How you can follow Google’s testing strategy to make your company prosper.

Wouldn’t it stink to be in the home sales business right now?

A friend of mine used to drive by a billboard every day that said “New Home FINANCE Center.”

Not a good thing in this down cycle but with the change of just a few letters this company ensured their survival in a down economy.

The billboard now says “New Home RELIEF Center.”

This is smart marketing and smart marketing always stems from a complete reality check.

That’s why Google is so dominant.

By adopting a “we don’t know it all, let’s test it attitude,” Google did the near impossible.

In less than 8 years they grew from nothing to the world’s most valued company.  They became more important than IBM…a bigger media player than all the TV networks COMBINED and put Microsoft back on its heels so far Bill Gates devoted his life to charity.

Through it all Google stays REALITY based.

They test every new business idea.  They test and re-test all aspects of their marketing to make sure they get maximum impact from all of their sales and marketing processes.

The first thing most small and mid-size service and retail companies should do is correctly set up an online advertising campaign on Yahoo or Google and then test it with your website (or special landing pages) to find out what converts traffic to sales in profitable fashions.

Take your time when doing this and do it correctly.  Every part of the process teaches you what works and what doesn’t and it’s this trial and error that will ultimately lead you to marketing success.

Why should you use search engines for this testing rather than other media?  There are lots of reasons but my favorites are as follows:

1. Search engines deliver a consistent, somewhat predictable flow of traffic

2. We can totally control how much we spend

3. We get more marketing and customer data from this source than any other option

4. We have more control of the testing process

THEN and only when it is working on our Google or Yahoo test do we break it out to our other marketing channels, in this preferred order:

1. Search Engine Test (Google or Yahoo)

2. Search Engine Optimization of Website

3. Other Search Engine Advertising

4. Email Promotions and Newsletters

5. Blog tagging, podcasting, videocasting and other online channels

6. Affiliates

7. Press Releases

8. Direct Mail

9. Print Advertising

10.  Other Media, if used

We test on search engines first because we can best control the conditions of our efforts while minimizing the expense.  Get it right there FIRST and then carry the messages forward to other lead generation channels.  Don’t let other more expensive channels offering less information be your test dummy.  If it works on the search engine, it most likely will work everywhere else.

Using this technique has the same effect water has in growing grass.  For a very small percentage of your ad budget you are getting valuable information from people that are your potential customers.  When you are ready to move to items 2-10, you’re doing so with valuable information that will explode your revenues, oftentimes 5-40 times as much as those not using such practices.

I want you to have a consistent recipe for generating traffic that converts into your desired business actions.  I want you to be able to use this recipe at will and have it do what you want at very minimal risk.  All the time, every time.

Test and make great things happen.