PersuasionTheory.com » Marketing

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

Propaganda and Covert Persuasion

Fox — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:45:22 +0000

If you persuade the masses or individuals, one of the most important people that made what we do possible was Edward Bernays. He wrote one of my favorite books, “Propaganda.”

Edward was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and was the first to bring many of the psychological theories he came up with for marketing and selling.

Here are a couple of videos on Bernays and what he pioneered. I highly recommend spending the 10 minutes for each video and picking up a copy of his book, it’s a quick and easy read.

Part 1

Part 2

© Fox for PersuasionTheory.com, 2009. | Permalink | Leave a comment |
Post tags: Covert Hypnosis, Covert Persuasion, Marketing, Propaganda, Skills, Subliminal Persuasion

Persuasive Power Of Price

Fox — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:28:29 +0000

When you’re selling something have you considered the impact your pricing plays in they buyer’s mind?

Price is a fine line to dance across and it hit me (again) the other day when I was filling up my car with gas. I was a little taken back when I saw the prices for gas. The options were:

Regular Unleaded – $2.19/gallon
Plus Unleaded – $2.29/gallon
Super Unleaded – $2.19/gallon

I normally fill up the car with Plus because it’s generally about $.10 less than Super and, well, it’s the middle option. I don’t simply want the cheap stuff.

On that day however, I filled up with Super (the real good stuff, right?) because it was less expensive than the Plus I normally buy. However, as I was leaning up against my car watching the numbers roll by on the pump, the following thoughts kept playing in my head:

Why are they pricing the premium stuff so low today?
What’s wrong with this batch? Is it filled with the crud at the bottom of the storage tank?
Did they really make a price mistake and I’m getting away with something?
Should I go inside and ask to make it’s not the crud and I don’t hurt my car?
Why isn’t this advertised on the sign, what’s wrong here?
Am I the only one seeing this mistake?

Then I realized what I was doing and stepped back to analyze the situation.

Think about it now. What does pricing play when you’re working to sell something? Does it convey “cheap” or “inferior?” Does it convey there could be a problem compared to the other options available? Does it convey “bargain?” Does a higher price imply “quality?”

As I said, this is a fine line and needs to be handled with care. It’s not so easy as to say, “do you present the low price option first and work to up-sell? Do you present the high price option and down-sell if they don’t buy the first option? Do you present multiple options and let the buyer choose the price?”

Each product and situation is different and careful consideration has to be brought to the table when pricing. Often bringing multiple options will confuse the buyer and put them into a state of indecision.

I wish there was a flat answer to these questions to make it simple. However, I’ll be exploring these more in time.

© Fox for PersuasionTheory.com, 2009. | Permalink | Leave a comment |
Post tags: Marketing, Persuasion Strategies, Pricing Options, Pricing Strategies, Selling