Simple Marketing, pt VI: Test Marketing

Earlier this week we explored how to formalize training within your organization to empower your key employees to become strong leaders inducing them to stay with your company as long as you wish. After you implement last week's Ingenious TechniqueTM, you may find that your attrition decreases significantly.

This is the last of a six-part series on developing an advertising campaign. In this column we'll test market your ad so you can improve results and ultimately develop an extremely effective advertisement.

In the first four articles of this six-part series, you answered four questions - 1) Who is your ideal client; 2) where do you find more of 'em; 3) what do you tell 'em to lure them to your offering; and 4) what are they worth to the company. In the last post we calculated your most cost-effective advertising medium.

You have developed a basic design for your ad. From Part 3 of this series, you decided what your message should be and from Part 4 you determined what medium to use. This determined what and how you wrote your advertising copy. You engaged a skilled marketing specialist to help you write it. If you were unable to find help, you can review some of the Guerilla Marketing books by Levinson for assistance. If you prefer to work with someone directly, contact me and I'll provide a referral to a reputable marketing specialist.

If it's a written ad you're using a coupon or some form of discount code that you're tracking. If you're running an incoming telephone campaign, you are using a special number that you're tracking as well. You've been determining the effectiveness of the number of people who've responded to your offer, and you've determined how much net profit each run of your ad is generating. Now we'll begin tweaking the ad.

How to Test Market

After running it, change one aspect of it just a little bit. See whether it does better or worse than before. If it pulls better, try tweaking whatever aspect you changed a little more. If it pulls worse, return that variable to the last configuration and tweak some other variable. Change one variable at a time and keep doing this increasing the effectiveness until you're satisfied.

There are many aspects of an advertisement you can change. If it's a print advertisement, for instance, you can change the message, layout, paper type, font, size, color, location, frequency, and a number of other attributes. Try playing with each one until you get a bulletproof ad. Then run it until it no longer pulls effectively.

Congratulations! You now have the most cost-effective advertising campaign your could devise. Write in and tell me: what is your best advertising method and medium?

In the next column I'll share how to add productivity to your organization while saving money, and giving leadership training to your line employees. It's the final of a four-part series on Developing a Turnkey Organization. You will definitely want to catch it. And if you haven't yet checked out the podcast, feel free to download it. More exciting stuff coming up. Stay tuned! Until then,

profitable business All!