How To Test Your Copy
Advertising and marketing are not precise sciences. You can never predict with certainty the result of a particular marketing activity. That is particularly true of copywriting.
Test For Understanding
Before you release your 'killer copy' on the world, try it out on some of your family, friends and business contacts.
We all have our own style of writing, and our own choice of words. And we can understand the meaning of what we have written perfectly!
But your copy may not mean the same to everyone. So it's important to get some other opinions, and to check that what you meant to say is the same that other people read into it.
Test For Success
The only real test of your copywriting is - does it work? Does it achieve the results you want (sales? sign-ups for newsletters? whatever you need?).
Winning marketers are always testing their materials to find out which one is producing the best results. The killer sales materials that you see being used year after year became that way through this type of testing. Rarely is the first letter written the absolute best letter it could ever be. You need to keep improving it through testing until you have the letter that consistently out-pulls everything else.
You need to be continually tweaking your copy. But make sure that you only change one small thing at a time. Otherwise, you won't know what made the difference - for good or for bad.
Split Testing
Professional marketers use a technique known as "split testing". To carry out a split test, you need two slightly different forms of your copy. It might be the headline that is different (if only by one word), or it might be the opening sentence (second only in importance to the headline).
Advertising and marketing are not precise sciences. You can never predict with certainty the result of a particular marketing activity. That is particularly true of copywriting.
Test For Understanding
Before you release your 'killer copy' on the world, try it out on some of your family, friends and business contacts.
We all have our own style of writing, and our own choice of words. And we can understand the meaning of what we have written perfectly!
But your copy may not mean the same to everyone. So it's important to get some other opinions, and to check that what you meant to say is the same that other people read into it.
Test For Success
The only real test of your copywriting is - does it work? Does it achieve the results you want (sales? sign-ups for newsletters? whatever you need?).
Winning marketers are always testing their materials to find out which one is producing the best results. The killer sales materials that you see being used year after year became that way through this type of testing. Rarely is the first letter written the absolute best letter it could ever be. You need to keep improving it through testing until you have the letter that consistently out-pulls everything else.
You need to be continually tweaking your copy. But make sure that you only change one small thing at a time. Otherwise, you won't know what made the difference - for good or for bad.
Split Testing
Professional marketers use a technique known as "split testing". To carry out a split test, you need two slightly different forms of your copy. It might be the headline that is different (if only by one word), or it might be the opening sentence (second only in importance to the headline).
If you are using direct mail, then you send out the two versions to two almost-identical groups of people. The sample size might be a hundred or two in each batch. You see what performs the best. Then you keep the best-performing copy, make a slight change and repeat the test.
What you are always doing is keeping the better-performing copy each time, using it as the "control".
If you are split testing web copy, then the process can be made a lot easier.
It's possible to automate the testing so that web pages are shown alternately to different people. Moreover, by setting cookies, you can make sure that if a visitor returns to the page, s/he will always be shown the page that they saw the first time.
One piece of software that I have used is the Scientific Internet Marketing Assistant ("SIMA")- a free download from:
http://www.onlinemarketingtoday.com/software/split-testing/
Unfortunately, this was not available when I last checked, because it is being reprogrammed. Other alternatives (not free) can be got from:
http://www.splithit.com/
http://www.optimost.com/
You may be able to find scripts which do nearly the same task from the many script resources on the web. But it's worth, from time to time, checking back on the Online Marketing Today site to see if Duncan Carver has re-released SIMA.
However you do it, never give up on testing. Remember, just one word in a headline can make the difference between a 1% conversion rate and a 5% conversion rate.
Now read about a golden rule in copywriting. It's all about YOU!
This report is© 2007 Traynor Kitching & Associates ("TKA"), York, UK. You are granted a licence to distribute this report however you wish, provided that none of the material is changed. TKA accepts no responsibility for how you use this material, which is for educational purposes only. No guarantees are intended or implied.
What you are always doing is keeping the better-performing copy each time, using it as the "control".
If you are split testing web copy, then the process can be made a lot easier.
It's possible to automate the testing so that web pages are shown alternately to different people. Moreover, by setting cookies, you can make sure that if a visitor returns to the page, s/he will always be shown the page that they saw the first time.
One piece of software that I have used is the Scientific Internet Marketing Assistant ("SIMA")- a free download from:
http://www.onlinemarketingtoday.com/software/split-testing/
Unfortunately, this was not available when I last checked, because it is being reprogrammed. Other alternatives (not free) can be got from:
http://www.splithit.com/
http://www.optimost.com/
You may be able to find scripts which do nearly the same task from the many script resources on the web. But it's worth, from time to time, checking back on the Online Marketing Today site to see if Duncan Carver has re-released SIMA.
However you do it, never give up on testing. Remember, just one word in a headline can make the difference between a 1% conversion rate and a 5% conversion rate.
Now read about a golden rule in copywriting. It's all about YOU!
This report is© 2007 Traynor Kitching & Associates ("TKA"), York, UK. You are granted a licence to distribute this report however you wish, provided that none of the material is changed. TKA accepts no responsibility for how you use this material, which is for educational purposes only. No guarantees are intended or implied.
