Marketing Strategy 31: Why Test, Test and Then Test Again

In today’s lesson, I want to talk to you about testing and why it’s so important to the success of your business.

This lesson is something that many business owners understand in theory, but very few actually practice.

Small… Big… Bigger… Huge

The first rule for testing is: Test Small. No matter how wonderful or great you think your plan or idea is… test small.

Let the response to the initial test tell you if the activity is worth pursuing or not.

If and only if the results are good and it’s working… test a little bigger. Then bigger if that works. And finally on to huge.

Don’t Lose Your Shirt Over Testing…

For example… Imagine a carpet cleaner buys 500 names from a mailing list broker. He mails the names and receives a tremendous response. He, of course, was ecstatic.

But then he makes an awful mistake. He goes from small directly to huge.

He buys and mails to the rest of the list – 125,000 names. He spends $10,000 on the list and more on postage. The result nets him only a few thousand dollars in sales and he loses a small fortune.

This is a very common mistake many people make. Don’t let this happen to you.

So why wasn’t there a better result?

Mailing brokers always give you the best part of the list first. These are the most responsive buyers. If the cleaner in our example had mailed to just the next 1,000 names, for instance, he may have seen a decline from the first mailing. But he certainly would not have lost all that money.

Always remember…

Small… Big… Bigger… Huge. And only move on to the next level if the results tell you to do so.

TODAY’S TASK: How To Test

Choose a way to track your results. There are many programs for trackingresults (Excel is useful), but if you prefer to keep things simple to start with, a basic table such as below will help you get started.

Tracking Results

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