Test Marketing

It seems you can’t turn on your TV lately without new bombshells being dropped in the BALCO scandal. Now Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi have admitted to using steroids in recent MVP winning seasons. Debate is raging about what this means for Major League Baseball, and they certainly have received a black eye in the public relations department. Many people are asking how they could have avoided this problem, but the more pertinent question should be, “What should they do now?” It seems time for organized baseball to follow rule 13 from the 14 rules of attraction: Learn the Discipline of Testing The Olympics have long tested for anabolic steroids, and have used this testing to create a culture in which cheaters are ostracized by their peers and the sports community at large. It seems time for baseball to finally implement a steroids testing program to root out this problem if they are to maintain legitimacy in the minds of their consumers, the fans. Because baseball didn’t test for steroid use, and it wasn’t against the rules of the sport, they likely can’t take any action against admitted performance enhancing drug users. While baseball has it’s unique problems, many small businesses run into problems themselves. They run marketing campaigns that fail, and are stuck wondering why. In most cases, it’s also due to a lack of proper testing! The Importance of TestingBefore running a full marketing blitz, it is important that we test our messages.If you ever send direct mail or run ads, testing is critical. How can you test these messages? One way is to use the Internet- I wrote an article on just that subject.Click here to read it. These same testing principles work for traditional ads and direct mail campaigns as well. Once you have designed your marketing piece and identified your target market, create a small mailing list that is a subset of your overall market. Now create a new variation on your marketing piece that includes an offer code that is different than what is contained on the original. Next divide your small mailing list into two. It is important that each half of this small list represent the same types of prospects as the target market as a whole. Send the original piece to the first half, and the new variant to the second. Use the same follow-up methods for both, and test your results! Based on the results you get for each offer code, you can tell which marketing piece is most effective. Now take the more effective marketing piece, generate a new variant on it, and test again. By repeating this process, you can find the most effective marketing message. At this point, you may wish to try variations in your follow-up to test the most effective means of taking the attention you have gained and turning it into completed sales. Now that you have tested to find the best marketing effort for your target market, go out and market yourself to your full target market. Testing is just one of the ways you can increase your chances of success in the market. Click here to read the rest of the 14 Rules of Attraction. To learn more about how to properly target a market with which to use this testing methodology, click here and sign up for the free 5 day self study course in Attracting More Business. Have a great week! I hope that this “Business Update” has been helpful in assisting you to improve the performance of your organization. For more information on how the Small Business Advisory Network assists companies in improving their performance, please feel free to contact us at 310-320-8190 or email mark@markdeo.com  Mark Deo Print this article.