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	<title>TestiVar</title>
	<atom:link href="http://testivar.com/blog/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://testivar.com/blog</link>
	<description>Your Online Business Advertising Resource</description>
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		<title>Media Contact List</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/24-hour-special-media-contact-list/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/24-hour-special-media-contact-list/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 May 2012 18:35:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=526</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here are some major online and offline outlets that we send our own news releases to: Venture Beat Ad Age Los Angeles Times Huffington Post Bloomberg The Age PC World Wall Street Journal National Post Fay Observer Business Insider Media Bistro Patch Maryland Coast Dispatch PC Magazine Associated Press 1 To 1 Magazine Advertising &#038; [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Here are some major online and offline outlets that we send our own news releases to:</p>
<p>Venture Beat<br />
Ad Age<br />
Los Angeles Times<br />
Huffington Post<br />
Bloomberg<br />
The Age<br />
PC World<br />
Wall Street Journal<br />
National Post<br />
Fay Observer<br />
Business Insider<br />
Media Bistro<br />
Patch<br />
Maryland Coast Dispatch<br />
PC Magazine<br />
Associated Press<br />
1 To 1 Magazine<br />
Advertising &#038; Marketing Review<br />
Ad Week<br />
SB Media<br />
Napco<br />
BNP Media<br />
Crain Publications<br />
Penton<br />
Colloquy<br />
Creative Magazine<br />
Creativity Online<br />
Deliver Mag<br />
Frog Design<br />
Direct Marketing News<br />
Red 7 Media<br />
Exhibitor Magazine<br />
iMedia Connection<br />
International List Magazine<br />
Finacial Advertising<br />
Advanstar<br />
NM Business Journal<br />
Odwyer P.R.<br />
Access Intel<br />
PR Week<br />
PRS Association<br />
Quirks<br />
Questex<br />
Mthink<br />
Sales Force XP<br />
Search Engine Land<br />
SM Standard<br />
The Novelette<br />
Sharing Ideas Magazine<br />
Shoot Online<br />
Strategy Business<br />
ASI Central<br />
Website Magazine</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Reasons for a News Release</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/reasons-for-a-news-release/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/reasons-for-a-news-release/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 May 2012 17:34:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=524</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A lot of customers want to take more advantage of free publicity, but can&#8217;t think of topics for a news release (also called a media release or a press release). We are going to offer a unique 24 hour special tomorrow related to news releases. It will be unique because it won&#8217;t just be a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A lot of customers want to take more advantage of free publicity, but can&#8217;t think of topics for a news release (also called a media release or a press release).</p>
<p>We are going to offer a unique 24 hour special tomorrow related to news releases.  It will be unique because it won&#8217;t just be a special price (although it will be that too).  It will simply be available for one day and one day only.</p>
<p>To get you ready to take advantage of that special, here are some ideas you can use for creating your own news release so you can get a ton of free publicity for your web-site.</p>
<p>Reasons for a News Release:</p>
<p>1. A new web-site.  Do you have a new business or a new web-site for your business?  That alone is worthy of a press release.</p>
<p>2. Do you have an inspirational story about a customer&#8217;s success?  That is a great news release!</p>
<p>3. Can you think of some great free information to share with the public related to your industry?  Great!  Do it.  Then tell the public about it with a media release.</p>
<p>4. Are you about to have an event or participate at an industry event?  Tell others about with a press release!</p>
<p>5. Have you just returned from an industry event?  Don&#8217;t forget to write a media release telling about the event and your participation!</p>
<p>6. Feed the controversy.  Is there a common misconception in your industry.  Write a controversial white paper that gives the real facts.  Then issue a news release telling others about the free white paper.</p>
<p>7. Have you recently helped out a local charity?  Personal charity might be something you keep to yourself, but your business&#8217; charitable contributions should be shared with the world.  Write a publicity announcement and plug the charity while you are at it.</p>
<p>8. Are you doing internal market research, studies, research or customer focus polls?  Share the results with a press release.  Everyone loves to see the inside scoop on how a business works.  Everyone loves summarized data and statistics.</p>
<p>9. Do you have a new product or a new version of an existing product?  Tell the world with a news release!</p>
<p>10. Do you have a new key person in your company or did a key person just leave for another opportunity?  Get out a media release.  People love to follow the personnel changes at a company for some reason.</p>
<p>Tomorrow we will be offering a product for one day only (at least for now).  It will be a 24 hour special, but it won&#8217;t go into the standard product line after the 24 hour special.  We simply won&#8217;t be offering it after the 24 hour special is over.</p>
