|
|
|
Test Your Advertising While You Do It
Advertising is expensive. You’re buying space in a newspaper or
magazine, airtime on radio or television, or some other medium to carry
your message; how do you know it’s working?
How do you know how well it’s
working?
Every time you run an advertisement you need to be thinking about
testing it and measuring the results as well.
Only by testing and measuring
your advertising can you have a good chance at being confident that it’s
going to do what you want it to do.
It’s just like changing the suspension settings on a racing car then
giving it a run around the track. By testing the handling of the vehicle
and measuring its performance in a real-life driving situation the crew
can tell if their new settings are working better than before the
change.
There’s nothing worse than simply placing an advertisement, letting it
run and then trying to decide whether or not it made a contribution to
your sales, yet this is what far too many business owners do every week.
What usually happens is that if sales rise the perception is that the ad
was ‘good’ and if sales don’t rise the ad was ‘bad’.
But leads and sales aren’t the only way to test and measure the
effectiveness of your advertising. You might have a good advertisement
that brings in some extra sales, but how do you know it’s the best
advertisement you could have run?
Every advertisement is an
opportunity for research and the biggest expense is in the cost of
running it; the testing and measuring cost very little extra.
Every Advertisement has Variables
There are a number of variables in every advertisement. For this example
we’ll use a print advertisement in a newspaper, but the same principles
will apply to any advertising communication:
1. The headline
2. The illustration
3. The body copy
4. The offer you’ve made
5. The layout
6. The size of the advertisement
7. The newspaper in which it runs
Each of these elements is a variable with opportunities for
experimentation. Each element contributes to the overall success of your
advertisement and can be optimized through testing and measuring.
Think about how you look at an
advertisement and you’ll have a better idea of how each element
interacts with the others and plays a part in the success of the whole
package. First is the headline; it’s got to attract your attention or
you won’t read the rest of the ad.
The Headline and the Offer
Headlines can be changed fairly easily. They usually sum up the offer
you’re making to your prospects and how they’re worded can make a big
difference to the success of your ad. You might, for instance, be
reducing the cost of a $20 item by $2, but does your headline say “$2
off” or “10% off”? To find out for sure which is the most effective, try
changing the headline in consecutive advertisements. And is the product
you’re offering the most attractive to your customers? You might make an
offer of another product and get a better response – it’s also worth a
try.
The Copy and the Illustration
The copy in the body of your advertisement is where people get the
details of your offer. If the headline gets their attention and interest
they’ll start reading the rest of the details until they feel they have
enough information to make a preliminary decision about their response.
To find out which details are the most important to consumers you can
experiment with their order in the copy.
The illustration is another critical part of your advertisement. It
should support the headline and help communicate your offer. Do you show
the product in use? Do you just show it on its own? Do you need color or
will black and white be sufficient? More chances for experimentation are
here.
The Layout and the Size
The layout is another variable – really, a set of variables. Where you
place the elements of the ad, what size each has, and whether you put a
border on it or not are all variables and decisions you need to make.
The layout of the ad is critical to its success and you need to be sure
your layout is the most effective way of presenting your offer.
The size of the advertisement is usually related to the response it
gets. The bigger it is, the better, but also the more expensive.
Doubling the size of the ad won’t necessarily double the response but it
will certainly double the cost. Find the size of the advertisement that
gives you the best return on your investment and don’t be too quick to
take a small size to save money – it could actually be costing you money
to run an advertisement that is so small nobody notices.
The Advertising Medium
It’s also a good idea to test one publication against another. You might
get a lower cost from one paper but find the other, more expensive one
is a far better investment. You won’t be sure unless you’ve tried the
same advertisement in both papers and measure the results.
Testing and Measuring
Here’s a simple way to try various combinations of offers and
advertisements – use them as the basis of leaflets for a letterbox
distribution. Put a different coupon in each variety of leaflet, or use
different phone numbers or some other way so you can tell which leaflet
got the best response. It’s inexpensive market research and gives you
instant feedback that can help you decide before you start spending
media money.
You have to have a measurement
system that collects and records the responses you get from every
experiment you try. You can even extend it to track which advertisements
attract the leads that are the most likely to convert to sales. Test and
measure every advertisement you run and you’ll build up a very useful
bank of promotional information.
When you do feel you’ve found the magic formula, great. But don’t stop
your testing and measuring. Even the best advertisement will run its
course and begin to lose its impact, and because of the testing and
measuring you’ve been doing you’ll be able to come up with something
even better when you have to.
|
|
