PersuasionTheory.com » copywriting

Testing Your Marketing: When Is As Important As What

Fox — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:49:32 +0000

I was talking with a client about a current mailing they were running. They told me that letter B was converting at a better rates than letter C. When I asked how they ran the test I was baffled at the response. I thought this was common knowledge. Ultimately, it became a lesson in market testing factors.

When you test your marketing piece is just as important as what you test. Here’s what they did in a nutshell.

They took a list of prospects and cut it in half. They sent sales letters to a group A and measured the results. They sent group B a letter with a different headline and tracked the results. This is not bad. It’s a good way to start testing your marketing however, the second group was sent letters one month after the first group received their letters.

The easiest way to test your marketing is to test one variable at a time and measure the results. If headline X pulls better than headline Y then use headline X as your control and continue testing to see if you can beat those results. This process is called split testing and is nothing new to anyone with direct marketing knowledge.

One factor commonly overlooked when performing split testing is time. The split test has to be run at the same time to be considered an effective test. If you send one mailing this week and another mailing four weeks later then you’ve essentially thrown in another testing variable called “time.”

“So, what’s the big deal it’s only a couple of weeks difference?” he asked. Imagine mailing a mortgage marketing piece right before the recent financial meltdown and a month later after all the headlines hit the news. If you’re selling earthquake insurance you’ll see a difference in response from a mailing before and a mailing after the recent Haiti and Chile earthquakes. As you can imagine, awareness in society changes over time and is another piece of the marketing puzzle you need to put in place.

What About Online Marketing?

The same rules apply online. If you’re marketing through email, most email responders allow you to perform split tests. Run tests changing the subject to test open rates. If your email system allows you to run more than two then test two different offers with each headline to test click-through rates too. Make sure it’s the same mailing and you’re not sending one email blast today and one email blast tomorrow. (that’s time and sending a second mailing to the same list, another variable)

What if you’re testing landing pages or opt-in forms? You want to run split tests as people visit the site. Testing one page for 3 weeks and another page for 3 weeks will not give you accurate results. Time can skew your statistics plus your source of visitors could change.

Most email providers offer a form of split testing your emails but, do you use it? If you have a sales page, opt-in form, squeeze page, etc. are you split testing to see what works or are you going by what the gurus tell you works? (I recommend SendPepper for reliable email and landing page split testing and marketing.)

Marketing Is Not A Science

Marketing is not a science but it does require one to step back, analyze the variables and, look at the results. The only scientific rule I know that works every time is test and measure.

What’s your experience?

Photo by Redstamp

© Fox for PersuasionTheory.com, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments |
Post tags: copywriting, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Marketing Variables, OfficeAutoPilot, Online Marketing, SendPepper, Split Testing

When Is It Okay To Attack Your Competition?

Fox — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:22:50 +0000

I’m sitting in front of the Apple store in our mall stealing their wifi on my iPhone. As I’m sitting here I’m thinking about their PC vs. Mac commercials and how successful they’ve been despite the fact they’re talking negatively about their competition and about their potential customer.

In these commercials, Apple is portrayed as the cool guy that runs well, plays nice with all the toys, and is who you want to be like. The PC is portrayed by an overweight guy with unfashionable clothing and glasses with a bumbling fool type personality.

In traditional sales you’re taught to never say bad things about the competition. When you do you elicit negative feelings from the prospect which become attached to you and your product, killing the sale. It also will often come across as a desperate attempt to win the sale. Basically, attacking the competition is bad so don’t do it.

Apple appears to have pulled this off well and is making great strides into the personal computer market.

So, when is it okay to attack your competition? Is it okay?

What makes the Apple ads successful, even though they’re insulting the competition and potential buyer, while others fail miserably when trying?

Share your comments and thoughts below.

© Fox for PersuasionTheory.com, 2009. | Permalink | Leave a comment |
Post tags: copywriting, Covert Persuasion, sales, selling skills, Subliminal Persuasion

Powerful Persuasion With Just A Couple Little Words

Fox — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:45:11 +0000

Most people never give thought about what words fly out of their mouth. It comes straight from an unconscious reaction and completely exposes their internal representation of the world…their true feelings and opinions.

Here are three words that can enhance or destroy your persuasion ability. And, when you hear them from others you’ll have greater insight into why you feel the way you do when they speak.

These three words are: “and”, “even though”, and “but.”

These words can destroy your message by either negating or placing emphasis on the wrong part of what you’re communicating. They can also enhance your message by negating or placing emphasis on the right part of your communication when used properly.

Read these three sentences and notice how different each one makes you feel…

I love you but you hurt me.
I love you even though you hurt me.
love you and you hurt me.

In sentence 1 the ‘but’ negates anything in front of it and places the emphasis on everything that comes after it. It’s the “you hurt me” part that sticks in your mind and the “I love you” isn’t as important or invalidated.

In sentence 2 with ‘even though’ it’s just the opposite. The part before ‘even though’ is what’s felt as important.

In sentence 3 when you use ‘and’ it places both sides of the sentence on equal footing. “I love you” and “you hurt me” end up with the same weight in your mind.

So, how do you use this in your persuasive life?

One of the best ways to establish a sense of authority or credibility is to admit a weakness or flaw in your product or service. You don’t want to say that what you’re selling is a piece of junk however you want to admit something that is a small flaw, nothing that may kill your deal, just something small that could become an objection. Then after you say it you say the magic word, “but” and add the great things your product or service can do. This slides those minor issues into non-existence in the prospects mind.

I don’t like mentioning anything bad at the end of any presentation, sales letter or and situation. So the ‘even though’ method I would use is to put ‘even though’ at the beginning of the sentence then the negative statement and then the positive statement. Example is “even though you hurt me I love you.”

Now, with ‘and’ I have a lot of fun. I use ‘and’ when people give me compliments and when they voice objections. Let me explain.

If someone gives you a compliment one of the most hypnotic things you can do is say, “that’s right and…” then say what else they can get from buying from you, what else you can do for them, any other positive thing. They’ll zone out for a second and everything you say drops right into their unconscious mind to act on later.

Now, here’s what to do if someone voices a minor objection, I’m not talking about a deal killer, one of those minor things you would put in front of a ‘but’ if you were the one that brought it up. They object with, “I hear your service is a bit slow to respond sometimes.” You can reply with, “That’s right they are sometimes and you’ll have access to them 24 hours along with this special XYZ to reduce the need for service anyhow.”

In this situation using ‘but’ would have been bad because you would have invalidated your prospects thought. By using ‘and’ here instead you’re allowing them to hold their thought, not argue with them, and it quickly diffuses the situation.

Go out and play with these three words (okay 4 words). Notice the difference response you get when you use ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘even though.’ Let me know your results. It’s one of the things I love to hear and you get to profit from this practice.

© Fox for PersuasionTheory.com, 2008. | Permalink | Leave a comment |
Post tags: copywriting, hypnotic language, Insight, Internal Representation, linguistics, Magic Word, Persuasion, sales, Skills