<p>It will be a great product for getting started getting tons of new prospects and customers using free publicity.  Don&#8217;t miss it!</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Article Marketing</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/article-marketing/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/article-marketing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 May 2012 11:11:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=517</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A customer recently asked if we still recommended &#8220;article marketing&#8221; as a method to bring in new web-site viewers. I was hesitant to use those words in this article because they have been co-opted by an undesirable group. Those words have become a brand that means something different than they once meant on their own. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A customer recently asked if we still recommended &#8220;article marketing&#8221; as a method to bring in new web-site viewers.</p>
<p>I was hesitant to use those words in this article because they have been co-opted by an undesirable group.  Those words have become a brand that means something different than they once meant on their own.</p>
<p>That is the only reason we haven&#8217;t mentioned those words here.  The concept that we once taught is still just as valid today, but those words are no longer used to describe it due to the negative branding those words received by being repeatedly used by spammers and scammers.</p>
<p>What are the words used today to describe the same activity?  Publicity.  Media.  Outreach.  Transparency.  Engagement.</p>
<p>Just like every other part of your branding efforts, you want to be associated with brands that are profitable and seen as positive.  You do not want to confuse your branding with the accidental branding of groups who take shortcuts, skirt the law, engage in unethical actions, spammers or scammers.  That is negative branding.</p>
<p>Like every other activity, look at what your true competition is doing.  Your true competition are those companies who are consistently advertising a similar product or service.</p>
<p>Are they appearing in the news media on occasion?  Yes.  They are.</p>
<p>Is their CEO participating in interviews with major web-sites in your sector?  Probably.</p>
<p>Now ask yourself how that is happening.  Post 2009, it is mostly happening by being active participants of trade groups and regular publicity efforts using media releases.</p>
<p>Pre 2009, it was acceptable to write articles and submit them to the media with a slight tinge of self-promotion or at least a bio box that mentioned that the author was associated with a particular organization.  A mention of a web-site was common.</p>
<p>Because of spam and other unethical activities performed by certain groups of people, that practice changed.  Nobody wants to be even slightly associated with spammers.  Now this practice is simply to make yourself available to the media for interviews and stories about you, your company or your products.  You do that through media releases and active participation in your trade groups.</p>
<p>Let the journalist plug you if they want.  Never suggest it though.  Never ask for a resource box, a bio or a link.  That is what the spammers ruined.  Today is all about being transparent and real.  If an article purports to be written by an unbiased journalist, then it better actually be written by an unbiased journalist.  Otherwise people will find out and the negative branding will eat you alive.</p>
<p>Become known for being a transparent company who values honesty and being real.  Those have always been extremely valuable attributes, but they are even more important to today&#8217;s consumers and Internet users.</p>
<p>So the answer is &#8220;yes&#8221; and &#8220;no.&#8221;  The practice of getting articles published about you, your company and your products is probably an eternal concept that will always work.  You can always verify that by checking on your true competitors and see if they are being mentioned in the media.</p>
<p>The way to go about that task will change over time as society reacts to threats from spammers, scammers and other people who like to take short cuts.  You will always want to avoid even the appearance of having anything to do with advocating the way they do things.</p>
<p>Instead follow the lead of your successful competition.  Use the scientific method to discover how they are doing things and mimic the parts that are working from each of your competitors.  Then add a touch of innovation to fix at least one thing all of your competition are doing wrong.</p>
<p>That is how to crush it in 2012.  That is how to dominate a sector.  That will always work.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>TestiVar Releases New Version of TestiVar Advertising Software</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/testivar-releases-new-version-of-testivar-advertising-software/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/testivar-releases-new-version-of-testivar-advertising-software/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 May 2012 19:40:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=515</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For immediate release TestiVar Releases New Version of TestiVar Advertising Software TestiVar, the global leader for advertising solutions based on science, recently released a new version of TestiVar Advertising which allows online businesses to test advertising copy for profitability in advance of ad placement. The new version adds over one hundred new elements which allow [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For immediate release</p>
<p>TestiVar Releases New Version of TestiVar Advertising Software</p>
<p>TestiVar, the global leader for advertising solutions based on science, recently released a new version of TestiVar Advertising which allows online businesses to test advertising copy for profitability in advance of ad placement.</p>
<p>The new version adds over one hundred new elements which allow testing specific areas of a web-site directly rather than just the advertising messages external to a web-site.</p>
