A simple way to test advertising

There is a very simple way to improve the return on advertising. Before start it is necessary to conduct its testing. How to do it without cost and headache? I'll tell you now.

The advertising theory tells us, before launching a large-scale campaign, to make small test ones - to evaluate the response and refine the forecasts. But this is not always possible - especially if the business is small and the “campaign” is just the placement of an advertising module in one publication or one banner on the industry platform. But this does not mean that testing is impossible. We just need ways that are adequate to the circumstances.

Once upon a time I ran a small advertising agency. As it should be, it was poor, but proud. We did not have the money to hire very cool designers, but, nevertheless, according to clients, our layouts for placement in the media worked better than the competitive ones. The whole thing was, as usual, "in magical bubbles."
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Before we show the layout to the client, we tested it using very simple technology. For example, a layout for a newspaper was printed on newsprint, cut out and pasted onto the page of the edition where it was supposed to be placed. On top of another, similar size. Then we looked through the strip in turn and evaluated whether our announcement was noticeable, whether its meaning was clear, if we glanced at it briefly.

Here it is necessary to understand the peculiarity of human perception. When a designer draws an ad layout or banner and shows it to the customer - the customer only sees this layout. On a clean sheet of paper or in a clean viewer window. And all the attention is focused on the layout.

But in real conditions, the environment of advertising will be completely different - there will be text, background, other advertising around, navigation elements, etc. can appear on the site. And in the end, the nice-looking layout itself is suddenly lost on the page and does not pay attention to itself.

Therefore, those models that we did in our small but proud agency differed favorably in visibility and clarity from those that our colleagues did. And in the end they gave customers a greater effect.

Now I am professionally engaged in marketing analysis of advertising, websites and companies, but these simple tools are still with me.

Here are guidelines to help you save thousands of dollars:

- Do not make decisions just by looking at the printout of the layout or a banner sent separately. At a minimum - try to imagine this object in its future location: what will be the background there, what is the environment, what are the circumstances of the contact?

- Print advertising (first of all - small, not lane), print and paste on the page of the advertisement. Try to choose for printing the quality of paper and print so that the printed ad looks like "real."

- Evaluate Internet banners directly on the site. It is very easy to do this - save the page, and then, in the html-code, change the saved banner to your own.

- "Outside" is inserted into the photo of a billboard made from afar. It turns out a small rectangle, which will give you the answer - how from a great distance your advertisement will be noticeable and what can be understood on it.

- Audio and TV clips . Here it is somewhat more complicated, since the formation of an “environment” is costly. On the other hand, the issue price is significantly higher. Therefore, we note that understanding the fate of the video will be much clearer if it is not assessed on its own, but in a specially created test block music / advertising or video / advertising. It is necessary to listen and watch these test blocks “half-heartedly” in order not to have the effect of waiting (“Well, when will our advertising be!”).

Here, in fact, all the secrets. Use, and earn more! :)