Is your web marketing message as good as it could be?

UK advertising research agency Millward Brown has just completed its 50,000th  ad copy test, 20 years after launching its Link pre-testing service. The system is used by major advertising clients to test whether their new ad (usually TV) is likely to work. It helps identify whether target consumers are likely to find the ad memorable as well as whether it fits with the brand and whether consumers have a greater intention to buy.

You may think it prudent that a company about to spend over £500,000 producing a new TV ad and another £2M on advertising the new ad will want to invest some money in testing it first. However, many don't for a variety of reasons.

Why doesn't everybody test their marketing first? 

In an ideal world, everyone would test their marketing before gambling everything on 1 role of the dice. With traditional media like TV, radio, press etc, testing is often not done because:-

• it is (perceived) to be too expensive - compared to the the cost of advertising
• the results can be unreliable - too small a sample or an indirect correlation between advertising research and purchase behaviour
• there is insufficient time to wait for results
• of a lack of marketing expertise to test robustly & cost effectively

Why is this relevant to SMEs & web marketing? 

Whether your web marketing strategy is trying to attract target leads, convert web visitors to customers or to increase customer lifetime value, you will want to ensure that your web marketing is giving you a high marketing return on investment.

Many of the reasons (or excuses) to avoid testing in traditional media do not apply online. e.g. with Google Pay Per Click advertising it is possible to:-

• test multiple variants of an ad for a low cost e.g. different headlines, copy, propositions, pricing
• tests can be conducted with consecutive people seeing different versions of the ad until you reach a statistically significant sample size
  
• it's possible to make a PPC ad live the same day (within the hour) and depending on the popularity of the product / or service you could get statistically significant results within hours / days
• it is possible to directly track individual ads to online purchases to identify the marketing ROI of each ad version
• although not as critical as for traditional media, it still benefits from having people who know how to put a smart robust web marketing test programme together

Having spent over 20 years helping some of Britain's best brands to transform their marketing ROI, I am excited that testing is another area where the internet has leveled the playing field and enabled small and medium sized businesses to use some of the marketing secrets of Britain's best brands.

Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing consultant with UK web marketing agency Brand New Way which helps companies to attract and keep valuable customers online.