Test, Test and Re-test

We could all take a lesson from children. As they are growingup, and learning right from wrong, they are constantly testing tosee what they can do, and what is not acceptable.I see hundreds of ads everyday on the web, and while there aresome good ones, most fall into the "ho-hum" variety, and some aredownright awful. Now this isn't bad, if they are testing to seewhat is going to work, and what isn't.Many put up an ad with no idea as to whether it will produce ornot. They let the same ad run for a period of time, and wonderwhy they didn't get results. They then do one of two things.They either blame the publication for not generating business forthem, or give up entirely and go out of business. Others will runan ad once, and when the world doesn't beat a path to their door,they react the same way.It is a proven fact that an ad must be seen five to seven timesbefore someone can be expected to take action. If your ad istargeted to your market, and you are not getting responses, theodds are you have a "crummy ad". It is not then time to quit orblame the publication. It is time to change the ad.All successful marketers have one thing in common. They areconstantly testing the effectiveness of their ads. One of themost successful that I know, almost always runs more than one adin the same or similar publication at the same time. You couldput the ads side by side, and not realize they were from the sameperson for the same thing. She lets each ad run five times,always keeping careful track of the drawing power of the ads, andkeeps the strongest and changes the weakest.Mechanically, her method is really quite simple. She uses adifferent email address in each ad, and a different websiteaddress as well. Both websites are exactly the same, but havedifferent URL's. She got her websites from a low cost web spaceprovider where she not only reserved the name of her site, butgot web space as well for less than the cost of her ads. Thereare several low cost web space providers. I can recommend and - You reallyshould go with the one that meets your needs at the best price.Don't fall for the "hoopla" that you get "jillions" of charactersof online storage for a few bucks more. You don't need all thatroom. I have dozens of web sites, and they are all under 10MBof storage. Capabilities being equal - price is boss.She uses a popular ISP, but doesn't use that address in her ads.She feels, and I agree, that an ISP email address does notconjure up a strong "business image". Your choice of an ISP isimportant if you hope to do business on the web. Be sure yoursprovides an industry standard POP3 email capability. While AOLis great for many things, it does use their own proprietary emailsystem, and isn't, in my judgement, the best choice for running a business.She got a POP3 email address with each of her web sites, so sheuses those. She also uses a different email address on her websites - most web space providers give you unlimited emailaliases. She then installed the Eudora email package with adifferent folder for each address she uses. When she gets anemail, which was sent to one of those addresses, she has Eudoraautomatically file it in the appropriate folder, and send animmediate response. This lets her prospect know she got the message, but more importantly, allows her to track which ad it came from. If the email address was one of the addresses in her ads, she knows which one. If it came from one of the web sites, she knows which ad sent the prospect to that site.But what has happened here? A quick count of the emails in eachof the folders reveals which ad is pulling, and where theprospect is coming from. Now, remember the unlimited aliases,she got with her web space. If she is going to try to test theeffectiveness of several publications, she simply uses adifferent alias for that ad in each publication, and sets up aseparate folder in Eudora for it.There are other ways of course to track the ads by forcing thesubject in your email address, and having a different subject foreach ad. The cost of web space however, and email addresses hascome down so much in the last few years, that having separateemail addresses is most likely the easiest way to track theresults of your ads, and present a professional image.You must test, test, and retest your ads. If you do, you willfind the winning combination, and realize the power of the web.