“Never spend on an untested idea what you can’t afford to lose.”  You can waste money if you don’t test your idea first.  Testing lets you conserve cash, continuously improve and mitigate risk.

Virtually everything can be tested: new product ideas, new services, new promises, new ways of transacting, new business models, new marketing methods and more.

Here are 3 fast ways to test…

1. Split Run… as old a press run that was genuinely ‘split’ between two presses, this simply means splitting your bulletin, emails, direct mail or other reach into separate and measurable groups, so that you can see which version works better.

2. Adwords… Yes, Google Adwords is not just a great low-cost lead generator.  It’s a research tool.  You can test ad variants and Google will faithfully show which gets more clicks.

3. Follow Up… Call or email a section of recipients of any marketing action that, for some reason, may not be easily measurable.  Survey them.

Note… only vary one factor at a time.  A headline, an offer, a colour… if you test more than one element, you don’t know what was responsible for the gains between batches.

By The Way…

If it’s not measurable, that’s ok.  So long as it’s cheap.  Publicity and other opportunities that may be low-cost and speculative can be fruitful.  But if a significant proportion of your marketing cannot be measured, you have a risk issue that needs mitigating.