Follow-up to those guys holding me up

Alex Gibson, who clearly does strange things at the dentist wrote this to me:

I was listening to you on my mp3 player in the dentist’s waiting room on Monday.

You said something along the lines of:

“One of the best things about the internet is that it makes it cheap to do the most important thing in marketing, which is testing”.

Like the two guys in your post, I do split-testing for clients using Website Optimizer and bumps of 20% to 40% are commonplace. But, for some reason, getting clients to test is like pulling teeth.

(Particularly if they’re “testing virgins”)

It’s the damnedest thing.

If I propose something that’ll get them 10% more traffic, they jump at it.

But, suggest getting 10% more out of their existing traffic and they either think it’s voodoo or too much like hard work (even when I show them examples and offer guarantees).

I’m wondering, is this normal?

Do you find that it’s easier to sell clients on brand new advertising than it is to sell them on a re-write of their existing copy?”

The answers Alex’s questions are “yes” and “yes”.

This is even though it is always more sensible to try and improve something that’s working than strike off in an entirely new direction – and even though you’ll make more out of improving your approach to people you’ve got than people you’re just acquiring.

I think people prefer to test new creative and on getting new traffic rather than making more from what they’ve got because of the human preference for the new. I often used to say at seminars when people asked me about this new thing and that new thing, “Why don’t you try and get the basics right first?”

By coincidence I had a colleague in today who was moaning that it’s hard to get any client to do enough testing. He has conducted over 100 tests that we’re thinking of making into a book. Some of what he’s done is really revealing, especially in the use of colour.

Incidentally, as further proof of the speed of change in our little world it seems my friend Ben and Karl are no longer the only Authorised Google Optimiser Consultants in Britain – just the first ever.

But they remain the only ones to hold me up.

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

4 Comments

  1. Hey Drayton,

    I’m not “Alex”, I’m Steve.

    But, thanks for addressing the question I asked.

    BTW, what did your colleague find about colour?

    I worked for Standard Life during the 1990s when they came up with their current logo.

    I was in a meeting when one of the board explained the logo was based on “blue” and “yellow” because blue signified “trust” and “reliability” and yellow meant “warmth”.

    We looked at him incredulously and he just shrugged his shoulders.

    However, I’ve subsenquently heard – from fairly reliable sources – that blue is good online for this very reason.

    Steve

    PS Within an hour of the Standard Life logo being unveiled, some wag nicknamed it “the fag packet”.

    The name caught on and I even heard the term being used by members of the board.

  2. Sorreee! There’s also an Alex Gibson … people think I’m a machine, but I’m not and I do tend to remember people’s names – wrongly, in this case.

    Two things about colour:

    1. Bright red chroma colour headlines (as opposed to black) above copy actually put people off reading the copy – and reduced good comprehension from 67% to 17%.

    2. My colleague got amazingly improved results by using a lot of (what else) green when making a an environmentally “good” proposition.

    Re Standard Life logo: I think design firms come out with a lot of fancy bollocks – but then so do we all from time to time.

  3. Hi Drayton

    I’ve had the same experience in terms of testing new approaches versus refining the ‘old’.

    It is human nature, and let’s be honest far more ‘fun’ to try something perceived to be new, ‘innovative’ (that horrible word) and more ‘creative’.

    All ‘bollocks’, to quote you.

    I’m only interested in helping clients deliver better results. It might be fun along the way – but thats secondary to doing things better, and more effectively.

    Hope you’re well. I must put a tag on my blog linking to yours!

    Jonathon

  4. Steve Gibson

    “Sorreee!”

    No worries. This would go into the category of “I’ve been called a lot worse”.

    Steve

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