Focus: Testing Marketing Promotions

If your business hasn’t developed an infrastructure of Marketing Measurement Systems, then you may not have a Testing Methodology established for your Marketing Promotions. How do you know where to go, if you haven’t kept track of where you have been? Here are 5 considerations in how to test marketing promotions.

1.     Set objectives for each marketing promotion initiative. These objectives must be SMART (see Goals & Objectives) and should have a return on investment objective. These objectives should be tied to one of the strategic plan goals such as New Customer Acquisition, Increasing Revenue per Customer etc.

2.     Establish Baseline data for each type of promotion. You have to start somewhere, so give it your best effort and measure the results. If you “think” that a particular promotion “worked or didn’t work” how do you know if you didn’t get the measurement down to a baseline comparison? Then remember, the real measurement is the return on investment of the promotion.

3.     Establish Control Groups for everything that you want to measure. Once you have established a baseline, then the baseline can become a control group to measure new ideas against. These ideas should include testing the offer, the creative, the message, the prospect lists, the customer segments, and the copy and how you ask for the order. Isolate something specific to test and keep everything else the same. This can be complicated, get professional marketing help.

4.     Establish a coding methodology so you can easily track the results you want to measure. Source codes/tracking codes for each type of promotion and each tested element is necessary or how will you be able to tell what initiated the order?

5.     Stay current and active in testing marketing concepts.  It is really frustrating if someone in your organization says, “We tried that type of promotion back in 1999 and it didn’t work” or “We tried that promotion at my other company (different customers, different products) so I know it will work here” or “I really like that sales rep from the __magazine/newspaper/website so I want to advertise with her.” 

Plan-Implement-Track-Measure-Analyze-Make Educated decisions on how to spend your
marketing budget.