Testing Advertising Strategy

Before spending good money to test advertising initiatives or strategies, it is crucial you do good research. The research process doesn't always have to be incredibly expensive or lengthy, but it should be the foundation for any business decision. A great product or service isn't going to be of much value if you don't have advertising skills or an idea of what is working in the current environment. It is always best to bounce your ideas off a marketing professional before testing advertising ideas. If you're on a tight budget, you can also analyze and research what is working for the competition or outsource the research for a few hundred dollars to a third party that can provide an outside point of view.

Testing advertising can be done in a number of ways depending on what type of media applies to your customers. You will certainly want to test such things as ad copy, target market demographics, and pricing. This may include putting up several dummy websites, using several different demographic groups and styles of copy for testing advertising with direct mail, or testing advertising with pay-per-click campaigns through Google or Facebook.

Deciding on a budget for testing advertising can be difficult. However, without a significant size test group, your test results may not really be representative of what would result in a larger campaign. Some basic minimum guidelines should be considered when testing advertising. For PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns, try $500 over 1-2 weeks with 2-3 ads. For direct mail, try a minimum of 2,500-5,000 pieces within 2 weeks. Testing telemarketing should be done with at least 5,000 plus records, using a minimum of 3-5 different callers.

How to track results from your different campaigns will vary depending on what type of marketing you did. Internet campaigns can easily be tracked by using Google analytics to reveal the source of traffic and where, if any, breakdown in the process occurred, thereby revealing what worked and what didn't. Telemarketing campaigns are pretty straightforward; however, recording calls for coaching and training is a must to see where problems exist and how to fix them. Testing advertising for direct mail campaigns is best done using different toll free numbers for each test group. Tracking tools available with these numbers can show clearly what worked best, and compare the response rates with the closing rates of your staff answering the phones.

Doing a little research up front, tracking results, and continually analyzing them will build an effective advertising strategy for you.