Split testing your Google Ads can uncover hidden growth opportunities. Even if your pay-per-click campaign is already delivering results, there's almost always room for improvement.
Say it's been a few months since you launched your new Google Ads campaign, and it's delivering quantifiable results. Fist pump!
What's next? Expansion, for sure. As well as segmentation. Increasing the PPC campaign's granularity, so that you have more room for fine tuning.
But another huge area of focus, probably for years to come, will be split testing various elements of your Google Ads campaign.
Does it work best Monday through Friday? Or seven days a week?
Is it performing equally well on desktop versus mobile? Or is one device delivering better results than the other?
What about geography? Are there any particular geo-targets or zip codes that have above average results?
Ad groups? keywords? What about the ads themselves? Is there a particular ad in your campaign that's outshining the others?
Have you tried different settings yet? The settings themselves can have a huge impact on performance.
What about your landing page? Could using a different destination URL help generate more leads, calls, and sales?
We're just scratching the surface here. There are dozens upon dozens of elements in a Google Ads campaign that can be modified or experimented with in an attempt to increase clicks, improve cost-per-click, increase conversions, improve cost-per-conversion, so on and so forth.
During the first 90 days of a new Google Ads campaign, the focus is geared toward adding ad groups, keywords, negative keywords, and simply ensuring everything is working as it should without hang ups.
One of the primary goals at this stage is rapidly growing the negative keyword list in an effort to weed out as much undesirable traffic as possible, as quickly as possible.
But let's say the majority of your traffic is now relevant, and the campaign is starting to generate qualified leads for you.
Since there are no finish lines with pay-per-click advertising, there's always opportunity for enhancement, whether a campaign is 2 months old or 2 years old.
This is why it's important to constantly test new elements and A/B test as well. A/B testing in your Google Ads campaigns is especially important and advisable, and here's why.
Firstly, you don't want your campaign performance to come to a screeching halt. Ideally, the changes you incorporate are beneficial, but what if they're not?
If you eliminate 100% of a functioning element in your Google Ads account, your conversions could dry up, and nobody wants to take something that's working somewhat well and break it.
A/B testing and experimenting remedies this concern because it allows you to incorporate new ideas into your Google Ads account only half or some of the time. That way, if it was a bad idea, you've learned a valuable lesson without making a drastic change that could cause significant downturn in campaign performance.
Once you or the person that manages your Google Ads account for you notice the tested feature, setting, copy, etc., doesn't work as well as baseline, you can simply deactivate it or test something else without a drastic hit to your campaign's ability to produce results.
There really isn't a right or wrong way to split test your Google Ads, and there are dozens of elements within a pay-per-click campaign that can be added, removed, modified, or experimented with. Our advanced search engine marketing strategies post highlights some of these more granular PPC and SEO optimization methods.
Here's just one awesome example of split testing your pay-per-click ads gone right.
I remember hearing this story as a pay-per-click campaign manager several years ago and I'll never forget it.
A retail business owner was running Google Ads within a mileage radius around their store, as 99% of PPC advertisers do.
However, this advertiser sold higher-end items. So they thought to themselves, instead of running the ads around the store as most people would think to do by default, why don't we try running the ads in zip codes that are further away, but more affluent?
Lo and behold, they saw many desirable gains in their PPC KPI's. So the lesson in this specific example is that closer doesn't always mean better as far as your geo-targeting selections are concerned. But had they not experimented with this idea, they never would have known.
This is just one example of how split testing in your Google Ads campaigns can pay off, and there are dozens, if not hundreds of elements within a PPC ad campaign that can be tested in this same manner.
We hope this post about split testing has shed some light on how you can take a Google Ads campaign that's working well, and make it perform even better.
And for those business owners or marketing managers out there that would like to recruit help for this endeavor, our pay-per-click marketing services can offload projects like these onto the plates of our professional search engine marketing staff.
Simply call us, email us, submit a contact form, or book a free consultation with us. We'll be glad to evaluate your current PPC campaign if you have one or answer any questions you may have about starting a new Google Ads campaign with us, before sending you a complimentary proposal for our services. We can also discuss digital marketing solutions in-person if you're located in Southeast Florida.
You shouldn't settle once the conversions start to come in. All this means is that your PPC campaign is starting to work, and that it's time to start figuring out how to make it work even better.
Cheers,
-AS
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