craft your campaigns to fit their interests.
Usability Testing:
In usability testing, respondents may be asked to perform a set of tasks with a device and observe how they reacted and interacted with the device. Following up with observational data would be a survey or poll about the ease, difficulty, or other experiences during the testing.
Multivariate:
With multivariate testing, the marketer has much more versatility and flexibility in the types of things that can be changed to impact the campaign.
The difference in multivariate is that you can make nearly wholesale changes to get better results. The downside is that when making more extensive changes, it can be challenging to determine which change resulted in the desired changes and outcomes when making more extensive changes.
Content Testing:
Content testing is a variation of usability testing, but while usability testing looks at how people interact with a product, content testing analyzes how a respondent looks at, reads, and comprehends content you provide. The overall objective is to measure user experience.
Incrementality:
Think about a food launch. You may include user testing if you want to know how attractive a dish is and how well it’s received. To determine if there is a better way to upsell your new dish, and the likelihood of ordering the dish again, adding a drink or dessert is one way to use incrementality testing.
A good example of testing a new dish would be offering a prix fixe menu. In the pre-fix, you provide three courses of options for consumers.
After a set time that the prix fixe has been tested, you may next test the specific dish as a standalone product. Finally, adding a deal of the plate with one additional item, a glass of wine or dessert, will give plenty of data points about the potential popularity of the dish.
The key to a successful marketing campaign is various tests and data analysis to determine the effectiveness of the messaging and the offers. With online content, many more measurable effects and data points are easier to iterate and improve for more effective messaging.