There are certain marketing principles that continue to hold good over time regardless of the state of the economy at large or within your specific business sector.

One of these Is in regard to the principle of testing and measuring.

What we mean by this is that because marketing is not an exact science we are unlikely to find the best solution ‘first off’ and so by trial sampling we can refine our approach without incurring prohibitive costs on the way.

So for example, if we have a mailing list that we want to use to prospect for work, we would segregate a representative sample, undertake an initial marketing-based communication and then measure the volume and quality of the response.

Better still, if we ‘split-test’ a sample so that we have two versions of the communication this provides a comparison, one against the other, in terms of their relative success.

Once we have identified which is the most successful version and that on a pro rata basis it will actually generate a positive return on the investment incurred, then we use that as the basis of the communication to the master database.

However, bear in mind that if one is better than the other but doesn’t actually produce a positive ROI then why do it and secondly, even though it has worked profitably it doesn’t mean it is the best it can be – so keep on testing and measuring!