Are You Building Your Business By
Guessing Or Testing?
By Bob Leduc
A distributor for a network marketing company called me this week for help
in promoting her business. Julie places ads in ezines (email newsletters)
to generate traffic to the free website provided by her company. She also
sends postcards to several targeted mailing lists to generate inquiries
and traffic to her website. I asked her what was producing the most
profitable results. She answered, "I don't know."
It's amazing how much money some business owners spend on an ad, sales
letter or other business promotion without evaluating how much profit it
produces. Your advertising decision is only a guess if you don't know how
much profit it's likely to produce. Advertising based on guessing is
gambling with the future of your business.
Increase Profits And Reduce Risk
Effective testing increases your profits and reduces your risk. Decisions
based on the results of continual testing put you in control of your
business profits. I once increased the response to a postcard promotion
from 3 percent to over 20 percent by constantly making changes based on
results revealed by repeated testing.
Testing may be fun for engineers but it's boring for most entrepreneurs.
That's why many business owners avoid it. If you're one of them, you're
making an expensive mistake. The benefits you gain and risks you avoid by
testing make it a valuable function you can't afford to ignore.
You may want to copy the 80/20 guideline I use if you find it difficult to
test your marketing efforts on a regular basis. I simply invest 80 percent
of my advertising budget in proven promotions and 20 percent in testing
new variations. This formula generates a constant stream of profitable
business from proven promotions while forcing me to continually test for
better results.
Continually Test Everything
Continually test and evaluate everything you use or do to promote
business. A partial list of things you should test includes:
* Different offers
* Different ad copy
* Different webpage layouts
* Different sales letters
* Different media (where you place ads)
* Mailing lists
* Different guarantees
... and some less obvious things like:
* Timing of your advertising (day of week, week of month)
* Products and/or services offered (or combinations of them)
* Networking activity (time and money allocated)
* Affiliate programs (time and resources to promote)
TIP: Test the headline for an ad, sales letter or webpage before testing
what follows it. Find the headline that attracts the most readers before
testing what the headline attracts them to read.
Test only one change at a time or you won't know what variable produced
the new result. Code each variation you test and track the results. Every
time a change produces better results, make it your new standard and
continue testing. There is no such thing as the perfect promotion. But
continual testing gradually gets you closer to it.
Testing is boring work for most business owners. But it pays off in higher
profits and reduced risk. Start testing today if you've been avoiding it.
Implement a program to continually test and evaluate everything you do to
promote your business. The steady increase in your profits will surprise
you.
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About the Author
Bob Leduc spent 20 years helping businesses just like yours find new
customers and increase sales. He just released a New Edition of his
manual, How To Build Your Small Business Fast With Simple Postcards and
several other publications to help small businesses grow and prosper. For
information: postcards@sendfree.com or visit: http://BobLeduc.com or call:
702-658-1707 After 10 AM Pacific Time/Las Vegas, NV
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