Testing An Ad Campaign: How Many Visitors Do You Need To Test?

I’ve been writing SEO and AdWords content for several years now, so I have a pretty solid understanding of the basics. But even though I’m experienced, I still check out new articles on the subject every week to keep up with the latest trends in marketing.

One thing that I noticed is that new articles seem to take more time than they used to, and this article will be no exception. If you are reading this article, it’s because you want to know whether or not you should be testing an ad campaign.

You probably want to know how many visitors your campaign needs before you can consider it successful. This is a very important question for any advertiser who wants to make sure their ad campaigns are running smoothly and efficiently.

In order to answer this question, let’s first look at what an ad campaign means and how many people need to visit your landing page in order for it to be considered successful

How Many Facebook Ads Do You Need To Test A Week?

Takeaways
Determine the required number of visitors for effective ad campaign testing.
Consider factors such as statistical significance and desired confidence level.
Use online calculators or statistical tools to aid in sample size calculation.
Larger sample sizes generally yield more reliable and accurate results.
Regularly review and adjust your sample size based on campaign goals and outcomes.

Table of Contents

1. Split-Test Multiple Ad Variants

The first step to successful testing is to know what you want to test. If you aren’t sure, then it’s best to start with a broad hypothesis that can be validated or invalidated by multiple options. For example: “This new ad copy will get more clicks than the current one.”

This is an easy statement to test and very likely to have some level of impact on your business. However, this shouldn’t be the only thing being tested because what if instead of seeing an increase in clicks there was a decrease?

Or maybe even just no change? Testing something like this would take some time but could save lots of money spent on ads that don’t convert well enough for your business model.

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Split Test Different Landing Pages

Landing pages are another area where split testing makes sense because they often contain copy that needs testing as well as design elements such as colors and layout (including text size).

Split testing these elements can help reduce bounce rate from visitors who don’t see what they were expecting when arriving at a landing page after clicking through from an ad campaign.*

2. Split-Test Your Landing Page

In this section, we’ll go over how to split-test your landing page. This is a great way to test different elements of your website and see which ones convert best.

A/B testing is when you have two versions of a page, or two “treatment groups.” For example, let’s say you have one version with a picture of an orange and another that has a picture of an apple.

You would then show each visitor one version or the other (or both) until you have enough data so that you can decide which image works better.

In order for this type of test to be effective, it needs enough traffic so that there aren’t too many variables involved in creating statistical significance.

A good rule of thumb is 100 visitors per day needed for every variable tested (e.g., if there are 4 different images being tested then 400 visitors per day would be needed).

3. Don’t Expect One Test To Give You A Clear Winner

Another thing to keep in mind is that we don’t recommend testing one variable at a time. That is, you should never test one ad campaign against another ad campaign. If you do, then you won’t know what caused the difference in performance!

Instead of testing just one thing at a time, we suggest running multiple tests simultaneously.

This way, if one of your ads performs better than the other, then you can isolate which element (ad copy or landing page) made it perform better and repeat that success with more variations on that theme.

Of course, this isn’t always easy especially when dealing with large amounts of traffic so don’t expect to find the perfect ad or landing page on the first try!

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4. Don’t Use A/B Testing As Your Only Tool

A/B testing is a useful tool, but it can’t be used as the only tool. It’s best when combined with other tools like conversion rate optimization (CRO), SEO, and keyword research.

A/B testing is most effective when you combine it with another data source to provide context for your test results.

For example, if you run an A/B test that compares two headlines against each other, then use Google Analytics to determine which headline was more popular in general traffic across all of your pages.

This will give you a clearer picture of how well each headline performed overall than just one or two isolated tests would have done alone.

A/B testing also works best when used as part of an ongoing campaign strategy rather than as part of initial planning stages for new campaigns.

In other words, don’t use A/B testing as your only method for determining whether or not something will work before rolling out an entire marketing strategy based on its results!

5. Use Keywords In Your Ads

Keywords are important, but the problem is that it’s hard to know exactly which keywords are going to drive traffic to your website. To combat this, you can use keyword research tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or SEMrush to track down relevant keywords for your site.

Once you have a list of keywords, there are several places you should use them:

In Your Ad Copy

This might seem obvious, but make sure you include all of the relevant keywords in each line of text within an ad group. It’s especially important if one ad group has multiple ads (for example, one product versus another), as well as on each individual ad itself.

On Landing Pages

When someone clicks on one of your ads and lands on a landing page in order to see more information about what they clicked on (or read more about how it works).

Make sure that page matches up with what was advertised so that people don’t get confused or frustrated when they land somewhere unexpected!

