We all hate wasting money, but if you do not know what response you got to your adverts or mailings, you are in danger of throwing money down the drain, unless you test and measure your marketing. Let me explain…

Why is testing important? When you know how many responses you generated, how many converted to customers and what they spent, you can calculate whether this is a profitable way to grow your organization.

Testing is actually a part of what we do everyday. We taste samples of new products in supermarkets before we buy, we test drive cars before we buy them and we take trial subscriptions to services before we decide to commit to a longer term subscription, so why do we not include testing in our everyday marketing activities.

In reality, this is because we are usually overly keen to complete the task and get the marketing activity done. Often organisations find the concept of testing a campaign prior to rolling it out, frustrating and some even consider it a waste of time…that is until the campaign fails to achieve the expected results and the campaign has made a loss.

FACT: A staggering 80% of marketing activity does not achieve the desired results.

If you take this fact on board and understand that a simple tweak or change to the headline, the offer, the mailing list or even the timing of when it is sent could make all the difference to achieving a successful campaign. But the truth is that you won’t know until you have tested between 10 – 15% of the campaign budget and discovered which combination provides the best return.

Having made the commitment to test the campaign, there is little point in going to the trouble of conducting the test unless you follow up with measurement and analysis of the results. This measurement and analysis of the results will give you the essential information upon which to base decisions about the feasibility of the campaign roll out.

For example, a mailing to 1000 prospects yields 15 responses. Each response results in an average sale of £200 with a profit margin of 40%. Each sale contributes £80 towards your organization’s overheads and a total of £1,200 overall (£80 x the 15 responses). The cost of the mailing is £1 each or £1000 in total, so you have made a net profit of £200 from this one test, not to mention the 15 new customers which will spend with you time and time again.

When you know the power of testing and measuring, you can learn from your test campaigns what works and what doesn’t with the minimum financial outlay. The simple message is to continuously improve your marketing activity through testing and measuring as you go along, rather than putting all your eggs in one basket with one campaign and just hoping for a good response.

Nicola Bury is the Managing Director of Haybury Marketing, a firm of marketing specialists that help small and medium sized business organizations to market themselves through accountable, measurable marketing techniques. Call 028 9048 8948, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit www.hayburymarketing.com.