to Maximize ROI with Social Ad A/B testing //

It can be difficult to stand out and reach your audience effectively. Marketers are faced with the challenge of using limited budgets strategically to achieve the best results in an ever-increasing market. Marketers must ensure that digital advertising spend is optimized for strong campaigns and maximum impact as we move into 2023. Social ad testing is one way to achieve this.

How to Benchmark Your Campaign Success

Marketers must maximize their return on advertising spend (ROAS). It is essential to understand how to calculate this metric accurately. Before we get into the details of how to increase your ROAS, let us first discuss how to measure it and how it will be used throughout our discussion.

Calculate ROAS by taking the total campaign revenue, and dividing it by the total campaign costs.

An example: If you spent $5,000 on a digital advertising campaign and generated $15,000 revenue through your conversion funnel, you’d have a ROAS ratio of 3 to 1.

Today’s blog post will include several B2C examples and references. However, all the information we are discussing today can be applied to B2B campaigns.

Optimizing your Ad-to-Page Journey

To increase your return on advertising spend, you need to create messaging that resonates well with your target audience so that they are able to engage and convert. It is important to ensure that your messaging is relevant and appropriate for your audience by optimizing your marketing funnel for each segment. A/B testing should also be performed across the funnel.

Before we get into optimization, let’s first look at the basic ad to page journey that potential customers will follow.

Below is a simplified, bird’s-eye view of the ad-to customer journey.

Your audience will first see your ad. This is the beginning of the conversion process. Your target audience’s exposure to your ad and a landing page. A landing page must highlight the offer and keep in mind the needs of the audience.

Your ad should match perfectly with your landing page, and any other content (welcome email sequences, nurture sequences, etc.).

Optimizing your ads-to-page experience also requires A/B testing, including social ad and page tests. This is to make sure you don’t pay high CPC (cost-per-click) for leads that aren’t converting on your pages.

Let’s look at an ad to page example of message matching, and see if it can be improved.

The Sasquatch Boots Ad-to-Page Example

Sasquatch Boots offers 10% discount on hiking boots in this ad. The creative includes a photo of the boots and social proof from Anish Anderson, a world-class hiker.

This landing page includes the complete quote from the hiker. The headline and subheadline highlight the boot’s features from the customer’s point of view.

The copy isn’t very descriptive of the product, except to highlight the comfort angle. It doesn’t mention durability or how it will perform against other natural elements.

The 10% discount offer that attracted prospects to the page via the ad is also missing from this page. This page lacks urgency due to the missing discount offer.

Let’s look at what happens when you include “sale” messaging on the page. With the addition of the CTA, “Shop Sale Now span>”, the page now has a sense urgency.

We can however, tweak this landing page to show prospects how much they will save. It is always easier to save potential customers the effort of doing the math.

This is how the landing page will look if you include the 10% discount copy and highlight the dollar value.

It also includes the exact hiking boots featured in the ad. The landing page also includes optimizations like showing the product’s star rating, and adding in a more relevant CTA such as “find my size span>”.

Tips to optimize your ad page journey for your next campaign

Let’s now look at the strategies you can and should use to maximize your ad spending investment. These five tips could help improve your ROAS by helping you plan your next digital campaign.

Keep your message consistent

A/B testing your social ads. For example, Facebook ads can help you determine which creatives are most effective for your audience.

Find the right opportunity

Marketers need to identify the right opportunity to create a successful campaign. How do you do this?

CPC or cost per click is an input metric to return on ad spending. CPC has its own input metrics, clickthrough rate and conversion rates.

Click-through rate (CTR: Percentage of impressions that result in a click. CTR can be lower than expected. There are two things you could do to improve it.

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  The quality of your ad copy. Is it compelling enough to get someone’s attention?
  
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  Targeting your audience accurately. Do you target the right people? If not, rethink your audience. Consider contextual targeting and retargeting people who have interacted with your website if you are targeting groups based upon their interest or demographic category.
  

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as purchasing a product or signing up for a newsletter. The percentage of visitors who visit your site out of all the people who visited it. A low conversion rate is a sign of problems.

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  Is your landing page consistent with what the visitor expected from the ad they clicked? This is where consistency in messaging is crucial
  
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  Again, accuracy in audience targeting is key. This is especially true for B2B companies. It can indicate that you are targeting the right types but not the right decision-makers.
  

Adjust your audience targeting, ad creativity design, messaging and landing page to see how you can reduce your cost per click and, by association, your ROAS.

Create a customized ad-to page journey

It is best to show the same product on both the landing page and in the ad. You can personalize dynamic ad templates and landing pages to show products your visitor is interested in from a previous visit.

Personalizing the user experience to suit individual preferences and interests can make it more interesting and more likely to lead to conversions.

You can build trust and strengthen your customer relationships by showing that you value and understand their needs. You can also differentiate your brand and make it stand out in a competitive market by providing a personalized ad to page journey.

Speed up conversions with experimentation

It is all about speeding up your ability to lead here. Making the most of the attention your page visitors will give you. So employ tactics like:

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  On-page Promotions
  
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  Heat map data
  
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  A/B Test
  
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  Emphasis on scarcity (ticking clocks, deal ends dates)
  
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  Cross-selling or upsell
  
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  Highlight social proof
  

To maximize your return on your advertising spend, optimizing your ad to page journey is crucial. Focusing on the essential components of an effective advertising campaign will create a more engaging experience for your customers and help you drive better results for your company. Every touchpoint on the ad-to page journey can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Take the time to ensure that each component is in sync to provide the best experience possible for your audience.

You now know the basics of optimizing your digital campaigns. Instapage offers a 14-day free trial to help you get started improving your ROAS.

Author: tess pfeifle