Testing Marketing Campaigns - Ask your audience

Testing marketing campaigns will help you get your messaging and creatives right for every target audience and purpose. Good campaigns can cut deep to the consumer and engage them in content that is harmonious with their thoughts and beliefs. However, bad campaigns will not only be a waste of time and resources, they may even deter consumers from engaging with your brand.

The problem is, public opinion is a dynamic and progressive phenomenon. Imagine running a campaign from 10 years ago today. Many of the adverts that aired then would feel disjointed from our present reality. People, trends and culture change at an incredibly fast rate and because of this capturing and distilling the essence of today is not easy. Making things even more difficult, people differ vastly in their opinions based on demographic, cultural and socio-economic factors within a single time frame.

Testing Marketing Campaigns

From our own research, we have consistently found that outcomes of concept testing, advertisements and even GDPR related attitudes change from profile-to-profile. However, by sub-analysing the results of potential marketing campaigns we can determine what sorts of messaging works for which people.

Figure 1 illustrates a piece of research we conducted for an organisation’s rebrand. The research consisted of two identical surveys and over 1200 respondents. One was sent to the general public and one was sent to the organisation’s own supporters. We asked participants what proposition they like the most.

From the graph, you can see that ‘Brand Proposition 1’ performs much better with the organisation’s supporters than with the general public. Therefore, this sort of messaging appears to work best with those who already have some affiliation with the brand. They could use this sort of messaging when marketers are contacting warm audiences. However, it seems that if the organisation used this messaging with people who have no affinity to the brand, they would have missed the mark. You can also see that while more people from the general public preferred ‘Brand Proposition 2’, there is a significant decrease in supporters who chose this type of messaging.

So, all in all, we have a trade off between what the supporters want and what the general public wants. Some compromises and tough decision will have to be made, but without the brand testing marketing campaigns, they may have made the wrong decision and developed marketing campaigns based on concepts that would have fallen flat.

This post was written by Tom Burke, Insight Executive, fastmap. For more information about how fastmap can help you with your marketing campaigns, you can read our Creative Testing Guide or visit www.fastmap.com. You can also get in touch with David Cole, Managing Director, fastmap on +44 (0) 20 7242 0702 or david.cole@fastmap.com.