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Rule 21 Listen to the Market

Written by: Brad Sugars

Article Overview: This is Rule #21 in a series of articles on "21 ways to Increase the Power and Profit of Your Advertising Without Spending an Extra Cent," by Brad Sugars.

Rule 21 Listen to the Market

You ignore the results of your ads at your own peril.

I made the biggest loss of my life by doing just that. I did a test mailing. The results were poor. I came up with a hundred and one reasons why the poor response wasn't really poor at all. I rolled it out - and guess what happened?

The test results were accurate.

Had I listened to the market, I would have canceled the project and taken a small loss. Instead, I took a big loss that set me back for years.

It's easy to second-guess the market. You can always rationalize poor results.

If you fall in love with your ad (and it's easy to do - it's your baby, and you've put a lot of effort into creating this ad) and it doesn't work, you're naturally going to be disappointed.

Try and cultivate an objective- a dispassionate attitude to the results. This can be a tough exercise- but it's well worth it.

For example, imagine (especially when the results don't meet your expectations) that the results are comments on your ad given to you by a fair but firm critic.

Listen to what this critic has to say and learn.

Every time you do something that doesn't work, you can learn from it. Don't make ‘mistakes.’ Instead, have learning experiences.

In my opinion, the only real mistake in life is to make the same mistake more than once.

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Article Tags: dispassionate attitude, exercise, experiences, love, mistake in life, objective, peril, poor response, test results



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