In order to make your Google Adwords ads worth your while, you will want to have an idea of what your key message will be and what words and phrases you will use to attract attention, these decisions will be made with an eye towards maximizing your CTR or clickthrough rate. How do you really know what attracts customers, and how to word your ads for maximum impact? Google AdWords expert Perry Marshall suggests that online marketers use split testing to gain an insight into their customer base and better understand how to use keywords and keyphrases effectively.

Along with split testing your AdWords ads, you can also apply this strategy to other facets of your online marketing. Here are just a few of the situations in which a split test can help to maximize your online marketing campaign’s ability to attract potential customers.

1. Sign-up boxes. When offering freebies to your prospective customers, such as free downloads or newsletters, it’s quite likely that you have included a prompt in which the customer must enter his or her Email address. Split testing here will give you a better idea of what types of free incentives actually work well. Feel free to experiment with the language you use in these areas, as it can only provide more valuable insight into the minds of your customers, that you can ultimately apply when creating AdWords advertisements.

2. The shopping cart. When individuals are shopping online, you can learn a great deal from the way in which they behave on the “shopping cart” page. You can take a variety of approaches to monitoring this ease of your site. In addition to watching what keywords and keyphrases are most effective in encouraging customers to explore your site and make purchases, you can also look into which specific items are being searched most frequently. You can also try split testing by using different messages in your check out area, and seeing if different wordings can drive your customers to make further purchases.

3. Your individual product pages. Each product page is a sales opportunity, so the copy surrounding your product can be used as a powerful marketing tool to capture your customer’s interest and lead to a purchase. Split testing in this area may involve using variations of a message to track results. Just make sure you track behavior over a significant amount of time, and note the messages that work- and which ones don’t. Again, these messages can be used in your Google Adwords ad or other online marketing campaigns.

4. Your sales letter. Sales letters continue to be an effective marketing tool because they’re designed to elicit an immediate response. Tracking different sales letter messages is another way to monitor your customers’ behavior and find out which key messages they respond well to; a click through to your product page or purchasing section means that your message was right on target. Capture that and use it for Google Adwords ad and other online advertising to maximize your efforts.

5. Email newsletters. From automatic responses to entire newsletters, its likely that you’re sending a good deal of Email to customers. Any one of these messages to customers affords you an opportunity to conduct long-term testing on what key messages really interest your audience.