Why Is Ad Copy Testing Essential For Campaign Success?

Ads are often the first impression of a brand on its audience, and they are a powerful tool when used to change a viewer’s perception about it. That’s why companies spend a lot on ensuring that ads are well thought out, planned, and useful. 

This makes ad testing a necessary process to vet the ad concepts and find one that appeals most to an audience. 

Simply put, ad copy testing is comparing words, value propositions, and writing styles to find what brings about the most response. These variables are put through many tests to determine their effectiveness.

Before we dive into the details, let’s recap the meaning of ad copywriting and A/B testing.

What Is Ad Copywriting?

Ad copywriting refers to the process of writing text used in advertisements or other forms of digital marketing. 

Its product is known as ‘copy,’ – merely a piece of written content that aims to enhance brand awareness and persuade an individual or a group of people to take a particular action at the end.

Companies generally will have a basic understanding of their target audience before they start writing ad copy. Either from past knowledge, market research or competitor analyses. Effective copywriting should be appealing, arouse emotions, and invoke action from the target audience. 

It takes research to find a consistent writing style that enables your marketing message to speak volumes to your target market. 

What Is A/B Testing?

In traditional marketing, businesses have several different ad copy ideas in the running before they finalize one for their ad. They might measure the effectiveness of various options by comparing the type of responses they attract in a small focus (sample) group. However, with the rise of digital marketing, we’re able to use our actual target audience for testing by splitting audiences into bigger ‘sample groups’. Unlike traditional marketing, setting up A/B testing is relatively cheap and can provide immense insights.  

As the name suggests, A/B testing is a way through which businesses compare two versions of a single ad – version A and version B. 

They typically examine how audiences respond to ad A against ad B, and the results determine which of the two variants will be useful if launched on a much bigger scale.

Why Is Testing Essential?

Ad copy testing provides the ultimate opportunity for a business to modify or rule out any approach that fails to produce the desired result, or to select an approach that maximises the desired result. At its core, ad testing improves ROI by maximising the number of results/conversions from an ad.

Ad copy should be refined and optimised as the business grows, understanding what resonates with their audience and how to invoke action from them. By refining ad copy you are essentially reducing your advertising spend on underperforming ads and only promoting ads that provide the highest return.

Additionally, when a company is in the process of developing an entirely new campaign, testing ad copy can help if the team is planning to take a bold new approach. For example, if you’re launching a new product separate from your current range and you want to know if your audience value copy regarding quality over copy regarding functionality. An A/B test can be set up with two variations of ad copy focusing on the two topics. The variation with the higher response is the value that draws more audiences into your product. 

What Happens If Ad Copy Is Not Tested?

Companies that do not deploy ad testing suffer some significant drawbacks in terms of:

Reduced Content Engagement

Your ads may not resonate with your audience, i.e., they do not connect with your audience; they won’t be interested in engaging with it. This will reduce your brand’s overall engagement.

Increased Bounce Rates 

If the ad copy is not strong enough to compel your visitors to take action or read your content, they will swiftly bounce right off your website.

Decreased Conversion Rates

Without A/B testing, a business can’t figure out which ad works most effectively, and when the ad is unable to invoke interest, it will ultimately lead to reduced conversion rates. The less people that are interested = less conversions = reduced ROI.

In Conclusion

When starting ad copy testing, make a list of all the value propositions that you want to be tested, prioritize the list, and then create a strategy for doing A/B testing. It is vital to have a baseline reading of all the metrics, so you have something to compare to (this will usually be your “A” test variant).

A/B testing ad copy is an important aspect of marketing and it helps companies generate better revenue as it increases sales and avoids unnecessary sink costs.

If you believe your ad copy can be better and you’re not sure where to start, contact us today.