Can Split Testing Improve Your Real Estate Ad Response Rates?

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I remember how frustrated I used to get whenever I would go to Craigslist.com or Backpage.com and post multiple ads for buyers, investors, sellers, or even my deals; I’d get responses here and there. I’d just keep re-posting the ads that wouldn’t get any responses, hoping they would eventually get me a lead.

Foolishly, I never saved all the ads that worked and I kept concentrating on the ads that had low responses. I kept re-posting to various sites because I thought they were awesome ads and I didn’t understand why nobody would respond…

BTW – If you have also been getting little to no response with your advertising, then keep reading!

I then came across and interesting concept… Split Testing.
 

Split Testing Can Improve Your Marketing!

I can’t tell you how crucial Split Testing is to your business. Split Testing will usually tell you if you have a good ad or not.

What is Split Testing? Split testing is an extremely powerful strategy for increasing the effectiveness of your marketing. You can use it for almost anything. It is a way of testing two or more marketing campaigns and identifying which one is more effective.

Let me break it down a bit further…
 
When I came across this concept, I tested it out on my ads… Basically I took two advertisements (This is just a SAMPLE):
 
Ad #1
 

Subject: Sell Your Home Fast!
 
Body:   
 
Fast Closing – Sell Your Home in 2 Weeks!
Instant Debt Relief!
No Commission!
We’ll Make A Written Offer Within 48 Hours!
 
www. MyLinkHere .com or I’d say “Reply To My Email”

 
Ad #2

 

Subject: Sell Your Home Fast!
 
Body:
 
Instant Cash! Fast Results!
No Equity? No Problem!
We’ll Make A Written Offer within 72 hrs guaranteed.
No Realtor Fees!
 
www. MyLinkHere .com or I’d say “Reply To My Email”

 
I then ran these two ads on sites like Craigslist, Oodle, Backpage.com, etc, in the same sections, for about 7 days and calculated the results: (Again, this is only a SAMPLE of how you would do this)
 
Craigslist Ad: 1= 7 responses or 7 leads… Ad 2= 2 leads
Oodle Ad: 1= 4 leads… Ad 2= 1 lead
Backpage Ad: 1= 6 leads… Ad 2= 0 leads
Trulia Ad: 1= 1 leads… Ad 2 = 0 leads
 
Overall, Ad 1 gave me 18 leads over a 7 day period and Ad 2 gave me 3 leads.
 
Can you guess which ad I will be re-posting?
It definitely won’t be Ad 2!

However, if I wanted to try for another 7 days just to be sure, then I could.
 
I can analyze which websites pull better results over a 7 day period. This can help me determine where to focus most of my marketing efforts and where not to. However, in order to properly test whether you should post to a classified website or not, I’d probably extend the period out much further and be sure to advertise on different days. (Well, I’d really advertise everyday and much more than 2 ads.. :-] )
 
You can improve your ad response dramatically by exploring the concept of split testing!
Again, you can do split testing with anything: websites, PPC (Google Adwords), signs, Flyers, postcards, emails, videos, etc…
 
It’s all about getting the most effective results!
 
It’s funny because I’m working on a current project and one “expert” is telling me I should do it one way and another “expert” is telling me to do it another way. I trust both individuals, they’re both really successful, and they can both back what they say… But who should I listen to???
 
How about I listen to the results of my Split TEST!
 
Hope that helps…
 
To Your Success,
 
J.Lamar Ferren
New Breed Real Estate Investor

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.