Testing is the keystone of successful marketing. Those that do it properly will flourish and those that don’t do it often lose a lot of money.

So why is it that almost no one does it?

Well, it may not at first glance appear to be the most ’sexy’ of things. It takes time, and often as business owners we’re looking for that quick fix, that ’silver bullet’ aren’t we?

Do you implement a marketing strategy (it could be your website, a direct mailing, some Google Adwords perhaps) and wonder to yourself  “is this going to work?”.

You’re not alone.

Even I Do Not Have A Crystal Ball

In fact I have business owners that ask me “Do you think this will work?” and “What about Google Adwords, should I do it?” and “What do you think about Direct Mail, does it work?”

And the short answer is “I don’t know – I cannot predict the future”.  I can often tell you if you’ve done something really stupid with an advert or a website or a Direct Mail piece..

But as far as predicting how your target market is going to react to your strategy then neither me or anyone else can tell you. This is why you need to test.

This Could Cost YOU Thousands…

So, why don’t more business owners do it then?

Well, in my experience it’s because they don’t know that they should be. They also don’t understand the implications of NOT testing either, which is scary.

I’ve also come across businesses that worry if they test a Direct Mail piece or a headline on their website and it fails miserably that they’ll do their business some damage, or will have wasted a load of cash.

This is utter rubbish.

Even if a strategy doesn’t work, all you’ll do is lose a few potential clients. But then that is why you TEST, because another Direct Mail piece (for example) may get those that didn’t buy before, to buy this time around.

Testing is NOT like changing the direction of your business FOREVER: you CAN change your mind, you can tweak it and possibly revert to how things were.

If You Want to be Successful

When you look at businesses with successful marketing systems you may just assume that they struck it lucky, or that they got some system “out of a box”.

I can tell you they didn’t.

Their systems were put together over a period of time, with plenty of effort and trials and tribulations, and there would have been mistakes along the way, no doubt about it.

But the scary truth is, if you aren’t testing ALL of your marketing, you are potentially throwing money down the drain, as well as limiting your income.

Vilfredo Pareto’s principal finding, whether you’ve heard of him or not, is an important factor in YOUR business, just as it is in mine.

So I’ll explain who is to you, shall I?…

Well it dates back to 1906 when Pareto, an Italian economist, observed that 80% of the land in Italy belonged to 20% of the population.

Aha, I hear you say! Now you know what I’m talking about…

So in terms of your business this means that:

> 80% of your sales come from just 20% of your marketing efforts.

> 80% of your sales come from just 20% of your clients or customers.

> 80% of your profits come from just 20% of your products or services.

> 80% of your problems come from just 20% of your clients or customers.

You get the point…

“Yes, but my business is different…”

Now of course the numbers in your business won’t necessarily be exactly as above, but it may be 65/35 or 70/30 or even 90/10, but this principal DOES work. In EVERY business, including yours.

This is relevant because it highlights to you where you should be concentrating your efforts more. That’s not to say that you exclude the under performing areas entirely, but invest more time, money and energy in those that are producing the best results.

This applies whether its clients, adverts, keywords or Joint Venture partners.

“If you’re going to lose, it is better to lose quickly”. My friend thought that sounded a little negative, a tad defeatist even.

The fact is it’s not, not at all.

Most Businesses Make this Fatal Mistake

You see there are many business owners who will cling on to a dead or dying lead or like a dog to a bone. I am all for being persistent and proactive, and I teach my clients that they should always follow up with their prospects (as well as clients).

But there really does come a point when you need to let go. So you should not be afraid of the word “no”.

That way you can put that prospect to bed (so to speak). You could possibly put them into a much less labour-intensive follow-up sequence, perhaps by sending them emails from time to time.

This means you can then invest your all important time more productively with those prospects who might still say “yes” to your products or services.

If They’ve Not Said “No” Why Not Still Chase Them?

Well, its part of human nature to not like to tell people “no”. And so very often we fob people off instead of telling them the truth. So sometimes YOU have to go with your gut feeling. After all, its YOUR time and energy.

I guess it boils down to this:

Don’t be afraid to ask your prospect for a decision. If you done all you can in educating them about your products and services, then get them to take action. Give them an offer.

