Test Your Offline Marketing Campaigns

Split testing for a campaign using offline media? There are many tools to do so with online media, but how do you measure the design of two different magazine ads? I find this question being asked by more and more people as the economy continues to raise the cost of online marketing.

I've been testing offline campaigns for over a ten years. The only change in the last few years is that many offline campaigns have been expanded to have an online component making it easier and quicker to track results. A good example is when you send a post card or publish and ad and have individuals fill out an online request form. This shows you quickly what type of results your campaign is generating in real time.

I recommend that you read, "Tested Advertising Methods" by John Caples the father of direct response marketing. You'll learn the methods John has used to evaluate campaign effectiveness. When marketing offline, you should always test one element at a time such as your headline. Split test ads or run them consecutively within the same publication.

Your direct marketing should always have a direct response mechanism. This can be an eight hundred number, an email address, or business response card. By having a direct response element, you can always test the response of your print campaigns. Different methods require different measurement techniques.

Test your print campaigns by publishing multiple versions of your creative in each campaign. Put in some type of mechanism to measure results that you can tie back to the unique version of your post card, magazine ad, or prospecting letter. You'll always be able to test and improve your print campaigns.

Posted in: direct marketing