Direct Marketing in One Word…

Test.

If you could boil marketing, direct marketing for that matter, into one word. “Test” would be it.

If you test enough and take the time to review your results and make changes based on what you discovered you can improve your marketing results in a consistent manner. And you could do it without being a professional career marketing executive.

A long time ago, when I studied Communications and Public Relations in college, I had one professor say, “…advertising, marketing, and public relations: They’re 80% science and 20% creativity…”

Yes, testing can be very scientific, complicated, time consuming, and expensive. It’s safe to say that for large companies, direct response corporations, ad agencies, marketing firms, etc. millions of dollars are spent on the testing process.

Fortunately, testing in direct marketing can be kept very simple and inexpensive

I’m not saying one is better than the other. Nor am I saying that you should replace the complicated and expensive with the simple and inexpensive.

I do mean, you can cross-pollinate ideas from the industrial practice of lean manufacturing into your marketing. And benefit from tangible results with very little input of resources. Also known as, get a huge bang for your buck.

[*In a nut shell, Lean Manufacturing's goal is to reduce waste at every possible step in the process and increase speed, quality, and profit. Isn't that what you want in your business? Isn't that you ultimately want from your marketing and advertising efforts? Better quality and faster money.]

Here’s a simple and powerful example you can mimic:

• A blogger I know started a new blog from scratch.
• After a week or two of posts he looked at his stats (many blogging programs include free stat and tracking tools)
• He looked at his unique page views and hits. A unique page view simply means that a completely new person (or computer) visited your site.
• His stat and tracking software lets him see the hits and unique page views by day, week, month, and hour.
• By analyzing this “scientific data” he changed the hour in the day he posted his new articles. He chose to post his new articles during the busiest times of the day for his typical reader.
• The result: Increased traffic and unique page views! Somewhere around 1,000 per day within the first month. Starting from scratch.
• He’s not a marketer or copywriter.
• And in his case, the “analysis” of his scientific marketing data is better known as “common sense”.
• This is a simple test that cost Zero dollars and still blew the roof off his traffic. Huge bang for his buck

He tested. And reduced waste by not posting during the slow hours of the day. Without meaning to, he tied-in to a text book direct marketing process. The result was rapid growth of his blog with zero cost.

Simple and inexpensive. You can do the same.