Most organisations, especially marketing-driven ones, are not familiar with one of the greatest web weapons available, namely continual testing. Traditional departments hum their day away thinking of great new “marketing” initiatives and wish they had invented the Meerkat or the two annoying blokes on the Safestyle Windows advert.
Most of what they produce is low-grade, recycled, tat. And that’s a shame.
Some of the brightest people I have met worked in marketing departments, but mostly they weren’t thinking about marketing, they were thinking about operational needs, budgets and getting out the latest offer in the post, by Friday. Ring any bells?
Most senior management and executive boards are not really that keen to sign-off on big changes, especially when “it’s the brand you’re playing with, don’t you know”. So here is a quick one paragraph trick to get them listening and, more importantly, keen to try something new.
Tell them “every company that tried online testing with their website saw at least a 20% improvement in conversion rates, in a month” and “that equates to £100k per month” – but obviously use a figure that represents 1/5th of your online turnover or if you are in the data acquisition world 1/5th of the total number of data items the online world generates for you. That should get their attention! Next tell them to half your salary and pay you a bonus based on performance with the condition that when the online conversion rate has doubled they have to pay you double your old salary. It that doesn’t catch them, which it bloody well should, contact me and I’ll organize a free test for you.
The results speak for themselves and as almost everyone is now getting into feverish testing you’d better start testing…or update your CV.
