6 Steps for Creating Successful Marketing Experiments

On this page, we’ll share six steps for conducting successful marketing experiments and four examples of marketing experiments you can perform. If you need help setting up your marketing experiments, call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about how WebFX can help.

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What are marketing experiments?

When you invest time, money, and effort into marketing campaigns, you want to get the highest ROI possible. This is where marketing experiments come into play.

With marketing experiments, you can test, refine, and apply the results to improve your campaigns and drive results.

By conducting marketing experiments, you understand how your audience will respond to changes. Marketing experiments help you figure out what works best for your audience. It can be a new product, a different type of post on social media, or a new call to action (CTA) button on your landing page.

Conducting marketing experiments allows you to optimize your digital campaigns and tailor your content and design to reach more customers.

6 steps for creating successful marketing experiments that drive results

You’re ready to start conducting marketing experiments, but how do you actually get started? Check out these six steps!

1. Create a hypothesis

The first step to conducting marketing experiments is creating a hypothesis. Your hypothesis is what you are trying to prove and should be able to be tested.

If you were to say, “Our website has better colors than our competition,” this wouldn’t be a good hypothesis. This is because it isn’t testable and is hard to disprove because it is subjective.

A better hypothesis would be, “Our landing page will see an increase in conversions by 50 percent from making our CTA button yellow.” This hypothesis is testable because you can change the colors on the button to produce different results. It can also be disproved if your conversions are below 50 percent.

The disproved aspect of your experiment is the null hypothesis, which is the opposite of your hypothesis. In this case, the null hypothesis is “our landing page will see a decrease in conversions by 50 percent from making our CTA button yellow.”

To start conducting marketing experiments, create your hypothesis and null hypothesis.

2. Gather research

Once you have an idea for your hypothesis, you’ll want to gather research. Research is essential in helping you see what experiments have already been conducted. It helps you fully understand potential outcomes for your experiment.

When you gather research, you can narrow down your hypothesis. It will help you create an experiment that produces more relevant results for your business.

Let’s say your hypothesis started off as, “Our landing page will see an increase in conversions by 50 percent from changing our CTA button’s color.” As you conduct research, you may find that yellow seems to draw people’s attention and get them to click. Based on this research, you would refine your hypothesis to focus on yellow rather than any other color.

3. Prioritize the proper metrics

Once you have your hypothesis and research set, focus on choosing the proper metrics. You should select metrics that will indicate if your hypothesis is true or not. The metrics you use will reflect your experiment’s success or failure.

These metrics include conversion rate, clickthrough rate (CTR), impressions, reach, and more. You’ll want to focus on aspects of your campaign that will show these results. For instance, you can monitor the features of an email that promote CTR, like a CTA button, and experiment on those features.

4. Design your marketing experiment

Once your hypothesis is ready and you’ve chosen your metrics, the next step is to design your experiment. You decide how you want to test your hypothesis.

In the design phase, you create the components for the marketing experiment.

If you were testing the landing page example, you’d need to create a landing page with and without the yellow CTA button. You’d also need to decide how that landing page would look, the content of the page, and other important details for your experiment.

It’s essential that you do not change anything once you’ve completed the design phase of your experiment. Avoiding adjustments in your testing could skew your results, which will not show the actual results and impact of your content.

Be sure to set up a timeline and monitor the progress of your work. Once this is complete, you’ll conduct A/B testing, which will show you the results of your experiment.

5. Conduct A/B testing

When you conduct marketing experiments, you want to use A/B testing. A/B testing is one of the best ways to prove your hypothesis. It helps you compare the original version of item (like a landing page) to the newly changed item (landing page with a yellow CTA).

A/B testing helps you see how your change performs compared to the original. It’s the best way to prove if your hypothesis or null hypothesis is true.

If you want to see the best results with A/B testing, you’ll need to randomize your visitors. This will give you the purest results for your experiment.

Once you run A/B testing, you’ll move to the final phase of your marketing experiment.

6. Analyze the results

At the conclusion of your experiment, look at the results. The results will indicate if your hypothesis is true or false. This is where you’ll accept or reject the null hypothesis.

Look at the different metrics you decided to monitor for your campaign. They are the indicators that determine the validity of your hypothesis. This will allow you to brainstorm methods for optimizing the content on your page.

