Write a note on Pre-Testing

PRE-TESTING
The purpose of testing ads for their sales effectiveness before the campaign is
run, is to assess the advertising on reduced scale, and to see whether it would be
profitable on a larger scale. The two methods used are:
1. Inquiry Tests: It involves measuring the potential sales effectiveness of ads
based on the number of inquiries received. The ads usually offer some incentive
for responding immediately, such as free booklets, product samples or free trials. It
is also used to test the effectiveness of media. It is useful especially in testing
small print ads. It also measures the intentions to buy, and therefore a good
measure of sales effectiveness of ads.
It may not always represent a sincere interest in the product advertised. Such
tests are also time consuming, as the responses to some ads may sometimes take
months to come in.
2. Sales Experiments an Test Markets: An advertiser who wishes to know how
effective his advertising is before investing large amounts of money on a rational
effort, may decide to go for a “test market”. Besides pretesting ads, they can also
be used for pretesting the media mix, the budget level and the scheduling or the
timing of the advertising. The problem with this method is that it is expensive
and it takes a lot of time