Try it out, see what sticks…

Sometimes the right marketing strategy is just to try different things. Until you have a good sense for what works, what’s producing the results you’re looking for, you have to be willing to experiment. That experimentation can take many forms. In general, some variants that get tested in marketing are copy, visuals, color schemes, budget, flighting, frequency, and on and on. Just depends. Granted, you should know a few things before you spend any time or resources marketing to your customers…

Some things you need to know first

For example, and this is a nice segue, you need to know your ideal customer - the person or people that are most likely to be interested in your product(s) or service(s). You should have a clear picture of who they are, what they like, when they’re available, etc. Some organizations create target personas, which outline different types of customers. These personas assume anything from interests, to age, to geographic locations, income levels, etc.

The next thing you should probably know is where your targets spend their time, both physically and digitally. Obviously, identifying digital tendencies in your target audience is much easier than figuring out where they might spend their time physically. Digitally, which channels do they use? What platforms are they on? If your target audience is single mothers in their fifties, living in suburban areas in the Southern United States, you can probably bet they spend their time on Facebook gossiping, or complaining about the current president.

Once personas are formed, and the targets are more clearly defined, build from there. This is where copywriting and design work get into full swing, and testing truly begins…

Test, and test, and test, and test…

One of the main goals of marketing is to find that magic message that resonates with the marketplace at the right time. Of course, that’s a never ending, impossible pursuit. Why? Because people, customers, constantly change. Maybe not every day, but certainly over time they evolve. This validates the importance of repeated testing - changing those variants that we discussed in the first paragraph👆🏼

Something important to keep in mind about testing: let tests run for a meaningful amount of time… Depending on the budget, a test shouldn’t last a single week. Ideally, tests should run for anywhere from 6 - 8 weeks - in some cases, 12 weeks, depending on the organization, its goals, and, again, its budget. The bigger the budget, the shorter the test can be…

Remember, marketing is an iterative practice. If performance targets are missed, there is opportunity to try something new. Until that perfect message is found, and customers convert more consistently, prioritize testing…