How To Test Your Headlines Without Spending A Fortune In Advertising Fees by Thomas A. Hilton, Jr.
So, you've spent all this time on creating your product and you've read all the advice from every marketing expert on the internet. You've discovered one common ground among them all. And they all do agree on this one thing.
Testing the headlines is critical.
They all say that it's the absolute one critical element to any successful marketing campaign. Whether it's the headline on your website, your subject line in your email or the first words you speak over the phone in a sales call. It's the most important feature and you should spend 80% of your time coming up with just the right one.
It's the difference between success or failure in any campaign.
If you're lucky to find an expert that is willing to share with you the exact details as to how he tests his headlines. You discover that it's the basic A/B split run test in newspapers.
Sounds simple. But did you know that most newspapers will not even consider going through the trouble of running A/B splits unless you are a major account paying for those high dollar advertising spots.
What's the answer for the average marketer that can't build up a huge marketing budget if he can't increase his sales in the first place.
Well, one answer that I've found is to copy the big boys in the corporate world. Use a focus group technique. Where you ask a number of people to look over a select group of your headlines and let them tell you which ones they prefer.
Let me tell you a story of one famous CEO.
His name is Fred Smith of Federal Express and when he hired a marketing executive to come in and help him with some of his branding issues... here's what happened.
He suggested that Fred Smith post sketches of 10 or more different color schemes for his airplanes on the wall of an office. He then asked numerous people to come in and look at all of them. He quietly sat back and watched which sketch actually attracted the most attention... one particular drawing kept bringing people back to it over and over again...
They didn't know what it was about that one particular color scheme but something kept them coming back to review it more than once... that's how he pre-tested the color scheme for that famous branded image of an airplane we all know and recognize as FedEx today.
A small focus group of people sharing their thoughts on what caught their eye.
If you have a small group of friends, co-workers or even a small email list that you can run a survey by then it could do wonders for your marketing campaign. I can recall receiving a email from a newsletter publisher that did that very thing about every portion of his newsletter.
He wanted to know which font his readers preferred over another.
He asked which font size was best for his readers over another.
He continued to ask these questions and he even posted the results and now his entire newsletter is -- you guessed it -- exactly like what the majority of his readers recommended and preferred.
A focus group could even do wonders for your headlines. The experts say you should write out at least 100 headlines and only then begin to start narrowing your list down to the most power pulling headline possible. Naturally your best headline would be the one that makes you the most sales...
But... after you've written 100 headlines -- which one do you spend money on in advertisements that actually charge you to run the ad. That could become a very expensive test. A focus group could help you tremendously save literally hundreds even thousands of dollars determining which headlines you should avoid and which ones you should work with.
Yes, headlines are the most critical part of any marketing campaign - so don't put money into any advertisement without first testing the Headline.
About the Author
Thomas A. Hilton, Jr. - entrepreneur, ineternet marketing consultant, entrepreneurial investor. Co-Founder of http://www.headlines2go.com -- Author of "An Entrepreneur's Approach to Buying & Selling on Wall Street" at http://www.entrepreneurial-investor.com
posted by Thomas Telford @ 9:41 AM
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