Many real estate agents are marketing dabblers. They try something (put up a website, send out postcards, advertise in the local paper, run a tv or radio spot, send a newsletter, etc), see it doesn’t work as well as they’d like, then move onto something else. They never stick with it, nor do they ever take the time to figure out why their marketing wasn’t successful. They simply conclude that marketing doesn’t work and throw their hands up in frustration.

Marketing doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, the beauty of using direct response advertising is that with some effort and patience, you can figure out why something isn’t working and work to improve it. You don’t have to play guessing games and hope that your new advertising campaign will be the magic bullet that has your phones ringing off the hook.

A/B Split Testing

What is testing? Simply put, it’s taking two ads or mailings that are identical in all ways except one and seeing which one gets more prospects to respond. Marketers call this A/B split testing because you have 2 samples – Ad A and Ad B. To test these two ads against one another, all other conditions must be equal, so if you’re using the same mailing list of 1000 people, you’d send Ad A to 500 and Ad B to 500.

Many newspapers and magazines also will work with advertisers to run A/B testing. Just ask them if you can provide 2 ads. Half of their circulation will see Ad A while the other half will see Ad B. If your publication won’t work with you, you can also try running Ad A one week and Ad B the next (make sure to run the ads on the same days) for several weeks. Then, measure which ads get the best response.

The quickest and easiest way to run A/B split testing is with pay per click advertising. It only takes a few minutes to set up a Google Adwords account and start running advertisements. You can then try different headlines on the ads, different ad copy, and different landing pages (the pages people “land on” when they click your ad). Once you find something that’s working, you can try it in your offline advertising.

Why Should You Test?

Simply put – return on investment (ROI). When you take out an ad or send a mailing, it costs you the same amount whether one person or ten people respond – wouldn’t you prefer ten people to respond rather than just one? If you test elements of your ads and mailings, you can steadily increase your response rates so that more people respond for the same price.

As you start testing, you’ll quickly learn that what you think should work doesn’t while what does work may surprise you. Just changing a headline can increase your response rate considerably. By testing, you take a scientific approach to marketing which means you let your target audience tell you what they want rather than presuming you already know. By listening to them and understanding their wants, needs and motivations, you can make your marketing materials significantly more effective.

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