The 80/20 Of Testing Facebook Ads

Written by Peter Day

Every internet marketer asks the same question. “What should I test?” The short answer: everything.

However, I realize that’s not a good enough descriptor to launch your tests from.

So, let me lay out the 80/20 split of what you should test FIRST when launching an ad campaign. For those of you who are not familiar with “The Pareto Principle” or the 80/20 rule, it means that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your actions.

This is true in most things in life but especially in business.

First and foremost, test your offer. What are you selling? Is there any demand for it? Is it something that will sell in front of a cold or warm audience?

Will it convert?

In most cases, the answer to this is no. It’s our job as affiliate marketers to find the right offer and convince people to take action on it.

Once you have found an offer you think will convert, it’s time to test ad copy. After the affiliate offer, ad copy is the most important campaign element to test.

Internet marketing can be chaotic at times, how are you going to stand out from the crowd and command someone’s attention?

If you are you running Facebook ads?

Test 15 different headlines.

Take the winning headline and test that headline against 15 different images.

Split test the winning image & headline combination against 15 different video ads.

On Facebook there are thousands of different split tests you can do including:

  • Audience
  • Type of Ad
  • Conversion Objective
  • Ad Placement (desktop, mobile, audience network, Instagram, etc.)

The list goes on.

But it all starts with your ad copy.

Great ad copy will make everything run smoother while testing.

The third most important thing you need to test is your sales funnel after someone clicks your ad.

Test using one landing page, followed by testing a series of alterations derived from how that page performs.

There are online tools called “heat trackers” that map the user experience on your website. This is a more advanced strategy, but it helps you to see where you need to make improvements.

PROTIP: only use heat trackers during the testing phase of a lander. Remove the JavaScript from your page when you are done testing as it will slow down your pages load time when used at scale.

In summary, here are the three phases of testing:

  1. Offer
  2. Ad Copy
  3. Landing page / funnel

There are many more tests you can dive into within these 3 but we will leave the list at that.

Happy testing