You Need to Know These 2 Marketing Test Tips to Maximize Your Traffic & Sales Potential!

The purpose of testing is to demand maximum performance from all your marketing efforts.

If one person in your BDC averages 100 communications per day (either by email, phone, text, etc.), doesn’t it make sense to find the message that gets twice as many responses or appointments with the same amount of effort?

If getting an appointment to show is how you measure your BDC's closing percentage... instead of closing one sales call out of 15, you could identify a script that closes one out of eight, you’d immediately double the productivity of your BDC.

You can easily achieve immediate increases in sales and profits merely by testing.

You, or your team, should try different approaches, different hot-button focuses, different emails, different specially priced offers, different “bumps” or upgrades or different follow-up offers.

Each day or week review the specific performance of each test approach, then analyze the data. If a specific new twist or experiment on your basic sales approach out-produces the old approach by 25%-50%, doesn’t it make sense for everyone to start using this new approach?

Keep experimenting to come up with even better approaches that outpull your current “control.” Your control is the concept, approach, offer, or sales pitch that is consistently proven, through comparative testing, to be the best performer you’ve been using.

One thing you’ll discover when you start testing variables is that the difference in response or results can be extreme from just a small shift.

If you only have time to test one thing... you must always put your Google Adwords account to the test

Digital is such a fast changing and always evolving marketing channel. What worked yesterday may not work today.

Many dealers to this day still recognize J&L Marketing as a direct mail event company. What they don't know is that digital makes up the majority of our business today. This all came from testing different marketing channels.

I recently wrote an article about How Artificial Intelligence Will Make You a Better Digital Marketer. I wrote it after a conversation I had with a 12-rooftop dealer. He mentioned a few of his frustrations with digital marketing and was questioning whether it really increased his sales.

Over the last four years he had worked with three different digital agencies and only saw marginal improvements. He didn’t think his campaigns were adjusted according to what the market was doing.

The worst part was he had no idea nor did anyone on his team know what changes were being made and the impact those changes had on results.

I asked him if he had ever worked with anyone who utilized artificial intelligence (AI) correctly. I could tell he had heard of AI was but wasn't exactly sure, so I began to explain a little bit to him about AI and how it works.

AI is what happens when a computer system is able to make decisions that would normally require human intelligence.

It reduces human error, but, more importantly, it allows us to do more, be more specific, and gain better results from processes that would otherwise be more manual and time consuming.

With digital marketing, this means that the optimization that’s so critical for success to marketing campaigns can primarily be done through AI. It allows digital marketers to manage campaigns more efficiently and optimize and adjust those campaigns more frequently and in less time.

AI has single handily increased my own dealership's digital marketing results by almost 200%! That's not an exaggeration - that's real data. AI allows us to identify on the fly what works best and what isn't cutting it. In a nutshell... that is exactly the main goal of all testing.

Now, all J&L digital clients benefit from this. We are literally optimizing accounts with almost 400 tweaks or changes per day. Most dealers are lucky if their Google Adwords account is optimized 400 times a week.

If you have the capacity to test two things... you must always test your direct response marketing

So far we’ve talked mostly about digital marketing. But, don't forget your e-mail and direct mail.

If you are using direct mail and email I'll assume it's probably used to inspire people to immediately drive down and visit your showroom. Or... call you. Or... respond to some type of call to action on your website or landing page.

Before you mail to 50,000 untested people over the next 6 to 12-months... and spend good money on postage and costs, do some A/B testing of one version of your mailing piece against another.

Or... one list vs another. Remember the key to all A/B testing is that they are identical except for one change. You must isolate down to a single variable or the test is not worth much.

You can test the same direct mail piece with two different headlines. Or... you can try different body copy with the same headlines. Try different offers. Try different creative or graphic design elements.

Test as many things as possible in the smallest possible arena before you risk a big part of your advertising budget on one expensive marketing approach to a large audience.

Why guess what the market wants, what price they’re willing to pay or what proposition they'll respond to when the marketplace is willing and eager to tell you the answer?

