Advertising is expensive. And it costs you the same amount of money to run an ad that brings in 1 Lawn Care Client as one that drives in 20 Lawncare or Landscaping clients. So that difference is in your ad. Let’s say you’ve come up with what you think is a good ad (powerful headline, good offer for landscaping or lawn care services, sizzling copy, etc.), now you’re ready to test.

A few months ago I finished reading Joe Sugarman’s insightful book “Marketing Secrets of a Mail Order Maverick” and he points out that testing will help you:

1. Save yourself a bunch of money.
2. Improve any results you’re currently getting.
3. Stop guessing about what works.

I’d say those are some pretty good reasons to learn all about testing and how to apply it to your landscaping, lawn care, irrigation, lighting or actually any other business.

And before spending money on your landscape ads you can (and should) do a few low-cost/no-cost tests:

The Sleep On It Test
First, you should let your ad sit for at least a day. Then the next day you can come back to it with new eyes and a fresher perspective. You can find errors that weren’t apparent before. Also, he points out your chances of writing a good ad are significantly improved with rewriting.

Reading Aloud Test
I don’t what it is about reading something aloud versus writing, but you’ll pick up lots and lots of insight into how good (or bad) your ad really is by reading it aloud. All the bumps and rough spots jump out at you. It’s because you’ve got a little voice inside your head speaking the words as you’re writing. And sometimes this little voice will fill in words that aren’t on paper, leave out different tenses, etc. There is something magical about reading your landscaping ads aloud.

Or a variation on this is to have someone else read it you. This is even better. As they’re reading it, you should take out a copy of the ad and make notes on it. One big advantage of this is your reader ( a landscaping or lawn care customer or prospect) is completely impartial. He won’t stress certain phrases or words to make the meaning clearer. And if the reader is having trouble with certain spots you know that’s an area to edit. If the reader stumbles over a sentence, it’s your fault as the writer not the readers.

All of those ‘trouble’ spots are where you want to focus and rewrite. You want all of your writing to be like a slippery slide. Once you’ve gained the landscape prospects attention with your headline, you’d like them to continue reading all the way down to where they need to take action and call you out for a landscape or lawncare or other service proposal. Every bump or trouble spot is a place for your prospect to stop reading and jump off your slide. Don’t give them that opportunity.

Sneaky Opinion Test
This test is really cool. Take your ad off your printer and make a xerox copy of it. Then go around to a few people who should be in your target landscaping market and say something like “Take a look at this, I just found this in a landscaping magazine.”

Key point: Do not tell people you wrote the ad because they’ll be say how nice it is.

You’re gauging their response. If they say something like “Did you write this?” or “This is really good.” What that really means is your ad sucks. But if you start hearing “Do you know how I can get this?” or “Can I get this type of landscaping or lawn maintenance from you?” then you know you’re on to something good.

But don’t get too happy yet. Because the only votes that count are the ones that are paid for. And that’s what we’ll talk about next.

Now you’re ready to spend some money.

But the first thing you don’t want to do is call every newspaper, magazine, throw-away, etc that a potential landscaping or lawn maintenance prospect may read. because you know this new ad is going to work like crazy. You need to start by testing small. And that means spending as little as possible to get accurate results.

Joe Sugarman (He is the bearded guy who sells a boat load of blu-blocker sunglasses on QVC and HSN) tells how he would test all his ads in the Southwestern edition of the Wall Street Journal. Because this was the cheapest and smallest edition of the Journal to test.

That way he was able to read results quickly and then decide whether or not to ‘roll-out’ to other editions. So how can you apply this information to your practice marketing efforts?

Easy.

Let’s say you’ve been running Home and Garden section of your local paper. Well, usually newspapers have zoned editions based on zip codes. So instead of paying for your ad to appear in the entire circulation, you simply put it in one of the cheapest and most representative zones available for the type of landscape or lawncare clients that are the best for your landscape company..

Now, once you’ve tracked the response (using a specific phone#, person, extension#, etc.) you can safely predict what results you’ll get once you go out to the entire circulation. One more point. It’s better to run your test ad in a daily paper instead of a monthly magazine. Simply because you can ascertain information more quickly.

And what if your test flops?

Well, it’s been my experience and other marketers, who I respect that you cannot multiply zero. That means if there is no life in your ad — kill it before it sucks more money and time from you. Usually there is no way to revive a lifeless ad.

Infomercial marketers realize this point. Imagine spending $100,000.00 to produce one single 30 minute spot and then buying $400 – $1,000 in media to test it out. That’s what infomercial companies do. They know if the phones aren’t ringing after a couple of T.V. spots — they’re sure as hell not going to ring if they throw tens of thousands of dollars in media at it, either.

That also means you can’t fall in love with your ad or letter. If you get emotionally attached to your creation you can’t rationally look at your test results.

And don’t get into the trap of letting your media rep talk their b.s. about repetition and getting discounts for multiple insertions. Remember, these guys have no clue in hell about how to create advertising that works. If they did, they’d be running ads in their own magazines and making tons of money. Make sure you explain that you won’t repeat an ad until you know the test is successful.

What Makes Your Test Successful?

Let’s talk about successful vs. unsuccessful tests for a second when it comes to landscaping or service related ads. Everybody is hung up on percentages and number of responses. I look at bottom line net dollars.

