One of the best marketing quotes I ever heard was from an old advertising genius named Bruce Barton. The quote went like this: "Advertising is the very essence of democracy. An election goes on every minute of the business day across the counters of hundreds of thousands of stores and shops where the customers state their preferences and determine which manufacturer and which product shall be the leader today, and which shall lead tomorrow." Now, if that's true (and I believe it is) -- if advertising is like an election -- then the ultimate "polling data" for that election would have to be testing your ads. What does that mean? It simply means you run an ad and then test a specific variable of that ad against another. For example, if you have an ad with the headline "How To Become An Expert Poker Player", you can run it, see your results and then run the exact same ad again, but with a different headline. Maybe one that says, "Who Else Wants To Make A Bundle At Poker Every Time You Play?" and then note the results and compare with the ad you ran with the first headline. Then, you simply take the one that had the better response and use that and then test another variable -- maybe the offer, the P.S. even something as small as the salutation. And by doing this -- by testing one variable after another, and using the variables that yield the best responses -- you end up with an ad that will pull in the maximum amount of sales. And when I say maximum, I really do mean maximum. Because, just changing the headline alone can result in over a 500% increase in response. I saw one test where just changing the signature of the ad from "sincerely" to "your success" resulted in a 300% bump. Bottom line: If you aren't testing the results of your ads, then it's almost a dead certainty you're leaving a bundle of money on the table. |
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