If you use email and direct mail, absolutely get your data right with testing - know who you should target. Data is the most important. Your offer is the next priority.

If you want people to read your ad you have to have a strong headline. It's your "ad" for the "ad". Most headlines don’t communicate a “What’s in it for me?” result that the prospect or client can expect to receive.

If you want a high response... it must do so. If you want to see some of our most successful headlines you can go to my LinkedIn article - How to Make People Pay More Attention to Your Ads - 5 Sure Fire Headlines.

What you can test with email and direct mail is unlimited. You can have much higher open rates, click through rates, calls, form fills, responses and showroom traffic for the same money just by testing alternatives against each other.

• By testing one list vs another.
• By trying different copy.
• By trying one offer vs another.
• One price against another.
• One guarantee against another.
• One graphic design vs another.
• One mail piece vs another.

Remember there are two rules in marketing 1) Test everything and 2) See rule #1

A dealer used two digital marketing approaches. In one, they relied solely on online data and research; in the other, the strategy incorporated their own DMS data (Yes, what can be accomplished with paid search and your own DMS date will blow you away! ) as well as online data.

The strategy that utilized both online and offline data doubled results with significantly less ad spend. You can view the case study here.

An auto manufacturer tested two different landing pages for a 90-day digital marketing campaign. In one, the landing page was generic and covered a variety of products the company offered. The second, was very relevant to the customers specific search.

The second option tripled results with the exact same budget!

A 14-rooftop dealer who consistently runs email and direct mail campaigns ran the exact same offer, same date, same list... everything was the same except they split everything in two for an A/B split. They wanted to test two headlines:

1. How to Upgrade Your Vehicle & Lower Your Payment with No Money Down!
2. Spring Savings Event!

The first headline trounced the second headline by 87 percent.

In all these cases, these companies would not have known the best results without testing. The results are often surprising. You can have far more sales, leads and showroom traffic for the same money just by testing alternatives against each other.

The control group test

Let’s talk about control group testing. One of our publicly traded auto group clients requests that we do control group testing on every campaign we run.

A control group is where we would run all the data analytics to identify who should be targeted for a marketing campaign. Once that is decided we randomly remove ten percent of the target group and exclude them from the marketing the other ninety percent will receive.

After the campaign is over we then go back and measure the response, leads and sales generated from the people we marketed to and compare it to the people who should have been marketed to - but were excluded.

This provides a very clear picture of the actual "uplift" the marketing campaign generated. This particular auto group was testing very specific service marketing event campaigns.

The average uplift is 120 percent.

This allows them to know with absolute certainty that the program is worth it because the average sales increase is significantly higher then their initial investment.

Control group testing is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to test. Attribution is a key buzzword. In the end, you want to know, is it worth my investment?

Did I sell more vehicles, parts or service because of the marketing or not? Control group testing is a quick way to answer that.

It can be done on anything you do that involves a target list.

Where do you start?

I'd start simple. First, start doing control group testing.

Then make a list of the activities or marketing you do in your dealership that produces measurable results. Include all processes where persuasion or influence are important to your success. For example; Google Adwords, sales pitches, setting phone appointments, advertising, direct mail, e-mail, etc.

Next, identify the key transitional elements in each of those activities (example: landing pages, headlines, phone scripts, lists, Dynamic Marketing Differentiators, etc.).

Then come up with at least two alternative ways or approaches to those activities. Then conservatively test these different approaches against your current “control” approach.

You’ll be surprised at how many of your new tests outperform your old standards. Or even better... how many new "great ideas" you would have normally just launched - and discovered they tested worse - allowing you to stick with the more successful standard you already have in place.

If you want more information on a few proven and tested marketing approaches...

Just say...   "Yes! I want more information." and click here and schedule a quick call.

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Be unique and show up like nobody else!

Scott

Scott Joseph is an automotive dealer and CEO of J&L Marketing. With nearly 3 decades of automotive sales, marketing and leadership experience, he helps automotive clients grow predictable sales with his engineered proven marketing process.