Online marketing testing is something you must do regularly. In this post, I will detail the three metrics you must check daily to have real success on the Internet.
According to Inc., Effective management requires good metrics.
Assuming you did your homework and you are already building the right business (selecting the right business is another topic in itself), testing and measuring your marketing should be a key part of your daily routine.
Success requires constant online marketing testing
Testing is the only way you can know what really works…and what doesn’t. It’s like the old marketing story: “I know half of my marketing is working well…I just don’t know which half!”
There are 3 marketing metrics even online marketing beginners can and should be testing daily.
Landing pages
I am constantly comparing the effectiveness of one landing page against another. Our business comes with a number of excellent landing pages, each with a unique URL. It is simple to see which one is working best for a given audience.
If you are creating your own landing pages, it is important to only change and test one element at a time. Keeping everything else constant, change and test headlines, sub-headlines, calls to action, font colors, and backgrounds. Yes, even subtle changes like font colors can create big changes in results.
Emails
I also review my email results on a daily basis. A quick glance at open rates (the percentage of emails that get opened by subscribers) and click-through rates (emails that result in a link to a website being clicked on) are critical.
I’ve used aWeber for my email management for years. It makes these tasks simple. The elements I test in my emails are subject lines (by far the most important part of email marketing), spam filter, call to action, unsubscribe data, and email frequency.
Traffic sources
Face it…if you are in online marketing, you are really in the list building business. It’s easy to track lead generation numbers, if you keep everything else constant. Just be sure to use a unique URL or tracking link for each traffic source.
Testing lead quality is a bit tougher. As an example, for each solo ad I buy, I track the number of clicks ordered, the price I paid, how many clicks I actually received, the number of opt-ins, conversions, and the cost per lead.
And a final thought, all of the testing you do is meaningless if you do not keep good records!
I encourage you to make regular online marketing testing part of your path to success.
To your success,
Joe Barclay