Are You Testing As Effectively As You Could Be?

In one of my last messages, I talked about the importance of testing your marketing efforts in order to determine what’s working, what’s not working, what works so-so, what works like gangbusters, etc.

You really should be engaged in the constant task of testing your marketing so that you can continually work to improve every single piece of marketing that goes out your door, or every single word you say to your customers, or every single message you leave on your voicemail, and so on and so on.

Last time I mentioned all the various aspects of your marketing that you could and should be testing. As a quick recap, a short list could include:

• Using a letter versus a postcard
• Including your return address versus no return address
• Handwriting the address versus using a mailing lable
• Putting ‘teaser’ copy on the outside of the envelope versus not putting anything
• Headline A versus Headline B
• Offer A versus Offer B
• Giving a phone number to call versus just a website versus including both
• Including a picture or some other graphic image versus not including any type of graphic image

And the list could go on and on. The point is, if it’s something that can be changed or altered, you should be testing.

So, with so many different things that can be tested, what’s the best way to go about testing each of these different elements?

Believe it or not, the answer is the same you’d get if you asked me ‘How do I eat an elephant?’ That’s right, one bite at a time.

In order to get effective, useable results from your testing efforts, you should only test one element at a time. That means if you send out a new mailing or flyer and you want to see if you can improve on its effectiveness, you should change one element and one element only. That could mean you change the headline, or the offer, or the close, but not all three and not any combination of the three. Change one and only one of the elements.

After you’ve changed that one element and sent it out, track the results you get. If this new piece beats the previous one, you have a new ‘control’ piece that you’ll use to judge all subsequent pieces you send out.

If the new one doesn’t beat the previous one, you know that first one’s better. So take the original one and test out something new next time you send it out.

Now, I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “Wow, that sounds like a look of work.” And you’d be right. It is a lot of work, but work that could pay huge dividends at the end of the day.

Next time I’ll share with you a secret for bypassing a lot of the initial work of testing your marketing pieces so you can jump straight to the winners and not have to mess around with figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. This one will be much more than the price of admission for these periodic messages, trust me!

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