6. Include The Target Keyword In Your Ad Copy

You can also make sure the keyword is present in your ad copy, but don’t overdo it. Optimize for a few different phrases and then test them out on their own.

If you’re using an automatic bidding system, you may find that one of them does better than the others but if not, there’s no reason not to include all three phrases in your ad copy.

Don’t use the keyword as the headline or body copy; doing so will only result in wasted clicks from people who aren’t interested or have no idea what they’re clicking on!

It’ll also reduce click-through rates overall because users won’t feel compelled to click on those ads anymore (and they’ll likely click elsewhere).

The same goes for display URLs: don’t use any keywords here because they could easily be confused with other words like “news” or “articles” (which would result in false positives).

Instead, create something memorable that uses some of those keywords but doesn’t give away too much information about what you offer or where they should go once they arrive at your site.

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7. Don’t Start With Branded Or Generic Keywords

When building a test, don’t start with branded or generic keywords. Start by identifying relevant keywords your audience is searching for that are related to the products or services you offer.

These can be broad and narrow, but they should always be specific enough so that you can understand what someone is looking for before they visit your site.

For example, if I am testing a new product called “Pizza Bites,” it would be helpful to know if people are searching for “pizza bites recipe” or “how do i make pizza bites at home?”

If I didn’t know this information up front, I could waste time optimizing my ads for an irrelevant phrase like “pizza recipes” and lose out on valuable traffic opportunity cost (where my money is spent trying to get clicks from those searches that are not interested in my product).

8. Don’t Count On Ad Extensions As An Automatic Win

Don’t rely on ad extensions as an automatic win. Ad extensions are a great way to increase the number of people who see your ads, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and only test ad variations that feature an extension.

Don’t rely on ad extensions as a way to increase your CTR. If you’re trying out new important keywords or have an existing campaign that isn’t doing well.

It’s tempting to try something new like showing call-to-action buttons or adding a location extension.

Just make sure you’re not making any assumptions about how these will help improve the results before testing them out. It may be worth running both with and without these options first!

Don’t rely on ad extensions as a way to increase your quality score. If you haven’t read up on how quality scores work before now (or ever), this might seem pretty far away from what we’ve been talking about here… but no worries!

Quality scores are based on how relevant users find certain pages within Google search results: if something is well matched with what someone typed into their search bar, they’ll be more likely click through than if it isn’t!

Quality scores affect which ads appear where: higher quality means better placement; lower quality means worse placement (and thus lower visibility).

9. Use Customized Landing Pages For Your Campaigns

When you are creating your landing pages, you should make sure that they are unique to the ad campaign. You want the landing page to be relevant to the ad, and it should be relevant to your visitor as well.

The goal of a landing page is also important. For example, if your goal is to get subscribers or leads on a website, then all of these things need to align with one another.

For example: If an ad for strawberries goes up on Facebook and has this message: “Buy strawberries today at our store!”

Then there needs to be some sort of link that takes users straight from that page into their cart where they can purchase the product being advertised in the advertisement itself (like an image or button).

10. Have One Simple Call To Action On Each Landing Page

It’s important to have a clear call to action on each landing page, so that visitors know what they’re supposed to do next. The text should be relevant and help move the visitor through the process, but it’s also important not to overdo it.

Keep things simple: don’t try and sell the same thing several times over on one page, especially if those things aren’t related.

Be aware of how many times you’re asking for one thing (e.g., signing up for an email newsletter).
Consider how many calls-to-action are necessary before trying something new (e.g., offering something else instead).

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11. Give The Visitor A Reason To Visit Your Site Other Than Just Buying Something

The next thing you should be doing is giving your visitors a reason to visit your site other than just buying something. Don’t just sell the product or service, tell them why they should use it.

Show them how the product will help them solve their problem
Tell them what you can do for them that no one else can
Explain why this particular product is better than others of its kind

You don’t want to just sell a product or service and expect people to buy it blindly. You need to explain how using your website/product/service will make their life better.

This way, when someone does decide that this is something useful for them and comes back later on down the road.

They’ll remember all those reasons you gave earlier on in which case there won’t be any barriers to realizing exactly what benefits they could get from visiting again!

12. Match Your Ad Copy With Your Landing Page Copy And Headlines

Ad copy and landing page copy should match. This is a common mistake that you can avoid by following this simple rule of thumb:

Be specific in your ad copy and headline. If you’re selling a shirt, don’t just say “shirts.” Instead, go with something like “Sweatshirts for sale!” or “Shirt prices slashed!”

The more specific each element of your ad is, the better chance you’ll have at matching up with its corresponding element on the landing page.

