Split Test Your Life
I used to run Facebook ads for dozens of clients from 2016 until 2019. A big part of running a successful ad campaign on Facebook is split testing.
Split testing, or A/B testing, is when you run multiple ads simultaneously and measure their success. Then, when you have enough data about which ad performs better, you turn off the underperforming ads and put the rest of your budget in the top performer.
Split testing has always existed in various forms, but Facebook ads took it to the next level. In the old days, you could run one billboard in one town, a different billboard in another town, and then see which town buys more products. You had to spend similar amounts of money on each billboard, and each billboard was visible to the entire town. The magic of split testing with Facebook ads is that the minimum media buy is really cheap, so split testing between dozens, or even hundreds of ads is a realistic strategy. Also, if a small audience sees your ad on Facebook but doesn’t respond, you can take it down before the rest of your audience sees it. It’s not available to the entire public. It’s selective.
Modern marketers are all about split testing. We can take some inspiration from this split testing strategy for our own life optimization. While you can’t clone yourself and split test your choices in identical situations, you can try multiple things for a short period of time and see how they feel. I’m a big fan of this, and have made a case for these short testing periods before.
Often, we feel tied to our current situations. We went to school for our profession, or we bought a lot of gear for it, or we’ve spent a lot of time on it, so it would be foolish to change. But this isn’t true. Just because we’ve sunk time and resources into one thing, doesn’t mean we’re contractually obligated to do it forever.
Split test your work and hobbies, because you can’t clone yourself. You only get one shot at life. It’s worth spending a little extra time and resources now to make sure the next decade of your life is spent on something that you love.
Good luck out there.
