Testing or Guessing?

Testing, in marketing and advertising, is a process for evaluating potential marketing effectiveness on a small scale prior to rolling it out to the entire world.

Guessing is playing a hunch, crossing your fingers, and hoping your instincts might be right (even though it could be a long shot).

Interestingly, both options are expensive.

Testing requires a serious and dedicated investment and commitment of time and money not only reinforce what you do know, but also to eliminate what you don’t know.

Guessing is easy. It only requires spinning the wheel and hoping (fingers crossed) that your lucky number comes up.

A Basic Testing Model

When it comes to marketing, there are lots of opinions. There are a lot of experts out there to tell you what’s the best thing to do, the right thing to do, the best-selling price, the best headline, the best color, etc.

Your opinions, my opinions, are only guesses.

The reason is that in the marketing process, there truly is only one expert. That expert is the consumer, the buyer, the holder of the checkbook.

Consumers will tell you everything you need to know about your business. But you must be willing to ask, willing to listen, and willing to do something about what you learn as a result of asking and listening.

There is an age-old testing model in marketing that’s simple enough any business can utilize it to some extent. It’s called A-B testing. It works like this. You’re curious what would happen if you raised your price from $39 to $49. Would you sell fewer? Would you sell the same? Could you sell more even at the higher price?

You split your list so one-half receives version A, the other half version B.

The goal and mission of all marketing are to hit the bullseye by every means possible. And testing can keep you on track. It doesn’t get any more or less elementary than this.

Speaking of Bullseyes… Beginning next week my LinkedIn newsletter moves from Sundays to Wednesdays. No bull!