Remember, as you create your 2016 marketing PLAN

The good news is that you can learn from every marketing effort… then tweak and perfect…and then test some more until you have an effort that produces for months OR years to come!

Every time you market yourself/your business, remember, you are simply testing a marketing initiative to see how well it produces. The results of your test will tell you several things:
– The number of responses
– The number of sales (from responses)
– The quality of the leads/sales
– Whether you should roll-it-out and go big with the same marketing strategy
– How well received the marketing piece/event/initiative was
– How much traffic it drove to your website
– How many requests for more information you received
– How many calls with questions (and the types of questions they are asking) you received

Marketing is UN-emotional and you should not allow yourself to become emotionally attached to the outcome of any marketing effort. I know you want every effort to be a huge success… BUT always remember – it’s a test.

With that said, there are certainly more predictably successful marketing initiatives that you can launch that will produce “guaranteed” results…you just won’t know what kind of results until you launch.

You should also “split test” for faster results. Split testing is where you create similar or completely different ads (using different headlines, graphics, copy, calls to action, etc) and send one ad to half of your target audience (as in a direct mail/direct e-mail, banner ad, newspaper ad, etc), or your patient/client/customer base, etc., and the other ad to the other half.

This will provide you with results (responses, quality leads/sales, etc.) fairly quickly and you’ll know which ad produced better than the other. Once you have this information, you’ll know which ad to use moving forward.

With that said, once you have this data, you should continue to split test to see if you can better your best results. Once you have your winner – use that marketing initiative/strategy over and over again until it stops working. And, DON’T CHANGE A THING – UNTIL it stops producing.

Example – I once sent the same email to the same list every Monday at 10:00 AM EST for six consecutive months, because it produced the same exact response – for SIX months! When I received 20-25% fewer leads, I changed the e-mail and started over. For some reason people think they have to change their ad every day/week/month. My advice is, use it until it stops working. That’s smart marketing.

ACTION STEPS:
1. Embrace every marketing effort as a test.
2. Use the “split test” strategy.
3. Find out what works and what doesn’t and document.
4. Keep using a strategy until it stops working.