What is the test period in targeted advertising

Test seven times, only then launch – this is an unspoken rule well known to professional marketers. They are guided by it every time before the launch of an advertising campaign, in particular when promoting on social networks. Let’s analyze in detail what are the advantages of the test period and whether it really saves you from wasting your advertising budget for nothing.

Why do you need the test period

Targeted advertising testing allows you to:

• understand the cost of your audience’s interactions with your ads. It will also help determine the cost of coverage and conversion;
• analyze which of the target audience segments is more effective;
• determine what budget you need for the next period;
• choose the most appropriate creative for the advertising campaign;
• identify which user groups respond best to advertising, and more.

It allows the targetologist to keep everything under control and manage the customer’s budget wisely throughout the campaign. In addition, based on the results of the test period, specialists can consider their steps for the future. You can test elements of an advertising campaign of various scales:

1. Placements: Facebook or Instagram feeds or pages, messengers, partner resources, etc.
2. Audience: interests, demographics, geography.
3. Call-to-action button.
4. Advertising text and graphics.
5. Ad format: Stories, Reels videos, photos, gallery and more.
6. Landing for user redirection: website, landing, page in social networks.
7. Display on devices: mobile or desktop.
8. Schedule of ad impressions and more.

You should also remember that you need to test your advertising offer. Please note that if the test does not satisfy you with the result, the problem is not always in your creative or incorrect segmentation of the target audience. Maybe your offer is not as attractive to the audience as you think. After all, an interesting offer with an average creative, not a perfect photo or video, is much better than the average offer and super creative. So take care of a quality and interesting offer for users.  

What is the optimal budget for the test

Of course, the more money allocated to testing, the better. It will allow you to conduct tests with larger variables, perform thorough hypothesis testing for a particular advertising campaign, and test the tools on a large audience. Also, if you run a Facebook ad, a sufficient budget will allow you to get the number of results you need. After all, the algorithm of social networks must learn, and for this, you need to get at least 50 target results in seven days. Note that the budget for the test period is individual. It depends on many factors, including:

• the scale of the business,
• customer wishes;
• selected advertising goals;
• the required number of segments for testing;
• terms of the test period;
• costs for irrelevant requests, etc.

Pay special attention to segmentation. Test your advertising primarily on promising audiences for profit. Also, focus only on those users who are actively searching for a product or service and are ready to perform the target action immediately. It will give you the best and fastest results. The main rule when determining the budget for testing: savings will not work in your favor. Without sufficient funding, you can only test a limited sample of audiences, get too little data, and lose even more money after the main launch of an advertising campaign.

How long is the test period

The minimum time required for test-targeted advertising is a week. Otherwise, there will not be enough data for analytics and forecasting, and social network algorithms will not have time to learn and optimize. For example, tests for only a few days may not give results at all due to the novelty of the ads. Usually, the optimal test period is from two weeks to a month, depending on the type of service or product, their features and niche in general, and the number of segments. There should be enough time for the specialist to analyze competitors, TA, create advertisements, conduct A/B testing, etc. The most important thing for testing is to constantly monitor the data obtained and set the target to obtain satisfactory results. After all, timely optimization will help you to get the perfect advertising campaign in a short time. Therefore, it is better to spend it longer and pay attention to testing each segment, format, offer, and text. Also, don’t stop testing new variables for your campaign, even if you’ve already found a working scheme. It will give you more opportunities to advertise the project in the future.

What benefits will you get

First, after testing targeted advertising, you will understand how well SMM promotion meets the needs of your business and which segment likes your offer the most. And the second advantage of tests is that you understand what budget you need to run large-scale advertising and spend it only on effective tools. In any case, the test period is always beneficial to the business owner, as the cost of its implementation will pay off in larger quantities.