Split test is one of the effective features of performance marketing, it allows you to test different ad sets and different aspects of your campaign, to improve performance of your campaigns.
Many advertisers go use split test as different audiences interact in a different way on different communication pieces and visuals. Facebook also allows advertisers to create split test campaigns to drive success on Facebook.
Let’s understand in detail!
What is a Split Test?
Split test commonly known as A/B testing is a marketing tactic where two variations of a ad campaign are compared against each other, to measure which drive success.
Advertisers do a lot of experimentation while using split tests in their marketing efforts and optimize their campaigns.
Different variables can tested through split test, which includes:
- Landing pages
- Images/Videos
- Color of Call to Action
- Form fields
- Headlines/banner copies/description
- Position of form/call to action
- Audiences Targeting
What is Facebook Split Test?
Facebook split test is a A/B test where you can test below variables of your Facebook ads campaign:
- Creative
- Delivery Optimization
- Audience
- Placement
Let’s understand each one of them
Creative
With the help of Facebook split test for creative option, you can test multiple creatives, videos, CTA’s, text, headlines or combination of any of these factors in the ad set.
Creative Split test is very useful, if you are looking to test how different creatives are performing and different copies are performing which changed on the ad unit.
Delivery Optimization
With the help of delivery optimization split test, you can test if optimizing for conversions or optimizing for clicks works for your ad campaign.
In delivery optimization, you can also test optimizing conversions with a conversion window of 1 day Vs a conversion window for 7 days to measure how conversions are reflecting for different conversion windows.
Audience
With the help of audience split test, you can test who different targeting parameters are working for the same creative or communication.
As for different products and services, the personas are different, so you can create a split test for different personas and measure the results.
Placement
With the help of placements variable, you can test which placements on Facebook works the best. Eg: Do Facebook news feed ads works best or Facebook right hand side desktop ad works well.
You can also do mobile vs desktop split test. Further you can also do automatic vs selected placements as a split test.
How to create a Facebook Split Test campaign?
Let’s understand step by step, how to create a Facebook split test campaign. I am going to use creative as a variable in this article to create a Facebook split test campaign.
Step 1
Log in to your Facebook ads account: Ads Manager
Step 2
Now create a new campaign by clicking on the green button.
Step 3
Now select the objective for the campaign
In this article, I am going to create a split test campaign for my training course on R Academy, and use creative as a variable for the test.
So I am going ahead with lead generation as an objective. Once you select lead generation, you will see the below screen. Now define the campaign name and switch on the create split test option.
Once you switch on create a split test option, you will be able to see the below screen, and then you need to select the variable which you would like to test. So I have selected creative, as I want to do a creative split test on Facebook.
Once you switch on create a split test option, you will be able to see the below screen, and then you need to select the variable which you would like to test. So I have selected creative, as I want to do a creative split test on Facebook.
Once you click on creative, you will see the below screen. You can now select the ad from an existing campaign and A/B test it with the new image to measure the performance. This A/B test is created in test and learn. No click on create A/B test.
Step 4
Once you click on create A/B test, you will be taken to the test and learn page as below. Now from here, you can select the campaign and the variable (creative) to do the A/B test. I have selected as below.
Once you click on next, you will see the below screen, where you need to now enter the new image for the test.
So I have added the new image as below for the test. As I want to only test image, I have only changed the image, the copy remains the same.
Post that:
- Define Test Name
- Test Schedule – Ideally keep a schedule of at least 2 weeks to test the variable
- Test Budget – Keep optimum budget for the split. Facebook we share the budget 50:50
- Estimated Test Power – Estimated Power is the likelihood of detecting a difference in your ads if there is one to detect. Facebook recommends using a budget that gives advertisers a power of at least 80% to improve their chances of completing a test successfully. So if the estimated power is showing less than 80%, make sure you increase your budget.
- Determining The Winner – Select the action which determines the winner from cost per result, cost per click, cost per purchase, cost per purchase, cost per lead etc. I have defined, as cost per lead, because I want to see which creative performs better and gives me leads at a lesser cost.
Now click on create test, Facebook will create a test and you will see the screen below, where the test is scheduled. Also, you can cancel, edit or view test details from the right hand side options.
Now, go back to the ads manager, and you will be able to see the tests are scheduled to run as below with a breakup or version A and Version B.
Once you ads start, the data will also start to populate on the dashboard.
So this is how you create split test on Facebook.
Conclusion
Split test is one of the effective features of Facebook ads manager, so keep experimenting with different split test variables, which will help you to, learn, optimize and drive success to your Facebook ads campaigns.
