Dig deeper: 3 tips for using promotions and discounts in paid search
4. Incrementality testing
One of my favorite testing initiatives for slower times is incrementality testing.
Basically, test segments of your campaigns to see if they’re actually driving the return you think they are or if users in those segments would be engaging or purchasing without seeing your ads.
These can take the form of holdout tests or geo tests.
For holdout tests, create groups that do not receive your ads and measure their performance against similarly composed groups that are seeing your ads to gauge the difference.
For geo tests (a form of holdout tests), identify specific geographic areas to suppress and measure the performance of those geos to those still getting served ads.
Successful learnings from these tests depend on a few key factors:
The right variable (and only one variable, whether that’s geo or age or another factor).
Identifying segments to compare that are close enough in composition to produce clean results.
Enough data density to make a call on the level of incrementality your spend is driving.
If you find that your campaigns aren’t all that incremental, the next step is to determine where to reallocate the spend for greater impact.
Often, moving funds away from direct response and up the funnel to build brand awareness and reputation is a long-term play.
If you’re thinking about when to start incrementality testing, the most common reason is that you’re spending more but not seeing a higher return.
Another reason, though less common, is when your closed-won rate drops in the later deal stages. This suggests there’s a chance to strengthen customer loyalty earlier in the process.
Dig deeper: Incrementality testing in advertising: Who are the winners and losers?
5. Default settings testing
Yes, this is kind of an excuse to remind you to check your default settings (e.g., Google Search Partners, audience expansions in any channel, etc.).
My rule of thumb is to turn off any settings that will give the advertising platform power to expand your campaigns.
For smaller brands or brands without a sophisticated analytics set-up, it’s best to just turn off these settings and monitor impact (I’m guessing the impact will be improved efficiency).
Even for brands with more robust measurement systems that tell them that GSP and audience expansions are bringing in revenue, the slow season is a good time to do some on/off testing to measure the effects in their campaigns.
Dig deeper: Improve your Google Ads performance: 3 simple setting changes
Prepare your PPC campaigns for high-demand periods
Human nature makes it hard to knuckle down when the sun is shining, and you’re months away from seeing the traffic that will make or break your year. But your competitors are feeling the same pull to power down their laptops.
Brands that run these tests now and have a system for analyzing and storing the results to deploy when the tide starts rising will have a big edge in crunch time.
Just remember that when you’re patting yourself on the back in late December, you have your summertime self to thank.
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