In direct response advertising, testing and analysis is as important as the creative and media choices. Without testing and analysis, as marketing consultants, we cannot determine what is working and what is not working. We test all campaigns on a small local level to gauge response. We, typically, do not commit more than 20% of our client’s advertising budget in the testing period. However, we walk a fine line here, because we like to see at least 1,000 responses on minimum to ensure that our testing was thorough and able to be scaled in measure. Depending on the campaign and product or service that we are offering, this can take anywhere from 2-4 weeks on average. Once we feel that we have adequate results, we can make educated predictions on the success or failure of the campaign – meaning we can look at the media failing if the creative brought strong response, or the creative failing if we feel that we hit the right audience. The analytics are measured by quantity, quality, response time, and the make-up of the consumer responding – ie; geographic locale, gender, age, income and professional and educational background etc. All these factors go into the decision making process during the testing and analysis phase.
Typical tools employed during the testing & analysis phrase:
- call tracking
- Google Analytics / other web reporting
- CRM reports
- media research
- historial response data
It’s a requirement that clients share access to the data they own with us – full transparency and accurate reporting are critical to providing direction for your campaign. This data is also useful when advocating for you to media outlets and networks. If you do not own tracking and reporting tools, we can provide these things for you for prior to the launch of any test or campaign.