<p>Allowing small business owners to quickly and easily test their proposed web-site changes before they invest their hard earned capital will not only increase profitability, but will also allow even the smallest online business to compete with enterprise level competitive data.</p>
<p>Many companies are already using analytics and multivariate testing software to ensure a constantly improving advertising message, but most haven’t been able to harness that capability without investing hard earned capital during their start up phase.  In addition, most new start-ups have a very limited amount of capital to invest in live tests.</p>
<p>The new version of TestiVar Advertising provides the tools to eliminate up to 85% of live real-world testing by comparing proposed advertisements with a massive database of known profitable and known unprofitable advertisements.  With the new version, specific changes on the online business web-site can even be &#8220;tested&#8221; before being tested by comparing the changes to the test results of thousands of successful online businesses.</p>
<p>These tests are performed in-house in seconds and virtually eliminate the necessity of running test campaigns using real money.  As a result, they will be better equipped to optimize an advertisement for profitability before valuable investment capital is expended.</p>
<p>The software provides a score that can be used as a benchmark as different versions of advertisements are explored.  A higher score indicates that an advertisement is more similar to profitable ads than unprofitable ads.</p>
<p>Since it takes only seconds to score an advertisement, hundreds of proposed variants can be explored in a single day by one marketing professional.  The alternative can be months of testing different ads in the real world with real world money.</p>
<p>To get more information about the latest version of the TestiVar Advertising Software, visit</p>
<p>TestiVar.com</p>
<p>About the Company</p>
<p>As the global leader for advertising solutions based on science, TestiVar delivers products and services with the goal of improving business profitability by using data rather than guesses.</p>
<p>Today, the company has helped over 20,000 customers use science and data to improve their business profitability.</p>
<p>Press Release Contact:</p>
<p>James D. Brausch<br />
Media Contact<br />
TestiVar, Inc.<br />
(850) 250-3134<br />
Support@TestiVar.com</p>
<p>http://TestiVar.com</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Software Update: TestiVar Advertising</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/software-update-testivar-advertising/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/software-update-testivar-advertising/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 May 2012 00:55:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=510</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We are releasing the 1 May 2012 version of TestiVar Advertising for current customers of the Professional Edition, Agency Edition or Developer Edition. The cost to update is only 10% of the retail price. Updates are voluntary and there is never any penalty for skipping updates. You can read about the new features in the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>We are releasing the 1 May 2012 version of TestiVar Advertising for current customers of the Professional Edition, Agency Edition or Developer Edition.</p>
<p>The cost to update is only 10% of the retail price.  Updates are voluntary and there is never any penalty for skipping updates.</p>
<p>You can read about the new features in the updated user manual here:</p>
<p><a target="_NEW" href="http://testivar.com/advertising-manual.php">TestiVar Advertising User Manual</a></p>
<p>If you see any features that you would like to have that aren&#8217;t included in your current version, you can update here:</p>
<p><a target="_NEW" href="http://testivar.com/testivar-advertising-update.php">TestiVar Advertising Update</a></p>
<p>The new features since April include:</p>
<p>1. New data.  The results now include even more advertisements from more keywords and more elements.  That means even more accurate predictions.</p>
<p>2. New elements for new pages that are linked from a typical landing page.</p>
<p>3. Agency Edition customers will now have the ability to override individual scoring criteria for words, letters and symbols.  It is also possible to override the default pithy flag and the exact match flag.  Read more about this in the manual.</p>
<p>4. Professional Edition customers will be able to see the scoring flags that are defaults for each element so that they can better understand how elements are scored and whether the focus should be on words, letters, symbols, being pithy (saying more in less space) or exactly matching suggestions.</p>
<p>5. There have also been several performance improvements.  Scoring and suggestions are much faster.</p>
<p>Contact us at Support@TestiVar.com if you have any questions about this update.  We&#8217;ll be happy to go over any details and help you decide whether this update is important for you.</p>
<p>If you want a new feature, new geographies, new elements, new keywords or anything else added to a future version of TestiVar Advertising, please contact us at Support@TestiVar.com.  We would love to add your features to the next version.</p>
<p>New customers for any edition will always receive the most up-to-date version of that edition.  All editions other than the Standard Edition are now being released at the 1 May 2012 version.  If you want to upgrade to a higher edition, you can purchase it at the normal page.  You will receive the latest update which is 1 May 2012.  Pricing information for new purchases can be found here:</p>
<p><a target="_NEW" href="http://testivar.com/advertising-pricing.php">TestiVar Advertising Software Pricing</a></p>
<p>Contact us at Support@TestiVar.com if you have any questions.</p>