What if you send out 5,000 sales letters and you only get a 1/5% (0.20) response. You might be inclined to tell yourself that letter really blew. Not so fast. Take a look:

5,000 x .20% = 10 people responded.

Now, let’s say only 3 of those people signed a landscaping or lawn maintenance contract with you. And if the average value of that client was $2,500.00 over the course of a year, you’ve come up with $7,500.00 in revenue. Not too shabby.

Well, take a look: 3 people x $2,500.00 = $7,500.00 in revenue. Your cost for sending out those letters was about 50 cents a letter. So your total cost was $2,500.00. Subtract out any supplies and other expenses related to these procedures and you might end up with $4,000.00 net.

I don’t know about you, but if I could invest $2,500 somewhere and get back $7,500, I’d be making that investment as much as I could. That’s the way you look at the success or failure of a test.

Working Your Numbers

In order to measure which ad or letter is working better than the other, you’ve got to do your numbers. And it’s not too hard. First, to get your cost per lead, take all your leads and divide by your ad cost (or letter cost). For example, you paid $1,000 for an ad and you get 40 people to call your voice mail message.

That turns out to be a cost per lead of $ 25.00 ($1,000/40 = $25). Now, just like a percentage this number doesn’t really mean anything until you start comparing against other ads.

Okay, next take all your variable expenses (voice mail, reports x3, postage, etc) and multiply that by your number of leads. Maybe it costs you 2 bucks for the first mailing and then $1.50 letters 2 and 3, plus $1 for voice mail transcription and rental.

So in this case it’s 40 x $6.00 = $240.00.

Take this expense and add it your ad cost ($240 + $1,000 = $1,240). Divide this number by your leads to get total cost per lead. So obviously if you get one landscape or lawncare job from this ad, your test would have been successful.

When you go to the bank to deposit your money they don’t ask you whether you got half a percent, 20 percent or 70 percent response to your marketing. Bottom-line is all that counts.

Fail Forward

And don’t worry if your test isn’t successful. The best landscaping marketers will typically have a success with 3 or 4 out of 10 ads. But those successes more than make up for any failures. The key is to move on quickly. Forget about your losers as soon as possible and capitalize on your winners.

Thomas Edison, when asked why he continued trying to invent the light bulb after 10,000 failures, replied that he now knew 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb.

On the other hand, if you’re ad is showing promise then you want to continue running it and test to see “how high is high.” Don’t make the mistake of dropping it arbitrarily in favor of something new. You should continue running your winning ad, sales letter, etc. until something beats it. Only then do you switch. Don’t let your spouse, office manager, or anyone else besides the market influence your decision.

Your winning ad is called your ‘control’ and now you want to beat it by changing one element at a time. Whether that is your headline, offer, call to action, subhead, etc.

And the best way to do this is using a split test or A/B split. Different newspapers and magazines offer this option. An A/B split is when the publication runs two different versions of your ad in every other issue. This produces the most scientific results, since both ads appear on the same day, same position and to the same audience. Some publications will charge you a little more for this service, but it’s worth it.

Let me give you a few examples of split testing that had significant results. Again from Joe Sugarman’s book he tells of how after 10 years he was spending millions of dollars on a vitamin ad and decided to test the format. Ad#1 was his control ad with no coupon. And ad#2 he added a vertical dotted line running up the entire left side of the page asking readers to tear out the ad. Then he also included a dotted line around the order information asking prospects to tear out the coupon.

And guess which version worked best?

The ugly one! It pulled a full 30% better response than the decade old control ad. He says from then all his ads became uglier and more profitable. Now Joe never ventured to try out a newer and uglier format he would have went on getting the same results and believing that’s the best he could do.

And here are a few examples of what simply a change in headline can do:

A. If you are a careful driver you can save money on car insurance vs.
B. How to turn your careful driving into money

Headline A out pulled the other by 50%.

A. Good news for men who want attractive, well-groomed hair vs.
B. Will your scalp stand the “fingernail test”?

Headline B brought in 56% more responses.

Could you have picked the winners from that group before they were tested? If not, then you know that’s why guessing is so dangerous.

John Wannamaker (and then later P.T. Barnum and William Wrigley repeated him), said that 50% of his advertising was being wasted — but he didn’t know which 50%. Now by using direct marketing and testing you’ll know exactly and eliminate conjecture and supposition.

Testing Gives You Incredible Leverage
to Multiply Your Results
Another major advantage to testing is the ability to transfer winning concepts and copy from one platform to another. I’ll give you an example from one of my other clients. I did a full page lead generating ad for this company selling EKGs to FAA Medical Examiners.

After the full page ad was successful we turned it into a self-mailer. The teaser headline on the front was the same headline from the winning ad. This way we knew that the appeal and the copy was powerful and it ended being extremely sucsales letters, brochures, etc.

More Testing Secrets

And you don’t have to limit your testing to an ad. There was a bank that would test their advertising propositions with posters in their front lobby. Each day they would count the number of people who walked by the poster and also those who stopped. Then they would use that winning appeal for their ads.

It wouldn’t be too difficult for you to do the same thing.

What if you included a small flyer inside a plastic holder. Every week or every other day you could test different ‘headlines’. Then you know which appeal is most powerful and would appeal to prospects similiar to your current landscaping, lawn care, or irrigation, etc…prospects.

Tests also don’t need to be limited to advertising. You could and should test pricing, different offers, different upsells, almost anything. As long as you can measure it — you can test it.