Better Marketing And Sales To Recession Proof Your Business – Test, measure and monitor EVERYTHING
Test, measure and monitor EVERYTHINGOne of the key principles we want you to get from this material is that you must test everything you do. Any marketing or sales efforts for your business have to be tested. Without testing, how will you know what is working? And as important, how will you know what is not working? The purpose of testing is to enable you and your business to be even more successful over time. And, there is a critical distinction between testing and experimenting. By testing, we mean “Taking a marketing or sales program that is already working, changing or refining the offer, then testing to see which version works best. If you were experimenting, you would be trying several different types of marketing or sales programs to see if anything works. One of the biggest challenges for startup businesses or businesses that are fairly new – say less than 2 years old – is to know about and recognize the difference between testing and experimenting. If you have been in business for a while, have had success with marketing and sales campaigns, and want to improve them, then you need to be sure to test and measure everything that you do. If you need to experiment with different marketing tools and sales techniques in order to get sales in the first place, that is beyond the scope of this book. There are several excellent resources available that can help you with marketing experiments. If you search online with Google, Yahoo, or MSN you will find plenty of information about how to experiment with your marketing. Basically, the idea behind this first principle is simply stated as “Never, ever run an ad without monitoring the response.” And, you can extend that to nearly everything you do from the marketing side to mean, “Monitor everything you do to promote your business.” One of the main reasons for this strategy is also simple: “You cannot improve on something if you do not know what is working and what’s not.” For your business to grow you must measure and monitor all of your marketing and promotion efforts in order to gain an understanding of how to improve. The focus of this approach is to improve your business results in a BIG way. Let’s work through examples of what happens when you test, measure and monitor and what happens when you don’t. Before we start with any specific strategies or tactics, you need to have a couple of definitions about testing. This is one of the most important skills you will develop in marketing and sales. Essentially, the idea of testing allows you to connect the unknown with the known. By testing you will be able to clearly see which marketing and sales tools you are using are actually working.
Just by monitoring your marketing efforts, you can double your business by cutting the expenses of something which doesn’t work and spending money where something does work. Now, let’s look at a specific example. Advertising Testing: Example Test DevelopmentThink about the last time you used the Yellowpages to advertise your business. Or, if you have never have, you can probably think of a business that does use the Yellowpages. And, you can probably also remember the last time you got one of the Yellowpages books. In today’s market, there are still both printed and online versions in use. But, what is happening to both? The delivery channel has changed in the last 2-3 years. Instead of picking up a Yellowpages directory to look for a business like yours that is close by, people are using information online or over the internet instead. It is much quicker for customers or your potential clients to get information from Google or Yahoo. There is also a lot more information online. Customers have access to reviews from other clients, location information or maps, and more detail about your business than they will find in a Yellowpages book. Do all of these recent changes mean that you should not use the Yellowpages? No, not necessarily. There may still be situations when Yellowpages advertising makes sense for you and your business. One simple way to find out would be to run an ad in the Yellowpages books in your area – and there are usually several key providers for any geography – and test the results. To test this ad, you will need to include a way to track customers that respond to the Yellowpages ad. One simple way is to ask customers how they heard about your business. But, customers may not always accurately recall or tell you how they heard about your products when they buy. Or, you might be busy and not have an opportunity to ask everyone. A better way to test this kind of ad would be to include a “special” offer – coupon, offer code, discount, something free, etc. – that you can track along with sales. If a customer redeems this offer then you know they came to your business from the Yellowpages. If you also have unique offer codes in your other advertising then you can track those as well. This kind of tracking and testing will give you a view of which ads are working, how well they are working, and what kind of return you are getting on your advertising dollars. And, you can run a parallel test with advertising in online versions of the Yellowpages or other online business directories. As close as you can, make the two ads match. If you then compare the sales that you get from the two ads – the online version and the book version – you will know that the only difference is the placement of the ads. Once you have the tracking and detail, compare the sales from each ad to the dollars you spent for each. This will give you a perspective on which ad is working the best for your business. And, unless you are testing and measuring the impact of your ads you won’t know if you are wasting money, not only in the Yellowpages but in other ads as well. There are key lessons to be learned from testing your marketing and sales offers and the results you get for your business. In the Yellowpages example, one of the key things to pick up is that the MARKETING CHANNEL HAS CHANGED. The implications for you and your business are:
So what you’ve learned by testing is that 1) the internet is a channel for successful marketing and sales because that’s where your customers are and 2) the internet is a marketing channel you can use for your business.
