Recently I stumbled upon an article about education in the New York Times online archives. It’s a wonderful resource for market research – a treasure trove of 13 million articles going back to 1851.

The article was entitled, "To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test".

How to Boost Recall

What does an article about students and testing have to do with battle hardened B2B audiences? Well, a big challenge in B2B marketing is to educate your audience. The trick is to get them to remember your message.

The NY Times article cites a 2011 Purdue study that says, "students who read a passage, then took a test asking them to recall what they had read, retained about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods." Researchers suggest that, "it may also be that the struggle involved in recalling something helps reinforce it in our brains."

Okay, you knew this. It's one of those truths that most of us learned the hard way in junior high. That pop quiz on Monday morning didn't go well, but it prepared us for the big test next week.

Results in the B2B World

You’re planning a website, creating an enewsletter or brainstorming an iPhone app. Is there some way you can work in a series of questions to help your prospects retain your message better? Why not challenge your creative team to find a way to educate your audience by actually giving them a test? You may not want to call it that, but why not? People are curious to see what they know.

There are several creative ways to do this. For example, if your product relates to energy efficiency you might include an interactive module that offers to test energy IQ. You might make this recall technique part of a webinar, regular enews feature or to incentivize participation at trade shows. Teaser ads and online surveys are variations of testing at work. Be sure to integrate these with your analytics strategy. By doing some A/B testing you could offer different versions to see which gets more results.

Want to Test Your Recall Skills?

1. What popular newspaper shares its archives online?
2. How many articles are available?      
3. What year do they go back to?              
4. In a recent study, what percentage did testing increase knowledge recall?
5. Did you look for the answers above?

Your score doesn’t matter, but if you answered "Yes" to the last question you are living proof that we are all curious by nature and we like to validate what we know. Your ability to use this to your advantage in your marketing program is only limited by your ingenuity. Test it for yourself.