The Importance of Online Testing in B2B Marketing

Optimizing your online conversion requires making things as clear and conspicuous as possible, because your target audience won’t look for it — they’ll just leave. But clear and conspicuous don’t matter if the content doesn’t resonate enough to motivate anyone to buy. WhichTestWon.com illustrated a perfect example of this in one of their recent B2B marketing online case studies.  

They tested two different order forms with clear and prominent headlines: One with the longer headline, “Create Your Profile for FREE and UNLIMITED Access”; and the second with the shorter headline, “Try Safety.BLR.com RISK FREE.” The longer headline option had 113% more trial subscription sign-ups than the shorter one.

Though the shorter option was more concise, it looks as if the longer option may have resonated more with the target audience. And since both options contained the word “FREE” in red, bold letters, it seems as though the idea of “free and unlimited access” was more personally relevant to the prospects than the idea of “risk.”

According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model, personal relevance is an important factor in motivating people to cognitively elaborate on the issue at hand; thus, finding a message that accomplishes this is very important. So conduct your research with a few test subjects and explore several copy options — and then test them. And remember what you learn from your testing, because you might be able to incorporate it in future B2B marketing campaigns, as well.

Vann Morris is the Director of Buying Behavior Studies with the Atlanta B2B advertising agency, MLT Creative. She is a Social and Behavioral Scientist who is currently working on her PhD in Communications, and uses her strong theoretical background in order to show how scientific theory should be used to develop strategy and effective B2B marketing campaigns.