The Secret of Testing -- How To Increase Cash Flow Without Risk

The Secret of Testing -- How To Increase Cash Flow Without Risk There is no other action you can take that will produce a higher yield on your marketing investment then testing. You need to test everything that you do. Test every sig file, classified ad, sales letter. Test mediums, ezines ads, banner ads, search engines, newsgroups. Test each sub set of that medium, an individual ezine, a certain banner exchange, a certain opt-in email list, etc. Getting results is good, but getting excellent results is even better. Many marketers make the mistake of settling for OK results when with just a little more tinkering to a headline or other variable you can increase yield tenfold. ALWAYS test your marketing before committing to any large outlay of capital. It's much better to lose small than to lose big. When you lose small you live to fight another day. But, when just one big ad bombs you could be wiped out with no other options left but to give up. The maxim for testing is to test small, then roll out big only after you've identified what works. With a relatively small budget you can test till you find the winning combination of a good ad and a good medium/list. Once you've cracked this code you can proceed with a larger campaign with a higher level of confidence that you'll succeed. Then just do more of what works to increase your results. There are 3 principles involved with testing... 1. Finding the ad copy that pulls the highest yield. 2. Finding the medium or type of advertising that works. 3. Finding the list or publications that work First you need to develop an ad that works. Let's take a classified ad as an example. You want to write 10 different ads. Then select the two you think are the best. Then place the ads in an ezine or other medium. It's important to keep as many variables the same as you can. This means the two ads should appear in the same ezine and in the same issue. This is the only way to get an accurate measurement of the pulling power of and ad. This is sometimes know as an A/B split test. Everything is the same except the ad copy of the ad. In ezine advertising the only variable you may not have control over and may skew results is the placement of the ad. Depending where the ad is placed in the publication can determine the pulling power, whether on top vs. on the bottom, etc. can make a difference in an ads effectiveness. You usually don't have control over this. However you can usually get a good feel for what ad pulled the best despite the placement. POWER TIP: How do you know what ad pulled the best? Well, in the offline world you could run the response through different 800 numbers. Or use different Suite numbers, etc. In the online world there are much better ways to do this, and they are totally automated. Every click that takes place on the Internet can be recorded and calculated. This means you can tell exactly how many people clicked on your ad. The secret is in the web address you put in your ad. You can find a service program that will let you set up as many ads as you want to track. You basically create a tracking event by selecting a name of the event. Then the Ad Tracker will create a special web address to use in your ads. When someone clicks on this address it is logged by the Ad Tracker and is added to the stats that you can view in real time. You'll want to create a different address for each ad that you run. This will clearly identify which ad pulled the best. This ad will become known as your control ad. You'll do future testing of other ads against this one. When you've identified an ad that pulls better than your control replace your old ad with this new one. Then do some more testing against this new control. Testing is a never ending process. The relentless marketer always makes more than those who give up early. Once you know you have a winning ad you can continue the testing process with various media. In the case of the classified ad you'll want to test ezine ads vs. web site classifieds. Test online classifieds vs. offline classifieds, etc. POWER TIP: You can test mediums by using the same ad tracking tool as before. This time you use a designation that reflects the medium chosen. For example you could use, ng for newsgroups, eb for your ebook, mb for message boards, etc. You'll want to carry this technique one step farther by testing individual publications and specific lists or groups. You could use nmz for the "Network Marketing EZine," entng for the "Entrepreneurs Newsgroup," mlmdl for the "MLM Discussion List" and so on. Keep a written record of which code is for what ad, medium or specific resource. Then analyze the stats on a regular basis. You'll notice trends not readily available any way else. Some ads will not pull as effectively as they use to. Some media will not pull well at certain times of the year. Knowing this information can save you a lot of money and help you get the most out of every marketing dollar spent. When you've determined what medium works the best, then test one publication against another. In the offline world test daily papers vs. weeklies vs. magazines. Over time you'll identify what produces the highest yield for each marketing dollar spent. This is the area where you'll want to spend more money and roll out big. You can also pyramid your profits to bigger type ads. You can go from classifieds to a larger sponsorship ad for example. You could go from a 1" ad to a 1/4 page ad. From a classified to a banner ad with the same copy. Keep moving to larger size ads until it there is no longer a cost benefit to it. To figure the yield take the cost of an ad and divide it by the number of leads or click throughs that you get. If an ad cost $35 and you got 35 click throughs, you paid $1 per lead. If for the same price you got 50 click throughs you paid .70 cents per lead, a better yield. Now if you bought a bigger ad for let's say $100 and received 125 click throughs you paid .80 per lead, a lower yield. You'd be better off to use the smaller ad since the yield was lower. That's why testing and measuring are so important. Getting the maximum out of every dollar spent can mean success or failure. One last area of testing you'll want to keep an eye on is your sales conversion. It's one thing to get a click through to your site it's another to actually get a sale. The quality of the lead is important. To get a better sales conversion getting a qualified prospect is crucial. Some media will produce a lot of clicks but few sales. This is true with ads as well. Keeping an eye on both the click throughs and the number of sales is what will determine the ultimate combination of medium and ad copy. Cost per sale is the bottom line measurement you want to use for all your marketing. What did it actually cost you to get that sale?