Core Habits for Internet Marketers - Testing and Analyzing

In case you’re visiting in the middle of this series, you can read the previous articles in the Core Habits series:

• Core Habit #1 - Reading
• Core Habit #2 - Listening
• Core Habit #3 - Networking

I think that all marketers would agree… testing is a terribly important skill to have. The same thing doesn’t always work for everyone, but unfortunately, it’s not in most people’s nature to be patient enough to try something more than once or twice.

Marketing is a game of finesse

Marketers who are diligent and have been around for a while may have an instinct for what will work and what won’t… it’s because they’ve put in their time running tests and being aware of their successes and failures. In the internet marketing industry, there are people who make what they do look absolutely effortless. The fact of the matter is that you only will read about it or hear about it from them after they tried to do it a dozen different ways and settled on the one that worked best.

Ignoring the importance of testing and analyzing can be a real pitfall for new marketers. Every day, people get excited when they hear that they can make money online… but when they spend a month plowing off in just any direction and don’t produce results (money), they’ll fall out frustrated and disillusioned. Choosing a path at random without considering multiple different options is a tough way to be successful as an internet marketer. After all, there are so many different ways you could make money on the web… you could combine affiliate offers with pay-per-click advertising, you could write for a blog, you could develop a product of your own and sell it, you could manage an Ebay or Amazon store, or you could develop keyword driven websites and compete for search engine traffic. How could you know which one suits you the best if you don’t spend some time investigating each one?

The real habit is patience

It’s been said that patience is a virtue, and I fully agree. However, let me explain why I like to think of patience as a habit, when most people would consider it more of a quality. I’m getting ready to talk about how patience combined with diligence is what drives internet marketers to be thorough in their testing and analyzing methods, and the point I’m going to make is the importance of consistency when it comes to doing the testing… taking each step in order and fighting the human tendancy toward boredom with routines. When you practice something consistently, it becomes a habit… so you’ll be working to develop a habit of being patient. When I think of patience as a quality, it strikes me as something that comes naturally, and I don’t believe that patience is standard equipment for most people.

If patience is the habit to be developed, then diligence would be the quality that a person would need to consistently call on to develop the habit. Marketers who are patient and diligent can be confident in how thoroughly ready they are when it’s time to act.

Find out what works, then adjust the rest

When you’ve been patient and diligent in your work, you’ll come to a deeper understanding of what you’re doing. Professionals in any industry will say that they’ve developed an instinct to quickly recognize what’s happening in their businesses and understand immediately what steps to take next.

The key to good testing is understanding two things… what you’re testing for (placement, conversions, new visitors), and what constitutes a successful test (50 new subscribers, better sales, more comments).

When you’ve identified a result that you’re after and developed a good way to test it, then it’s time to do the test. I recommend keeping a dedicated notebook or Word file where you document your testing efforts and results… you may want to change things back at some future date, so having a dedicated notebook is a great way to back yourself up!

An example of pay-per-click testing

Here’s an idea of what I’m talking about… One way to test a readers emotional reaction to an ad is to target two different emotions. In this example, using Google Adwords, we’ll test two emotions that people tend to react the strongest to… desire and fear.

Let’s say that your company assists people with employment issues. Here’s an example of an ad that appeals to desire:

Get a Bigger Raise
Negotiate a Heftier Paycheck
At Your Next Performance Review
www.employment-advice.com

Now, while that ad runs, let’s test an ad at the same time that targets fear:

Hate Your Boss?
Wake Up Each Morning in a Cold Sweat?
Get Help and Contain Your Rage
www.employment-advice.com

Do you see how each of these ads would draw clicks from two different types of people? The goal of your test would be to see which ad draws the most clicks… when you’ve identified the better performing ad, then you can ramp up the budget on that ad and cancel the one that didn’t perform.

In the internet marketing industry, desire is a commonly targeted emotion… people naturally want to make more money, right? Sales letters and pay-per-click ads for internet marketing products are designed to appeal to that emotion.

When the Blog Mastermind program was still accepting new registrants, I tested an ad to drive search traffic to my affiliate link for that program. Here’s a copy of the ad:

Blog Mastermind
Make up to $6524 a month blogging!
Get a coach who can teach you how.
www.BlogMastermind.com

I found that this ad appealing to desire performed decently… it wasn’t mind-blowingly great, but it was my first experience with Google Adwords, so it wasn’t too bad, either. What would an ad targeting fear-based clicks that promoted the same program look like?

Worried about downsizing?
Start a blog and make money on
the side, before it’s too late…
www.BlogMastermind.com

I actually wrote this ad as an exercise after Blog Mastermind was already closed, so I’ve not been able to test it properly. I’m sure that it would draw a good number of clicks, though. Maybe I’ll run it sometime just to see.

What else can you test and analyze?

• The placement of elements on your web page or blog, using tools like Crazy Egg to track and analyze where your readers click
• Your readers emotional reaction to color
• Your readers emotional reaction to the wording in your headlines
• Keyword relevancy, using tools like Wordze or Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Direct commands, or other forms of hypnotic writing
• How often search engines crawl your site
• Conversion of commentators to subscribers

Develop the habit of Testing and Analyzing

Testing different elements of what you do is what sets you up for success as an internet marketer. You would never pour all of your effort into something without knowing that it will work, no matter what industry you work in!

Make it a habit to work on being patient… understand that getting bored with the routine of testing and analyzing your work may make it sloppy and ineffective. Make a list of a dozen things that you could potentially test on your website or blog, then spend a week testing each one. Keep a notebook or diary of your testing efforts so that you can analyze your results later, or as a backup in case you want to change things back to the way they were before you started testing.

Identify tools that you can use to help you test and analyze your work. I’ve listed a few in this article, and there are more in the Resources tab towards the top of my blog.

We’re almost half way done with my Core Habits series! Stay tuned for the next article!