How will you know what works? 

You must test everything!  Really successful marketers live and die by their test results.  There has really only been one very successful type of marketing–scientific marketing.

Unfortunately, some people in their marketing simply stumble around until they acheive some success.  Then they pat themselves on their backs and pronounce themselves “good marketers.”  My response is, “Good compared to what?” to which they too often reply, “Good, compared to what I used to be.”  What you “used to be?”

Indeed!

What a narrow, self-limiting, self-centered, and self-deceptive attitude!  How about asking yourself, “Is this good compared to what is possible?”  All at once you have changed the entire playing field!

In fact, you have just broadened your thinking and your horizons infinitely!  The only way you can engage in this realm is to test everything, go with the results, and test again!

For years I have told my clients that unless you can positively track every marketing dollar you spend, you must consider it a dollar wasted.  While to the self-deluded this may seem harsh and unnecessary, I reply, “Why wouldn’t you want to know the result of every marketing dollar you spend?”  This is one of the foundations of testing.

With the testing tools available today, and many are very simple, it is a shame, yea, foolhardy, to ignore them.  There are many tools both online and offline to do testing of every element of your marketing program.

There are many people in your market who know exactly what is and is not working and what you should be doing or the products or services you should be offering.  Who are they?  They are your customers!  BUT you must ask them!

With a little inducement and encouragement, most people are willing to offer their opinions to a few, short and well-designed questions.  This process also helps with the psychological principle of ownership.  When we contribute our opinions to some project, we have the warm feeling that it is “our” project.  This is part of the process I call “affinity bonding” which we will discuss in more detail later.

To your business success!

Paul Elliott
Marketing With Unbelievable Guarantees!™
http://www.MarketingSuccessBlueprint.com/blog

© 2008, Paul Elliott, All rights reserved world wide.