“I tried marketing, it was a waste of money.” “I tried direct mail, I tried an ad in the local paper, I tried using coupons. None of them worked.”
Sound familiar?
I was a full time stock trader for 13 years and managed other traders for 11 of them. One of the biggest secrets to learn is how to “pay for information”that gets you and ROI. To pay for information is to put on a trade with a “feeler” share size. This gives you an idea of the order flow for a stock.
If the initial position is profitable, you add to the trade. If it isn’t you got great information at the lowest possible cost.
Prior to putting on the trade you had to determine the probability of the idea. The eventual goal is to get as many feeler (high probability) positions on at the same time-add to the winners and dump the losers.
The real secret to successful trading; testing an idea with low risk, if it works you add more shares to an idea.
The problem for most would-be traders is they live and die by the results of individual trades. Instead the focus should be the play over time.
What does this have to do with marketing? Everything!!
As a marketer you need to set up high probability campaigns, test on a small scale, then roll out the ones that bear fruit on a bigger scale.
Don’t do too much on one idea that didn’t prove itself.
As a business owner it’s very important to not “out trade” your resources. You need to work one media and promotion at a time to discover what your edge is to your market. Then roll it out in bigger numbers.
Work your price points, tweak your headlines, work your offers, work the day of the week, work email, text versus direct mail.
Test, test, test. Then based on the results, exploit your edge as often as possible.
This is how to pay for information, send slightly different ads to your highest probability customers and then roll out the best result to a bigger audience.
Testing takes all the pressure off guessing what your market wants. “Pay” for the right information and then offer it to everyone.
Have a great day,
Pete