And if there’s no connection between what someone sees in an ad and what they see when they land on the site (or any disconnect between the two), it’ll be harder for them to convert into customers.

Keep headlines short and sweet (think Twitter). Your headline should be short enough to gain attention but also long enough to convey what’s being offered and ideally both things at once!

13. Know What You’re Optimizing For Up Front Conversions, Leads, Sales?

The first question you need to answer is “What do I want visitors to do on my site?”

There are three main types of actions that people can take with your website:

Conversions

A conversion occurs when someone takes an action on your site, like signing up for a demo or downloading a PDF. You can track these in Google Analytics by setting up event tracking and creating custom goals.

Leads

A lead is simply a contact form submission or some other information exchange between your prospects and yourself. These are tracked similarly to conversions in Google Analytics, but without custom goals (because leads aren’t worth money directly).

Sales

This metric is used when you’re trying to increase sales directly through advertising instead of building brand awareness through engagement with your audience (which we will discuss in another article).

In this case, sales mean actual orders made through purchases from the ads themselves you don’t have control over what happens after someone clicks on your ad (they could go straight back onto Facebook).

So any purchases made by clicking on an ad will show up under “sales” as opposed to “conversions” or “leads”.

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14. Consider The Specific Stage Of The Buying Funnel With Each Ad And Landing Page Pairing

At this point, you’ve decided how many visitors you want to test and at what price. Now it’s time to get specific about where they’ll go on your website so they can complete their journey through the buying funnel.

The buying funnel is a process of how a customer moves from awareness to purchase. The funnel has 5 stages: awareness, interest, desire, action, and loyalty.

As customers move down the funnel, they become more interested in what you’re selling and less expensive it is for them as well!

You may want people who are currently in a different stage of the buying funnel than yours so test ads that target those audiences by creating ads for each stage of your consumer’s journey (or create custom audiences).

15. Don’t Give Away Too Much Information In Either The Ad Or The Landing Page Copy

It’s also important to note that when you’re testing an ad campaign, giving away too much information can be costly. The more information you give away in either the ad or the landing page copy, the less likely you are to get a conversion.

If your goal is just to get people on your website and interested in what else you might have for them (i.e., if your goal is brand awareness), then it makes sense to have all of this information available in both places.

But if what you’re trying to do is increase conversions and therefore sales then try not to give too much away.

In addition, don’t tell people how many times they’ll need to convert before they become customers; this might deter them from converting at all!

Instead, provide enough context so that people understand why they should care about what it is that they’ve clicked on and/or why they should stick around after leaving their email address (and/or phone number).

16. Rotate Multiple Ads For A Single Campaign

Once you have your initial landing page and ad set up, it’s time to get testing! To start, we recommend rotating multiple ads for a single campaign. This means using a variety of different copies, images, and landing pages.

The more elements you test in tandem with one another, the more information you’ll be able to gather before deciding on an overall winner.

This isn’t just good practice when testing one ad at a time it’s also advisable when running multiple campaigns at once (for example: if you’re launching new products or services).

In this case, make sure each campaign is tailored around its own specific goal (i.e., lead generation vs traffic).

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a place to start testing your ads, consider all the headlines, subheads, and other copies above the fold.

This is where most people’s eyes will land first when landing on a page, so it’s very important. Test them against each other to see which ones work best and which ones need improvement.

If you want to get even more advanced with your testing, try splitting tests by country or language as well as device type (mobile vs desktop).

Remember that different devices have different screen sizes which means they’ll display differently depending on where they’re being viewed from!

FAQs

How can I effectively test my Facebook ads for optimal performance?

Testing Facebook ads involves creating different variations and analyzing their performance metrics to identify the best-performing ones.

What are the essential steps for running a successful ad testing program?

Running a successful ad testing program requires defining clear objectives, designing controlled experiments, analyzing results, and iteratively refining your ad strategies.

What are some best practices for conducting ad testing?

Best practices include setting clear goals, testing one variable at a time, using a large enough sample size, and interpreting results based on statistical significance.

How does ad testing contribute to improved advertising outcomes?

Ad testing helps you identify which ad variations resonate best with your target audience, leading to higher click-through rates, conversions, and overall campaign success.

What role does data collection and analysis play in ad testing?

Data collection and analysis provide insights into the performance of different ad versions, enabling data-driven decision-making and continuous campaign optimization.

Costantine Edward

Costantine Edward is a digital marketing expert, freelance writer, and entrepreneur who helps people attain financial freedom. I’ve been working in marketing since I was 18 years old and have managed to build a successful career doing what I love.