“Never stop testing and your advertising will never stop improving.” -David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy founded the iconic ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather and is known in the industry as the “Father of Advertising.” He was a strong proponent of testing and it’s difficult to argue with the results he and his agency garnered for a long list of iconic brands. There’s no doubt testing can be helpful, but it can also be wrong. What works in a small sample test may not payoff in a broader campaign. Father doesn’t always know best, and not all tests are created equal. The first thing you want to do is make sure your testing makes sense.
Deciding what to test
You can almost literally test anything. That’s why it’s sometimes hard to decide. For instance, let’s say you want to see if including a giveaway in your promotion increases the response. You add the chance to win a $5,000 cruise to your offer. Half your recipients get the offer, and half don’t. It’s commonly referred to as an A/B split. If the response is the same from both groups, you can reasonably conclude that the cruise had little effect on the outcome. If many more people responded to the offer with the cruise…you get the idea. But here’s the fly in the ointment. You could have also tested the $5,000 cruise against a $10,000 cruise. Will a bigger prize produce even better results?
Free shipping on orders of…
Like we said, you can test pretty much anything. At what point does “free shipping,” really kick in? You might find that when it comes to paying for shipping, people have a high tolerance. If you currently offer free shipping on orders of $50 or more, drop it to $25 (if you can afford to) and see if that causes a bump up in business.
Make sure your test is fair
Let’s say that there are two radio stations in your market, close in ratings, similar in demographics and you want to know which to use on an ongoing basis. Run the exact same commercial on both stations. If you run different commercials, you are no longer on a level playing field. However, if you are trying to test the commercials and not the station, run two with different creative, both on the same station, the same number of times. You can track results by using a different URL on each ad which direct them to different landing pages.
Out of focus
It’s been said the only true test is the marketplace but focus group testing persists. Focus groups are often a gathering of 15 to 20 people who fall into the category of potential customer for whatever is being tested. You can get their opinions on just about anything, like a name, a new product, a print ad, a webpage, etc. Talking to actual consumers can sometimes be more productive than trying to digest data. Just be wary. There are a lot of stories about focus groups saying one thing and the marketplace saying another.
Small businesses test all the time, they just don’t realize it. A brief but friendly conversation between a business owner and a customer can be a test. When a business owner shares their advertising with family members before using it, that’s a test. If you’d like to learn more about testing, give us a quiz.