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		<title>Case Study: Preschool</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/case-study-preschool/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/case-study-preschool/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:41:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=503</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A friend of one of the co-founders recently asked for help to set up their web-site for a preschool. It was a great case study because it raised a lot of the questions new clients have about using the scientific method to maximize profits. Those questions included: 1. Can you manage a PPC campaign to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A friend of one of the co-founders recently asked for help to set up their web-site for a preschool.  It was a great case study because it raised a lot of the questions new clients have about using the scientific method to maximize profits.  Those questions included:</p>
<p>1. Can you manage a PPC campaign to find new students for a preschool?</p>
<p>2. Does the software work for a preschool?</p>
<p>3. Do you do press releases for a preschool?  What do you announce?</p>
<p>4. Are you sure the research for the sites in your database apply to a preschool?</p>
<p>Of course you can replace &#8220;preschool&#8221; with &#8220;car mechanic&#8221;, &#8220;chiropractor&#8221;, &#8220;mediation&#8221; or any other locally provided service.</p>
<p>All of these local services are what we call B2C or &#8220;Business to Consumer&#8221; services.  TestiVar is a B2B or a &#8220;Business to Business&#8221; service.  The above questions often arise because of a misunderstanding about whether these methods can work for a B2C just as well as a B2B.  The answer to that question is a resounding &#8220;Yes.&#8221;  In fact, most of the data in our database is for B2C companies because most business is B2C these days.  The data works equally well for B2B and B2C type companies.</p>
<p>The next question that is implied in the above questions is whether we can work on a locally targeted business verses a business that operates with customers around the world.  The answer to that implied question is that it depends on the locality and the market when it comes to our Managed Advertising service.  If you plan to just use our software, then it will work just fine with a local market.</p>
<p>The only reason we can&#8217;t handle some local markets with our Managed Advertising service is just a scaling issue.  If your local market isn&#8217;t large enough to grow to a significant advertising budget, then we can&#8217;t cover overhead for that type of account.  We do generally focus on companies that are global, but we will always be willing to look at the numbers to see if a business can scale to an acceptable level in your locality and market.</p>
<p>In the case of the friend we have that is starting a preschool, we couldn&#8217;t work with them on a Managed Advertising campaign.  They aren&#8217;t located in a major city.  And they aren&#8217;t planning to create a chain of preschools.  That&#8217;s just fine.  We can run the numbers and see that they can create a thriving $300K/year business in their market using our tools, but their advertising budget will be only around $300-$350 per month to get the number of referrals they want.  That leaves our 10% share at $30-$35 per month and our average campaign has a $100/month overhead.  We can&#8217;t accept them as a Managed Advertising client, but we can still help them out as a friend and get them set up using our tools and the results of our data analysis of competitors.</p>
<p>What about press releases?  Do you do press releases for a preschool in a smaller market (a city of 500,000 or so)?  There is a simple way to find out.  First, you find your competitors.  Do this:</p>
<p>1. Go to Google and type &#8220;preschool&#8221; (or whatever your service is).</p>
<p>2. Write down the ads you see.</p>
<p>3. Wait one week (two or three is even better).</p>
<p>4. Repeat step 1 and 2.</p>
<p>5. Compare the two lists and make a new list of only those advertisers showing up on both lists.</p>
<p>6. These are your competitors.  Now go to Google News and type in each of your competitors names.</p>
<p>Do you get results for new articles about your competitors?  Then Yes&#8230; Press releases are appropriate for your business.  Your successful competitors are doing press releases.</p>
<p>Did you not have any competitors?  Worry!  Competition is good.  If you have no competition, then there is probably a good reason for that.  Don&#8217;t celebrate.  Find out why you have no competition and fix the problem.</p>
<p>The problem might be that you identified your market incorrectly.  Maybe in your city, people want &#8220;day care&#8221; instead of &#8220;preschools.&#8221;  Maybe the don&#8217;t want either.  Maybe fewer women work and there is more extended family support.  Don&#8217;t jump into any market where there are no successful competitors.  If there are just two successful competitors, then you can copy what is working best for each of them and beat both of them in the market.  Never be afraid of competition, but always be afraid if you see no competition.</p>
<p>The final question is if our data applies to the &#8220;preschool&#8221; market.  After all, the type of customer that purchases stock advice is very different than a mom looking for a good preschool.  The sites look very different &#8212; don&#8217;t they?</p>
<p>In some ways, they might.  When we did the research for this friend, we were actually surprised to see that almost everything was identical to the overall data we had in the database.  Sites had a logo in the upper left corner, a professional web-site design with rounded easy to navigate menu bars and subtle gradients here and there.  They had almost the exact same links: &#8220;Home&#8221;, &#8220;Blog&#8221;, &#8220;About Us&#8221;, &#8220;Contact Us&#8221;.</p>
