We’ve spoken before on how every part of your marketing should be strategic. That means a few things.

It means you should be aware of and in touch with your ideal client: understanding what platforms they’re on, what questions they’re asking, and what solutions they’re looking for so you can speak directly to them.

It means you should have a clear marketing message: one that reflects your business values, your mission, and what your company stands for.  

It means you should set appropriate goals, aligned with the metrics that matter most for your company.  

And it means that you should be actively testing different methods, campaigns, and approaches to see which give you the biggest return on investment (ROI).

If you’re not testing different marketing methods, you can’t possibly know what you’re currently doing is most effective.

If you aren’t measuring progress against your most valuable metrics, the effectiveness of any campaign or strategy goes unseen, and you won’t have a clear picture of how to proceed.

And if you don’t make ROI a main focus of your marketing efforts, you’ll simply be throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, hoping that the next campaign is successful, not knowing what’s working and what isn’t. I like to call this spaghetti marketing.

Here are 5 things to keep in mind as you begin testing your marketing efforts to maximize your ROI.  

Set goals that consider the bigger picture

When setting goals for marketing experiments, consider the bigger picture. What metrics are truly important to your business growth? Which are most reflective of success for your business?

Ensure your marketing goals are aligned with your larger business plan and goals. If your big vision is to build a multi-million dollar company, the number of Instagram followers may not be as important as your sales. Effective measurement for this kind of goal starts with knowing where paying customers came from and what they interacted with on their path to purchase.

Make your goals stretch goals, meaning they make you a little uncomfortable but they are still realistic with the resources and support you currently have!

Set tactics that are measurable

Now that you’ve set your goals, you need to figure out how to measure your progress. If you fail to establish metrics in advance, it can be challenging to get an accurate picture of how your efforts performed. You begin with the end in mind and work your way backwards in your plan.

As we discussed above, if your ultimate goal is to achieve a certain revenue amount, you need insights on what is most effective in your content as they consider purchasing.

Important metrics include:

• Visitors and unique visitors: how many people are viewing your content? How many of these are new?

• New lead acquisition: what percentage of website visitors complete your calls to action, such a filling out a form (subscriptions or downloads)?

• Sales conversions: how many people reach the end-goal and buy? How did they find you and what convinced them to choose you?

Whatever you decide on, record where you start out and keep an eye on the numbers throughout to gain a comprehensive picture of your efforts.

The value of experimentation

Experimentation shouldn’t look like spaghetti marketing. It’s not about throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Instead, it’s about taking a data-backed (ideally) hypothesis and testing it to see if your hunch is right. 

There are numerous ways you can run experiments, but it should be done with careful thought and intention.

• Consider creating a couple of different offerings or product ideas that reflect what this customer is looking for and the solution you can provide. Decide on a set period of time to promote the offers and then gauge your results. Which product had more downloads? Which offer had more inquiries or sales?

• Promote the same offering via different marketing channels and analyze which one brought in more leads.

• A/B test your offering by changing one element slightly and analyze which campaign is driving more traffic. You can change the subject line, where you put the CTA in the copy in the email, or images you use. But choose just one thing to focus on - not all three.

Photos via: https://www.mailmunch.com/blog/ab-testing-got-obama-60-million/

Regardless of the route you choose to experiment with, the results will give you a good idea of where your time is best spent, and the marketing tactics that are worth your effort.

There are best practices, but there are no rules

When it comes to testing your marketing efforts there are best practices but no rules. The world is constantly evolving, as is the market, the next algorithm, and customer wants and needs.

There isn’t a certain number of social media platforms you need to be on or a certain number of emails you need to send out each week. There isn’t a certain number of followers you need to hit or a sales goal you need to reach for your marketing efforts to be considered successful.

Your business is unique, meaning the marketing tactics and strategies you use will reflect that. Slow down and really reflect on what success looks like for you. Base your efforts and testing on that.

Anecdotal experiences will never take the place of data

Asking your audience what they want to see from you can be a great indicator of where to direct your marketing efforts. However, it’s important to remember that isolated instances of customer feedback do not always reflect a broader truth.

Just because, for example, your neighbour had an appliance from X company and it broke down, doesn’t mean you’ll have the same experience.

Unfortunately, our brains are wired to make these hasty generalizations in an effort to speed up our decision-making processes - often doing so at the expense of the accuracy of our judgments.  

While as an individual you might take your neighbour’s experience at face value (illustrating the impact of word-of-mouth marketing), as a company, it’s up to you to look beyond these isolated instances and look instead at the broader truths.  

If general feedback is suggesting one thing but the data doesn’t reflect that, default to the data. Data always offers a more objective and impactful perspective, and it’s what you should focus on to create a better understanding of your marketing.

Final thoughts

Once you’ve established clear testing strategies, executed them, and measured the results against your goals and pre-established metrics, your job is to simply tweak and repeat! Use what worked to develop the base of your next strategy and build upon it using everything that you learned from your first test.

Don’t expect to get it perfect the first time. In fact, know that you won’t. Recognize each test is a new opportunity to compile more data, better understand your audience, and create offerings that they are truly excited about buying. It’s a win-win!