Fail Your Way to Marketing Success

Does that headline sound wacky to you?  I mean, why would you want to fail your way to marketing success?

Because a lot of marketing flat-out doesn’t work …trust me, I know from experience.

The trick is to fail early, to fail cheaply and to ride your winners.

It’s kind of like the saying my skiing and snowboarding friends use, “If you’re not falling down, you’re not trying hard enough.”  In other words, you’re never going to improve or learn new tricks unless you’re willing to fall down.

The same line of thinking applies to your marketing.

Failures Identify Winners

If you’re not generating marketing that fails, then you are probably not generating and testing enough marketing pieces.  You should always have one piece of marketing that is winning and another piece of marketing that is failing (relative to the winner) for each marketing campaign that you’re running.

Let me explain.

One of the most important things you can do is split test your marketing.

If you’re going to spend the time to create one marketing piece, then spend a little bit more time and create two marketing pieces. Test one piece against the other and see which one converts better. 

“Care for an Example?”

Okay.  Here’s an example from the world of offline direct-response marketing:

Let’s say you are a dentist and you want to generate more appointments via postcard marketing.

First, create two postcards with only one difference between them (let’s test the color of the headline). You now have Postcard A and Postcard B. 

Next, include a response key on each postcard so you can track which card generates each response.  For example, postcard A might instruct the caller to ask for Mary while postcard B instructs the caller to ask for Jessica.

Now, divide up your mailing list so every other recipient receives postcard B. 

Mail the cards, measure your response, pick the winning postcard and generate another postcard to test against the winner.

If you are already running a marketing piece that is a real winner (your “control”), then create another piece and test it against your control.  To limit your risk, you can test 3 control copies per test copy (3 controls to 1 test copy).  If the test copy statistically outperforms the control, then your test copy becomes your control.

Rinse and Repeat …Forever

Keep repeating this process to continually improve your conversion ratio.

I know it’s easier said than done.  If you can master the art of continually split testing, then you’ll be on your way to more successful marketing.

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