Of they’re interested they’ll tell you. If they don’t take you up on the offer then revert to what you’ve seen in the post.

I know it sounds simple. But it’s the most effective way to move forward. Don’t waste time chasing potentially dead wood.

Your prospects’ PERCEPTION of you is critical to the success of you and your business – even more so than the actual TRUTH in fact.

How they see and perceive you is vitally important. based upon this they will choose to want to do business with you, or not. So there is a lot hinging on this, isn’t there?

I have recorded a short video for you that highlights 3 KEY reasons why your perception is critical to your business:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So why are testimonials so useful? And how can they be used to their absolute advantage? … To YOUR absolute advantage?…

They should be used in ALL of your marketing materials. So your website (if you have one, if not you should have one), your leaflets, pamphlets and brochures…. and even in your newspaper, magazine or Yellow Pages adverts.

And if you have an office – use them there too. Have them on your wall, in a folder or book so that prospects can read them.

Why this Works so Well

Testimonials help you in 3 main ways:

1) They set you apart from your competition, who may not use testimonials at all, or if they do they use them the wrong way. By using them effectively you will LOOK different, meaning you must BE different, right?

2) If your business offers slightly different services that your competitors do not, your customers can highlight this in their testimonials. THEY will appreciate why you’re different to everyone else. And spelling this out in a testimonial will be hugely powerful for you.

3) This is THE most important aspect. Testimonials will allow you to use your marketing to your advantage. They will allow you to be able to eliminate the argument of price, because prospects will see YOU as a clear EXPERT in your field.

Why believe YOU?

Testimonials use something called ’social proof’ (something I write about in my book, which you can see here) and this is extremely powerful. But why?

Well, the main reason is that its all well and good YOU telling people that you are good at what you do. But when a third party (someone else) says it for you, it has a lot more influence.

Imagine a friend or someone you know recommending a restaurant to you. You may have passed this restaurant a few times before and thought to yourself that it looks like a nice place to go and have a meal.

But when someone else says it too, it carries so much more weight. So much so that you’d probably give it a try based upon their recommendation.

So this is why they work, and why using them EFFECTIVELY is another key to the success of your business. And also do not be afraid of asking for them either, as people are often more than happy to oblige.

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The report as a whole identifies some Huge Myths that you probably believe about your business.

The report comes in 2 parts – Part One is 36 pages long – and whilst that might seem a bit of a Mammoth , it goes in to a lot of detail about areas such as:

• Why working HARDER does not mean you’ll be Successful
• Why reducing Your fees is a HUGE mistake – even in this economy
• How Perception is Everything
• Why copying other businesses is often the WRONG thing to do
• Why too many Referrals is a BAD thing
• What Dating and running Your Business have in common
• The 5 reasons to have High Prices

Part Two, called The Missing Myth, looks at an area that you may not have considered. Its an area that has helped a lot of businesses in the past (including mine), and I know that it will help yours too.

If you’d like a copy of the report, you can send an email to Report @ SimonPaulThurston.com – and please indicate the type business that you have.

But as you’ll know if you’ve read my book (and if you have not, you can get a copy of it here – all proceeds going to a local cause), I write about just how stupid larger companies and corporations are with business decisions, and especially about their marketing.

Because they typically have more money than sense, they seemingly just throw money away as if it were going out of fashion.

Anyway, someone who I consider to be one of my mentors has recently posted on his blog a lot more eloquently than I could about one such company. It is very interesting reading indeed, and I suggest you take a look.

My mentor’s name by the way is the great Drayton Bird, and you can read his post by clicking on this link here.

Enjoy!

However, I thought that a recent radio interview that I had may help, and so do have a listen to this (by clicking on the button below) and feel free to leave any questions or thoughts below.

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In Part One of this article I discussed why it is important to understand who your market is and why trying to market your product or service to everyone is a huge mistake to make.

Part Two will now go into more detail as to how you can do this quickly and easily, as well as identifying what you should and should not do in order to maximise your success.

When assessing who your ideal potential customers are, you may well already have a reasonable idea based upon the existing customers that you have. If you keep a database or list of your current customers, you should start thinking about grouping them logically based upon current factors – it may be based upon income or age perhaps? This is an ideal way to start and it will get you thinking in the right direction for the future.

