Learn How To Test Your Campaigns For Success Using Marketing Software

"I know that half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half" said a successful business owner. It's a common problem. How do you tell which messages will resonate with your market before you make a significant financial commitment?. Now with the availability of marketing software connecting with customers no longer needs to be a guessing game.

The problem is that you never know how the market is going to respond to a campaign. If you have a huge advertising budget you can always hire a firm of market researchers, consult with psychologist and run focus groups to test your ad. But they regularly get it wrong anyway. For the small business owner who can't afford consulting and test groups the situation is even worse. You're really stabbing in the dark.

But there is a way for small to medium business owners to develop a library of successful marketing campaigns without breaking the bank. Testing…..

Start running your own small test runs before launching your campaign in full. Try different messages, formatting or advertising mediums to find out what really speaks to your market. Be creative. By doing test groups of 100-500 letters or impressions you won't break the bank. If it is a fail, so be it. But you might just strike marketing gold. You might find your original instincts were correct or discover that your market is more concerned with one product point over the others. Testing is the only way to know for sure.

The trick with testing is recording the results. In the past results had to be recorded manually and due to the man hours and money involved it was beyond the reach of all but the largest corporations. Using marketing software you can quickly and easily track the results of your test campaigns. And many of these marketing software packages are inexpensive.

Online and offline activities can be tested using your marketing software. And you should record more than just the mini (test) campaigns. Track all your advertising. Ads can work well for years and then suddenly the market will tire of the message, unless you're recording the results you won't know (and keep wasting money on an ad that isn't bringing in business). By tracking all your marketing activities you will know which campaigns aren't performing and drop them. You'll also be able to identify profitable campaigns to replicate in new areas or in other advertising mediums. For example you might have a web page that generates a lot of new customers, you could convert that web page into a long copy sales letter and try mailing it direct to households or even adapt it to an insert to be placed in a magazine or newspaper.

Often it isn't as simple as failure or success. Some campaigns may perform better in certain areas or appeal to different demographic groups. A brochure might be a complete failure in one neighborhood but achieve success in another town or suburb. By testing and recoding the source of all your customers you can determine which campaigns work best in defined areas, to specific groups and according to season. This will give you the ability to plan your marketing strategically and generate greater profits on each dollar spent.

So the question is do you know which half of your marketing yields result and which half is a waste of money? Testing is much less expensive than repeating an ineffective campaigns over and over again, so why not give it marketing software a go?


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