Summary: Learn why you should test, test, test everything in Internet marketing to find out what works.

There are a ton of “proven techniques” that are promoted in the Internet marketing arena. But, no matter what you might read or who you might listen to one thing is certain. Testing your marketing methods is something that must be done on a regular basis.

Here’s the deal. We can’t assume that what works for one group of prospects will work for another group. We can’t assume that because it has been “proven” that it will work for us. We can’t assume that what has worked for us in the past will work for us in the future.

I know what you are thinking, “If I can’t depend on these things, then what can I do”. Well, here it is in three simple words; test, test, test.

Testing of your marketing methods should simply be a part of the way we do business. We should want to know if option A produces more results than option B. We should want to know if we are getting traffic from those paid clicks or if we are just paying out money for no reason. We should have some form of insight into what is going on in our marketing efforts and how we can improve their results. We should, test everything.

So how do we do this testing?

One method is split testing. Let’ take newsletter sign up forms as an example. Split testing a sign up form is a simple way to know if one form gets better results than another form. Let’s say your two forms are exactly alike in all respects, except one form is placed within the home page of your site and the other form is included in a popup on that same page.

Over a period of time, say a week or even a month, you see that more people sign up through the pop up form than through the inline form on the page. Now you know that the pop up form is the way to go.

Now that you know which form works better by placement, now you can create two similar pop up forms that rotate out and you can begin to refine the form for even better results. You can continue to do this for as long as you like, though there may come a time when you say, “That’s good enough for now”. When that happens leave it for a while, but don’t forget to come back and review your results regularly to make sure that you are still getting the response rate you are looking for.

You might be thinking, “I don’t want to spend a lot of time split testing”. I understand how you feel. I felt the same way until I saw my newsletter subscription rate double because of some simple split testing. Before the split testing I had no real insight into how to improve my processes. It was all mainly guess work. I got tired of driving blind and I am sure you feel the same way.

If you are interested in improving your results, and I know you are, then here is what I recommend. Use a service that provides you the ability to split test whatever it is that you are working on. Now, in some cases you can easily split test on your own without needing a service, but if you like to be shielded from the technical side of the process, then look for a service that can give you quick and easy split testing tools.

To split test the Open Source Marketer newsletter sign up forms I used AWeber. They offer me the ability to create split tests for newsletter sign up forms and all I had to do is put the code on my website. Aweber handles the form rotation and tracking for me. I get to login, review my results, and make decisions about a or b. Then I can refine the test and the forms get updated on my site automatically. I get the benefit without the hassle.

There are also services out there that will let you split test web sites, web pages, graphics, ads, etc. Everything and anything can be split tested and should be. So remember, all the “proven techniques” in the world aren’t worth a dime if you can’t point to one of them and say this worked for me better than that worked for me.

Testing is essential to getting results and should be just another part of how we do business. So, stop and think for a second, what can you split test today that will increase your chances of success? Now, get out there and test it.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com