squeeze page study and universal "what works"

I have some interesting test results.

There seems to be a new popular squeeze page layout that has been adopted by many internet marketers. Some well known marketers have tested designs and found this specific design to be the most successful.

Jeff walker uses it at his product launch formula
Non-Guru Case Study

And many other very well known internet marketers use it to.

I tested the layout for my particular market against a different control layout based on the simple centered table design made popular by doubleyourdating.com

Well, the older, simple centered table design performed 36% better.

** Before anyone asks to see the pages, at this time, I am not providing links right now.

Which brings me back to the second part of the subject line for this thread...

Universal "What Works":
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I am going to reveal the MOST IMPORTANT rule of marketing. Internet or offline. This is the biggest secret you could ever know. Here it is, ready....

Drumroll....

Conduct Tests.

This is the first fundamental to learn, and probably the most important one.

When a theory or statement makes it's way around the marketing community online about the "best way to do something" all that means is:

With the market and systems that person has in place, according to their tests - XX worked best. In this case it would be that particular squeeze page layout.

Why would that squeeze page design not work better for me and my market?

Maybe my market is older, less sophisticated, less computer savvy, and they were still confused by the 2 column layout. Perhaps 1 simple centered table is just that much easier. I don't know, I am just proposing a theory.

But, the point is, there are no things as one size fits all, or blanket statements.

Markets are different, markets adapt to techniques being used on them, and the most important thing to do is simply conduct test and adjust based on those test results.

If I just listened to the blanket statements of what the "best squeeze page design" is and kept it. According to this test, I would get 36% less opt-ins than I could be getting.