Your problem, unless you're looking for some turnover in secretarial pool, is which headline to go with. So, you run a test. With all other factors being absolutely, gruelingly, microscopically equal, and with some completely automated, totally foolproof, exhaustively planned tracking method in place, you send 500,000 with one headline and 500,000 with other.

The result? You'll never know. The list guy bonked and sent one headline to New York and other to Fiji. The computer guy bonked because it's part of his job description, so Data Entry had to handle tracking. Data Entry didn't bonk, they just stared at their shoes while you explained tracking and didn't do it.

The numbers you do get, however, paint a remarkably clear picture:

Testing is dumb.

So, how about little guy? The guy whose budget doesn't have room for wildly improbable, hugely inaccurate, utterly useless extravagances like testing a free car deodorizer against a free closet deodorizer?

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Guess. That may not sound very scientific, but marketing is really more art than science anyway.

2. Don't reinvent wheel. Unless your product or industry just emerged, you probably have vast archives of previous marketing successes and failures to analyze for free.

3. Train your ear. Develop a sense of pitch that tells you when any element of your marketing is off-key.

4. Try, try again.

On net, keying your links, watching your stats, and borrowing liberally from competition is all most of us really need.

Yes. "Scientific Advertising" is a great book and a must-read. So is Old Testament, but that doesn't mean we should all rush out and stone wicked.

(Unless, of course, they're passionately expounding virtues of boring marketing books written by dead marketing guys.)

6)Think and act like a guerrilla marketing type – incorporate "guerrilla marketing" techniques to drive your business in unique ways. Go to source, guy who coined term and many of processes, Jay Conrad Levinson http://www.gmarketing.com

Ready for some don'ts?

1.Don't use TV, Radio or Billboards unless you have lots of money to spend (read millions typically). Yes, they work to develop brands, but be aware of disconnect factor when you are trying to reach online customers. When was last time you jumped up from TV set to write down a URL you saw splashed across a screen or stopped your car driving down your local boulevard when you saw a billboard that caught your attention? Not very often!

2.Don't pay top dollar for banner advertising – negotiate a good deal for yourself and don't believe sales rep when they tell you all inventory is sold out! There is lots of unsold inventory out there, just look at number of "house ads" (done for company who owns site and published on their site) being run on many web sites. Do some old-fashioned digital horse-trading and leverage your media buy!

3.Don't base your business on "high tide raises all boats model" – there is definitely a storm brewing and we don't mean just at your local movie theater with George Clooney starring (sorry ladies). We are telling our clients to batten down hatches and leverage their marketing dollars as much as possible - party is over, time to get down to building viable business models based on selling tangible goods and services.

4.Don't use biz speak verbiage in your marketing processes - if I see another site that has "first mover advantage" quoted throughout site I am going back to radio for news/information. Be real, tell people what you do, how you do it and what value is based on – enabling them to quickly (it's web……..) understand what your business is all about.