Why Test & Measure?

If you don’t know where your customers come from, you’re really stabbing around in the dark. You have no real idea which marketing campaigns are working, how well your salespeople are doing or even how much each sale is ‘costing you’. Once you know your current position you have the power to make decisions, and good ones. You know which marketing campaigns to kill, or improve, and which to spend more money on. You’ll also know where your ‘key leverage point is’ – that is, the thing that you most need to improve.

Perhaps your conversion rate is high but your leads are few – maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you’re not selling enough high priced items. Once you know which area needs work, you can start to make some new, well-informed decisions.

The 3 Most Important Things About Testing & Measuring

  1. Testing and measuring is nothing new. You’ve probably been doing it all your business life. Remember the Facebook advertising you tried that ‘didn’t work’, and the flyers that ‘did OK’. That’s all testing is. It’s about finding out what produces results and what doesn’t, then making decisions based on that.
  2. You MUST start asking people where they found out about you. If you don’t, you’ll be in the dark forever. Customers usually come from so many sources; it’s impossible to judge how an ad is working on sales alone. Every time someone buys, ask them this question – ‘By the way, can I just ask where you heard about my business’.
  3. Be vigilant and disciplined. You can’t test & measure half the time – you must do it constantly. It’s not difficult – just remember to make a record after every customer interaction.

What To Do With Your Results

  1. The first thing to do is see what’s not working. If an ad is getting a very low response (which means the profit margin from the sales is not at least paying for the ad), kill it. Of course, you need consider the lifetime value of the customer as well. Every time you run this sort of ad, you’re literally giving away money.
  2. Go back over your past ads and think about how well each one worked. Pull out the best couple and identify what gave them their edge.
  3. Read some marketing books.
  4. Look at what your competitors are doing.
  5. Do each working strategy on a larger scale. If it’s flyers, drop twice as many flyers. If it’s networking, go to more events.
  6. Test and measure – notice if the number of enquiries remains the same or goes down. Also compare this with how much you’re spending on marketing.

Very soon, you’ll develop a collection of marketing strategies that work, and weed out all the costly ones. Now that’s a business success formula, and the real benefit of testing and measuring.