You can learn too from large companies that have an internet presence. For example, Google and Yahoo! obviously have a huge online presence, but they have large office complexes and offline capabilities too. Another example comes from eBay. They are a big player online, but now they have retail stores too. You can take your things into the store and one of their customer service people will list and sell the item for you. So, keep in mind that the internet is important for marketing and sales, but so are your actual business locations. When you test marketing and sales programs, keep in mind that the primary objective is to identify what’s working and what’s not working. You should test everything you do but focus on tracking and analyzing the results. Our example from the Yellowpages shows that 1) if you weren’t testing this part of your marketing campaign, you would not be able to see the shift from printed directories to online marketing and 2) you would not know the importance of having a presence on the internet. Through testing you also have an opportunity to learn more about what you don’t know. Testing marketing and sales campaigns allows you to evaluate what you know or think you know about your customers and your business and track the importance of what you know. As your customers change, by testing you can change with them. Test results will reinforce what you do know, help you change or shift what you know, and help you understand more about what you don’t know. From testing, then, you will be able to change and improve your marketing and sales programs to make your business more successful. As you consider testing different marketing and sales programs, think first about what can be measured for your business. Most often, most of us think about measuring results in terms of customers and sales. Increased turnover that results from a specific piece of marketing can be said to be successful. However, as you evaluate one program versus another, you will want to refine your measurements and look at the separate parts of each program. By using different levels of detail, you will have more input to help you decide what’s working or what’s not. Let’s break down the marketing and sales process a bit further into different parts that you can measure.
It’s important for the development of your marketing and sales programs to recognize that you should test in small increments. What do we mean by small? You will want to test one thing at a time. The main reason to test one thing at a time is to make sure you can interpret the results. If you only test differences in the sales pitch – and leave everything else the same – then you will be able to see the impact of different sales pitches on how your customers react. Otherwise, if you try to test more than one thing at a time, you won’t be able to see what’s working and what’s not working.
SALES PITCH TESTING Any marketing or sales program that you implement will have a “sales pitch” as part of the program.
One of the key elements to remember about testing is that small changes are the basis for getting better results. For example, what will happen if you change one or two words within the sales pitch? Consider this first pitch. “Box4Blox–The Amazing Toy Storage Box For Lego.” Then compare it to the following. “Finally! Discover the Secret That’s Got More Than 50,000 LEGO-Crazy Kids Worldwide Actually LOVING Clean-Up Time!” Which one do you think drives more sales? The second one as you can tell from your own interpretation. Basically, the idea is that the first phrase describes what the product is but the second one describes the benefits or what the product does for you. You can easily see the difference when you look at these phrases side-by-side. But, it’s important to keep testing so that you continuously improve. What do you think would happen if you changed some of the words in this last pitch statement? Would using “At last!” instead of “Finally!” make a difference? How about the term “LEGO-Crazy Kids”? What if you changed that to read “LEGO-Crazy Boys”? Testing at this level gives you an opportunity to see which part of your sales pitch have the most impact. Another example of how to test a sales pitch comes from JustBeachTowels.com
By testing his Sales Pitch, Rob at JustBeachTowels.com was able to realize very large increases in his monthly sales – by a factor of 10! Is there any business that would not like to have 10 times more sales this month than last month?
PRICE TESTING How can we test different price levels? There is one pretty famous example from a recent website that we can use to illustrate how to test price. There was a flashlight business that was selling products on their website over the internet. They decided to test three options and see which one sold more flashlights. Here are the three prices they tested: Option 1: Price = $5.00, shipping and handling = FREE Option 2: Price = $2.50, shipping and handling = $2.50 Option 3: Price = FREE, shipping and handling $5.00 Which of these three options do you think sold more flashlights? As you might imagine, the last one – Option 3 where the product is offered for free – actually “sold” more flashlights for this particular business. The charges for shipping and handling were evidently not viewed as restrictive and customers responded to the “free product” part of the offer. This offer wound up putting more revenue in the hands of the business owner compared to the other two. We wouldn’t necessarily recommend offering your products and services for free and expecting your customers to be comfortable with paying shipping and handling fees. But, this illustrates the kinds of things you can test with price. According to current best practices for price testing, here are a few ideas to remember when you are thinking about what to test with your pricing.
