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.

And if you haven’t, you really ought to.

The changes could have a profound affect for all businesses. Google announced these changes on 27.10.2010 stating that “Place Search” will give searchers a “faster, easier way to find local information”.

It’s hard to know right now what the end result will be. All I know is that local search on Google will never be the same again.

I have already seen one client that occupied position A. in the “7 pack” Local listing go down to position D.

Initial Impressions Are This…

My initial findings are telling me that the new “Place Search” (as Google are calling it) is focusing on both the local element of the business as well as their organic Google listing.

This means that what used to work will no longer work, and the you’ll need to reassess your SEO efforts to ensure your listing doesn’t suffer.

The listings have also moved. Previously the map that appeared on Google with the red pins and the 7 listings would appear in the top left hand corner. Now it appears on the right-hand side.

Experts that I have been speaking with believe that things will settle down soon and a clearer picture will be evident of exactly what Google is aiming for with these changes.

At the moment all we know is, things are a changing.

Part Three will now show you how to get maximum impact from your articles, how to increase your chances substantially of getting them read, and how to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

One of key tactics in not only improving the visibility of your article, but also having it read by people, is the headline. In this respect it is no different to a newspaper – headlines are designed to entice readers to want to read the newspaper, and the same applies with your articles.

This Is The Single Most Important Aspect of Your Article

Your headline should of course be relevant to the content of the article, but it should also grab immediate attention. This is because you not only want the article to stand out amongst the crowd of other articles out there, but you also want it to be read.

You could have the most informative and best quality article ever written, but if the headline isn’t compelling and doesn’t convince your audience to read it, then your article is essentially useless. It is a good idea to write your article first, and then think of a suitable headline after.

In fact I would suggest that you write more than one headline, perhaps up to ten headlines to see which one you think is the best. This sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it? But believe me, it is not and it is definitely worth it too.

Do Not Do This

One thing that your article should not do is be promotional. Your article should not ’sell’ anything within the content of the article, as this would more than likely not be accepted for submission. Instead of selling your products or services, your article should be informative, compelling, educational and helpful for its reader.

This in itself is often enough to convince those reading it that they should visit your website, where they can find out more about you and your products or services. Once they arrive at your website, this is where you can do the selling.

Why It Really Does Pay To Be Different

There is a saying in marketing circles (in fact its the title of a book too) which is ‘differentiate or die’.

The fact is that if you are considered the same as or very similar to other businesses in your field or sector, you need to act quickly to differentiate yourself. Once again this may sound like hard work, but number one; it is not hard work, and number two; it is more than worth your while doing it.

First of all you need to ask yourself this question: “What do you have or provide or do that will encourage prospects to choose you, rather than one of your competitors?”

Well, if you implement an article marketing strategy you’ll find that by putting the name of your company into a search engine such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing, you’ll have multiple listings appear from a variety of credible sources and websites.

This would be a good start. It builds credibility, and prospects should be impressed and reassured, and feel that your business is one that they’d like to be involved with. Are your competitors listed multiple times across the internet? Why not have a look?

When you hear me mention about credibility and the correct positioning of both you and your business, this is what I mean. Having a presence and an authority is critical in any business, and you may have heard it many times but perception is reality. If you can get these key aspects in place they will form the solid, sound foundation to your empire from which everything else is built on

When you compare the benefits and advantages that credibility can bring to your business, it makes it a no-brainer in my opinion. It’s relatively easy and quick to implement and the ROI (Return On Investment) could be huge. Do you think your competitors are focusing on improving and increasing their credibility? I very much doubt it.

This is possibly due to the fact that the concept of video marketing is still relatively new, and this could mean that most business owners simply do not understand how to use it effectively.

So if you’re business is not using video at the moment, then this is potentially good news for you, and bad news for your competition. If you could start creating some videos about your business, you could steal a march on your competitors.

The Good News Is

Your competitors are unlikely to be using video marketing yet, and so this could be happy days for you and your business. And as you may have read in my previous article about video marketing, it is neither very difficult or expensive to create and produce a video.

In fact the very concept of video marketing has grown in popularity hugely in recent years, mainly due to substantial improvements and the greater availability of affordable technology. Digital and HD (High Definition) camcorders are now relatively inexpensive to buy compared to when they were first launched, and this has allowed many more people to film and upload their videos for all the world to see.

This Is Why Video Is So Powerful

And this is without doubt one of the assets, the power if you like, of video marketing. It allows your business to capture the imagination of your prospects, and be completely honest and transparent about the products and services that you are offering.

Video also gives you the opportunity to enhance your reputation in the process. It can of course, also allow you to demonstrate in a few seconds on video, what would potentially take longer to explain in audio or in print.

