“Testing and measuring your Marketing are critical to the growth and profitability of your business.” - Dave Smith

In fact, unless you have some form of measurement system in place, how will you even know if your business is growing or making a profit?

Of course, if your net income is greater than your costs, you know you are making money, but how do you know that the cost of one Marketing Strategy is not eating all the profit of another? You need to know that each penny of your Marketing budget brings in an acceptable return on investment so that your business grows and stays profitable.

Too many Business Owners fail to test and measure their Marketing and end up spending way beyond their budgets or leave heaps of money on the table. I find that there are three reasons for this:

They do not know how to test their Marketing
They think the testing process is too time-consuming or complicated
They do not evaluate their results or make decisions based on them

Let's get started and make sure you don't fall into any of those categories. When discussing these things, I typically cover:

How testing and measuring relates to your bottom line
and business growth
How to test and measure on a small scale before you go big
How to track responses on your Marketing campaign
How to split-test your Marketing
How to evaluate your results and make decisions
Campaign rate of return and break-even analyses

Testing and measuring are an overall, ongoing system or habit that you need to implement in your business.

You need to consistently test and measure your Marketing to make sure you do not make mistakes that cost you money. You also test and measure your Marketing to make sure you are making the most money possible from each Marketing Strategy you execute. Since you should measure every time you market your business, you will need to have an ongoing system integrated into your business operations.

There will need to be a clear system for tracking responses and sales and attributing each to a specific campaign. You will also need to make evaluating your results and make changes based on them a regular part of your weekly or monthly routine.

This may be as simple as a tracking sheet placed at every point of sale and phone in your business. It could be as high-tech as a web-based lead tracking system (like SalesForce). Either way, you need to use a system that works with your business. Sometimes it is as simple as getting into the habit of asking every customer how they heard about your company.

Your Marketing Strategy or Campaign will never start out perfectly - it will be a constant work in progress. The only way you will be able to establish what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong is to test and measure the results. When you make these tweaks, one at a time, on an ongoing basis, you will leverage your Marketing to get the best possible return on investment.

You can learn something from every mailing, ad, newsletter, or promotion, but if you fail to test and measure, you'll run the risk of making mistakes that cost you money and repeating them.

Always test and measure your campaign ideas on a small scale before you go big.

Testing or measuring is the way to make the most of your Marketing Campaigns and avoid repeating costly mistakes.

PS: It is just a matter of getting into the habit of budgeting for and evaluating each campaign you run. Once the systems are in place, it will take very little extra effort and you'll really see the difference in your Marketing budget and in your revenues. You cannot afford not to.