HEADLINE TESTING Headline testing might be one of the easiest things you can test in your marketing and sales programs. Everything in the headline can make a difference in the headline response rate. Things that make a difference in response are called response modifiers. In addition to the items mentioned above, other response modifiers in a headline might include the font used, the size of the font, the capitalization of the first letters of each word, etc. Everything in your headline can and should be tested. For an example of how a very minor change can make a difference in your headline response, take a look at these two headlines: Headline # 1: “Put Music In Your Life” Headline # 2: “Puts Music In Your Life” The only difference between the headlines is the addition of the letter “s” to the first word. The second headline greatly out pulled the first headline. In this case we believe that the second headline was more targeted on the benefits of the product. It may have been easier for customers to understand how the product enabled them to accomplish what they wanted. Three Qualities of Winning Headlines
When headlines and subject lines apply these three qualities, they are more apt to connect with the reader – which is the true objective. A typical approach to this kind of headline testing is to start with a headline that is working for you now. You are getting sales with the headlines you are currently using. Test one different version of this headline by making a very small change. Then monitor the results to see which one “wins” or gets you more sales. If the current copy does better than your change, then use your current copy as a baseline. For a second test, make another small change by varying something else in the headline and test the second version. If the second version “wins”, then use the second version as your new baseline. The next step would be to make a small change in this latest version and test again. In this way, you can always be testing new headlines to see if small changes make a difference. Each tweak of your headline that results in a new baseline improves the desired outcome. Your response rate increases, you get more sales, and you are on the road to continuous improvement. While you can never know for sure why one headline outsells another, the reason is not important. At the end of the day only the results matter.
OPENING STATEMENT TESTING Why are opening statements so important? One reason – and there are several – is that most of your potential customers have very little time. It’s important to capture them on the first attempt you make. This applies to both online or internet marketing as well as offline marketing and sales. For the internet, the “average” website visitor spends about 8 seconds on any particular website. And, the time potential customers are willing to look at your materials is even less for offline marketing and sales – assuming you can get them to take a look in the first place. So, opening statements are very important because you have limited time to help potential customers make a decision about your products and services. Let’s say that you’ve done a good job with your sales pitch, offered a good price, and written a great headline. With these parts of your marketing and sales in place, a great opening statement will be the next part of what your customers sees about you and your company. To develop better openings, a similar approach to the one you developed for testing headlines can be used.
Example Opening Statement: A publisher recently had a book written to guide authors and potential writers on how best to sell their manuscripts. After several tests, here is their opening statement: Sample Opening Statement: “Want to sell your work? Want to make more money? Would you like to know the secret to being published often?” To test this opening statement, you could change the word work in the first sentence. What would happen if you changed the word “work” to “writing”? Or another change that has been proposed would be to change the second sentence entirely. What would be the impact if you changed the second sentence to read … “Want to get more recognition from your work?” We can all guess about which versions we think will work best, but until we actually test both versions among our real customers, we won’t know for certain. And, we may never know why one set of words works better, but remember – only the results count. Did you get more sales or not?
GUARANTEE TESTING Guarantees are really a way for you the businessperson to assure your customers that there is little or no risk in purchasing your product or service. We are all sensitive to risk to some degree. And, we’re all skeptical at first. To reverse or address this risk, consider using some type of guarantee. There are basically two types of guarantees: Conditional or unconditional. You know your business and situation better than anyone. What type of guarantee do you currently offer or could you offer? Would this guarantee be enough to help your potential customers get over their skepticism and make a purchase? There are a couple of classic examples of the different types of guarantees. Conditional guarantees Shoe stores and online shoe retailers often offer to take a product back, refund the purchase price or give the customer store credit. The guarantee is usually conditional and based on the fact that the customer has not worn the shoes outside. When the guarantee is written, it specifies exactly the conditions under which a refund will be made. Another type of conditional guarantee applies to the workmanship or quality of the product. For example, a recent guarantee was offered on a pair of running shoes. “…1,000 kilometer guarantee on unitsole wear” (Source: Shoebuy.com) If the customer is nervous about the soles wearing out on this pair of shoes, then by offering this type of guarantee the business owner can help the customer feel better about their purchase. For the running shoes, if the soles wear out with less than 1,000 kilometers of use, they will be replaced. After 1,000 kilometers, the customer is on their own. For an avid runner or jogger, getting in about 20 kilometers per week is a quite a lot of running. To go over 1,000 kilometers in one pair of shoes would take almost an entire year. For an average runner or jogger, about 10 kilometers per week is more likely. The average runner then will have the soles of his or her shoes guaranteed for at least two years. With this conditional guarantee, the customer knows that they will have a usable product for a long time. Unconditional guarantees This type of guarantee is often quoted in terms of price. Retailers often guarantee to match a competitor’s price or offer “lowest everyday prices, guaranteed”. To complete with Coles Myer and Woolworths, Wal-Mart offers “Always low prices”. Woolworths on the other hand offers “everyday low prices”. These types of guarantees are unconditional in the sense that the business owner promises to come up with the lowest possible price and the customer can count on that as a guarantee. You can also use unconditional guarantees to help you distinguish your business from your competition. Back in the shoe category, Zappos.com an online retailer offers the following: Shopping at Zappos.com is safe. Every credit card purchase on Zappos.com is covered by our Zappos.com Safe Shopping Guarantee. Zappos.com takes great pride in offering a safe and secure online shopping experience. We understand that the safety of your personal information is extremely important to you. We use a wide array of electronic and physical security measures and devices to protect your personal data and credit card information from unauthorized access. There have been efforts to increase security on many websites and online stores. If you can offer this type of guarantee to your customers, do you think it would make a difference? As you think the different types of guarantees you can offer, remember to test them too. You must test everything to be able to see what works and what doesn’t. Generally, the fewer conditions there are as part of the guarantee, the better it will perform in helping you get your customers’ trust. Unconditional guarantees are usually the best, so the challenge for you is to find parts of your products or services that you can guarantee in this way. There is also a performance effect that results from your offering a guarantee. We’ll cover this in much more detail later, but for testing purposes keep it in mind. If you offer an unconditional guarantee, what do you have to do in your business to make sure that your products and services have great quality? As you test different guarantees, keep in mind that each one will have different implications and ramifications for how you run your business.