Video marketing has now emerged as possibly the fastest, most efficient and persuasive mode of online marketing available, hence the importance that I believe it has as part of a successful marketing campaign.

But despite the fact that some larger corporations are now using it, the small and medium sized business community still appears to be lagging behind. They still do not appear to have grasped the fact that video marketing can be hugely beneficial in attracting more interest in what they are selling.

And It Gets Even Better For You

Fortunately for you, this is still great news for your business as your competition are unlikely to be using it either.

One of the keys to the success of video marketing has been the popularity of the You Tube website. Since the creation of You Tube a number of other video sharing sites have emerged on to the scene, however You Tube remains the one that is the most popular. In fact, such was the success of You Tube that in October 2006, internet giant Google purchased the site for a reported $1.65 billion. Yes that was billion with a ‘b’!

And in 2008, according to a service called Alexa, You Tube was the second most trafficked site in the world, getting 60 million unique views per month. Alexa is a well respected source of online information that has built an unrivaled source of information regarding websites, including visitor statistics, related links and much more. Given these facts, do you think it may be beneficial to your business to have a presence on a site that has 15 million visitors each and every week? I think you know the answer.

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.

And one of the first things to often be reduced is, you’ve guessed it, a marketing budget. Hmm, big, big mistake!

Now I know you’re possibly all thinking “Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?” but let me explain why I feel it is a huge mistake.

First of all, pretty much every business will be thinking the same way, so by continuing to market your business relatively aggressively you could pick up additional business from your marketing budget cutting competitors.

Secondly, the single biggest challenge in a recession is getting people to spend money and if you’re not advertising special deals, services, packages – whatever it is you’re doing, you’re not going to bring in the level of sales that you need.

I’m not talking about throwing silly money at advertising (in fact, this is something I would NEVER advise, let alone in a recession) but strategic, targeted and focused campaigns with a specific goal in mind.

A recession can sometimes help a business

Strange statement some of you may think eh? Well, let me tell you that in the leaner times, a business often has to adapt much more stringent and focused tactics and strategies – and these can often set a good tone for future business.

To succeed in a recession, every part of your marketing campaign should be accountable so that you know how to react in a down market, to get maximum returns for all the money you invest in marketing. Equally though, this should be your strategy when the good times return too. You need to test, tweak and improve everything, and know where your sales are coming from (ie: which form of advertising).

Know your unique selling proposition

Next, you have to take a look at your unique selling proposition, as this is what helps grab the attention of prospective customers. It helps differentiate you from your competitors. So if you find that your USP does not clearly tell prospects how they will benefit from using your product or services, you may end up an irrelevant commodity.

It is important that your USP be prominent, easily found and is updated in your TV, direct, mail, website and all other marketing media. In fact, before you start your new marketing campaign, you should place your USP at the forefront of your marketing campaign – this is absolutely critical to success and something that many of your competitors will NOT be doing.

Ok, so that’s it for this post. I’ll be back in a few days with some more strategies and as ever, if you have any questions then please do contact me.

So obviously, the idea would be to have a list of prospective customers to send your emails to, right?

It’s an old adage in the internet marketing world that “the money is in the list”. This is most certainly true to a degree, but a word of warning in that a large list is not necessarily best.

That may shock a few people. Surely a large list is better than a small list? Well yes, but it all boils down to the quality of that list. It can be quite easy to build a large list but what I opt for is a list of educated, highly targeted prospects, not a list comprising of dozens of ‘tire kickers’ who are not really interested in your business, or your emails for that matter.

I have learned this over the years, and so I can now pass my knowledge on to you.

What the professionals do

The art is in ensuring that people that opt in to your email list have a valid reason for doing so. Sure, you’re always going to get some time wasters and ‘tire kickers’ as they’re called, but it is very possible to minimize that.

Having a quality, valuable call to action that your prospect is genuinely interested in is a great way to get them to opt in to your list. Once you’ve got them, you need to give them more quality, valuable content – not too much, but just enough.

You don’t want to bombard them with emails, but educate them on your products and services and let them get to know you better. This develops trust, credibility and rapport.

Ok, well I think that should keep you motivated until my next post, so see you all soon.

Quite often the email addresses that are entered into forms on web pages and squeeze pages (a form of web page that solely prompts you to give your name and email address) are false, as people provide this information just to gain entrance to sites or to see what comes next. The people who are in this email list will not have any interest in whatever you have to sell. So sending them emails about your company or product proves to be worthless.

At the most, and if you are lucky, you may only find about 1% of them clicking to your site through the link you send in the emails. However, I believe that it is better to have a quality list of people where you are sure that anywhere between 20-80% of them will click to your site when you send them an email.

