One of the bigger advertising mistakes I have seen in the hospitality industry with newcomers to online advertising is locking into one set of ads or one landing page. For an advertiser, this can be disastrous. I have seen entire ad budgets blown because the proper testing was not done. What I am referring to here is split testing, or A/B testing of online ads.
What is Split or A/B Testing?
In its simplest terms, this is the process of using two or more different types of ads or landing pages to “test” which types of ads and landing pages will offer the highest conversion rates. In the hotel industry specifically, thousands of dollars can be saved by doing small A/B tests on everything from ad copy to images to the actual landing pages.
Why Use A/B Testing?
Split testing is an inexpensive way to see what is working and what is not. It really is as simple as that. Today’s travelers are far more complex than the traveler of even a decade ago. They are inundated with so much data and have such a diverse range of needs, it is impossible to tap into the full range of any demographic with a single ad and hit a home run on the first attempt.
Because of the tracking data (analytics) we have available to us today, you are not only able to target a type of traveler with specific ads but also demographics within a demographic. For example, ads that do well with millennial business travelers may not work as well with business travelers over the age of 50. By constantly tweaking the ads used and zeroing in on specific markets, you can make your advertising spend several times more effective than it ever has been before.
What Part of Ads Can Be Examined with A/B Testing?
Basically, every part of the ad can be examined and tweaked during this process. The most common aspects of the ads you will want to work with are:
- Ad Descriptions
- Call to Action
- Headlines
- Layout and Design of Ad
- Images
- Ad Copy
- Landing Pages
- The Actual Form (from the form fields to the actual length of the form)
- Your Offers Being Advertised
The Process of A/B or Split Testing
The main function of running split ads is to identify problems and fixing them. This is in its most simplistic form, but it will give you a better idea of the actual process when creating split ads to get to your final product in each demographic:
- Identify the Problem – Test ads need to be created with a specific problem in mind that needs to be fixed. For instance, you are experiencing a high volume of website visitors that are exiting in the middle of the booking process.
- Analyzing Data – Prior to creating the improvement ads, you will need to dig deep into your existing ads to see the current behavior of website visitors. In our current example, you will need to identify who is abandoning the booking process and at what stage they are actually abandoning the website.
- The Solution – Once you have identified the actual problem, you can begin to create an action plan to solve it. For instance, are there too many add-on menus during the booking process that are frustrating visitors and making them abandon before finalizing their booking?
- Calculating Run Time of Ads – One of the more important aspects of A/B testing is in how long or how many website visits are needed for the data to be meaningful. This can be done with a Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) calculator. There are plenty of both paid and free tools online for this. That data you will need to input to the calculator is:
- Current Conversion Rate
- Minimum Improvement Desired
- Number of Variations
- Average Number of Daily Visitors
- Percentage of Visitor to Include in Test
- Running Test Ads – Once the first four steps have been completed, it is time to test the ads. You will have an A ad, which is your control, and a B ad, where hypothetically you will see the desired improvements.
- Analyzing Results – After the testing period is over, you will once again need to break down the results to see how your ad variations are performing against the control ad. You may have to go back to step three several times before finally settling on a final ad.
As you can see, this is a rather involved process and can take some time to zero in on both the problems and solutions. However, when A/B testing is done properly, it will make your advertising spend far more effective than just randomly creating ads and hoping they perform.
Is your marketing team using A/B testing when creating online ads for your hotel? If not, you may need to look for a Director of Marketing that truly understands the intricacies of online marketing. Joseph David International has been successfully placing executive level managers in hotels for decades because we don’t just find candidates, we find the ideal candidate to address your specific needs. For more information about our hospitality recruiting services, please click here.
Photo By sarawutnirothon