Timberway.com - Marketing Test of a Solo Ezine Ad

Marketing Test of a Solo Ezine Ad from Solo-Ads.com

Testing your marketing scientifically is one of the most important things you can do to improve your marketing efforts and increase your sales.  The concept of a marketing test is simple:  gather statistics on the results from various places that you market and/or from changes that you make in other variables in your marketing.  Marketing test variables might include:

• Where the ad runs
• Type of ad (solo ezine ad, top ezine ad, classified ad, Google AdWords, etc.)
• Headline wording
• Graphics that are included
• Body text wording
• Pricing points
• Free bonuses included
• Different guarantees
• Different calls to action
• Different P.S.'s
• Etc.

Here's an example of a very simple initial marketing test I just did for a solo ezine ad.

I recently wrote a news item in Timberway.com Internet Marketing News about Solo-Ads.com.  Solo-Ads.com lets you send solo ezine ads to opt-in subscribers.  Their prices are quite affordable, and you can even earn free advertising.  Solo-Ads.com was highly recommended to me by Tinu Abayomi-Paul, author of Marketing Success with RSS and Blog About This!  Tinu told me that she normally gets better results with free solo ezine ads from Solo-Ads.com than when placing the same ad elsewhere.  Since I've greatly benefitted from every other piece of advice Tinu's give me, I decided to test it.

Marketing Test Objective

Solo-Ads.com allows subscribers to earn points towards getting their own free solo ezine ads by clicking on links within the emails they receive as subscribers to Solo-Ads.com.  I wanted to determine:

1.  Whether people only click the link to get the points and then leave without taking any further actions,

OR

2.  Whether they would take action on the offer on the web site, even though they had already received their points just by visiting that page.

Marketing Test Size and Cost

I purchased a very small run - 500 solo ezine ads for just $6.

Marketing Test Offer

Since I wanted to see if people would take action on the page or just click away immediately because they were only after the points from Solo-Ads, I decided to focus the ad on giving away an ebook for free.  That way there would not be any question whether my offer was good or bad, after all, it's free!

Of course I didn't want to just an ebook away for free that would have no benefit for me also, so I picked one that I could brand with my affiliate ID on any sales links in the ebook.  Brad Callen had just released a free ebook on Search Engine Optimization that was perfect for this.  It not only gives really valuable and useful Search Engine Optimization advice, it also markets his excellent and very popular SEOElite Search Optimization software.

How the Marketing Test Was Keyed

It's important when doing a marketing test to key the results so that you can separate the results for a given ad from other similar ads.  I set up a web page just for this marketing campaign, so that I could easily track the results by looking at my web site logs.

Ad Text Used in the Marketing Test

Subject:  Free Special for Solo-Ads.com Subscribers

Brad Callen, author of the extremely popular SEOElite Search Engine Optimization tool, just released a new Ebook, Search Engine Optimization Made Easy.  I've made arrangements with him for Solo-Ads.com subscribers to download it for free.

Brad's SEOElite software is probably the most effective SEO tool currently on the market.  His new ebook is the collected wisdom of one of the most expert Search Engine Optimizers around.

Search Engine Optimization Made Easy is written very clearly and basically so that anyone can understand it and use it to dramatically improve their web site's ranking in the search engine results.

Download a copy of Search Engine Optimization Made Easy and learn how to increase your web site traffic.  You will learn:

- Why if you optimize your web site for the wrong keywords you will likely never see results

- How changing one single onpage search engine optimization factor can boost your search engine rankings by over 350 positions!

- The secret to getting listed in Google in under 24 hours - guaranteed!

- How to skyrocket your web site to the top Of Google with properly planned offpage Search Engine Optimization!

- How to skyrocket past the #1 ranked website on Google for your keywords

- Whether you are asking Google to penalize or ban your web site - by accident!

- What is possibly the biggest misconception about ranking well in the Search Engines?

- What you MUST do to rank well for your inner web pages...

- The cold, hard facts about Google Page Rank (PR) and how to use it to one-up your competitors!

- And much more!

Download your free copy of Search Engine Marketing Made Easy today from Timberway.com.

http://www.timberway.com/solo-ads-seo-ebook-1.htm?1

Marketing Test Results

500 solo ezine ads were sent at a cost of $6.

58 people clicked on the link in the solo ezine ad and visited the page within 24 hours.  This was an 11.6% response, with an advertising cost per visitor of $0.10.

14 of the people who clicked on the link and visited the page downloaded the free ebook.  That's a 2.8% response from the original ad and a 24.1% response of the people who visited the page.  It cost $0.43 for each copy of the book that was distributed.

6 people surfed around other pages on the website - 1.2% of the people who received the solo ezine ad and 10.3% of the people who visited the page.

3 of those people who surfed around other pages on the website had also downloaded the ebook - so 21.4% of the people who downloaded the free ebook also went on to check out the rest of the web site.

3 of the people who did not download the ebook still surfed around other pages on the website.  That means that even though they may not have been interested in this particular ebook, 5.2% of them were interested enough to check out the rest of the web site.

Marketing Test Conclusions

I have to admit, I'm pretty impressed with those figures. Even with Tinu's recommendation, I wondered how many people would click on links just to get points to get their own free advertising.  I think the responses I got indicate Solo-Ads.com is a great place to advertise.

Search Engine Optimization is a very competitive market for pay-per-click advertising.  The phrase "Search Engine Optimization" is $3 per click and the phrase "search engine optimization software" is $4.50 per click on Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) right now.  $0.10 per click is a bargain.

Though I did not immediately sell any copies of SEOElite from that campaign, that was not the opjective of this marketing test, and it was not unexpected.  First, the sampling size was small - with only 14 people downloading the ebook, that's not a big enough sample to evaluate the percentage who would buy SEOElite from this campaign.  Second, this is an indirect way of making a sale.  People may read the ebook for a while and then later decide to buy SEOElite.

Though this wasn't a big enough test to determine what percentage of people would actually purchase SEOElite because of this campaign, a common estimate for sales from any direct marketing piece is 1%.  If you figure 1% of people who download the free ebook will likely purchase SEOElite, that would mean there would be an advertising expense of $43 for each copy of the software sold.  SEOElite currently sells for $167, with a 50% commission for affiliates.  At that rate, I would approximately double my money.  This also fits in with a classic rule of thumb in direct marketing that advertising expenses will average 50% of gross sales.

I could also purchase a bigger number of solo ads from Solo-Ads.com and get almost a 50% discount - 4000 solo ezine ads sent for $25.  By the above estimates, I could quadruple my money instead of double it.

Okay, sounds like it's time for a bigger test!  I would say Solo-Ads.com is definitely a recommended place to advertise at a very affordable (or even free) rate.  And I think it's time for a bigger ad run there!

Find out how you can advertise for a very low cost - or even free - at Solo-Ads.com...

Find out more about the best Search Engine Optimization software, SEO Elite...

Download a free copy of Brad Callen's Search Engine Optimization ebook, Search Engine Optimization Made Easy...