Every marketing department in the history of marketing departments has had the need to know what sells and what doesn’t. There’s never been a better time in history to actually figure this out. The plethora of digital tools, free tools mind you, promises to give you the assist you need to know if you’re being successful at marketing or not.

Use Digital Marketing Tools to Learn

In our world at Digital C4, we focus on the digital tools that help us create and test marketing and advertising content. In any given campaign, we might want to know whether a landing page is converting better than another, if one PPC (pay per click) ad is driving more clicks, if one headline is better than another, or maybe which type of video is more engaging, keeping a user engaged to the end. These are all important data types that help us become a more successful marketer.

The tools are there for A/B testing your marketing creations. You don’t have to look any further than Google to find what you need. They’ve created the tools you need to test anything and everything, and they’re mostly free to use. Of course, their tools work mostly with testing campaigns on their own ad platform. Google Optimize is a tool that can help you optimize your site, and landing pages, through A/B tests. Another tool we use is Unbounce. I’m sure most who read this know Unbounce is a landing page builder that allows marketers to build well designed and optimized pages and then A/B test to see which landing page is most successful. This is not a free service but well worth the money, in our opinion.

Get the tools and use them for more than just publishing ads and landing pages. Use them to produce data that will help you make informed marketing and business decisions.

Testing Advertising Appeal in PPC Ads

Ok. You’re using these awesome tools to build ads (at least that’s what we’re using as example for this post). But what exactly are you testing? If you don’t know what you’re testing, or what you’re trying to learn, then you’ll have a hard time understanding the results and data.

What we often try to find in our tests is which ads are more appealing to our target audience. We know that there are certain types of “appeals” in advertising. When I think of the ads that are appealing to me, like a Super Bowl ad/commercial, I think of humorous ads. I respond well to humor and I seem to remember a funny commercial more often. Humor isn’t the only appeal, obviously. I won’t go into all of them but here’s a short list:

  • Fear
  • Pain
  • Personal/Emotional
  • Sex/Sensual
  • Romantic
  • Scarcity/FOMO (fear of missing out)

Test Ads with Different Appeals

Understanding what makes a user click on one of your ads, or watch one of your videos, or click through an organic search results can be all the difference in the world. So, don’t just A/B test two ads that are both funny. Try an ad that appeals to a user’s pain, or maybe their fears.

If you’re an internet security company, for example, you might have better results letting folks know the risks of not being protected by your service. Put that fear appeal out there. Maybe test the fear against a pain appeal of someone who’s already experienced the results of not being protected by your company. You might also try humor, to maybe go against the grain of the industry. If everyone is trying to scare you, maybe you can make them laugh and be more memorable.

Another example would be using scarcity or FOMO in product launch ads. This might equate to using words like:

  • Limited Edition
  • One-time Offer
  • Special Edition

A user might be looking for the latest shoe from Nike, or Jordan, and realize, from your ad, that the next shoe to drop is a limited edition. That’s puts the user “on the clock” so to speak. They need to make a decision because you just put them in a FOMO situation.

Nike uses it’s SNKRS app to “drop” new limited-edition shoes all the time and they often sell out extremely fast. Showing ads that make someone have that “fear of missing out” (FOMO) or think there’s scarcity so they need to act immediately is exactly what Nike does.

Trust me on this last example, I have two sons (20,15) and they approach me often with this FOMO attitude like somehow Nike is never going to drop another shoe, ever. I actually buy into myself sometimes…ok, more than sometimes.

Knowing Your Audience’s Appeal Translates Across Your Company

Testing advertising appeal in your PPC ads, or in your landing page headline, or your latest marketing video headline, isn’t just helpful to you as a marketer. It’s valuable information for your entire company.

If you’re consistently seeing a higher flow of sales from leads driven through fear-based advertising appeal, and your entire organization’s messaging is humor based, then you might want to let others in on the secret.

With today’s marketing tools we marketers are in a unique position to quickly gather a lot of data on what drives action and what doesn’t. Make data-driven decisions in your organization through marketing with today’s digital tools. You will be missing out if you don’t.

Don’t A/B test one advertising appeal all the time. Try humor. Try FOMO. Try Personal. Try them versus each other. You won’t be disappointed with the data.

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Hey, we do free PPC audits!

We’ll jump into your account and tell you what we see, and how we can assist you in achieving your marketing goals. Let’s chat!