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4 examples of marketing experiments

Now that you know how to conduct marketing experiments, the next step is to figure out the type of marketing experiment you want to do. Here are four examples of different marketing experiments for your business to try out.

1. Email testing

Email testing is a valuable way to help you produce emails that drive better results for your business. Your email subscribers are people who are most interested in your company. It is vital that you deliver content that peaks their interest and gets them to convert.

There are a few types of marketing experiments you can run with email testing.

1. Test the subject line

The subject line has the biggest impact on whether your audience decides to open your email. It’s the first thing they see when your email enters their inbox. If you don’t have an impactful subject line, you’ll miss out on potential conversions.

When you conduct marketing experiments, try different subject lines for your email. It is crucial that you only make small, incremental changes to keep your data comparable. For example, you could personalize one version of the email by using the recipient’s name and leaving it out in the original email.

2. Test the content

If subscribers are opening your emails but aren’t doing much after that, there may be an issue with the content in your email. This is another marketing experiment you can test to help you produce better content for your emails.

You can test the images in the email, the headline, your CTA, or the phrasing. Again, you’ll want to focus on one aspect at a time.

Email marketing testing is a great place to start for your marketing experiments. You’ll help your business create emails that are more interesting and engaging for your audience.

2. Pay-per-click (PPC) testing

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements are another excellent option for marketing experiments. These paid ads drive in valuable traffic for your business. To make the most of your ads, you’ll want to make sure the copy is appealing to your audience.

There are numerous aspects of your landing page you can test to produce the best landing page. The most common test is on CTAs. CTAs drive your audience to act on your landing page.

In addition, you can test things like your headline, images, videos, font color, size, type, and numerous other aspects. These are all great marketing experiments to conduct to help you create a more impactful landing page.

3. Social media testing

Social media sites are another great place to conduct marketing experiments. It’s crucial that you test your social media posts frequently to ensure you are delivering the best content to your audience.

On social media, visuals are important. It’s often the first thing people see when they see your ad, which can help your business earn new followers and conversions. By conducting a marketing experiment, you’ll have a visual that generates the best results for your ad.

Like PPC ads, there are numerous elements of social media ads that you can test. The visual aspect of your ad, such as photos or videos, is the most critical part. In addition, you can test elements like the color of your ad or the typography to see if your audience has a preference on what you use.

There are other nuances that marketing experiments will help you figure out, too. First, you’ll learn the right tone for your ad, which can alter the way your audience feels about your business. Second, you will figure out how to phrase information in your ad, such as inserting a question, exclamation, or statement.

You’ll also want to test any hashtags you use with your social media posts. These are an integral part of social media and can affect how your audience responds to your ad. All these experiments will help produce a better ad copy for your business.

4. Usability

Your audience wants a good experience with your business. If they have a poor time navigating your website, you’ll lose potential leads and conversions. So, creating a sufficient user experience is crucial to your success.

It starts with the usability of your website or app.

Your audience should be able to complete simple tasks, like checking out pricing or supplying contact information, without a struggle. Even if you have a great looking site with an awesome design, it doesn’t mean your audience can easily navigate through it to get what they need.

Marketing experiments help you understand how to improve the user experience. By conducting marketing experiments, you’ll ensure that your audience can use your site or mobile app with ease.

WebFX will help you conduct marketing experiments

Marketing experiments are a great way to produce the best campaign for your business.

You can test different aspects of your digital marketing strategies to help you create a campaign that will work for your audience. At WebFX, we have over 29 years of experience conducting marketing experiments to help improve digital marketing campaigns.

We’re a full-service digital marketing company that offers numerous services like SEO and PPC. We have a team of 500+ experts that will bring their knowledge and expertise to your campaign. Our team will help you conduct marketing experiments to produce the best campaign for your business.

If you want a digital marketing company that drives results, look no further than WebFX. To date, we’ve driven over $10 billion in sales and over 24 million leads for our clients. We focus on driving successful campaigns for our clients first.

Don’t believe us? Just ask our clients! Check out our 1,100+ client testimonials to see what it’s like to partner with a top digital marketing company like WebFX!

Start experimenting today

If you’re ready to start conducting valuable marketing experiments that help you produce a better digital marketing campaign, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist.

We look forward to helping your business grow! Don’t forget, we offer our services to clients around the world, so whether you need a lead generation campaign right here in Harrisburg or a Harrisburg video marketing strategy that is sure to attract customers, WebFX is here for you.