“Wait, my copy is going to be put to the test?! What?!” Anything that mentions the word “test” always sounds scary but don’t panic! When a client starts to talk to you about potentially running tests on your copy, this is something that you should not only embrace, but even be excited about.
Testing your copy is a chance for you to better serve your client, allowing you to learn a lot about what resonates with a particular audience. In this episode, Nicki and Kate discuss how testing works, as well as different opportunities for testing copy that could help you deliver more value and drive better results.
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Looking for closed captioning or a transcript? Watch the episode on YouTube!
A Sneak Peek at the Episode
[1:50] In this episode, Nicki and Kate are talking about testing your copy in terms of seeing how different versions of it perform (as opposed to a copy test you might do for a client before being hired—more on that here).
[2:36] Testing your copy is not a scary thing—it can actually be an opportunity for you as a copywriter to better serve your client.
[5:31] There may be times when it’s appropriate to provide options for your client to test, which is a nice way of providing more of a service, while also helping you learn more about what that audience responds to.
[6:24] It is in no way a judgment on your skills as a copywriter to test your copy—it’s just an opportunity to learn (and you will often be surprised by what performs best).
[8:20] You can’t test your copy before giving it to your client—your client has to test it to their audience
[9:35] With an A/B test, you’re testing two versions of one variable against each other. For example, you might test one headline against another headline on a sales page. Changing too many variables at a time makes it hard to isolate the reason one sales page performed better.
[11:01] Your client would split the traffic between the two different versions of the sales page and when they’ve reached a high degree of certainty, they’d look to see how many people purchased on each sales page.
[12:25] There are many opportunities for testing copy, including subject lines, headlines, the language you use in a call-to-action, and testimonials. You can bring more value to your clients by making recommendations for tests to carry out.
[15:46] When Nicki is doing email copy for a client, she will often just automatically send through a couple of different versions of subject lines to her client, which they’re generally grateful for.
[16:41] There are other kinds of projects where testing is more built into it, like Meta ads, where you are constantly testing to see what performs against different versions. Length is always a good thing to test to see if the audience prefers more or less detail before clicking through.
[18:31] If you are creating more copy for your clients to test, make sure you’re building that into your quote so that you are being compensated for it. And if your client comes back to you with additional testing elements, don’t be afraid to create a new quote for that.
[21:17] Anytime that you’re asking your client to test something, put it on your calendar to follow up with them and ask if they can share the results with you (although it may take a while to get them). This is a great opportunity to re-pitch your client—even if it performed well.
[22:32] If your client runs some copy and it doesn’t perform the way that they had hoped it would, that’s not a mark against you. You are only one part of the marketing machine and there are many other factors that can affect the metrics. But you can be part of taking advantage of the opportunity to improve it.
Must-Hear Takeaways
As with every episode, we highly encourage you to listen to the entire conversation! But here are a few of the highlights:
“It’s just so, so valuable for me and for my client to get that information back and know, oh, here’s what our audience actually cares about. Here are the messages that most resonate with them. How can we say these different things in other ways because they want to hear more of this. And this other message, yes, it’s important for them to hear maybe, but they don’t resonate with it as much. So maybe you don’t put as much emphasis on it. It just gives you so much more to work with.” – Kate
“It is not in any way a judgment on your skills as a copywriter to test your copy. It does not mean that you’re not a good copywriter. It’s just an opportunity to learn. And if your client says, ‘oh, we’re going to test this’, embrace it and ask to find out what the results are. After however many years I’ve been doing this, pushing 15 now, I feel like I am almost always wrong of which thing I think is going to win the test.” – Nicki
“I think that’s one of the nicest things about working with a ton of different clients across a ton of different industries is you get ideas that you can then bring to your clients and bring so much more value to them by having all of this knowledge from what other people are doing in their marketing.” – Kate
“And I think anytime that you’re saying to yourself, ‘which one do I think will perform better?’—that’s a perfect time to say, okay this is an opportunity to say to my client that they run an a/b test.” – Kate
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Last Updated on June 10, 2024
