The Losing Test That Led to 4% More Leads (We Took the L so You Don’t Have To) – InstantFollowerz

Today I have a special treat for you, something most companies won’t share: a look at one of our losses.

A “best practice” that failed so badly that we had to pause part of the test early. And, if I can wax clickbait for a moment, that’s a tactic you might be using in your calls to action as we speak.

So come the crash, but stay for the lessons, because what we learned led to 4% more leads from our CTAs.

And I’ll show you how to recreate it. (An improvement, that is. Not a wreck.)

A best practice that wasn’t

I turn to AJ Beltis, Senior Marketing Manager of Conversion Strategy, when I need absolute authority on two things: 1) pop-culture movie references and 2) content conversion.

So when I read an internal summary that purported best practice caused 14% loss at the conversion rate, I ran to him like Luke flying back to Obi-Wan.

It all started with testing the text on our CTA buttons. Longtime readers may remember that our anchor texts used to be a grab bag of different styles.

“It was at the blogger’s discretion because each of those CTAs were set individually,” explains AJ. “So sometimes it was ‘Download Template’, sometimes it was ‘Download Now’.”

And because we test everythingwhen we set out to make our CTAs more consistent, we started by testing different language options. The test variants were:

• Control: “Get him [Product Type]”
  Cut and dry. Straight to the point. A great example of our old anchor text strategy.
  Example: “Get a template”
• Best practice: “Get it for free [Product Type]”

Same as above, except now we add “free” as an enticement. A fairly non-controversial tactic that you’ll see in every CTA guide.
Example: “Get a free template”

• Wildcard: “Get it for free [Specific Product]”

Here we add the description of the offer to the button itself. At the time, this seemed redundant since there was already a description above the button, but hey, let’s try.
Example: “Get a free SOCIAL MEDIA calendar template”

We were so confident in the results that we put our money where our mouse was and tested 25 of our highest potential blogs.

“We felt pretty comfortable with the risk because we weren’t removing or drastically changing anything,” says AJ. “So it was a pretty safe way to test something.”

John Hammond felt the same way Jurassic Park.

What went wrong (and what went right)

Within two weeks, variant B increased our conversion rate by 14%, until we finally paused the branch to mitigate the losses of our powerful lead generators.

So, why did the best practice fail?

“One theory is that whenever you see something labeled ‘free’ on the Internet, it can have an unwanted connotation.”

In other words, like Pavlov’s dogs, we are all trained to see the “free download” and immediately scroll past what is sure to be a scam and/or ED cure.

Ah, but what about variant C? The one we dismissed as redundant?

It actually increased our conversion rate by 4% overall, and by 7% among new visitors.

So why did this variant succeed where the other failed?

AJ believes it’s all about using visual cues to highlight the keywords the reader is looking for.

“When people read a blog post, they often just skim as quickly as possible to get the answer,” he says with a shrug and a sideways smile. “I used to be a blogger and it sucks to say, but usually no one reads all 1200 words you put your time and effort into.”

(But not you, dear reader. Not you… right?)

Let’s say a visitor is scrolling to learn more about SOCIAL MEDIA content calendars. Suddenly, they see a big orange button that offers a SOCIAL MEDIA content calendar template.

“This is a specific thing I want and is it free? I’ll get it.”

Get out about CTAs

To see the top entry, scroll back up and look at the CTA button just below the title of this blog. You’ll notice that we no longer include descriptive text above the button, but instead use a description on the button itself.

Some of AJ’s other insights:

1. Test every freaking thing. (Or “Don’t take best practices at face value.”)

Just believing the best practice would hurt our conversion rate, and we might never know why.

Similarly, if we hadn’t tested what we assumed was a redundant option, we would never have found a win.

“If we had just tested ‘free’ against the control, the test would not have worked,” points out AJ. “But because we tested ‘free’ versus control versus ‘free’ [specific thing]’, that extra layer worked.”

2. Use keywords in your anchor text

“If you can use those words that they’re looking for, it’s going to be more successful. Using the words ‘content calendar template’ or ‘planning template’ when they read a blog about SOCIAL MEDIA content calendars… they’re already thinking about that word, so psychologically it might hook them a little faster.”

Placing keywords in anchor text is also a win for accessibility, as it helps people using screen readers know what to click on.

3. DO Test your biggest lead drivers

After beating Apollo worse than Rocky, you’d think we’d moved on to testing less important sites, but that’s not the case.

As Rocky says, “It’s not how hard you get hit, it’s how you can take a hit and keep going.”

As AJ says, “When we look at testing our top pages, that’s where the biggest opportunity for growth is. If we were a little safer by testing pages that also don’t convert, we might not be able to tell how successful or unsuccessful a tactic might be.”

4. Trust your audience over authority.

And that includes me, AJ, and Obi-Wan.

Always trust the reaction of your audience over what you find in any guide.

“Respond to your audience,” says AJ. “Some audience might find the test we launched not to be a good match. While we could look to other companies for inspiration, run it on the HubSpot blog audience and find that their test doesn’t work for us.”

5. Test your offers as well.

In the midst of all this talk about CTAs, AJ makes another point: Your CTA is only as good as what it offers.

So test what you have to offer.

“We use templates because templates work for us. We don’t do webinars because webinars don’t work for us. Some companies, all they do is webinars, because that’s what works for their content sphere.”

How to test your text and CTA button offers

Unlike Rebecca’s test paid ad landing pagesfor this you WILL you want to test one element at a time. So be sure to test your anchor text and your content offer separately.

You’ll also want to use a tool that splits your traffic evenly across variants—something like Convert, VWO, or, hey, Content Hub!

1. Go to the test page.
2. Click on the file menu and then select “New,” says “Run an A/B test.”
3. Enter a name for each variation.

This should be something descriptive that will be easy to remember. If you look at the first screenshot, you’ll see that we simply used “Original Page”, “Variant B – Free” and “Variant C – Free + Description”.

4. Click “Create Variation”.
5. Edit the anchor text or link destination (but not both!)

During this optimization time, you will get better results by testing one change at a time. (Though you can certainly test multiple variations on that one change.)

To recreate AJ’s test, try the offer description in the anchor text. Heck, you might even want to try using “free.”

6. Click “Publish” in the upper right corner, then “Publish Now”.

Regardless of what you decide to test, be sure to keep an eye on the results over time. Be ready to pull that brake in an emergency so you can avoid your own accident.