<p>There were a few subtle differences.  We saw &#8220;Rates&#8221; more often than &#8220;Pricing.&#8221;  We noticed that on a hotel customer site as well.  We also noticed some graphics to make it appear more kid friendly like some stick figures of kids playing on a playground.  The graphics were very different than the stock photo images of three professionals around a table for instance.</p>
<p>You find out the same way you find out about the press releases.  Make a list of your specific competitors.  You are in your locality so Google will automatically give you local advertising results.  Just type in the name of the service you want to offer and do it again in two or three weeks to see who can consistently advertise as your competitor.  They are already successful.  Copy them.  </p>
<p>If you have two or more competitors, then you can copy the best of each of them by using the data to decide which elements are contributing to the success of each competitor.  That way you come up with an even more successful marketing strategy than any of your competitors and nobody will even notice that you are copying because you will be mixing up the best elements from each of your competitors.</p>
<p>And that is how it is done using science.  Have fun!</p>
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		<title>Shelly Gull Family Leave</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/shelly-gull-family-leave/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/shelly-gull-family-leave/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:21:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=500</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Shelly Gull started her family leave on Saturday, 21 April 2012. She is expected to be on family leave for six months to one year. Please join us in congratulating her on this new adventure in life and thanking her for her service to TestiVar and to you, our customers. Shelly expects her new family [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Shelly Gull started her family leave on Saturday, 21 April 2012.  She is expected to be on family leave for six months to one year.</p>
<p>Please join us in congratulating her on this new adventure in life and thanking her for her service to TestiVar and to you, our customers.</p>
<p>Shelly expects her new family member in May.  We wish her the best and can&#8217;t wait to see her friendly face back here when she returns.</p>
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		<title>If Looks Could Kill&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/if-looks-could-kill/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/if-looks-could-kill/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:31:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=498</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It is difficult (but not impossible) to do studies on the &#8220;look and feel&#8221; that a profitable web-site should have. It is difficult because it can&#8217;t just be parsed. However, it is possible to manually gather information like the following from profitable and unprofitable web-sites: 1. Do they have a logo? 2. Where is that [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It is difficult (but not impossible) to do studies on the &#8220;look and feel&#8221; that a profitable web-site should have.</p>
<p>It is difficult because it can&#8217;t just be parsed.  However, it is possible to manually gather information like the following from profitable and unprofitable web-sites:</p>
<p>1. Do they have a logo?</p>
<p>2. Where is that logo (upper left, upper right, somewhere else)?</p>
<p>3. What is the predominant color of the logo?</p>
<p>4. Do they use a symbol or only words in their logo?</p>
<p>5. Is there a navigation menu?</p>
<p>6. Is the navigation menu a drop-down or push out?</p>
<p>7. Is the navigation menu on the top, left, right or bottom?</p>
<p>8. Is there more than one navigation menu?</p>
<p>We have done quite a few of these studies.  They will eventually be codified and placed into TestiVar Advertising.  They will also be published in the <a href="http://testivar.com/ibs.php">Internet Business Science</a> white papers.</p>
<p>One other reason that we have had to turn down Managed Advertising and even Landing Page Rewrite orders is that the owner of the site didn&#8217;t have a clue about web design skills and wasn&#8217;t willing to let us incorporate a decent design.</p>
<p>There is a group of people out there that say that design doesn&#8217;t matter.  In fact, they say that design gets in the way of sales.  A plain white background with small plain links and a simple short text page is what they advocate for maximum actions.  Does that work?</p>
<p>Two of our co-founders claim that it DID work at one time.  In fact, both built thriving businesses by specifically shunning any kind of web-site design attributes.  When did this work?</p>
<p>There is a magical date when everything changed on the Internet.  There have actually been three magical dates.  One was the beginning of the first dot com crash.  The second changed the world of commerce.  It was 911.  The third magical date was a little more recent.  It was sometime in the middle of November 2008.  Many of us remember that as the beginning of the housing crash and the collapse of many financial institutions.  Nothing special seemed to be happening on the Internet.  In fact, many new Internet businesses seemed to be sprouting at the time and venture capital for the Internet didn&#8217;t seem to dry up when all of the other financing sectors did have issues.</p>
<p>Jake was doing monthly data analysis of sales text at the time and noticed the blip.  The data all shifted dramatically in November 2008.  He waited to see it settle down and return to the prior levels.  It never did.  A new baseline was established.</p>
<p>A massive amount of information about how to sell on the Internet changed that month.  Change is the only constant in business anyway and the language that is used to sell has constantly changed even after that point in time.  But that month there was a massive change in the language used to sell online.</p>
