3 Ways to Test Market Your Product Promotions

Test marketing your product promotions is essential to maximize your sales potential. When you test different options, you’ll be able to select the one that can give you the best ROI.

Not testing can limit sales, increase your risk of losing market share, and more. The expense involved in properly testing your product promotion campaign is money well-spent, and can save you many dollars from marketing losses later.

What You Can Discover from Testing

Before you test a promotion, it’s vital to test the market for your product or service. When you test market you can discover many things, according to Entrepreneur Magazine. These include:

1. The demand for your product or service in your market; identify how big your market is
2. Who your customers are and what they think about your product or service
3. What your prospects and customers are willing to pay for your product or service
4. Which promotion vehicle is most effective for each customer segment

You need to test no matter what part of the life cycle your product may be in to achieve or continue to fulfill your optimum sales goals. If your product is new, then you need to test to prove there is a market for your product. And if your product is in its mature stage, you need to test to find out how much of a market you still have and can dominate.

Test Marketing Your Promotion

There are an infinite number of ways for you to promote your product or service. Yet, your budget limits the number and types of promotions you can pursue. Testing can help you find the promotions that give you the best return on your investment.

Testing is part art and part science. The part that is the art is how you create and execute the promotion. The science part involves measuring and analyzing the results. Here are three ways you can test your product promotion:

#1 Direct Marketing A/B Split Test

The A/B split test is perhaps the most traditional way to assess the effectiveness of a promotion. That’s because it produces solid evidence of what works, so you don't have to guess what may or may not produce the results you want. The A/B split test compares one promotion to a second promotion. Each promotion may have a different audience, headline, message, guarantee, incentive, price offer, or delivery time and place. Usually, marketers test one of these variables that differ between promotions while keeping the other variables the same for both.

For example, you could compare responses to different price offers for each promotion while keeping everything else the same.

The first promotion may yield a higher open rate but lower conversion rate than the second promotion. But if the second promotion yields a higher ROI, then you’ll know that this is the better one to use going forward to attain greater sales.

Direct marketers commonly use A/B split tests. They use it with direct mail, email and direct response advertising campaigns. One of the emerging fields in which marketers are using A/B split testing is mobile marketing, according to a report in Direct Marketing News in March, 2013.

Brendan O’Kane, the author of the report, says,

“A/B split testing of push notifications, SMS, and mobile email messages can be one of the most powerful tools of engagement in any marketer's kit as they look for data beyond standard metrics (for example, open rates), such as organic versus prompted opens, time since last open, app session times, redemption rates, and other mobile-specific conversions focused on engagement and ROI.”

When you split-test your mobile messages, you should also follow up by and use response data you’ve collected to retarget customers who either ignored your message or opened it without taking further action. Retargeting can help you increase customer retention and maximize sales.

Retargeting can also help you gather new information that you can use in a future A/B split test. A/B split testing can ensure that each message you send is more effective than the one before.

#2 Advertising Recall

Advertising recall is an effective way to find out how well your audience remembers your ad. The premise in advertising is that memory can lead to purchase. Recall involves both conscious and unconscious memory.

"Effective recall does not necessarily mean conscious recall…an ad can be effective even if the consumer cannot recall having seen or heard it," says Horst Stipp, Senior Vice President of Strategic Insights and Innovation at the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF).

The most effective ads evoke emotion, and emotion is the key to conscious and unconscious memory. The ARF suggests that when you test recall you test with aided recall. So instead of asking an open ended question about what one remembered seeing you ask if they recall seeing something specific.

Advertising recall can help you determine an effective campaign. The quality of data you gather and the way you interpret it can impact the success and longevity of your brand, according to a report in BrandChannel.

The key to assessing your test results is to find ways to improve your ideas so your advertisement makes a deeper emotional connection to your audience.

To ask your test audience how likely they would be to buy your product after viewing your ad is not nearly as valuable as observing their behavior. That’s because your audience may not express their true feelings. The thing that matters more than what your audiences likes or dislikes about your ad is the perception they have about your brand before and after seeing your ad. Building an emotional bond is what can sustain your brand and increase your sales.

#3 Viral Marketing Test

Viral marketing is not a conventional testing method. However, given the massive adoption of social media, viral marketing can make a huge difference not only with the results of your promotion but also the value of your brand.

There are three goals for a viral marketing campaign. The first goal is to get qualified leads. The second goal is to build awareness and reach as many eyeballs for your brand as you can. The third goal is to increase your sales conversion.

The best way to measure and assess the results of your viral marketing promotion is to record defined actions. For example, record what people who see your promotion do during and after their interaction. Record how many emails they send and to whom they send their emails. Look and see whether and when they return to your promotion, and record how many buy your product and how much they spend.

With A/B testing and advertising recall, you have full control over your message, promotion vehicle and timing. With viral marketing, your audience sends your message. And once they send it you have little power to stop it. As your promotion gains momentum it can reach thousands if not millions in a very short period of time.

Perhaps the most successful viral marketing campaign has been Unilever’s Dove soap promotion highlighting the “Real Beauty Sketches” short video. The video attracted over 60 million views as of April 2013, according to a case study Digital Strategy Consulting published. The big reason for its viral marketing success is the video has a very powerful emotional message.

The video portrays a police sketch artist that draws pictures of women’s faces as he listens to how they each describe themselves and how others describe them. Then he shows the two images to each woman. It shows that many women do not always see the best of themselves as others do. The video won several awards for its creativity and use of social media.

As a result of the viral marketing campaign, Unilever exceeded their goal to change the way people perceive their beauty. The campaign also boosted sales and increased distribution of the video worldwide. Plus, it has been the topic of numerous op-ed pieces, broadcast news, and hundreds of thousands of comments, likes and shares throughout social media.

Start Testing Today

Testing your product promotion through A/B split tests, advertising recall and/or viral marketing can help you improve your marketing results. Plus, it can help you build your brand. So make a commitment to test your next product promotion campaign.