The importance of testing variables in an AdWords account

One of the most important aspects of any AdWords account should be testing, as it establishes a system where you will end up using only what works out and eliminate what doesn't.

In order to test variables you need make sure to build a RELEVANT test. A test is relevant if:

- you are going to test JUST one variation across multiple elements that would otherwise be IDENTICAL. For instance, you might test the effectiveness of different advertising titles by creating multiple headlines and using the same description lines and URL for all of them. This will give you the opportunity to find out which title works best for you. Which elements can you test in an headline? Good examples are: prices, offers, locations, and call to actions.

- you have enough data to justify the final result. For instance, if you are receiving 100 clicks per day you will not be able to judge the effectiveness of a day for at least 1 month while if you generate 1000 clicks per day you will be able to evaluate a test almost o a daily basis.

The majority of advertisers stop their tests to the advertisement level and this is a very basic mistake. Any AdWords account has a huge potential for many other sort of tests. Some other test best practices are:

- Conversion Optimizer: the conversion optimizer is not a guarantee of success. Anytime you turn on the conversion optimizer you might want to create a copy of the campaign, set it up as you had it before enabling the conversion optimizer,  and run it in parallel to the original campaign (which had the conversion optimizer turned on). After an initial warm up period the new campaign will be able to test if the conversion optimized campaign is actually more profitable than the campaign you previously had. Using this method saved many clients thousands of euros as the conversion optimizer wasn't actually profitable for them.

- Test the effectiveness of the Google Search Network versus the Google Search Partner. This test is very important as the cost per conversion can vary among the two search advertising solutions.

- Test different campaign settings

- Test the performance of different sub-regions in within a country. Also, you can find out if ads specifically targeted to a  high volume subregion of a country can generate better performance than ads that are general and not city / region specific.

There are many other scenarios where a test is necessary to optimize your account. Please feel free to email us all of your questions and we will happy to tell you if what you are describing us needs a test or not!