google &testing Martin Lee on 03 Nov 2006 01:28 pm
How to Decide Which of Your Ad is Better
Sometimes, you might ask yourself this question, “Which version of advertisement or salescopy should I use for my promotion?” I will like to tell you an interesting story that might provide you with the answer.
A few days ago, Adam Khoo, a well known success trainer in my country, was seeking feedback on his blog about a sales letter for one of his programs. He had changed his salesletter and wanted to know which was better. Here’s how his new sales letter looked like:
Two lucky readers who provided the best feedback (in his opinion) would be given a copy of his program free. I decided to take part in the contest for the fun of it.
Before reading on, spend a few minutes to take a look at Adam Khoo’s sales letter and see what you can come up with.
It took me all of 10 seconds to look at his sales letter and a few more minutes of typing to provide my (winning) critique out of 100 over entries:
Well, you asked for a critique. Here goes�.
If the purpose of getting feedback is to improve the salesletter (ie increase the conversion rate), the whole exercise is futile. Why?
Each and everyone of our comments do not help determine whether sales letter A or B is better or worse. Individually, each of us might have a preference; but taken collectively, this opinion counts for nothing.
So what if 1 reader prefers headline A, 10 readers prefer headline B, and so on.
Even if 99% of your readers tell you the same thing, it might very well be the wrong thing. You wouldn�t know.
To see which sales letter is better, run them in parallel with a A-B test and see which one gives you a better conversion (making sure the sample size is sufficient).
That will be your better sales letter. At the end of the day, the market is always right. Why not listen to it?
You didn’t expect that, did you?
I got a free copy of his course as a result of being 1 of the 2 selected winners. 🙂
To end off, I would like to introduce you to this free website optimizer testing tool by Google.
It’s a powerful tool that allows you to do multi-variable testing on your website. This is the sort of tool that companies are paying thousands of dollars for and Google is providing it free of charge!
The flip side is that it is only open to selected people at this point in time. So, you have to apply to get in.
You will want to keep an eye on it to see when they will release it to the general public.
