Want to get the most bang out of your advertising buck?

Learn to test using this short article!

Test for Success
© Charlie Page

What do you think of when you hear the word "test"?

Do you remember that empty feeling in the pit of your stomach as you prepared for the SAT? Do you think of the grin on your least favorite teacher's face as she handed you back a paper full of red marks?

Well here's the good news. Now you get to GIVE the test!

Testing your ads before rolling out an ad campaign is probably the most important, yet most overlooked part of successful advertising.

If you have ever saved up your money, written an ad you thought sounded good, then bought the ads only to have little or nothing happen, I have very good news for you.

Today you will learn a cheap and easy way to test your ads that will practically ensure you never waste money on a bad ad again.

Read carefully. More importantly, APPLY the ideas to your advertising. When you do, you will make more sales with less effort, and that's a beautiful thing!

Today I'm going to share with you the #1 answer that experts give when asked about successful advertising. Cheap, and easy to do, TESTING your ad copy BEFORE you spend big bucks is by far the most important, yet most overlooked, step in the process of successful advertising.

To test your ads successfully involves four essential elements.

1. WHAT TO TEST

A great ad contains an attention grabbing headline, compelling body copy and a dynamic call to action.

For our FREE report on how to write a great ad, send a blank email to mailto:adreport@directoryofezines.com

You will need to test each aspect of your ad. You can test each at the same time by using a unique URL or email address for the response.

Here's what to do: Write out a series of ads for your product or service. If you need help writing, use our free report as a guideline. Make each one the best it can be. Choose your top three favorites and run those ads for one week. At the end of the week, tally the results and see which ad won.

Now you have an ad that is proven to work to some extent. At this point you will begin refining the ad by changing ONE element at a time (the headline for example) and testing again.

2. WHERE TO TEST

Successful testing means you may place three ads in the beginning, then three variations of the ad that pulled best. Since you don't want to go broke in the process, and want fast results, place your ad where the most people will see it.

At this point you want to turn to Yahoo, AOL and free classified directories to test your ads. Using these sources offers two big advantages. First, they are free! Second, they have huge numbers of people seeing your ad.

While you won't make much money in the long run advertising in these places (that's what ezines are for!!) you will have run a free, successful test.

3. WHEN TO TEST

Many people believe that Saturday is the best day to place classified ads since people who work during the week are free to surf on the weekend. While that may be true for some products, it is not true for all.

The key is to run each ad for a full seven days. This way you can test not only your ad copy and where you placed the ad, but see when the ad pulled the best.

Keep careful track of how many responses happen on which day. When your test is done you'll want to choose those ezines who publish on your best selling day.

4. HOW TO TRACK TEST RESULTS

All of this testing is meaningless unless you track results. The good news is that tracking is easy if you keep it simple.

Here's an insider tip. Add a ? and number to your URL and you can track ads for free by using your server logs. For example, if I change my URL from

http://www.directoryofezines.com

to

http://www.directoryofezines.com/?123

you will go to the same page, but my server logs will show how many hits went to the ?123 site separately from the main page.

To track your ads simply start a spreadsheet (or use a piece of paper) and create an ad chart. On top of the chart, give each ad a number, list the location and duration of the ad and allow room for daily results. Remember, it's best to use a separate email address or URL for each ad.

At the end of each day tally the results of each ad. When the week is done, tally the numbers and list how many total responses you had for each ad. Which ad wins will become very clear, very quickly. A typical chart looks like this.

Date Source Ad # M T W T F Total
3/28 Yahoo 003 1 12 13 19 11 56

Now you can go on to figure costs per click. To do this simply divide the amount you spent by the number of clicks. For example, let's say you advertise in an ezine that charges $45 for an ad. If you get 1000 clicks from that ad, your cost per click is

$45 divided by 1000 = 4.5 cents per click.

Whether the cost per click is good or bad depends on your product, how well your sales material works and your profit margins.

Testing ads this way is the #1 tool of successful advertisers from Madison Avenue to the one person business operating from home.

Learn to test your ads effectively and you will sell more while spending less. Now that's a beautiful thing!

-----------------------------------

Charlie Page is a copywriter who owns the Directory of Ezines and the Directory of Marketing. If you want to sell more online, visit Charlie today at http://www.directoryofmarketing.com