In discussions with marketers there are often heated exchanges about “what works”. The problem I have is when it becomes clear that one side is arguing on the basis of “everyone knows”, “this is how it has always been” or even worse “I read somewhere”.

OK, clearly we can’t be an expert in everything, and doing your research is a good idea. The thing is, especially in marketing, you don’t know until you have tried.

Most tactics are not expensive to test and give pretty immediate results. Everything from a headline through to pricing can often be tested quite efficiently giving you answers rather than ideas.

A great way to test is to use small PPC campaigns. In fact Google supplies tools to compare options even down to the page level with split testing. With just a hundred or so dollars you could test a landing page, call to action and price level.

I have to say, I am a real testing geek. Everything I learned about copywriting came from reading the masters and trying out the concepts they taught. Admittedly I had the luxury of using client budgets to test with!

In the vast majority of cases even a small amount of testing can provide huge results, in terms of click throughs, conversion rates and overall profit. It’s not a one-off process either, once you have a winning formula, try to beat it. Continuously.

If you are not testing now, get started right away. You might be shocked just how much better even your favorite campaigns could be!

Tags: analytics, conversions, site-conversion-rate-testing
Posted in Conversion Optimization