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replacing one control with a better one.
One thing you'll discover when you start testing variables is that the difference in response or results can be extreme
from just a small shift.
Several years ago I was working with a precious-metals dealer who was selling gold and silver to investors on a bank-
financed purchase basis.
He ran ads in the Wall Street Journal, and the headlines of those ads read: "Two-thirds bank financing on silver and
gold." When my client ran those ads, they were reasonably successful.
They generated enough sales so my client was able to (a) pay for the ad, (b) pay the salespeople a fair commission, (c)
have money left to operate and to pay his overhead and salary, and (d) have money to invest in more advertising.
However, I didn't believe he was optimizing. I sat down with him and asked what other headlines he had tested. He
looked at me bewildered and said, "None."
So I gave him three additional headlines to test.
He tested them in different ads in the Wall Street Journal. Two of those headlines outperformed his existing one by
small margins.
The third headline did much better.
Gold was selling for $300 an ounce and silver was selling for $6 an ounce.
Remember his old headline was "Two-thirds bank financing on silver and gold."
All I did was change the expression of the headline to better denominate what was in it for the client.
My headline read: "If gold is selling for $300 an ounce, send us just $100 an ounce and we'll buy you all the gold you
like."
The headline for silver: "If silver is selling for $6 an ounce, send us just $2 an ounce and we'll buy you all the silver
you want."
Those headlines pulled five times as many sales from the same size ad, the same basic advertising approach-but five
times, 500 percent, more responses and clients.
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Now you might ask yourself, "Why did that simple change make such a big difference?"
Most headlines people use don't communicate a "What's in it for me?" result that the prospect, the client, the reader, the
listener, the viewer, can expect to receive. My headline did.
You can have far more inquiries, clients, and sales for the same money just by testing alternatives against each other:
* By testing different ways to say the same thing
* By testing different copy
* By testing the pull of one magazine against another
* By testing one mailing list against another
* By testing one radio time slot against another
* By testing one offer against another
* By testing one price against another
* By testing one guarantee against another
* By testing one sales presentation against another
* By testing one direct-mail package against another It's relatively easy to test and track ad results and to ruthlessly
leverage every marketing dollar.
Failure to test, retest, and test again is tantamount to admitting that you aren't the business person you should be. Or at
the very least it's a willingness to remain stuck at the same lower-yield platform.
Keyed Response-the Key to Testing
If you have two different approaches that you are testing, you must design your test to give you specific results keyed
to each approach. You must know which ad each and every prospect is responding to.
You can do this in different ways:
* Use a coupon-a differently coded coupon for each version of your ad.
* Tell the prospects to specify a department number when they call or write-there doesn't have to be an actual
department.
* Ask the prospect to tell you he heard it on radio station WWXY in order to qualify for a discount or special offer.
* Include a code on the mailing label returned with the order - the code identifies the source of the label or the version
of the ad you mailed.
* Use different telephone numbers for respondents - each offer is accompanied by a similar but distinct phone number.
* Make different package tests and note which bonuses or prices people ask for.
* Have the caller ask for a specific person-the name can be fictitious.
You must be able to attribute each response to one of the approaches you are testing.
Keep meticulous track of each response and its results: simple inquiry, sale, amount of sale, previous client. Keep track
of every piece of information that you need in your marketing. And be sure to differentiate in your record keeping
between responses (prospect generation) and actual sales. Prospects are fine, but sales are what you're after.
Then when you have all the results tabulated by method A or method B, compare the two approaches and select the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]