5 Steps to Optimize A/B Testing to Improve Your Law Firm Videos

Ten years ago, simply making video content was enough to stand out and gain traction online. Today, if you want to stay on top of the video craze and produce content your audience truly wants to consume, it’s time you begin A/B testing your videos.

A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) is the process of testing two different versions of a marketing asset to understand your law firm’s target audience’s preferences based on performance. The goal is to understand which variances lead to better engagement results.

A/B testing is often associated with email marketing or website design and development, but it definitely has its own place with video content. When it comes to videos, you need to understand which things entice people to actually engage with your content and take your desired next steps. There are so many elements that you can test – and small changes add up to make a bigger impact. Here is a general guide on A/B testing to improve the videos your law firm produces. 

What Metrics Should You Measure While Carrying Out A/B Testing?

For a video ad, you should be tracking the Lead Conversion Rate. It is the percentage of viewers that perform an action after watching your video and are transformed to leads in your pipeline. By measuring this, you know how many people actually clicked on your video and how many were actually intrigued by your content.

For the videos your law firm posts organically to social media, you should track the post engagement scores. Most platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter share these metrics with you. Different social media networks measure engagement differently – views, average view duration, click through rate, likes, dislikes, shares, comments, and reactions are a few examples.

5 Steps to Optimize A/B Testing for Videos

1. Identify the element that will be the variable.

Videos have a lot of components that you can test. Some of them are internal and some are external. The external elements influence the probability of a user clicking “Play” whereas the internal elements influence the view time and the actions a viewer performs after watching the video. Some of the most common variables to A/B test are: 

• Call-to-action (CTA) – A strong call-to-action can make the ultimate difference between a prospect doing what you want them to and clicking onto other content. Make sure you use dynamic language and test different verbiage, actions, and placement. 
• Title – Video titles are especially important on social media. Remember that people will search for videos on sites like YouTube. Think about what makes the video compelling and also what terms people will use when searching.
• Introduction – Your introduction should be short and sweet. It’s a balancing act between telling your audience who you are, telling them a story, and not going on too long and losing your viewers. According to Ad Age, nearly 20% of people abandon a video after the first 10 seconds. A/B testing might help you get the balance right.
• Music – Able to completely change the tone of a video, music can affect the meaning or feel of your content and people have a strong reaction to it. 
• Length – Generally speaking, the longer the video, the less likely people are to watch it. We recommend 1-2 minutes per video. Keep videos short and sweet, but test a few different lengths to see what’s optimal. 
• Thumbnail – On platforms where your video doesn’t autoplay, a thumbnail will be present. This is meant to give viewers an idea of the content. Try choosing a different thumbnail if it’s something you can change. 

2. Create a hypothesis.

Once you’ve chosen an element, conduct some research and develop a theory about what will happen, backed up by what you’ve learned. It might look like this: “Reducing the length of our video by 15 seconds will increase the amount of people who watch the whole video by 10%”. Your goal is to prove or disprove your statement. 

3. Make variations of your video.

Use tools to make clones of current videos, and then make changes to them. Depending which tools you use, this can be a very quick process. 

4. Run the tests.

You may need to leverage a third party to show the different versions of your video to various audiences. For example, if you’re running tests for video on your website/blog, you can use Google Optimize to set up the experiment. Google Optimize will randomly show either of the 2 variants to your viewers, and will give you metrics of how each variant performed. Or, if you plan on running tests on LinkedIn for video ads, then you can use LinkedIn Campaign Manager to run 2 variants of the same video.

5. Analyze results and then repeat.

After you’ve conducted your experiment, gather the results and analyze them. What can you take away from the findings? Make that particular change permanent and then determine other factors to test. 

Related: Video Marketing for Law Firms: 10 Techniques That Will Drive Success

Takeaway

Most of the importance of A/B testing your law firm’s video content lies in getting started. So, find something to test, create two variations, and monitor the results. It doesn’t matter which variable you choose to test, you’ll still be able to come to interesting conclusions about how your audience is interacting with your content. That kind of data is priceless.

Do you need help creating compelling videos or putting together a video marketing strategy that strengthens relationships with your future clients? Reach out to us for help.