Copy Tip 12: Evaluation
While we’re at the end of the marketing formula … the “E” in MOOVE … by no means is this the least important ingredient … in fact, without this, you could waste incredible amounts of money!
If you don’t track, test, measure and evaluate your marketing … you’ll never have any idea of what works and what doesn’t work.
You’ll be an advertising victim! You’ll keep spending money without any idea of your return on investment.
There is, of course, a better way!
Whether to TEST elements of your copy, or the various Vehicles you use to reach your market … evaluation is essential for success.
What should you be evaluating?
Well, you’ll want to know for each marketing “campaign” you create what value it returns.
So it’d be a good idea to know …
- Your cost per lead/enquiry
- When you get them
- How many leads convert into customers/sales
- When you convert
- Total sales (and average sales)
One easy way to track it is to setup a spreadsheet: you could even do that for FREE with online apps like Google Docs.
When you include the cost of the campaign (eg, your advertisement cost plus artwork), and know how many responses you get, you can work out your total sales, your average sales and your costs per lead.
Then, if you track WHEN the responses arrive (eg, the publication day of the ad would be Day 1, then each day you can track the responses you get) … you’ll know roughly how long it takes to be profitable, and how long your sequence of contacts should be with prospects to be worthwhile.
(That’s really a whole other topic — but your marketing should always involve a sequence of contacts. You’ll find with tracking that the 2nd, 3rd, 4th (and maybe more contacts in the sequence) really boost your ROI and profits over just 1 or 2 contacts in your sequence).
Evaluation
Once you have this kind of data, you can easily work out what was viable and profitable, and what wasn’t really worth your effort.
You can use this data to plan future campaigns.
If you knew that every time you invested $500 in one particular vehicle that you get back $2500 in sales, how often would you keep on doing this marketing with this vehicle?
As long as it stayed profitable!!
Sometimes, your vehicle/media may SEEM expensive (eg, a $7000 advertisement vs a $700 postcard mailout) — but that more expensive vehicle may have a lower cost per lead, and a bigger profit, because it reaches a much larger number of your prospects.
If you don’t track this data — you’ll never know!
How do you get the information from your prospects to track which “vehicle” is working?
The answer is simple: just ask!
It could be easy as “can I ask you please how you heard about us today?” — and keep track of the answer. You might just have a simple sheet with each vehicle listed, and put a tick next to the vehicle that corresponds to the answer.
Eg:
- Today’s Date: _____________
- Yellow Pages: IIIII IIIII III
- Wednesday Ad In Daily Paper: IIIII II
- Referred by Customer: IIII
- Coupon in letterbox: IIIII II
Etc etc. If for each sale you can link to the vehicle/media, you can work out the revenue that each has returned to you.
If you’re using a coupon, and have more than one in use at a time, you can include a small “tracking code” to keep track of where it was cut out and when you received it.
The Alternative
This is the scary part … if you DO NOT know what works, you’ll keep on responding to whoever shows up at your door to sell you particular media!
You might have a newspaper ad rep who asks you to spend $400 on a small advertising feature. If you’ve been tracking your data, you’ll know of course whether or not that’s a worthwhile decision — and you can control your spend according to what’s already working!
If you don’t know … you’re at the mercy of wasting your money on something you don’t know whether it works. Lots of businesses do this — and it’s a crazy unprofitable strategy!
What if you haven’t used this vehicle/media before?
Now “new” vehicles can be worth testing (especially when you KNOW your market and can evaluate whether this is a worthwhile risk).
Whatever Vehicle You Use, This Is A MUST …
When you do spend money on advertising or marketing — makes sure you include an OFFER. Don’t just “get your name out there” … how long can you afford to do that? Create an offer, based on your objective — and then track it to see if it works.
Testing Copy
When you’re testing your copy, you want to compare whether one version outperforms another.
The only way to compare this properly is to ONLY CHANGE ONE THING in your copy (otherwise you won’t know what changed element made the difference).
There is software (even part of Google’s free package of web tools) that can setup the tests and track the results … so it’s not even that hard to do!
The big thing about copy tests is — according to me — not get too bogged down in testing the minor parts of your copy. Test the things that matter: headline, offers, sub-heads and pre-heads, openings, testimonial placement, variations on urgency, etc.
You might want to try testing designs, but if you get into the real nitty-gritty it’s probably not stuff that makes a big difference.
Also keep in mind other factors outside of your control can also make a difference (eg the timing of economic news, other offers and launches in your market, seasonal factors) — you can’t always assume what YOU change makes the difference.
You also need to be sure the number of test results is sufficient to have some surety about your findings. Eg, having just 10 responses vs 500 responses might not yield a reliable result.
That’s a wrap on evaluation — both on testing copy and tracking your campaigns. Both are critical.
Tomorrow, we start on the juicy elements of persuasive copywriting … I don’t know how I’ll sleep in the meantime!! It’ll be exciting to reveal some great tips!
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