<p>There was an even more massive change in the &#8220;look and feel&#8221; of sites that sell online.  Some even associate that change with the Web 2.0 meme.  They say things like &#8220;that looks like a typical web 2.0 design.&#8221;  While such statements are meaningless because they compare non-quantifiable things to other non-quantifiable things, it is certainly true that the style of a web-site suddenly became much more important.</p>
<p>If you have archives of Google&#8217;s home page you can even see the shift in priorities on the biggest web property at the time.  They also always prided themselves on having a plain vanilla site with no distractions from the purpose of the site.  But even that changed.  Aesthetics became much more important.  They rounded the search box.  They installed jquery.  They made the form pop up to the top and used fancy fonts to show the drop down suggestions.</p>
<p>Everyone else who survived did the same kinds of changes after November 2008.  Using gradients, rounded edges and aesthetically pleasing design attributes became important.  Navigation links are no longer bare underlined blue text.  They are almost graphical in their presentation.</p>
<p>Almost!</p>
<p>This was not permission to go back to the beginnings of the web with the dancing smiley faced animated GIFs.  Web-site design became true design.  The design must be tasteful and subtle, but a design must exist.  Plain links should only ever show up in a text block now.  All square edges of everything should be rounded.  A jquery controlled tasteful menu bar is a must.  Subtle gradients and shadows are the norm.</p>
<p>Looks matter now.</p>
<p>If looks could kill, they probably did.  Sites that didn&#8217;t change when society changed in late 2008 didn&#8217;t survive.  They are no longer profitable or they no longer exist.</p>
<p>Take a look at your site.  Does it look more like profitable sites today or is it purposefully ugly and plain?</p>
<p>Fix it!  Clean up shop and beautify your site in a subtle and tasteful way.  It is important post November 2008.  It is so important that it can be considered a fatal flaw if you ignore this critical aspect of your business.</p>
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		<title>Copy Plus</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/copy-plus/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:34:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=493</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We have been turning down about 20% of the Managed Advertising orders we receive due to one common issue that deserves a post to answer. This post gives an over-arching view of our Internet business philosophy. We call it &#8220;Copy Plus&#8221; in-house. Let me see if I can describe to you in simple terms what [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>We have been turning down about 20% of the Managed Advertising orders we receive due to one common issue that deserves a post to answer.  This post gives an over-arching view of our Internet business philosophy.  We call it &#8220;Copy Plus&#8221; in-house.  Let me see if I can describe to you in simple terms what we mean by &#8220;Copy Plus.&#8221;</p>
<p>First, a question.  Do you remember Visicalc?  No?  Maybe you remember it&#8217;s successor called Supercalc?  Don&#8217;t remember that either?  How about Lotus 123?  Surely you have heard of Lotus 123.  Do you use it?  Of course not.  You probably use Excel.  The reason why Excel is relatively successful today and why Visicalc doesn&#8217;t even exist (as far as I know) is a great example for showing our &#8220;Copy Plus&#8221; philosophy.</p>
<p>Selling things like TestiVar Advertising and TestiVar Media is difficult.  Why?  Because you have to do what we call internally &#8220;missionary work.&#8221;  You have to teach people what the product is and what it can do for them.  It isn&#8217;t a commodity.  It&#8217;s hard work.  The creators of Visicalc did that work and taught people about the concept of a &#8220;spreadsheet&#8221; which is a fancy kind of document that allows a lay person to explore the results of some pretty complex calculations.</p>
<p>Everyone now understands the function of a spreadsheet and takes it as a given that spreadsheet software is a very valuable business and even home finance tool.  But that wasn&#8217;t always the case.  The creators of that innovative concept had to do missionary work.  They had to teach people why they wanted spreadsheet software and how to use it.  The same is true for TestiVar Advertising and TestiVar Media.  Those pieces of software are NOT great examples of what we mean by using the &#8220;Copy Plus&#8221; philosophy (although they are great tools to put the &#8220;Copy Plus&#8221; philosophy to work).</p>
<p>There is a major problem with being innovative and investing all that time and money in doing the &#8220;missionary work.&#8221;  People can copy you.  Sure; if you were first, you might keep a majority share of the market when the copycats come along.  Or you might not.  All a copycat has to do to steal your market share is to be just a little bit better in some way.  That is the &#8220;plus&#8221; part of the &#8220;Copy Plus&#8221; philosophy.</p>
<p>The opposite side of the marketing spectrum is to sell a commodity.  A commodity is understood by every potential customer.  You can simply name it, the price and maybe put up a picture of it and you are ready to sell it.  92 octane gasoline that meets U.S. regulatory standards is a commodity.  You don&#8217;t have to teach anyone why they need it.  They look at the price and the convenience factor and they just pull in and buy it from you.</p>
<p>That isn&#8217;t a great place to be either.  Commodities end up having a lot of competitors and very low profit ratios.  You have to either be extremely good at the &#8220;Plus&#8221; part of the &#8220;Copy Plus&#8221; philosophy (like offering more locations, better locations, cleaner restrooms, better service, a free cup of joe, etc) or you have to compete only on price and competing only on price ensures a very low profit margin.</p>
