Why You Need To Care About Online Testing

“We need more traffic.” How many times has this directive crossed your mind or your desk? This has been the mantra of CMOs, marketing directors, and the like for many years now.

The problem is, for most people or companies, there are limits on the amount of traffic you can generate – you can only spend so much on advertising and you can only hope to rank so well against your competitors.

And that is why you need to care about online testing.

You were probably expecting something more groundbreaking, but it really comes down to this:

At some point, you’re going to max out the traffic you can generate. Realistically, you’re probably close to doing that already. And when you hit that point, you will need to do more with the traffic you’ve got. Online testing is one of the post-click marketing techniques that will help you do that.

Does that mean that you don’t need to care about online testing until you’ve hit your traffic ceiling? Definitely not.

There’s not much point in continuing to pay for traffic (whether that money is going to an advertising agency, a search agency, PPC and display advertising, a link farm, or elsewhere) if that traffic isn’t making you a bunch of money in return.

The barrier to entry in online testing is really pretty low these days, so if you’re already doing some testing, that’s excellent. But what many marketers struggle with is execution. So I’m making it my goal to help you answer the questions you might have about testing. Some of the answers you can expect will show you:

• How you should and shouldn’t test
• What you should and shouldn’t test
• How many tests you should do
• How long tests should run for
• How to incorporate testing into your marketing plan
• How to sell testing to your boss

If you’re one of the marketers who is struggling with execution of online testing, what questions do you have?

Be sure to subscribe to the feed as I’ll be answering these questions in new posts over the next few weeks!