Daddy or chips? A/B Testing to Make the Right Ad Copy Decision

Remember the sweet little girl contemplating one of life’s toughest decisions in the iconic 90s television ad for McCain Oven Chips? Here’s the ad if you’re wondering what I’m going on about.

Daddy or Chips? A classic piece of advertising from the 90s

Daddy or chips?

As the advert shows, making decisions can be difficult; and the more people and opinions added to the process, the harder the decision becomes. You believe that putting 10% discount messaging in your ad headline will produce a higher CTR than in description line 1, but your client thinks otherwise. You feel that a short and punchy description line 1 and 2 will be more engaging to potential customers than utilising the entire character length, but your colleague disagrees.

More often than not, we choose actions and form opinions which are heavily influenced by emotions, memories and bias, but what if there were a superior way to better inform our decisions?

Fortunately, a more scientific method known as A/B Testing (occasionally referred to as split testing) takes the guesswork out of making these crucial decisions, by allowing you to put multiple ad choices in front of your audience to determine which ad customers find the most engaging, and thus which boost CTR.

So let’s get into the nitty gritty of A/B testing.

What Is A/B testing and why is it SO important?

A/B ad testing is the process of conducting an experiment where you test two different versions of an ad simultaneously. In PPC marketing, when you only have a limited amount of time to separate yourself from the competition in SERPs, it is vital to constantly be testing ad copy.

By using systematic testing to collect real-world data, you can shed some light on which messaging works best for your brand and the products you sell. When you discover that the difference between putting your percentage discount in the headline and description line two is a CTR increase of 20 percent or more, while your quality score increases and your cost per click decreases, the thought of not using A/B testing becomes scary.

What are your goals in A/B testing?

Before an A/B test can be put into motion, knowing your desired outcome is essential. Arrange a meeting with your client to discuss the goals of your PPC campaign. This discussion should cover everything from USPs, competitor copy and special offers, to calls to action and message tone in compliance with brand guidelines.

Once your goals have been agreed, you can tailor ad copy tests towards the goal and have something concrete to measure success. At this point I recommend creating a Google doc with the ad copy you are looking to run, with columns that include the test stage, expected start date, messaging and test type, which you can share with your client for approval. This is beneficial for adding a level of transparency, reassuring clients that you have a solid action plan and for keeping yourself on track.

What can you actually A/B Test?

In PPC marketing, there are four basic components that you can change to create new ad variations: the headline, description lines 1 and 2 (also known as body text) and the display URL.

Once you have decided which variables you want to test, the next step is to list potential product features, CTAs and test ideas. When you have completed your brainstorm, weigh up your suggestions against your goals and delete where necessary. Once approved by your client, you will then have a solid list of CTAs and product features that you can combine to begin ad copy testing. I recommend creating a testing schedule and giving each ad a specific label. Here’s one I made earlier.

Bonus: Apart from changing the headline, body text and display URL to create new ad variations, there are a few additional things that can be tested. Don’t be afraid to be creative, extend your testing to include ad extensions, english vs. native language, location in headline vs no location, dayparting and more.

The 7 golden A/B test rules

Although there are endless variables that you can A/B test for PPC ads, there are a few vital rules to remember to keep you on track:

1. Don’t forget your goals - Despite outlining the importance of goals earlier in the post, they are so important I must stress it again! In order to be successful, knowing what success looks like is paramount. Select your quantifiable metric(s) and stay true to them throughout the test.

2. Test one thing at a time - When A/B testing ad copy it is very easy to become overzealous and throw multiple variations into your test at once, which can kill a test before it’s even begun. Fight the urge to do so and methodically work through testing one variable at a time. By doing so, you will know that when one ad outperforms another it is near certain that is is due to the variable that you have changed.

3. Run your test for an appropriate amount of time - It is important not to run your A/B test for too short a period of time, but it is just as important not to let the test run too long. If you do the former your results may produce inconclusive results, while doing the latter might mean that you miss the window for implementing real change.