<p>The truly successful Internet businesses all fall in the middle of that spectrum.  They sell something that is easy to understand (no missionary work), but they do it better than the leading competitor.  They focus on a big &#8220;Plus&#8221; while &#8220;Copying&#8221; for the most part.</p>
<p>That is what we do here.  Most of our business is focused on doing very easy to understand things (distributing a press release, managing advertising campaigns or rewriting a landing page).  We do it better because we have massive amounts of data that has been crunched and quantified.  We use TestiVar Advertising and TestiVar Media to do the job better than ANYONE else can do without exception (unless they happen to be a competitor who is using our tools and then we gain by the license fees to use our tools).</p>
<p>The way the tools work is the embodiment of the Copy Plus philosophy.  We find businesses that are profitable in every profitable market on the Internet.  Then we copy the top three or the top five competitors almost exactly (we mix up the very best of those top three to five competitors because we know from the data which aspects of their advertising are the most profitable by doing a statistical regression analysis between them).  We copy them exactly in every single thing they are doing right.</p>
<p>They can&#8217;t tell that we copy them because we are also copying their competitors and every single thing THEY are doing right.  It is all mixed together and without the data it kinda looks like we are just another competitor with a slightly different marketing mix.  Because we have the data though, that marketing mix is actually the very best mix among all of the current competitors.</p>
<p>Then, we put in a big PLUS.  We do it better in some significant way.</p>
<p>For instance, press releases are almost commodity.  Everyone has a different list of media outlets and a different relationship with those outlets, but a press release service is pretty basic.  You simply get the press release to the outlets.</p>
<p>But there is an issue that bugs both sides of the equation with press releases.  Quality of the press release.  If a press release distribution service sends a poor quality release to media outlets, the relationship will be damaged.  The media outlets will value press releases from that press release distribution service less in the future.  Continue on that path and all media outlets will ignore all press releases from that press release distribution service.</p>
<p>On the other side, those sending press releases using a distribution service often get the dreaded &#8220;editorial hold.&#8221;  They get it for the above reason.  It is insulting, a hassle and irritating though.</p>
<p>Our &#8220;Plus&#8221; solution:  We rewrite the press release to be higher quality.  We know what media outlets want to see because we have the data!  We run the offending press release through our software and make it better.  We then ask the sender for approval on the changes (which isn&#8217;t a hassle compared to having to do rewrites themselves) and send it on to a media outlet who is equally happy to always receive high quality press releases from us.</p>
<p>That is our &#8220;Plus.&#8221;  In every other way, we simply copy the best of the best of our competitors.  We use TestiVar Advertising and even actually look at the suggestions in the Agency Edition to see exactly what our competitors are doing that works.  It is proven.</p>
<p>And that is why you use Excel today.  Visicalc did the missionary work.  Supercalc added a &#8220;Plus.&#8221;  Lotus 123 added even more &#8220;Pluses&#8221; and stole the market.  Then Microsoft finally stole the market with Excel by adding even more Pluses.</p>
<p>Ironically, it is almost a commodity now and there is a free alternative that will soon overtake Excel.  It is called OpenOffice Calc.  That product went all the way from innovative solution that required missionary work through all the phases until it became a commodity with a zero percent profit margin (free product).</p>
<p>We turn down most clients for Managed Advertising because they either require massive missionary work (they have no existing competitors to copy) or they are selling a commodity product and they have no big &#8220;Plus&#8221; they can offer to take their market share.</p>
<p>That is the Copy Plus philosophy.  It&#8217;s simple.  Copy success and add your own &#8220;Plus.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Friday Update</title>
		<link>http://testivar.com/blog/friday-update/</link>
		<comments>http://testivar.com/blog/friday-update/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:52:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TestiVar</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://testivar.com/blog/?p=491</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This has been another busy week. We answered all customer support requests within a half hour. We made a lot of updates to our products and services. We did almost nothing for our own sales and marketing efforts though. That had to change. So the biggest change this week was adding new people to the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This has been another busy week.  We answered all customer support requests within a half hour.  We made a lot of updates to our products and services.  We did almost nothing for our own sales and marketing efforts though.  That had to change.</p>
<p>So the biggest change this week was adding new people to the TestiVar team.  We will do a press release when we are caught up on everything else.</p>