TARGET MARKET TESTING How do you know if your marketing and sales communications are reaching the right audience? One of the best ways to start is to look at a profile of your current customers that are in segments or groups.
For example, there are several ways you might group your current customers:
These segments or groups of customers are intended to show you the detail behind who your most important customers are and what they like. In order to evaluate and test target markets, see if you can answer the following questions:
Once you know more about who the most important customers are for your business, then you can begin to explore ways to find more of them. Tests of your marketing and sales material among prospective target markets are intended to show you where to get more customers. You can take one of your successful marketing pieces and introduce it to a new location, source or “watering hole” where you think your target market can be reached. Remember to try to test in small increments. You would not want to test any changes in the marketing materials or message at the same time. Testing to see how best to recruit new customers that match the characteristics of your current customers will be enough to test at one time.
Other Marketing Testing There are many other possibilities that you must test in your marketing and sales materials. These include:
Here are a few examples from recent news and headlines that show you the importance of testing these parts of your marketing and sales communications. Large companies benefit from testing just like small companies. Remember, the purpose of testing is to continuously grow your business through small changes in parts of your programs. PACKAGING TESTING
PRODUCT BUNDLING TESTS
OFFER TESTING
UP-SELLS and CROSS-SELLS
We will cover these in more detail as we discuss each part of the structure in your marketing and sales programs. Basically, the idea will be the same. Test, change your marketing and sales approach based on results of the tests, then test again. You probably get the idea by now. To make continuous improvements in your marketing and sales materials to continuously improve your sales and profits, you need to develop an ongoing testing program. Marketing Testing Review and Things To Do Basically, your testing systems will include the following no matter which part of the marketing and sales program you are testing. Your pre-test starting point (Step 1): Start with your current marketing and sales materials. Step 2: Identify one or two parts of the materials, wording or marketing that you want to test. Step 3: Make minor changes in the materials to create new versions. Step 4: Keep your current materials as they are. Step 5: Design a program to use both sets of materials among the same target customers in small groups (100 to 200). Step 6: Monitor results to see which version sells more or gets you better results. Step 7: If the new version outperforms the current version, replace your marketing and sales materials with the new version. If the current version outperforms the new version, leave the current marketing and sales materials in place. Step 9: Start the testing process over again – using whichever version of the marketing and sales materials generated the best results as your baseline. Step 10: Make small changes and run a new test. Step 11: Based on the results, decide which version of marketing and sales materials to use. Step 12: Continue testing different parts of your marketing and sales materials. From this review and these steps you will find yourself in continuous testing mode. Remember that one of the ideas we described earlier was that applying these principles consistently over time gives you what you need to drive BIG results. By testing and re-testing, your marketing strategies and tactics will begin to drive bigger and bigger sales and profit results. This will help you achieve that dividend goal and objective that you established early on for your business. |
Sales pitch: MAIN SELLING PROPOSITION UPON WHICH AN ENTIRE SALES CAMPAIGN IS BUILT.
2 Responses to “Better Marketing And Sales To Recession Proof Your Business – Test, measure and monitor EVERYTHING”
Dmitri Stern’s [Outstanding Results in Marketing] Blog » Marketing points of distinction - Sampling Online… on June 25, 2011
[...] to always test and measure, first on the small scale – before rolling out any marketing [...]
Ivan Patronella on February 14, 2012
I tend not to create a bunch of comments, however I read a few of the remarks here Better Marketing And Sales To Recession Proof Your Business – Test, measure and monitor EVERYTHING | Outstanding Results in On-line and Offline Marketing For Business. I actually do have a couple of questions for you if it’s allright. Could it be simply me or do some of these comments come across like they are written by brain dead visitors?
And, if you are writing on other places, I’d like to follow you. Would you make a list of every one of all your shared pages like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?