I test con­stantly in an effort to boost my response rates. So it’s no won­der why some peo­ple have asked me about mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing. Specif­i­cally, they want to know what is it, how does it work, and what’s “Taguchi.”

First of all, Taguchi is just one form of mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing. I’m not a math­e­mati­cian. And Dr. Genichi Taguchi and his work specif­i­cally relate to the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try, which was later proven ben­e­fi­cial in the car industry.

Not direct mar­ket­ing. (At least, not at first.)

Dr. Taguchi’s for­mula was only recently extrap­o­lated to the areas of direct mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing, and now Inter­net mar­ket­ing, and has become the basis behind mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing and the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing as a whole.

More often than not, the name “Taguchi” is a buzz­word often bandied about, even by peo­ple who’s mul­ti­vari­ate tests do not use Taguchi’s method specif­i­cally. The for­mula is rather com­plex, and I’ll leave it to those more capa­ble than me to explain it to you.

But in this arti­cle, let me explain the basics of mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing, using layman’s terms and as best as I can. I hope not to lose you along the way. Fin­gers crossed.

What mul­ti­vari­ate test­ing is, is this…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

In my cri­tique con­sult­ing ser­vices, I’ve found the most com­mon mis­take clients make is the igno­rance of, or indif­fer­ence to, split-​​testing. Lit­tle do they know this under­uti­lized mar­ket­ing prac­tice can be one of the most profitable.

Split-​​testing is the sim­ple process of split­ting your audi­ence into read­ing two or more ver­sions of your copy — whether it’s your web­site, saleslet­ter, email, etc — to deter­mine which ver­sion pulls the best.

I’m a big fan of test­ing. And I teach it as much as I can, and if my cri­tiques are any indi­ca­tion, I also believe 99% of mar­keters out there do not test at all. It’s a shame, because they’re leav­ing so much money on the table.

I applaud those peo­ple who do test. The prob­lem, how­ever, is that some of them reveal their test results, share their insights, and make claims, which can be a bad thing.

Sure, test results are cool. Per­haps even insight­ful. But some may be mis­in­ter­preted, and doing so also feeds into this lack­adaisi­cal mind­set of those non-​​testers, think­ing that such test results are uni­ver­sally applic­a­ble and there­fore test­ing is unnecessary.

Tak­ing any test result as gospel, with­out val­i­da­tion, can be an expen­sive proposition…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

In prac­ti­cally every major mar­ket­ing teach­ing, course, or sem­i­nar I’ve come across, I have found that almost all suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing on the Inter­net really boils down to two essen­tial fac­tors: traf­fic and con­ver­sion.

Sim­ply put, vis­i­tors and sales.

In fact, I’ve been to two-​​day Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars and work­shops, where the first day focused on gen­er­at­ing traf­fic and the sec­ond day on build­ing sales.

That’s all well and good. How­ever, I believe there’s one more key com­po­nent. It’s one that’s grow­ing not only in pop­u­lar­ity, but also in need and impor­tance. It’s the one fac­tor on which the other two hinge. And it’s one that seems to be the least talked about.

In my career, I’ve seen the proof again and again. If you incor­po­rate this third ele­ment into your busi­ness model, chances are you’re going to see sub­stan­tial, con­tin­u­ous growth in your busi­ness — with a lot less effort than you’ve orig­i­nally thought possible.

What is it? What is this third, miss­ing element?

Read the rest of this post or share it »

If you’ve spent much time at all here, you’ll know Michel’s a fanat­i­cal tester. But he’s not alone in his pas­sion for quan­tifi­able results.

For instance our friend Alex Man­doss­ian preaches to any­one with ears to hear that, “Noth­ing is true or false, but test­ing makes it so.”

(Hope I got that right, Alex.)

That’s so impor­tant. Because while copy always has been and always will be indis­pens­able in sell­ing — espe­cially on the web — any copy­writer who thinks words alone are enough is doing his clients a huge disservice.

At Suc­cess Doc­tor we’re pas­sion­ate about copy, but we also rec­og­nize words have lim­i­ta­tions. When you tune your copywriter’s radar into mar­kets that value test­ing, you’ll quickly dis­cover — it’s the most com­pet­i­tive mar­kets that place the great­est pre­mium on test­ing over “gut” feeling.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Not a copy­writer or just start­ing out? Can’t afford a high-​​priced copy­writer? Need copy real fast to start sell­ing or to pro­mote affil­i­ate prod­ucts right away?

Here’s some­thing that might inter­est you…

Com­puter pro­gram­mer Robert Plank shares his quick and easy for­mula for writ­ing com­pelling sales let­ters fast.

Sure, noth­ing beats know­ing how to write great copy. But…

This pain­less for­mula will have your prod­ucts launched and your web­sites up and run­ning in less than an hour! (If you hate writ­ing copy or don’t have time, or you sim­ply need copy really fast, you’re going to love this.)

Read the rest of this post or share it »

One of the many tools avail­able that I absolutely love is Amem­ber from CGI-​​Central. Amem­ber not only man­ages my mem­ber­ship sites, it also han­dles dig­i­tal prod­uct sales, deliv­ery, and protection.

For instance, it pro­tects down­load pages, offers back­end sales and automa­tion, allows pro­tec­tion of “exter­nal” fold­ers and files, and it even comes with a built-​​in autore­spon­der. (And that’s just a par­tial list.)

I use Amem­ber with Word­Press for my mem­ber­ship sites, such as, for exam­ple, the all-​​new Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity, among many others.

But Amem­ber does have its flaws…

Read the rest of this post or share it »

One of my coach­ing stu­dents recently asked me whether it’s bet­ter to offer a free trial or a $1 lim­ited time trial as an incen­tive to sign up for a paid newslet­ter subscription.

The answer involves the vital role of track­ing and test­ing through­out your entire sales funnel.

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, a free trial is likely to con­vert more vis­i­tors ini­tially, but the $1 trial may be the bet­ter choice over the long term. Such gen­er­al­iza­tions have lit­tle place in busi­ness. The only way to deter­mine the right answer for your busi­ness is to track and test the process from begin­ning to end.

Read the rest of this post or share it »