Testing your ideas (2)

Yesterday, I received a solid reminder of the costs and challenges of surveying and testing marketing ideas, especially when you engage in intrusive communications. The question, always, is whether the intrusion's reward is worthy of its cost.

The question is whether our special advertising-supported editorial feature concept, the backbone of our existing print business, could be adapted effectively to leads generated from this blog in the new Design and Construction Report (http://www.dcnreport.com).

You can see the original posting explaining the concept here.

Out of 1,419 survey invitations, 15 answered the question, but disturbingly, six people reported my email as "spam" -- the highest number of spam complaints I've received for a single mailing since I began using Constant Contact about two years ago. (The spam complaints may have resulted in part because I inadvertently selected one of my employees as "sending" the email, and the recipients may not have known her. (She got a surprise on waking up to find dozens of 'bounces' in her email box!)

However, while nine people responded by saying they would welcome publicity only without any cost at all to their organization (hardly of value for our business), three said "yes" to the question of whether they would be willing to pay for the service with a "satisfaction guaranteed or there is no cost" fee, and three said they don't know whether publicity would be of value to them.

Later in the day, Chase observed in an email to me:

"Three leads where people would pay a fee is promising.

"The real question is to determine if the people responding are the real decision makers or not.

"I suspect we would see an average of five per cent close rate from the blog leads. I have no problem working these and as more issues are published the close rate will increase."

The results, obviously biased with responses from people who have a relatively close connection with our business, suggest there is some interest in the concept, but we don't have overwhelming or obvious demand. In other words, I certainly have not hit a home run.

And, to get the answers, I pushed myself into the face of busy people who don't really need nor want the intrusion.

But it isn't a dead loss either. As Chase points out, if we can achieve a five per cent close rate in the early going (that is one in 20), without being a pest or spending too much sales energy on weak leads, we have a viable market -- because this blog and its high Google rankings generates upwards of 20 to 30 inquiries a week. With our average revenue per feature, this indicates a market potential of upwards of $100,000.

In marketing, sometimes we need to push out a little to see what is happening, and sometimes we need to be a little in the face of our current or potential clients. This is certainly not the "Permission Marketing" advocated by Seth Godin, but I think a totally passive approach with no assertion or invitation/call to action is asking for silence when you try out new things.

As well, I appreciate that our business idea probably requires the effective intervention and co-ordination of intelligent sales representatives. The editorial publicity/special advertising feature concept is reasonably simple, but may not lend itself to the "check the box, 'I'll take it'" attitude.

Nevertheless, I'll be respectful and careful before rushing to generate another survey. I need to respect that far too many people resented the intrusion.

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Testing your ideas

Yesterday morning, I floated a trial balloon on this blog, suggesting that the Design and Construction Report could be an effective opportunity to associate your interests (as Construction Marketing Ideas blog readers) with our own marketing strategies.

I then presented the idea to our weekly general meeting, and received what amounted to a collective "sigh" from my company's sales team. They effectively told me, "no, this won't work."

Glub. "Brilliant ideas" go nowhere without execution. So, the question is, am I wrong to assume there is a valid marketing correlation between responses and connections from this blog and the marketing of publicity-focused services, or should I push forward and (even more dramatically) invest time, resources, and money in making it happen?

Most of the time, these sorts of questions are aired and responded quietly within our own businesses.

But this blog's foundation is its openness and experimentation -- you can see ideas maturing, tested, and sometimes failing, right in front of your eyes. The result hopefully show you what can work for your own business, and which ideas should be dropped like lead balloons. (That's the second balloon analogy in this posting.)

In practice, most successful business people process dozens, even hundreds, of ideas a year. These arrive through their own experiences, insight flashes, employees, external media publicity and conferences, and sometimes, the initiative of outside sales representatives.

We need to process the ideas quickly and sort them into ones worthy of further experimentation and implementation. Most ideas rightfully end up right in the trash can, but unfortunately, I'm sure, many worthy innovations are not introduced because of inertia, fear, laziness, or simply lack of knowledge.

The question is, how can you sift the ideas effectively and quickly and focus your energies where they will be most useful? I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest these tests are worthy of consideration.

Is the idea you are testing low risk, easy to implement, and not likely to cause too much disruption in existing operations?
This is an "easy to say yes" idea -- but one which probably won't have that much impact long-term.

If you are asking someone else to do something, would you do it yourself? If not, why not?
My sales representatives said "no" to the idea of marketing leads generated by this blog for the Design and Construction Report. I suppose I could force them to do some work here -- but if I'm not ready to do it myself, why should I ignore their resistance?

Can you find quick tests that will validate your assumptions, without burning bridges or draining resources?
A few years ago, a well-placed person proposed a business idea that seemed relevant and valid, but would have required commitments of resources and effort beyond normal levels. We spent months setting up the concept, even developing prototypes. But I hesitated and decided I needed to see how the market would respond. I contracted with a reliable but non-employee representative to work with me for three days to see whether he could sell the idea. It failed, miserably. Maybe the idea should have received a 'second chance' but I realized that we were entering the space of diminishing returns. I dropped it.

Will the idea produce immediate revenue or reduce costs right away, or is it an "investment for the future"?
The former two variables are easy to say "yes" and move forward, the latter requires a much higher commitment threshold (and the risk increases with the investment size).

Can you find a test that will quickly provide you with insights and results at minimum cost and effort?
The three day test described above for an idea we had worked on for months made sense (and the investment in a few days pay for one person proved to be worth every cent), but do you want to spend that much time and effort validating other ideas, at the earlier stages of their development. You need some quick tests and measuring tools to tell you whether to take things further, or drop the idea.

For the idea I posted yesterday, the negative feedback from my staff is a major warning to go slow, if at all.

I can now take things in two directions: Pick up the phone or send some emails to a sampling of potential clients to see their interest (that is, do the work myself, with sampling, one by one), or survey the readers with a quick online poll.

I decided on the latter -- it is fast, easy, and if it works, will provide immediate and actionable leads. And if it doesn't work, I'll know equally quickly, and we can move on to other ideas.

If you haven't already received the survey invitation email from me, you can see it here -- and once you complete the survey, you will also see the results!

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