How To Test Your Headlines Without Spending A Fortune In
Advertising Fees
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.