Test big ideas in marketing

Start with the broadest change to find the greatest impact

By Jurgen Stephan

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Stephan is executive director of new business development at the Hacker Group. He plans and manages the execution of marketing strategy for Hacker Group clients, and he manages the new business team. Most recently, Stephan was vice president of global marketing for Captaris software. He has also held senior-level marketing positions with Rosenthal and US West, which is now Qwest.

Marketers love to test. Whenever a client asks if a campaign will work, we like to say, “Let’s test it!” We’re intellectually curious. We like to learn new things every day. If we don’t know whether a long headline will get a bigger reaction than a short headline, we go for the empirical proof.

Unfortunately, we can’t test everything — at least not all at once. There is always a finite budget. So, we have to set priorities for what we want to learn. A good rule of thumb is to start broad, then narrow your focus.

In most cases, the broadest possible test will be media. The question is which medium has the lowest cost per lead and or cost per sale. While that won’t be the only criterion you use when making a final decision on your media mix — factors like scalability and reach will have an impact, as well — knowledge of costs offer a benchmark.

Within media are other important testing opportunities. You need to test your targeting hypotheses. With direct mail, opt-in email or banner ads, you test lists and media and sub-segments. If you’re trying to cross-sell products, you probably have many data points you can test. Your analytics will show you, for instance, when customers last made purchases, how often they buy and how much they spend.

Another broad area to test is the creative concept. If your team thinks two or more different approaches have merit, test them. That test will be relatively inexpensive for banner ads and prohibitively expensive in a TV campaign. Testing concepts through e-mail is cheap. In direct mail, it’s more expensive. You can try testing in a digital medium, get quick feedback from the market, and then roll out what works in print or TV. You take a certain amount of risk, but it’s better than going with your gut or flipping a coin.

If you’ve determined the best media and decided on a creative concept, your next step is to test offers. Consider the following ideas based on products and goals:

• “Buy one and get one free” is a common offer for consumer packaged goods.

• “Buy before August 31 and get 0% financing for a year” is used for big-ticket items.

• To collect leads, exchange an informative white paper that relates to your products for an e-mail address. Follow up with e-mail marketing messages.

These broad strokes will result in more market information than testing minutiae. Too many marketers are interested in testing minor copy changes or colors. Should we use a pink background or green? Will a photo of a smiling couple or a single woman be more appealing? Should we put a stamp on the outer envelope or use an indicia? Does a signature make a difference in my email? Those things can make a small difference, but rarely is such fine-tuning worth the effort.

You get more bang for your testing buck when you find big ideas to test. Let’s test it!

For more information, visit http://www.hackergroup.com.

CA