The best way to ensure that your test comes to a natural end where a data-driven decision can be made is through statistical significance. Statistical significance is achieved when your ad copy test has matured and is accurately informing you which ad is better. This confidence level is usually set at 95%, signifying that there is a 5% chance that your test results are coincidence. For ease, some bid management platforms provide built in statistical significance calculators, however these calculators are readily available online -Cardinal Path has a great statistical significance tool, which gives you the option to change the confidence level and has the added benefit of showing the absolute difference between two ads’ CTR and CR, and points out if further testing is needed for clear cut results.

4. Use the correct ad settings - To set up a fair A/B test, ad impressions need to be divided evenly between your ads. Failing to do so could mean that your new ad may not even show.

To help ensure that the new ad variation gets a fair chance of showing as frequently as existing ads with history, (in Google) click the campaign settings tab then go to the adgroup which you are going to be testing is located and update the setting to ‘Rotate Indefinitely’. Bing also provides a similar setting to ‘Rotate Ads More Evenly’.

5. Do not make a golden ad for a bronze landing page - So you have found out which variables improve your CTR and have now created ‘the golden ad’. Why follow this up with a less than golden landing page? Make sure that your potential customers’ expectations are met by doing/offering/presenting what you have outlined in your ad, on the landing page. Don’t make them work hard for it, or you could lose your visitor just as quickly as you gained them. Where your ad sends visitors can have just as much impact on conversion as the ad itself.

6. Eat, sleep, rave, repeat -  Once you have completed your first round of testing and paused your underperforming ads in favour of the winner, your job is not done. The next step is to mark down the results of your test in your Google doc and move on to testing the next variable. It is essential to continuously test new ads in order to stay ahead of your competition.

7. Be patient -  It is unlikely that you will improve in leaps and bounds each time you run a test. Success can also be found in knowing what does not work for your business, as the point of testing is to learn and improve. As Benjamin Franklin said:

“I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.”

Final thoughts

To wrap up for those of you who looked at the post and thought TLDR (too long didn’t read), A/B testing is an integral part of PPC success.

Test results can be seen quickly at a minimal cost, providing invaluable real-world data about how potential visitors respond to different messaging. Creating one great ad is a fluke, but consistently creating engaging ads is an art which takes careful planning, vigilance for competitor strong points and a methodical testing schedule, which eliminates the feeling to ‘go with your gut’ or stalling on the testing process.

When you know which copy provides quantifiable results, it becomes easier to make better decisions, better advise clients who have a ‘gut feeling’ about copy and create an efficient strategy for future campaigns. Take full advantage of the options available to you when A/B testing, and remember to keep testing as what works today may not work in a few month’s time.

And by the way, it’s definitely chips...

If you have any anything to add or you think it's daddy please say so in the comments below. 

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3 Rules To Write Better Ad Copy

Before the days of smartphones, I would often hear complaints from friends about how text messages weren’t long enough to get their message across. Text messages are 160 characters long.

Many of you may lack confidence in your writing skills. Personally, distanced myself from the entire subject of English during college. My high school AP class got me out of freshman writing and my junior writing class was offered by the business school instead of the English department. I actually boast about getting a college degree without taking a single English class.

Along came Twitter (which was originally designed to be used via text message) and I heard even more complaining about how tweets were too short to say what they wanted to say. Tweets max out at 140 characters.
As a PPC professional, I just laughed to myself. I thought that 160 or 140 characters was voluminous. I could say what I needed to say and have room to spare. Why? Because I’d been writing PPC ads for years. I’d been selling products/services with just 95 characters!

Writing Better Ad Copy

But you don’t need professional training to be a great ad copy writer. I had to grow and develop the skill myself, and here are 3 rules that you can follow to write better ad copy.

Rule #1 – Think Like Your Customer

I wrote a full post about this titled “What Keeps Your Customers Up At Night” and I recommend reading it in its entirety. But I will offer a couple high level points here.

