Marketing Tests: Don't Make a Commitment Without an Initial Sample

Marketing tests are crucial to your marketing strategy. At the beginning phase of your business, your budget will be incredibly tight, and saving money will become important. Marketing tests can tell you whether you should pursue a specific sales avenue or explore other options.

No matter how great a specific marketing strategy seems on the surface, it isn’t always the best for you. Marketing tests performed on small samples of prospects can help you avoid over-spending and bring you closer to discovering the most effective marketing campaigns.

The following ideas will help you with marketing tests:

1. When you are thinking of using direct mail, rent a marketing list in small installments. One of the biggest mistakes new business owners make when not using marketing tests is renting thousands of names before even determining if the list will help them.

2. Print out very few marketing materials rather than thousands of fliers or postcards and then conduct marketing tests. You can better track whether your targets are throwing your materials away.

3. When conducting marketing tests, track leads by the source of marketing materials. Tell them you are in the midst of marketing tests and ask them detailed questions about how they heard about you. Then determine what percentage of interest is coming from each marketing activity. Your marketing tests will show you what campaigns are working.

Marketing tests can help you make the right choices about marketing strategies before you waste huge amounts of money on large campaigns. If you don’t perform marketing tests in the beginning and throughout the life of your business, you could spend a great deal of time and money on strategies that don’t work and also not arrive at the perfect marketing strategy for you.

Blogged By: Joshua Feinberg