One thing that all growing businesses engage in, is online advertisements. With so many platforms to start an ad campaign, each of these platforms all promising good result, an advertiser might find himself in a rather awkward situation. It is important to note that not all ad network or platform are suitable for all kinds of business, and this is where the advertiser would begin a series of test campaign to find out the best medium of advertising his business.

Testing campaigns would cost a sum of money but its definitely worth it. After a successful series of tests, an advertiser will be able to know which of various mediums will be able to not only drive in traffic but also lead to a conversion.

Take for example;

ADVERTISER A: finds a tech platform that has a lot of traffic and then he decides to market his new book on the platform. He ends us driving in traffic into his landing page but makes Zero(0) sales.

ADVERTISER B: finds an education blog that does not have traffic but decides to market his new book on the platform. He ends us not only driving in traffic into his landing page but also makes a numberous amount of sales.

lesson: Always test campaigns on mediums that have visitors likely to buy your product or service to avoid wasted cash

When preparing to run a series of ad campaign, there are some other keypoints to note;

Make use your graphics are contextual and appealing enough
Reduce lying habits to a moderate level to avoid misleading advertising scandals
Read more: Expensive Lying Habits: Top 5 Misleading and False Advertising Scandals

What and how should you be testing?
Before we get to how much should we spend, we should know on what actually we are spending the money. What do we test?

In brief, everything, everywhere. Every aspect of the campaign can and should be tested. Looking for new opportunities is similar to research and development in tech companies. Even if something works just fine, it can always be improved.

The best way to conduct a test campaign is with a scientific approach. To get significant results, you should test one variable at a time. To make the results even more clear, set the test on your best performing variables. For example, if you test a new creative, leave the copy as it is and set the test on your best target audience. This way, you’ll know whether the creative failed or succeeded but only due to its design, not an underperforming audience.

Such tests, however, are only capable of discovering the full potential of an advertising campaign within the ad network you operate on.

If you were to test new grounds, like a new ad network, there are more unknowns. It’s harder to pick winners and losers in these conditions. Such a broad test will be more expensive as you’ll need to act blindly to some extent. However, soon you can pick the best performing aspects and create a true, revenue-boosting monster.

The ‘more expensive’ aspect can be scary, but there’s good news as well. As soon as you move to developing platforms and start growing revenue there, you have a massive competitive advantage over those who will join there later, once the platform matures.

Once the test is set up, leave it for 24 or 48 hours without any adjustments. After this period, you should be able to analyze the results. This one or two day window will allow you to pick winners quickly while also ‘kill’ losers to minimize your losses. Actually, picking losers is even easier and can be done quicker.

The budget
Due to the series of tests you will run, you will have to spend more than just N2,000 testing all approach and taking down estimates and results.

To put it into a real-life example, it’s not the previously mentioned N2,000 but closer to N100,000 for a test. And this still doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the results you need – you might need to spend N500,000 or even N100,000 on test campaigns before you hit the spot where your advertising brings you more than it costs.

Is it always about large budgets?
Not at all. You can get really good results with smaller budgets and/or gather rubbish conclusions with a large budget. But nevertheless, the more you spend on testing, however, the more you learn about your traffic. And even if you spend a lot on testing, it’s still wise to set reasonable budgets for test campaigns. Along with a systematic and calculated approach of testing paid ads, it’s the best way to grow your business!

In a nutshell….
Set a budget for testing purposes
Test one variable at a time
Leave the test to run for 24/48HRS
estimate the results and move to other variables.
Now, its time to put the practice what you have just learnt. Login on your advertiser dashboard and start a test campaign right away.

-----> www.afriadverts.com/advertisers