Test Campaigns

Almost any ques­tion can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test cam­paign. And that’s the way to answer them — not by argu­ments around a table. Go to the court of last resort — the buy­ers of your product.

On every new project there comes up the ques­tion of sell­ing that arti­cle prof­itably. You and your friends may like it, but the major­ity may not. Some rival prod­uct may be bet­ter liked or cheaper. It may be strongly entrenched. The users won away from it may cost too much to get.

Peo­ple may buy and not repeat. The arti­cle may last too long. It may appeal to a small per­cent­age, so most of your adver­tis­ing goes to waste.

There are many sur­prises in adver­tis­ing. A project you will laugh at may make a great suc­cess. A project you are sure of may fall down. All because tastes dif­fer so. None of us know enough peo­ples desires to get an aver­age viewpoint.

In the old days, adver­tis­ers ven­tured on their own opin­ions. The few guess right, the many wrong. Those were the times of adver­tis­ing dis­as­ter. Even those who suc­ceeded came close to the verge before the tide was turned. They did not know their cost per cus­tomer or their sale per cus­tomer. The cost of sell­ing might take a long time to come back. Often it never came back.

Now we let the thou­sands decide what the mil­lions will do. We make a small ven­ture, and watch cost and result. When we learn what a thou­sand cus­tomers cost, we know almost exactly what a mil­lion will cost. When we learn what they buy, we know what a mil­lion will buy.

We estab­lish aver­ages on a small scale, and those aver­ages always hold. We know our cost, we know our sale, we know our profit and loss. We know how soon our cost comes back. Before we spread out, we prove our under­tak­ing absolutely safe. So there are today no adver­tis­ing dis­as­ters piloted by men who know.

Per­haps we try out our project in four or five towns. We may use a sam­ple offer or a free pack­age to get users started quickly. Then we wait and see if users buy those sam­ples. If they do, will they con­tinue? How much will they buy? How long does it take for the profit to return our cost of selling?

A test like this may cost $3,000 to $5,000. It is not all lost, even when the prod­uct proves unpop­u­lar. Some sales are made. Nearly every test will in time bring back the entire cost.

Some­times we find that the cost of the adver­tis­ing comes back before the bills are due. That means that the prod­uct can be adver­tised with­out invest­ment. Many a great adver­tiser has been built up with­out any cost what­ever beyond imme­di­ate receipts. That is an ideal situation.

On another prod­uct it may take three months to bring back the cost with a profit. But one is sure of his profit in that time. When he spreads out he must finance accordingly.

Think what this means. A man has what he con­sid­ers an adver­tis­ing pos­si­bil­ity. But national adver­tis­ing looks so big and expen­sive that he dare not under­take it.

Now he presents it in a few aver­age towns, at a very mod­er­ate cost. With almost no risk what­ever. From the few thou­sand he learns what the mil­lions will do. Then he acts accord­ingly. If he then branches he knows to a cer­tainty just what his results will be.

He is play­ing on the safe side of a hun­dred to one shot. If the arti­cle is suc­cess­ful, it may make him mil­lions. If he is mis­taken about it, the loss is a trifle.

These are facts we desire to empha­size and spread. All our largest accounts are now built in this way, from very small begin­nings. When busi­ness men real­ize that this can be done, hun­dreds of oth­ers will do it. For count­less fortune-​​earners now lie dormant.

The largest adver­tiser in the world makes a busi­ness of start­ing such projects. One by one he finds out win­ners. Now he has twenty-​​six, and together they earn many mil­lions yearly.

These test cam­paigns have other pur­poses. They answer count­less ques­tions which arise in business.

A large food adver­tiser felt that his prod­uct would be more pop­u­lar in another form. He and all his advis­ers were cer­tain about it. They were will­ing to act on this sup­po­si­tion with­out con­sult­ing the con­sumers, but wiser advice prevailed.

He inserted an ad in a few towns with a coupon, good at any store for a pack­age of the new-​​style prod­uct. Then he wrote to the users about it. They were almost unan­i­mous in their disapproval.

Later the same prod­uct was sug­gested in still another form. The pre­vi­ous ver­dict made the change look dubi­ous. The adver­tiser hardly thought a test to be worth while. But he sub­mit­ted the ques­tion to a few thou­sand women in a sim­i­lar way and 91 per­cent voted for it. Now he has a unique prod­uct which promises to largely increase his sales.

These tests cost about $1,000 each. The first one saved him a very costly mis­take. The sec­ond will prob­a­bly bring him large profits.

Then we try test cam­paigns to try out new meth­ods on adver­tis­ing already suc­cess­ful. Thus we con­stantly seek for bet­ter meth­ods, with­out inter­rupt­ing plans already proved out.

In five years for one food adver­tiser we tried out over fifty sep­a­rate plans. Every lit­tle while we found an improve­ment, so the results of our adver­tis­ing con­stantly grew. At the end of five years we found the best plan of all. It reduced our cost of sell­ing by 75 per­cent. That is, it was four times more effec­tive than the best plan used before.

That is what mail order adver­tis­ers do — try out plan after plan to con­stantly reduce the cost. Why should any gen­eral adver­tiser be less business-​​like and careful?

Another ser­vice of the test cam­paign is this:

An adver­tiser is doing mediocre adver­tis­ing. A skilled adver­tis­ing agent feels that he can greatly increase results. The adver­tiser is doubt­ful. He is doing fairly well. He has alliances which he hes­i­tates to break. So he is inclined to let well enough alone.

Now the ques­tion can be sub­mit­ted to the ver­dict of a test. The new agent may take a few towns, with­out inter­fer­ing with the gen­eral cam­paign. Then com­pare his results with the gen­eral results and prove his greater skill.

Plau­si­ble argu­ments are easy in this line. One man after another comes to an adver­tiser to claim supe­rior knowl­edge or abil­ity. It is hard to decide, and deci­sions may be wrong.

Now actual fig­ures gained at a small cost can set­tle the ques­tion def­i­nitely. The adver­tiser makes no com­mit­ment. It is like say­ing to a sales­man, “Go out for a week and prove your­self.” A large per­cent­age of all the adver­tis­ing done would change hands if this method were applied.

Again we come back to sci­en­tific adver­tis­ing. Sup­pose a chemist would say in an arbi­trary way that this com­pound was best, or that bet­ter. You would lit­tle respect his opin­ion. He makes tests — some­times hun­dreds of tests — to actu­ally know which is best. He will never state a sup­po­si­tion before he has proved it. How long before adver­tis­ers in gen­eral will apply that exact­ness to advertising?

About the Author

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