Any form of marketing requires some trial and error. Even the very best documented marketing strategies don’t work every time or in every situation; they often need to be tweaked, revised or even completely overhauled in certain situations. If marketing were so simple, then everybody would be using it to great effect.

Yet many brands struggle with the basics of marketing – in particular, delivering strong results through forms of digital marketing. Whether ads are being ran on social media, in search engines or via email, learning the basics of how to improve these campaigns is essential. This is why A/B testing is so important: let’s look at some important lessons that A/B testing can provide when done properly.

Improvements Don’t Come Easy

A/B testing provides a valuable opportunity for brands and businesses to improve their marketing efforts. Practically mandatory in this day and age, A/B testing helps brands discover new opportunities for expansion, increase overall sales and generally become more efficient. However, pinging websites with advertising variants does not guarantee success on its own.

Studies show that roughly 9 in 10 variants involved in A/B testing produce no statistically significant results. This means that the vast majority of your efforts in finding new and improved ways to reach audiences will yield nothing. This can be particularly frustrating for brands seeking to improve operations on a limited budget, but it is a fundamental part of the process. This also underlines why it is important to strategically consider each campaign’s elements before authorizing an ad buy.

Audiences Are Multi-Faceted

Discovering which elements impact your digital marketing campaigns positively or negatively is a time-consuming process, but just as important is understanding exactly who is impacted by them. One of the major benefits of A/B testing for advanced marketing success involves discovering exactly who is persuaded by what, and then using that information to truly customize each ad campaign.

While failure is often the name of the game in A/B testing (in terms of producing better results), often, there are gains to be made in every single test. Some of your audience may be turned on by a particular tweak, while an equal number may be turned off by it. Advanced analytical observations are essential in determining exactly who is affected by each change or alteration; once discovered, combining these elements in the right order and targeting the right audiences can produce monumental results.

The Importance of Branding and Messaging

In a world where there is more digital noise than ever, standing out is essential to long-term brand success. All too often, brands fail to truly organize their digital marketing campaigns, letting the product or service outshine the brand itself. One element that is often present in successful A/B testing efforts is the unification of product, brand and message.

A thousand campaigns can be pinging websites with advertisements, but without a clear message, those campaigns are likely to falter. Even when utilizing all of the valuable technical information gathered from testing, failure to incorporate those elements with the brand’s message and imagery can produce poor results. It is essential that brands focus on unifying these elements in each campaign to truly create brand awareness and increased conversions.

A/B testing can provide a wealth of benefits when done properly – and when the results are analyzed. Many lessons can be learned from repeated efforts: by analyzing the gathered data, incorporating strong branding and messaging and understanding that failure is inherent to the process, you can achieve great results over the long term for your brand.