Testing, Testing 1,2,3
I have heard agency owners describe themselves as creatives. But honestly, to make an agency work, you have to be at least 51% scientist. So much of what I do on a daily basis is testing. As an agency owner, I am testing new social media or email platforms, testing calls to action, and testing multiple forms of content.
Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are constantly changing, adding new features, getting rid of old ones, and of course, copying the upstarts. As an agency owner, I must be paying attention and using the tools that I will put into play for my clients.
As a small business owner, this can be overwhelming but testing is the difference between people who are successful on social and those who aren't.
What should you test on social media?
The short answer is to test everything. Let's take a deeper dive into that!
Platform
Are you on the right platform? This one can be deceiving. You may have plenty of followers and even engagement on Facebook for instance, but it's possible that you are missing an entirely new audience on LinkedIn. Testing new platforms is a great way to introduce your product or service to a new audience. This has happened to me this past month as I dipped my toes into the TikTok waters.
Content
There are so many areas you can test when it comes to content.
Start with the tone of voice. Does your audience respond to funny, warm and inviting, sarcastic, or professional? Finding the tone of voice will help you decide the direction you will take your marketing. Keep in mind that sarcastic may be a hit on Instagram, but may not work on LinkedIn or vice versa. It all depends on the audience.
What medium works for you? It makes me cringe when I hear an expert who tells small business owners that video is the end-all, be-all for social media. I love video and find that it does well for many of my clients, but there are whole industries where video is not the best medium. Testing live versus recorded video versus images versus GIFs versus audio files is the only way you will find what really works for your industry.
Short-form versus long-form? The answer is it depends. Test it. Write some longer posts and see if you get more or less engagement than you do when you post shorter posts. I have found that a lot depends on the age of the people reading the posts. Or it may also depend on the area of the country or the tone of voice you are using.
Timing
People often ask what time of day they should be posting. We can't answer that. We may take some guesses, but until we test for an individual audience we don't know. And keep in mind you may have a couple of audiences to test for.
For example, if you are own a running shoe store, you may post at 6 a.m. to reach moms who are training for a marathon, but you might need to post at 3:05 for the cross country runner. Knowing your audience or audiences is important when it comes to testing.
Websites
Okay, your social media is up and running smoothly. People are loving what you post and now they are clicking over to your website. Now, what happens? Let's consider testing. There are so many things to test on your website.
Tone of Voice
Your tone of voice on your website is probably going to be different than the tone of voice you use on your social media. Chances are you need to be a little more formal on your website. But maybe not. Test it. How does your audience respond when you change your tone from professional to caring? How about caring to snarky? My gut reaction is that your website should have the tone of voice of your best salesperson. If that is casual and cool, that's great. You just have to find the tone that works for you.
Content
Everybody's audience is different. The content you provide will be different as well. If your audience is no-nonsense, you may have a website that is more like a catalog than an informational brochure. If your audience is like ours, you will want to look at educational content. What can you give them that shows them you are the expert in your field?
Call To Action
A strong call to action is one of the single most important parts of your website. If you aren't testing the call to action regularly, you are almost definitely leaving money on the table. You should test the placement, the copy, and even the format. Should your call to action be a button, a link, or a shopping cart? What is going to be most enticing for your customers? Will pop-ups work or will it scare people away? If the pop-up works, is it meant to lead them to a purchase or entice them to leave you their email address?
It's easy to see that each question begets another question. While most times in life we say, "avoid that rabbit hole," this time we want to encourage you to go deeper into the rabbit hole. The more you test, the more you learn, and the better your results will be.
Email Marketing
If you are a longtime subscriber to the ASMM Newsletter, you may have noticed some of our testing. You have seen us change format, change from photos to videos to GIFs, and back again. You have seen us change from buttons to no buttons. You have seen us go from trying to lead you back to the website to what we are doing today, which is to give you all the information without asking for anything in return.
Subject Lines
One of the easiest ways to test your email marketing is with your subject line. Most email platforms allow for A/B testing for your subject lines. Take advantage of the feature so you can decide which subject line works best for open rates.
But also consider whether the open rate is the measurement you are looking for. Many of our home service companies look at the number of phone calls they receive the day we send out the email. Some have told us they get more calls than open rates because the email acts as a reminder to call.
Format
The format you choose matters. The one metric I use to decide whether my email is working or not is whether I get email responses after I send an email. If people feel compelled to reply to my email, I must be doing something right. I found that I started getting a lot more email responses when I went to a longer more in-depth email. But for some clients, I have found that a digest format works best, and for another, a monthly calendar of events has given them explosive growth. You have to test to find the right format. It's that simple
This is not a test.
When we tell you that testing is important we aren't just making it up. We know. We are obsessed with testing. Here are a few things I learned this week through testing:
My TikTok videos do better when I don't wear my glasses.
My Reel videos do better when I use saucy language.
My emails do better when I don't try to tell a joke.
My website does better when the blogs, videos, and podcasts are all in separate locations.
I am happier when I have my tea. (I have been testing that one for some time.)