Do you know the best times to post to reach your specific target market? How about the best types of photos and hashtags to use? The only way to honestly know how your audience responds to your marketing is to perform tests on your social media marketing process.
But how do you conduct an effective test? How long should your test run for, and what’s a good study size? Also, are you aware of the variables that can significantly skew your results?
Fortunately, Facebook released a guide to help answer all these questions. Facebook’s guide addresses a variety of common testing issues and details steps to help you avoid or overcome each problem.
For instance, Facebook has said that in any experiment unexpected errors can happen and although unforeseen testing issues are never fun, they provide an opportunity for marketers to learn.
Enter Facebook’s 16-page “Guide to Testing and Learning with Incrementality Measurement” released earlier in March. This document details six common testing mistakes, such as concerns over sample size, how outliers can mess with your data, and what problems might occur with non-defined variables.
Although it might not be the most thrilling read, these insights will prove invaluable in helping you improve your testing methods and your overall understanding of your target audience. Plus, it will help make your decisions strategic based on real-world evidence, not on gut-feelings or generalized guides.
And that’s what really makes Facebook’s guide so valuable. There are numerous blog posts on the internet that’ll give you a general overview of how digital marketing works, but the truth is that individual results will always vary. Here are a couple of examples:
Video content performs best on every social media platform right now… but that doesn’t mean your specific audience only wants video content. What’s more, research might show that shorter Facebook posts typically perform better, but maybe your followers will respond best to long-form posts.
The only way to be sure is to perform your own experiments, and this guide will help you make sure that your testing is taking some of the more common mistakes into account, so you avoid flawed results and only gain accurate data.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a digital marketer, or a social media manager, you’re definitely going to want to check out Facebook’s new guide. Understanding effective testing and the common mistakes that come with it can really help your business scale and grow in unparalleled ways.
Download Facebook’s “Guide to Testing and Learning with Incrementality Measurement” here.
