Assuming that you "repaired" an ad, i.e. made it better, and gave it all the trimmings, it is still both interesting as well as important to test and observe the results of how well it pulls in the marketplace. It's still a bell curve of a bell curve; meaning, even the individuals who are willing and able to buy your product/service may not be ready to buy for one reason or another. We will look at the various causes of being willing and able but not ready. The mailing of a piece to a demographically appropriate potential market, with a highly "repaired" and hard hitting ad, resulted in an increase of 300% in call-ins for the "Free Analysis". While this was an unusually large increase, it was also most interesting to watch the results of the next two efforts.

First, we re-mailed and got a surprising 65% of the original "repaired" result. Again we re-mailed and got about 35% of the first "repaired" result. This was not originally expected, but it rather should have been, here's why. The original response was 2%-2.5%, a fairly high response rate for cold call direct mail. When the "repaired" rate turned out to be 6%-7%, this should have told us that the ad made a lot of sense to a high percentage of the potential market. It stands to reason that more of them would be "ready" if we sent out another mailing; they were.

It happens that a mailer sometimes will not be read, sometimes the person who gets it is not responsible for that area of their life, sometimes the reader is in a bad mood and does not want to hear it, and sometimes things change between mailings, like their financial condition. But the biggest reason why people who are willing and able are not ready is the credibility of the product/services benefits. At times your credibility is enhanced just by being persistent. That, tied along with the fact that the benefits worked in them, will cause a lot of people to pull the trigger. So. after watching the high response rate, the high "repaired" response rate and the high re-mail response rate, it stood to reason to put a professional tele-marketer on to calling them after the next mailing.

It doubled the results of the "repaired" ad response! This became the mode of operation because it delivered results that were both predictable as well as controllable. There is no better marketing level than that which is profitable, predictable and controllable! That is Profit Controlled Marketing! It is important and valuable to test all possible avenues of all marketing efforts to determine which can become the most predictable as well as profitable. You need to choose the right methods at the right time- that's Appropriate Marketing!

p.s.- this does mean that repeating an ad can be profitable, it also happens that rotating ads will increase readership; but, don't get caught up in the ad agency or media salesman claim that quantity is king- consider the source!