• Don’t Assume – You all know the saying about what assume spells, but I see this happen frequently. Meetings are held, problems are discussed, and plans are made with unwritten assumptions. To get at the heart of the matter you need to question assumptions, validate them, and then explicitly state them. Then you can ensure everyone is on the same page and you’re dealing with what really matters.
• Get Closer To Your Customers – As businesses grow, the decision makers tend to get further and further away from customers. If you don’t have the time to interact with customers directly then you need to talk to the people who do.
• Use Their Vernacular – Say things the way they say them. You may think you’re an “enterprise widget management solution”, but you’re customers might simply call you their “inventory system”. If that’s the case, you’ll get better results from ad copy about how you’re an awesome inventory system because you’re speaking their language.
• Learn What’s Important To Them – I recently went couch buying. My wife had picked out a sofa/loveseat combo that she liked and I was there to give it the run through before we bought. I sat on it every which way. I had my wife sit with me. I laid down on it. That was when I was sold. You see, at 6’2″ I’m used to sleeping on couches where either my head or my feet will be on an arm rest. This couch was long enough that I could lay flat without hitting either arm rest. It was the clincher for me and I don’t think the salesman even realized it. What are those clinchers for your product/service?

Rule #2 – Convey Unique Value

Tell me if you’ve ever done a search and seen several ads that look virtually the same? Perhaps it looked something like this:

Image via Wordstream.com

When all the ads look the same, how will you stand out from the competition? Are you willing to bid enough to get that #1 position so that you get the click? It shouldn’t have to come to that (though Google’s bottom line would appreciate it)
You need to dig down to the core of what your product/service does. Here are some questions you need to answer, and then commit these answers to memory:

• What problem does your product/service solve?
• How is that solution better than your competitors?
• Why should a customer pay $X for your solution?

The answers to these questions will obviously be interrelated, but I want to make sure you have homework when you’re done reading this post. Write each of these questions at the top of a whiteboard and then answer each one as specifically as possible. Don’t worry about the length to the answers at first. Once you have answers you feel good about, start distilling it down to phrases that will fit in ad copy. Break it into some pieces that are 35 characters, some that are 70 characters, some that are 90 characters. These are the phrases you can use on various PPC platforms in your ad copy. This will make your ads stand out from the rest and you can get the click even if you’re not in the #1 position because you’re conveying your unique value right there in your ad.
Now on to the third rule.

Rule #3 – Always Be Testing

After taking the time to think like your customer; to really know their pain, their fears, and their worries. After distilling your companies unique value for each product/service into phrases that are 35 or 70 or 95 characters. After all this, you might get attached to your work. You’ll step back and admire it. Perhaps you’ll even pat yourself on the back as you hit the “Save” button, knowing with absolute certainty that you’ve just created the best ad your account has ever know.

And then it fails to beat that old, crappy ad that’s been there forever. It might even get beaten badly. At first you might get angry. You’ll blame search users for being stupid and not understanding. It might be Google’s fault for not giving you good enough placement on the page.

This is why testing is so important. Testing takes the emotion out of the equation. Instead of making qualitative assessments of which ad you feel is better, your potential customers are making quantitative assessments for you. Their clicks show they preferred your ad to another advertiser. Their conversions show that you delivered the product/service that solved their problem. Then it’s not about which ad is better, but which ad produced the best results.

Even when you start to feel like you’ve run out of ideas you can draw inspiration from competitor ads. While you could search a bunch of keywords, you’ll save time by using a research tool like iSpionage. For example, consider you’re in the big data industry and you want to see what a competitor is using in their ads. iSpionage allows you to see ads at the keyword level like this:

One of the great features here is the AEI (Ads Effectiveness Index) that even tips you off on which ads are performing best for your competitors. Then you’ll know which ads to use as the genesis of your next ad test.

This method can be particularly effective when competing against a large competitor with a full PPC team because as the smaller advertiser you can learn from their experience and larger budget.

Homework Assignment

Thank you for reading this entire post. As a bonus, here is the easy-to-follow homework assignment that will get you writing better ad copy today:

• Identify 3 underlying assumptions you make about your customers and question them. Are they valid or not?
• Speak with 3 average customers face-to-face (or speak to 3 customer-facing employees)
• Answer the 3 questions from Rule #2 IN WRITING
• Using the answers from above, start at least 1 ad test today

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