Testing Marketing Strategy For A Small Business Startup
How, when and why you must test your marketing strategy for your small business startup.
Tighter and tougher economic times means that there is no longer room for small business start ups to blow money on marketing campaigns in a hit and hope manner. A few years ago in all most any industry entrepreneurs and managers of small businesses could put together almost any haphazard advertising campaign and still rake in millions while taking long expensive vacations and leaving early for lunch. Now if you want to have any hope of your small business start up not only surviving but actually making a nice profit you must make the most out of every marketing dollar you have.
This means testing your marketing strategies before leaping in. Making sure you hone your marketing message and delivery system before committing the big bucks. This will enable you not only to make sure your small business start up is successful in bringing in revenues but to really dominate your industry and drive out competitors. In fact even before you launch a new small business start up it is wise to test to make sure your assumptions are correct and the market for your product or service is really there and as profitable as you have predicted. Not to mention it can also help you attain additional funding by having proven your theories and demand for what you are offering.
What should you be testing? Initial testing should be used to test all aspects of your marketing including; tag lines, ad copy, demographics, delivery channels, most attractive features, geographic areas, and pricing. The easiest and perhaps lowest cost form of initial testing, especially during the planning stages of your small business start up for most companies is via the Internet. Normally via split testing with multiple websites and PPC ads. This can be done via Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook or other industry specific avenues. You may not plan to do the bulk of your marketing for your small business start up on the Internet but this provides an inexpensive way to rapidly test the most variables accurately.
How much testing should you do prior to launching your small business start up? Preliminary testing must be sufficient to prove your theories that there is a demand and that you can turn a profit. This can be done for almost next to nothing, but should be allotted at least a budget of $500 if being done online. Before you launch any other types of marketing campaign you should also run small tests in batches to perfect it and find the most profitable combinations before going full blast. For direct mail you will need to be willing to test 3,000 to 5,000 pieces to get a real feel for the market. While for telemarketing campaigns you will want to not only run plenty of test calls but also a good week of live testing with a minimum of 4 agents.
However your testing certainly should not stop there. Even once your small business start up is away and rolling testing is something that should be part of your ongoing commitment to excellence. Marketing metrics should be constantly analyzed in order continually refine your system so that you are always getting the most from your marketing budget as well as have the edge over the competition by being able to determine new trends as they emerge, not from reading about someone elses success with them.
Copyright (c) 2010 Chuck Boyce
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