I’ve recently become a big advocate of testing. The idea that you should try out a marketing strategy on a small scale before rolling it out across your business. It’s a great way of minimising risk, while at the same time learning what marketing tactics do and don’t work.
An example could be with telemarketing. If you want to conduct a telemarketing campaign and decide your target list should be 10,000, then test your campaign on 1,000 contacts at first. This will enable you to evaluate whether this strategy will achieve your objectives, but also to refine your sales script and potentially improve your performance. With direct marketing initiatives it should also enable you to predict future performance, as success rates typically scale very well.
Testing can be used for many if not all marketing vehicles. If you want to use exhibitions to reach your target audience, plan an annual calendar of events to attend, but don’t invest in more than one or two shows until you know whether this format works. If you’re planning on running a paid for search campaign, trial it for a month or more with a limited budget first and than expand if it works.
Anyway, you probably get the idea by now. Whichever marketing vehicle you choose, test it on a small scale first. If it works, expand. If it fails, drop it and put your time and money into something else.
