Quick, Free, Easy Market Tests
Forget Google Analytics. Forget landing pages. Forget a fancy email system. Sorry all my agency friends - this post is all about guerrilla marketing!
For those of us who are lucky to have a blog, use our own email accounts, and Tweet or use Facebook for fun or business, there are some pretty cool, free tools to test messaging and user engagement for our products and services.
(Never has it been more important to break through the noise online with your messages, and never has it been more important to keep marketing during an economic downturn.)
Say you want to test messaging into several different market segments. You can do so quickly with some pretty simple tools.
Hypothetical Scenario: Reaching Moms during the Holidays:
You want to reach moms during this busy holiday season with a special offer of some lovely bath products just for them.
You recognize the differences in the motivations and life patterns among moms:
- some prefer to stay at home
- some work outside the home
- all work inside the home - some for profit, some volunteer, some run the family
Subtle differences in anyone’s lifestyle, attitude and preferences are best served with subtly different messages.
Consider these (unscientific, on the fly, illustrative) examples:
Message 1: Stay at home mom - “Escape inside your own home - even for 30 minutes - and refresh your attitude! http://smub.it/jlj/escape” 104 characters - Tweet worthy! (Twitter limits you to 140 characters)
Message 2: Stay at home mom volunteer - “You give so much to everyone else - take just 30 minutes - and be good to yourself… http://smub.it/jlj/ahhh” 103 characters - Another winner for Twitter!
Message 3: Mom working outside the home - “Relax in the comfort of your own home - take just 30 minutes - and find peace. http://smub.it/jlj/peace” 103 characters - yes!
So Tweet these (assuming you’re following your market - moms who Tweet) and you can see how many times people follow your links using Smub, a tool to personalize and share links. (disclaimer: Smub is a client of mine, and there are other URL shortening tools that allow you to track links, but not personalize them.)
Your personal, secure MySmubs page will show you the number of “hits” you get from people who follow your Smubs (see the right-most column, below):
As those of you with REALLY good eyesight might see, I can easily track the number of click-thrus on any Smub.Â
Want to test these messages in your blog, or send these messages in an email, or post them on your Facebook page (or your mom group’s Facebook page?) Go ahead. You can see the results immediately, and watch them over time.
The messages that are resonating (or interesting or…) are going to show up quickly in clicks.
So go ahead… take this time to test some messaging. Spread the word simply, and see the results. Without help from a web programmer, an agency, your IT guy or anyone else, for that matter.
Your guerrilla (free) marketing will be more effective as a result.
I had no idea Smub did that. I like it but was starting to find it limiting for mass use. This really shows me that it can be used very strategically. And I agree that there are so many tools people are just scratching the surface on.
Hey, Matt, in terms of being limited for mass use, are you talking about other “built in” type functions (e.g. TinyURL in Twitter, etc.) that make a difference to you, or???
Thanks for any clarification you can make.
I agree with you - the tools are proliferating, so we really need to focus on those that fit our lives online, and add the value we need. - Cheers!
This is a great tool that I’ve just started using for my wife’s business. In the past, analytics and social media haven’t really been able to fit into the same sentence, but it’s exciting to see that the complexity of measurement tools is slowly starting to evolve.
Thanks for the article!
[...] through Janet Lee Johnson’s blog, The Art of Marketing, you may run into links that appear to be gibberish (i.e., http://smub.it/jlj/90.9.1). However, if [...]