How to correctly use A/B testing in an app marketing campaign?

Marketing is not a perfect art.

One only needs to look at digital platforms at large to understand this simple principle. We see unpolished videos and images go viral all the time. Widespread engagement and visibility  cannot be engineered.

Most seasoned marketers understand this fact. At its best, marketing is a practice in aligning your goals with the interests of your audience. At its worst, marketing is uninspiring and dull.

One thing it is not? A perfect science. Marketers have to regularly test every marketing asset they create with real people to make sure a campaign runs smoothly.

This leads us to the concept of A/B testing and its role in mobile app marketing.

A/B Testing - The basics

Most of us have heard A/B testing being mentioned in marketing literature at some point. It is so common that marketers use it in passing reference at various points during a campaign.

There is however a need to understand A/B testing before actually using them in a campaign.

In simple words, A/B testing refers to creating two versions of the same marketing asset and testing each for performance.

Marketing teams are often not absolutely sure about the level of engagement their marketing asset can create. It thus makes sense to create two different versions of the same asset and check which performs better when placed in front of real people.

The use of A/B tests in app marketing seems natural. Let’s take an example and assume you have a shopping app on the Google Play Store. You have two ideas for the app icon, but remain unsure about which can help generate more conversions.

You can leverage the A/B testing facilities that Google Play provides and create two separate app listings, each with a different app icon. The app listing that manages to outperform the other is naturally more desirable. You now know which icon you should use on your app listing.

Similarly, you can test every part of your app listing. Marketers similarly use A/B testing for optimizing app install ads, social media campaigns, email blasts, and more.

Anyone who uses tools like AppMySite now knows how to make a WordPress app. Development is no longer a challenge and marketing is the next frontier. A/B testing is crucial in enhancing mobile app marketing.

Setting up an A/B test

To set up an A/B test, you first need to create a different version of your marketing asset. The asset is basically anything you want to test, from the copy of an app install campaign to the creatives of your Facebook ad push.

Both versions of the marketing asset must have some key differences. If you are testing the copy of an app install campaign, you should create two different copies. The same is true for deploying A/B tests for other assets.

Most platforms these days allow marketers to deploy A/B tests. This includes major platforms like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and more. Marketers can perform A/B tests manually as well by running different campaigns over a period of time and comparing the results.

However, using A/B testing facilities provided by the platform itself is a better way because it promises more accurate results.

Establishing reliability

Before deploying A/B tests, you first need to verify the reliability of your A/B tests. Follow the steps below to get a better idea.

● Identify the main element of the marketing asset you wish to vary.

● Create the new version of the asset. Remember to create a copy of this new asset.

● Now deploy all versions. The first version is your existing marketing asset. Let’s call that X. The other versions are both the same and vary with the original version in the same way. Let’s call these versions Y and Z.

● Ideally, Y and Z should perform similarly because they’re the same. If they do, your A/B testing process is reliable. If both range widely in terms of performance, your A/B tests are unreliable.

● There will be some differences in performance in both Y and Z even though they are the same. These differences should be marginal. You’ll have to rely on your marketing instinct to judge if both variants are performing similarly.

● If the test is reliable, wait for the results and interpret them correctly.

It is easy to interpret the results if they’re largely positive. The variant gets overwhelmingly positive feedback  and is thus the best choice.

The main challenge is interpreting results when they have a small impact, either positive or negative, or they’re completely negative.

Small positive

A small positive simply means that the variant performs slightly better than the current asset.

It is difficult to draw sweeping conclusions with a small positive. This generally happens because the end users are not able to clearly see the new change brought to the marketing asset.

Let’s come back to the example of your app store listing on Google Play and assume you’re testing the long description of your app listing. You create two descriptions A and B and check which comes out with more conversions.

In such a case, it is likely that the variant will have a small impact. This is because most users don’t read the long description. There is not enough difference in both the marketing assets to actually make a difference.

How should you interpret this result? It is better to continue these tests at different stages to make sure the variant maintains a small positive advantage. If it does, you can proceed to change the varying element.

Negative impact

When the feedback you get is negative, you have to explore various avenues to find faults in the variants.

One of the most common reasons behind negative feedback is an obscure value proposition. When you test a new message, you’re generally testing a new value proposition or rephrasing the existing one.

However, it is possible you may end up making the value proposition unclear. This is very common in app install and social media campaigns where the importance of a value proposition is immense.

Other reasons can include existing popular features getting overshadowed or a lack of clarity because of the new changes.

In conclusion

Anyone can build an app with automed app making solutions like AppMySite. Development is thus very simple now because making an app is easy with a free online app maker without coding.

This piece provides a comprehensive analysis of using A/B testing for mobile app marketing. The points covered here can help readers start running their own A/B tests from scratch.