Yesterday I wrote about why testing is important for me, inspite of having worked on this for so many years. One is the theoretical part and I shared that yesterday. Next is the practical part and why I insist on testing.

I was advising someone, who does video production, for how their Google Adwords should look, the kind of phrases they should have etc. I had also advised them on the audience they need to cater to and the kind of headlines and lead magnet they need to look at.

After launching the advertisement, there were no clicks, no one was clicking on their ads and giving their emails. As usual, my first target to deduce was the market, so I got them to check for the market they were targeting, checked if they had the single target market defined clearly. Then added a couple of geographies, just in case the market we initially identified was too small, still no response.

Then we changed the keyword phrases of when the advertisement should show up. Still no response.

Till now I was giving them ideas from a distance and they were executing. I understand I can make errors, but not getting any response is extremely low for my ego. So today I actually sat down with them to understand when the advertisement gets shown, how does it look. That’s when I started seeing a horror movie.

The way the ads were getting shown because of the limits on the headlines and content lines, the whole advertisement was gibberish. It was not making sense. No wonder, no one was responding. The medium has its constraints and you have to live with it. But if you know the constraints, then you can always find ways to solve.

Luckily we were playing at a low scale to test for the lead generation and hence the impact was not very high. Testing at a small scale to figure out the “gotchas” is a God send. Even with the best of intentions and capabilities, its absolutely critical in marketing to test every element of your campaign.

Now we are getting a new set of ads getting launched. I will keep you posted on how the new things progress and the impact the changes had on the campaign.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!