AB tests in Facebook Ads can greatly improve the results of your campaigns
The creation of AB tests in Facebook Ads is a quite valuable method for those who wish to compare the results of the ads served with the purpose of developing more strategic campaigns in the future.
If you have doubts about which placement is better for your ads or which target audience generates more engagement, for example, it is ideal to bet on these comparisons to make your work more effective.
With this your investments become more promising and you can build a more certain path to reach your audience with the type of content they want to receive.
Therefore, besides increasing engagement you also improve your cost-benefit and enhance performance according to the chosen campaign goal.
Below you will find how AB tests work and the step-by-step on how to create them in the Ads Manager. Let’s go.
How AB tests work
AB tests on Facebook allow you to create multiple ad sets and make comparisons based on different variables.
However, when designing a new test you can only define one variable to track since it is necessary to actually know what was changed and what results this change generated for your campaign.
During the broadcast the audience is distributed into random groups which helps ensure balance when displaying ads and acquiring more legitimate comparison data.
Thus, when a campaign ends, the cost per result of each ad set is calculated and the one that performs best wins the test.
The advertiser then receives all the information via email and can use it to plan more strategic and effective campaigns based on these analyses.
Available campaign objectives
To conduct AB tests on Facebook, your campaign must be tied to one of the following objectives available on the platform.
- awareness objectives brand awareness and reach
- consideration objectives traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation, and messages
- conversion objectives conversions and catalog sales
Variables for AB tests
As mentioned earlier, when creating AB tests on Facebook, you can make comparisons based on only one variable at a time. This allows analyzing.
- placements makes comparisons both between platforms, Facebook and Instagram, and between placements, feed or stories, to find out which are the most effective for a campaign
- target audience tests different audiences to understand which ones are more inclined to interact with your ads and improve the performance of your engagement
- delivery optimizations makes a comparison between different optimization events to define which one is more effective for the campaign. If your goal is to generate traffic, for instance, you can direct one ad group to clicks on the landing page and another to link clicks
- creative you can create between two and five versions of the ad to test images, texts, videos, titles, and/or Call-to-Actions (CTAs). To clearly see which change achieved the best results, it is ideal to change only one creative element per campaign
- product sets helps to understand which product set from your catalog on Facebook performs better in campaigns targeted at the objective of catalog sales.
How to create an AB test in Facebook Ads
The step-by-step for creating AB tests in Facebook Ads is very simple and fast. See below what needs to be done in each step.
- From the first list we provided above, define what will be the objective of your campaign.
- Still on the campaign’s home page select the option to create an AB test, choose the variable you will measure and click Continue.
- Taking into account your objective and your variable, this is the moment to set up your campaign to know exactly what you will compare in each ad group.
- Determine what will be the budget and the delivery period of your campaign. Facebook itself recommends the definition of a period between three and 14 days to generate more reliable and accurate results.
- Finally, just choose the images, texts and CTAs for your ads and send them for analysis.
At the end of the testing period, you should take advantage of the data provided by Facebook itself to extract the most relevant information about cost-benefit, engagement, and performance according to the chosen objective.
This monitoring is essential so that you have a basis for making new comparisons and creating more effective campaigns for the development of your business.
Want to go beyond AB tests and achieve even better results for your ads? Then make sure to also check out our 6 amazing tips to optimize your Facebook Ads campaigns.