Factors affecting list quality

When you speak of list quality, you have to realize that this is a trait in email lists that is determined by various factors. This is why to maintain your list quality; you will have to follow an effective and proven strategy when you sell products that lead to subscribers subscribing to your list.

So if you have a product to sell, it is often more effective to send prospective clients two emails that have links which lead to high quality information, or perhaps some audio or some software before you actually send them an email that leads to the page that will be selling your products.

This is because the clients on your list who will be most responsive to your offers will be prepared to wait to see what comes next, and they will hopefully appreciate some quality, free information or audio as a ‘thank you’ for signing up to your email list.

Of course, most autoresponder systems now allow you monitor which emails are opened and which links within that email are clicked, so you can easily and effectively monitor your list to see how responsive it is.

Testimonials are generally taken lightly, as just the feedback provided by customers about your product or services and is often not used to its full potential. Today I will discuss why you should use these at every opportunity to increase your customer conversion rates.

Did you know that one of the key factors that will ensure the success of a sales letter is having testimonials. This is because these testimonials add further credibility and efficiency to the product or service that you’re offering.

This is because testimonials form part of what is known as ‘social proof’. As human beings, we love social proof and either following other people in what they do or having someone reccommend something to us.

Place testimonials on your site

It can be extremely worthwhile to place your customer testimonials on your website, so that all potential clients can see for themselves what others think of your products or services.

I always try to use as much information as possible about the person giving me the testimonial, so their full name and town/city, plus their full testimonial – rather than using a condensed version of it.

The more specific a testimonial, the better. One that goes into detail about why your product/service is so valuable and exactly what you did for them will really stand out to your prospects, and they will be able to start visualizing themselves using your company’s services.

Don’t be afraid to ask for testimonials

This is something that few businesses actually do, and that is to ask for a testimonial. And it is so easy to execute too.

All you have to do is once a client has bought your product or used your service, you simply send them out a ‘thank you’ card/letter thanking them for using your company’s services, and you then ask them to tell you about their experience with your company.

You could also mention that this may be used on your website or in your shop/office and most people will like that too, as it gives them some kind of recognition as a customer.

So you can see how easy it is to get testimonials from clients that will serve as social proof to prospects as to why they should use your company. So, what are you waiting for, get writing to those clients who have used your services this past month!

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I am going to reveal today some strategies about how it is possible for you to use the traditional offline marketing technique of referrals.

Referrals, particularly in the current economic climate where competition is fierce and businesses are falling by the wayside every week, are a crucial part of staying one step ahead of your competition.

The main benefits of referrals are that first of all, they are a very cheap (in many cases free) means of acquiring new clients to add to your business, but perhaps more importantly, there is the credibility factor to consider.

If the referral is coming from a business owner to another business owner, this can be hugely significant. Even if the referral is coming from a friend of the business owner, it still carries a lot of credibility and can help your cause no end.

So now you may be wondering how you can actually get referrals for your business. Referrals are mostly available from three sources; existing clients, your networking, associates and (as I’ve already mentioned) people that you know on a social basis like your family and friends.

As far as family and friends are concerned, you simply need to talk about the business that you have (if they are not already aware of it) and ask them if they know of any other businesses which may be interested in your services.

If they do, would they be able to mention your services to this business? You can also offer an ethical incentive for friends and family, such as a £50 gift for each converted referral.

You will often find that amongst all your family and friends, that most will know a business owner – and of course that business owner will then in turn know several more business owners – and so it goes on.

Provide optimum customer service

However in case of existing customers, you should use a slightly different approach. You have to aim at providing optimal service (as you want to any way) and if they’re happy (which they should be) they may refer your product or services to their acquaintances.

Or, you could always ask them. Based upon their experiences, you could say to a ‘happy customer’ “Well Mr. Business Owner, I would be more than happy to give the same quality service to other businesses in the area, could you please recommend any that you know/deal with?”

A referral from a fellow business owner, particularly one who is singing your praises, is hugely valuable in terms of your credibility.

Similarly, if you visit social networking sites (Linked In and Facebook to name a couple) on a regular basis, keep a lookout for business professionals and people who will benefit from your product and services. Tell them about your business and what you can offer, and they will not hesitate from referring you to others and even to use your services themselves.

Incentives to mention your services

A great strategy that you can use to get referrals is to offer some type of an incentive. These incentives may range from a referral fee for successful conversions to a small free gift or service – depending on the circumstances and the type of referral.

In terms of gifts, you often don’t need to send anything expensive, even a gift card or free sample of your products is more than enough. Just the thought that you remember them will make it obligatory for them to refer your product or services to someone they know.

So remember to strive to always offer high levels of customer service as this leads to happy customers which can eventually lead to a goldmine of referrals. It is such a powerful strategy with proven success that I encourage you to go out there today with the aim of getting referrals for your business.