Hello there!
Even if you don’t consider yourself the next Nigella or the Ultimate Braai Master, I’m pretty sure you prepare food now and again, right?
So consider this:
Do you sneakily dip a finger in to check how your sauce tastes?
Are you quite fastidious about the time each chop needs to sizzle in order to be medium rare?
If you answered “Yes” to either of these, you are already a Test and Measure guru.
Exactly the same principles apply to your marketing efforts – and a lot less detrimental to your waistline!
Before any marketing strategy becomes successful, it will have been meticulously refined and relaunched. Constant tweaking based on testing and measuring is the only way to improve your marketing results.
How do you set out to create your most successful marketing strategy yet?
Here are four simple steps to follow to leverage your marketing so you get the best possible return from your investment.
1. Gather Your Ingredients
As of right now, start asking people where they heard about you. Use a fake contact name in print ads to quickly know which publication your potential customer read, ask outright when people call or contact you, supply a little feedback form including this question to existing or possible new clients… Get as much information as possible in order to have more accurate results.
Digital marketing has a ton of useful analysis tools built in – use them!
2. Shake It Up
Immediately ditch any expensive, useless areas of your marketing. When testing and measuring our marketing, it’s important that you test one thing at a time. If you change more than one element, it’s impossible to see what caused the change in your results. So straight away get rid of the obvious losers as you will need the time to test options with more potential.
Take a look at the best performers, and use them as a guide see what you can do to modify the mediocre performers.
Remember all those marketing strategies you examined and modified? Now is the time to pull them out of the drawer, and give them a run. Do one at a time, and track the result meticulously.
3. Simmer Awhile
Good things take time, so be patient while you measure the results of your shake up for at least a couple of weeks.
3.1. Sieve
Be careful to measure your feedback accurately and fully - both the negative responses and the positive. “An email marketing exercise that generates 10 replies, from people who do not become clients, is NOT a zero response rate! It is proof that 10 people read your email and were motivated enough to call or email you.” http://jimsmarketingblog.com/
3.2. Use The Right Setting
Be honest with yourself – how many leads do you convert into sales? So often, poor marketing is not as much the problem as inadequate sales techniques is.
3.3. Serve It Up
“The universe rewards ACTION”
Examining every little thing in too much detail and waiting for the stars to be perfectly aligned will cripple your efforts – either by doing nothing at all, or by taking so long that the opportunity has gone. Once you see a good marketing opportunity, get to work immediately… and then Test and Measure it.
4. Repeat
This is a cyclic process where you test and measure everything you do, refining it until it’s as effective as you can get it.
Testing and measuring is a work-in-progress that is so important, it must become a habit.
What are you waiting for?
Contact Sonja NOW for the most valuable marketing expertise in town.
083 256-0378 | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Next week:
In the spirit of Halloween, we share how to scare off your competitors!