The Edge Marketing

Before you run your first ad, before you send out your first email, there are two important questions you need to answer.

1. Who is your target market?

2. What makes them buy or sign up with an organization?

The easiest and cheapest way for you to find the answer to these two questions is through testing and tracking. These methods will highlight your advertising strengths and weaknesses and allow you to maximize your marketing dollar.

Testing:

The purpose of testing is to increase the response rate to your ad or offer. For instance, you could write a sales letter and test out different headlines for the ad. Often a headline can make all the difference in your response. Many marketers have increased sales by as much as 200% simply by changing their headline. Remember, even if your ad is producing steady sales, you should always test. A small change could move your sales from steady to overflowing!

Tracking:

You should keep track of everything you do in your business. Not just your profit and expenses, but also your promotional and advertising campaigns.

Let's say, for example, you're running an ezine ad. What kind of information should you keep track of? The most essential are:

Where you placed the ad including the name of the ezine and date the ad was run

How many subscribers to the ezine

The cost to you

The number of responses generated by the ad - Dividing this into your cost will show you how much you paid for each response

The number of sign ups you got as a result

Contact person and email address for ezine

The URL of the ad you used. This is especially important if you promote more than one program

Any comments or notes you'd like to keep

Headline used in the ad

You could also keep track of other items, depending on how detailed you would like to be. The important thing is to study the numbers. Some ads may produce great interest but if no one buys, your profit is zero. Other ads may produce only a few click throughs but generate more sign ups. Which ad was worth the most to you? Obviously, the second one.

You will also probably use other forms of advertising, such as maybe a pay per click program, and it is just as essential that you keep track of these numbers as well. Set up a spreadsheet in Excel or keep one on paper. Every dollar you spend on marketing should be tracked so you don't waste precious money on things that aren't working.

Also, don't forget, if you have a prospect and you're not sure how they found you, ask them! You must keep track of all your leads.

Do not underestimate the power of testing and tracking! By following these techniques, you'll know exactly where you're making money online.

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