You may have seen this new thing called ‘testing’.

It’s pretty awesome – and it works like this.

You write some copy. But you don’t let all your prospects see it. That would be madness!

Instead, you let, say, 10% of them see it. You just dangle it in front of them, to see how they react.

If they respond favourably, you’re in business! You can roll your test out to the other 90% and make lots of lovely money.

If, on the other hand, your prospects respond unfavourably to your test…

Well, 90% of them never see it, so no harm done! You haven’t lost anything, have you?

Have you?

… haven’t you?

Actually, you have. You’ve lost is the opportunity to test something that may have made you lots of that lovely money I mentioned above.

So before you run your next copy test (which you must always be doing to improve, by the way), ask yourself this:

What makes you think your test will work?

Testing, as it happens, pre-dates the internet. And through testing, copywriting legends like Claude Hopkins, John Caples and David Ogilvy discovered certain tweaks almost always boost profits (even when costs go up).

  • Like using bullets in your copy.
  • Or offering something for free.
  • Or extending your guarantee.
  • Or including your target’s name in your communications.

These are the money-makers you should want to test quickly. Not changing the colour of a sales button, or decreasing your word count, or anything else the jury is very much still out on.

Because if your tests don’t uncover wins, you’ve fallen behind. Make sense?

If so, ask yourself this:

Do you want to stack the odds in your favour when trialling new copy?

Then ask me to write some copy for you.

I’ll make sure you run something proven to work. So you take a step in the right direction.

Whilst your competitors play around with the colour of their buttons.