Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Strategies for Effective Split Testing

Many AdWords beginners understand the concept of split testing, but do it haphazardly and without strategy. They learn that split testing is too confusing and complicated, and give up on the most powerful weapon in their marketing arsenal. Here are two strategies to assure a streamlined and effective split-testing process:

• Start wide, get narrow. When you begin to split-test in an ad group, choose very different ads. You may want to focus on different markets (stay-at-home dads versus divorced/widowed dads with full custody), different emotional responses (greed versus fear), or different benefits (lose weight versus prevent heart disease). Get the big picture right before drilling down to the details. It does you no good to test easy versus simple in a headline if your prospects don't care about ease or simplicity, but just whether it can run on batteries.

  After you discover the right market, key benefits, and the emotional hot buttons of that market, you can start testing more-specific elements. See the upcoming section, “A Split-Testing Protocol: Generating Ideas for Ad Testing”.

• Ask intelligent questions. Split testing can become so mechanical, it's easy to forget that the purpose is to make you smarter by learning what makes your customers tick — er, click.

  Perry Marshall distinguishes between true market research and what he calls “opinion research.” Opinion research is what people say they'll do. Market research is what they actually ...