<p>We also made some updates to the Managed Advertising service.  We are doing better at getting new accounts completely running and profitable within a few weeks.  Our average is now about 35 days from order placement to first profit.  Getting the startup tasks completed (choosing and ordering a domain, setting up landing pages, etc.) is taking less than one business week now.</p>
<p>We also updated the TestiVar Advertising software.  Internally there has always been the following five flags that adjusted how scoring was performed based on the element selected:</p>
<p>1. Score Words</p>
<p>2. Score Letters</p>
<p>3. Score Symbols</p>
<p>4. Exact Match</p>
<p>5. Pithy Flag</p>
<p>All five of those flags can now be selected in the Agency Edition.  Other editions show the flags that were selected for that element for maximum predictability.</p>
<p>Why would you want to use them?  We do all the time.  Getting suggestions based only on words is a great tool for a first pass.  Then you can focus on using the right punctuation.  Seeing only words for the anchor text is great for figuring out what pages a site should have.</p>
<p>Using the pithy flag even on elements that don&#8217;t normally need the pithy flag can result in a pass that gives an even higher score without the pithy flag.</p>
<p>If you decide to upgrade to this version (just a 10% upgrade fee to cover our time compiling and registering your copy), you will want to take advantage of these new flags.  Here is what they mean:</p>
<p>1. Score Words</p>
<p>When this check box is set, then words are scored for that element.  You normally would NOT set it for the SLD or the ADURL elements.  That is because URLs don&#8217;t contain any &#8220;words&#8221; as defined by TestiVar&#8217;s engine.  To TestiVar&#8217;s engine, a word is any group of letters (letters are defined as a-z) which begins right after any non-letter and ends right before any non-letter.</p>
<p>There are some odd results to this definition.  For instance, &#8220;don&#8217;t&#8221; is not a word to TestiVar.  TestiVar sees &#8220;don&#8221; and &#8220;t&#8221; instead with the apostrophe being scored as a symbol.</p>
<p>Non-English words can also end up being parsed oddly.  From the Miami data, there is actually quite a bit of Spanish in the data.  Spanish uses letters with a tilde over them in their alphabet.  The &#8220;n&#8221; with a tilde over it is the most common.  It doesn&#8217;t get parsed as a letter.  It becomes a symbol that divides words.</p>
<p>These things aren&#8217;t normally a problem because the source data and the data you propose is scored in the same way.  It can cause problems though when you are looking at suggestions or the positive or negative word list and don&#8217;t understand these definitions.  You might not understand why the &#8220;word&#8221; of &#8220;don&#8221; is so good/bad when it isn&#8217;t really an English word at all (for instance).</p>
<p>Turing this flag on and off in combination with the other flags can help you zero in on artifacts like the above and get better performing ad copy.</p>
<p>2. Score Letters</p>
<p>This flag is normally only used for selecting domains and URLs.</p>
<p>It has been used successfully to better score foreign language text.  This is especially true for German and Dutch.</p>
<p>We don&#8217;t know why.  You hardly ever get to know the answer to &#8220;why&#8221; questions.  Our best theory is that the very sounds of phonetics invoke emotions.  German, Dutch and English all assign similar phonetics to similar letters so it could simply be that the very sound of words can help ad copy to perform better.</p>
<p>In any case, we often see predictability of more than 75% when scoring by letters using German and Dutch ads.  We have a Dutch customer and two German customers who use TestiVar Advertising in this way and previously used custom compiled versions of the developer edition.  They can now use the Agency Edition and simply select this flag.</p>
<p>3. Score Symbols</p>
<p>This flag is normally set for almost all elements.</p>
<p>Sometimes it is nice to fine tune your punctuation though.  You can turn off all of the other flags and leave only this flag on to do that.</p>
<p>4. Exact Match</p>
<p>This flag ignores parsing the words, symbols and letters of the proposed text and simply scores based on exact matches.</p>
<p>It gives a much more accurate answer (approaching 100%) when used on elements like DocType, Registrar and Hosting company.</p>
<p>These choices are exact choices.  You don&#8217;t avoid Go Mommy because Go Domains and DomainMommy both score low. You avoid Go Mommy only because Go Mommy itself scores low.  The scoring is based on an &#8220;exact match&#8221; rather than scoring the words and punctuation involved in the name.</p>
<p>5. Pithy Flag</p>
<p>This changes whatever other scoring flags have been selected to force pithy copy.  Pithy copy is copy that says the most it possibly can in the shortest space possible.</p>
<p>Many elements have higher predictability when the pithy flag is selected.  It is pre-selected with the proper option whenever you select your element, but you can now override that selection with your preference.</p>
<p>Even when it isn&#8217;t pre-selected, you can often get better copy by first optimizing your copy with it not being selected and then optimizing it again with it being selected.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p>If you want to upgrade to the latest version of TestiVar Advertising, just send an email to Support@TestiVar.com and tell us what edition you have.  We will send back the link where you can pay your nominal upgrade fee.  It is only 10% of the full purchase price and you can upgrade as often as you desire (or never at all).  It is entirely up to you.</p>
<p>We will continue adding new features and gathering new data on a daily basis.  You decide when you want to get access to those new features.</p>
<p>In any case, drop us a note if you have any input on what you would like to see us offer in the future.  We love to hear from you.  Our email address is:</p>
<p>Support@TestiVar.com</p>
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