From 20% conversions to 94% overnight...

Hi Folks,

Today is a revelation for me, kinda. As I woke up this morning and
logged into my Google Adwords account over a nice warm cup of coffee,
my bleary Saturday morning eyes suddenly opened very wide...

I have been running an Adwords campaign for just over a week now.
In the beginning I was paying around £1 on average to acquire a confirmed,
bonafide subscriber to my list.

This was with conversions of around 20-30% at best, as a daily average. But
during this time I was doing something very important in order to increase
these conversions...

Can you guess what I was doing?

SPLIT TESTING.

Boring huh? Well, maybe. But during my spilt tests I was sending traffic to
two completely different DESIGNS (same headlines and offer).

The first design was very straightforward, typical looking. The opt in
box was below the fold, there was an image but it wasn't the best.
There was some great bullets and also some more text and a little
bit of copy.

The second page was wider and looked more modern, Web 2.0 style
if you like.

It has the exact same bullets, but I did two things:

1. I INVESTED in a graphic image from iStock photo for £10.
2. I removed some of the "dear friend" type of copy and just
kept the bullets.
3. I changed the actual bullets to softer and more colorful
ticks and crosses.
4. I moved the opt in to above the fold and changed the actual
optin form to look cleaner and bigger (using Aweber's html editing option)

The result?

Today I woke up and saw my conversions go from 20% to 94%, which in
real terms means 37 confirmed subscribers added before breakfast which
cost me a measly £5.28

My cost per acquisition of confirmed subscriber has gone from £1 to £0.13

£13 for 100 subscribers? Now THAT is value!

I post this not to brag, but to give you some tips that can be universally
applied to your business. Obviously, there are other factors that can affect
your results and sometimes the industry you're in will not be as responsive,
but these principles remain true no matter what.

Apart from wanting to share with a community that has inspired and educated
me, I also wanted to use this as a subtle reminder that the single most important
thing you can do to get the results you desire in marketing is...

SPLIT TEST EVERYTHING.

If I hadn't split tested my landing pages, I would still be paying £1 to get someone
on my list, instead of £0.13. It would be taking me months to build the list that
will now take me a week or two.

I hear people say all the time, "I am no good at landing pages" or "I am no good at
writing Adwords Ads..." etc.

But you know what? The only thing you need to be good at is analytics. In other
words, if you can make incremental changes to your ad copy, it only becomes a
matter of time before your ads and sales copy pulls traffic and sales like a beast.

So if you're driving measurable traffic and you care what they do when they hit
your websites, but you're not religiously split testing everything, then I am afraid
my friend, you're throwing money AND time away every minute of the day.

This post is a precursor to my upcoming "1000th post" celebration where I am
going to lay out some things I have learned in 2 years since getting into this game,
and I have a feeling it might set a lot of people straight who are still floundering.

Thanks for reading. You're the best.