Use What You Already Have

Once you have been through your list of current clients, you can then begin to think about future clients and how you can start targeting them. You will of course already have an insight into what your target audience is, based upon the customers that you already have. You simply have to go out there and find more of the same.

And once again, all it takes is a little work and effort on your part, but the results can be astonishingly successful when you do this correctly, so a little effort can go a long way. I cannot emphasise enough that the money and effort that you’ll be saving in the long run will more than outweigh the initial effort that you have to put in to this.

If one of the demographics you wanted to target was income, do you think you and your team could target the more wealthy areas in your town or city? Of course you could.

You Can Probably Start Doing This Today

All this requires in its most basic form is that you or someone from your team drives around in order to establish where the wealth could be, so big houses and luxury cars could be your first reference point. If you’re more than familiar with the town or city that you operate in, and the surrounding areas in the locality, you probably have a good idea already as to where you could begin targeting.

You can also do a lot worse that by using mailing lists too, as these can be very effective for identifying a target market. In the UK (where I am based), there are several decent companies who provide this service, and they allow you to drill down to your target audience based on certain criteria and parametres.

Once you have established some geographical areas (or whichever criteria you have chosen) to target, you need to find the appropriate means to contact them. You could use direct mail which can be very, very effective and bring a good ROI (Return On Investment) if implemented correctly.

Do Not Fall Into This Trap

Success also comes from not just trying once and then giving up because the uptake the first time around was not what you’d hoped. Certainly in the direct mail arena there are creative strategies that involve your prospect receiving four, five or more mailings and so the first mailing is merely the first piece of a larger puzzle.

At this point you may start looking at your business in a slightly different way. You might be assessing and evaluating what the benefits of your products or services are to your customers, rather than focusing on the features. This process will also enable you to eventually create an unstoppable USP, and together with your focus on your business’s benefits to its clients, you can now market your business with a message that has the correct and desired impact

You have also now found your ideal, target market by looking at your current clientele, as well as the aspirations of perhaps where your business would like to be in the future, or indeed where it should be, and this will have you streets ahead of your competition.

I am constantly stressing the important of profit and today I’ll give you some different strategies that you can use in order to create improved profits.

Some of the basic concepts are:

• Increasing the prices of the products and services that you sell
• Sell more during each transaction – up sell, down sell or cross sell
• Monitor cash flow via payments terms – both in and out
• Ensure you track every marketing strategy for effectiveness and ROI

Number one is often something that business owners fully believe that they CANNOT do. They seem to believe that increasing prices, particularly at the moment is commercial suicide.

WRONG!

Clearly there needs to be a valid reason for doing this and so it is all in the positioning. You need to build up the value proposition so that your clients appreciate that prices are going up, but that they are getting back an appreciable improvement in return.

I discuss this in more detail in my book, and will elaborate on this is a future post, but you’ll be surprised at just how easy it is to increase your prices if it is done correctly.

Your Customers Like You, So Give Them More Reason To Do So

Bundling products and services together is a proven and effective way to increase the transaction value for each client (although of course it will not work for every client), and the best bit is – its FREE.

If you were able to up sell, down sell or cross sell to only ten per cent of your current clients, just imagine the effect that would have on your bottom line. And as these are already clients of yours, it has cost you ZERO marketing cost to gain more revenue.

The Life Blood Of Any Business

Ensuring that your cash flow of your business is healthy is absolutely critical to the success of it.

And this means watching what comes in, as well as what goes out. How many of your clients are on 90 day terms? Even if you got them down to 60 days this would have a positive effect on your business.

And its the same with payments going out. Can you negotiate increasing any 30 day terms to 60 days? Once again, the difference that this can make is huge.

What You Track You Can Improve – Or Bin!

How many of you are actually tracking every ounce of marketing that you do?

The sad reality is that in the vast majority of cases that I come across, I get a blank look from the business owner when I mention this.

The analogy that I use to represent what they’re doing is ‘throwing mud at a wall’ as this is quite literally what is happening.

Most businesses have NO idea what is working and what is not, but they just continue to run the same campaigns that they always have.

If you track what Return On Investment (ROI) you;re getting from each marketing method, you can then aim to improve it, maintain it, or get rid of it.

As some very famous Meerkats are currently saying on TV …. SIMPLES!