“Testing Your Sales Copy – Bettering Your Best”
Jim drops some knowledge bombs on how to test your sales copy on your site or in video sales letters. The focus of this discussion is getting more money from the SAME traffic. To do this you have to test ONE THING AT A TIME. For instance, make only ONE CHANGE:
Test a headline or title (also change color, size, font, etc – just one at a time)
Test a 1st paragraph or first minute
Test a picture on your sales page (near title or call to action)
Test offer or call to action
Test limited time offer / price or order bumps…
Try AB Split Testing – Test Headline A / Test Headline B. See which one performs better.
But the goal is to try a test with your current audience and see how it performs. Check out Jim and Stew as they discuss more information and their experiences with some common sales copy mistakes. Join the Closed Facebook Page – http://thejimedwardsmethod.com/group and get full access to a close knit community and Jim Edwards Q and A and other great information.
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The Transcript
Jim Edwards: Hey guys! Jim Edwards here! And welcome to another podcast episode!
…I don’t remember which episode this is?
It’s like it’s a bunch and…
Stew Smith: Number nine..
Jim Edwards: no… it’s more than nine…
Stew Smith: Have we gone double digits?
Jim Edwards: …It’s like 11 oh my God!
Stew Smith: Well, we’ll find out today…
Jim Edwards: I’m Jim Edwards along with…
Stew Smith: Stew Smith
Jim Edwards: And Stew was just showing me pictures of himself in his youth with his various hairstyles that he had and… it was rather impressive!
You can check him out on a Facebook near you for throwback Thursday.
So, what are we talking about today?… We’re talking about testing…
Now, when I say testing… there’s a lot of different things that people come to mind that come to mind for different people.
So, like when I say testing… Stew thinks of…
Okay… How many pushups and pull ups and sit ups?… And how fast can I do a 500 meter swim?
And all kinds of other stuff…
Stew Smith: That would be correct
Jim Edwards: When I say testing to other people…
Like my son in law… He might be thinking about sobriety testing on the side of the highway…
which is always exciting at two o’clock in the morning on Saturday… when you’re not quite sure if it really was just two beers.
But we are not going to go down that road…
So, this is a Jim is sick podcast but we wanted to do it anyway!…
Stew Smith: Yeah, we’re sucking it up!
Jim Edwards: That’s right! I’m actually testing two different antibiotics right now…
Just see which one… Yeah! See we’re testing the second antibiotic.
So, when we talk about testing… when it comes to copywriting, really what we’re talking about is…
Bettering your best or… seeing if you can do better than what you’re doing.
And in my book, Copywriting Secrets, we talk about the fact that the enemy of great is… good.
And what happens, especially with sales copy… is people get an offer up and it works…
And then, they become super superstitious about it and don’t want to mess with it because they might break it.
And so, as soon as it’s working, like, “Oh! don’t touch it because it’s working… and if I do something… it might stop working.”
And that’s the wrong way to look at it. Because…
Once you have an offer working… 999 times out of a thousand… you’re never going to be at your optimal on the FIRST try.
Meaning you can always get better!
Just like when Stew failed his first PT test at the Naval Academy…
He was able to test again… and test again… and test again… and then became a PT Stud!
And then we see him where he is today. Right?
Stew Smith: That would be correct…
Jim Edwards: Okay, so… and humble!
So, what the thing to understand about testing, the first thing you might ask is…
“Okay, well why would I test?… what is testing?… and what would it do for me?”
And the short answer is testing is going to… help you make more money on the SAME traffic.
So, I want to draw something out for you guys just real fast and…
That will illustrate this better than me just talking to… hear myself talk.
So, let’s say that you have an offer where… and we’re going to keep these numbers really, really simple.
You’re selling a $100 product, okay?… And you’re spending $90 in traffic to get that.
And let’s say for those 90… let’s say the for that $90… you’re getting a hundred unique visitors… All right?
So, what does that mean? It means that for every hundred dollars you make… you spent $90 to make it… and you’ve got a $10 profit.
So, for some people that might be great… especially if you’re in retail.
And if you’re online and you’re like, “Man, that’s not so bad.”
Now let’s say that you have a 1% conversion rate doing this.
All right, well and I kind of assume that right here.
So, what that means is for every hundred visitors you get… you’re making one sale… a hundred dollars… you’re spending $90 to get those hundred so… your profit is $10.
Now, let’s say that we test our headline… and we test one headline and we’re able to boost our conversion by 0.2%
Just a teeny little 0.2%… Let’s say we also then test the first paragraph of our offer and we’re able to bump that up by just a measly little 0.1%…
Okay! Then, let’s say that we test a picture… we add a graphic.
Let’s say, we add a really cool professional looking graphic right around where we make the offer… and were able to bump that up by 0.1%…
And then let’s say we test… let’s say we test a PS where we restate the offer and…
We’re able to bump up our conversion rate by 0.05%…
So, after we run all these little tests… that’s 0.1 or 0.2 plus 0.3… 0.4… 0.45%…
That really doesn’t sound like much.
Stew Smith: It does.
Jim Edwards: I mean, on the surface it sounds like crap, honestly.
Stew Smith: Yeah, I mean it could it be better? Yes, but okay, let’s do the math.
Jim Edwards: So, now we do the math and we’re converting not at 1% but…
At 1.45% which means… for every hundred people that we bring in, instead of converting at 1%… which gives us $100… We’re converting at 1.45%…
Which means that for every hundred visitors we get…
We’re actually making $145 minus the same $90 that we’re spending for traffic.
Which means that our profit… our profit now instead of $10… our profit is $55…
But our profitability has gone up something like 450%… with the same traffic!
That’s the thing… It’s the exact same traffic!
Now, if you can go from making $10 to make and $55…
Every time you spend $90 in traffic… that means you can actually go spend a lot more money to acquire customers.
It means that you can advertise in more places…
It means you can extend your reach… It means all kinds of stuff…
And I didn’t even get into testing one time offers… testing upsells… testing order bumps… testing all these different things that…
You can do to up the take on traffic that comes in!
So, it’s through that constant testing that… you’re able to increase the amount of money that you’re making based on the traffic.
Now, there are some realities about testing that we’re going to talk about in a second, but there are two types of…
Well, Stew do you have any questions or comments or observations at this point?
Stew Smith: My big thing is you have to take the big part of this video and that is… This is the same traffic.
Jim Edwards: Yes
Stew Smith: You are not trying to get it out there to new traffic… This is the same traffic that you’ve purchased.
Now, something to consider, right?… Take what has worked for you over and over and over again and… Find new traffic, right?
While, at the same time… you’re testing the headline… the first paragraph… the call to action… the picture in there with the same product…
Just different… a different way to engage in already…
I hate to say this… a saturated audience, right?
They’ve already seen your stuff before, but maybe… they just need to see at a second and third time in a different way.
So, that is the key to this.
Jim Edwards: So, the biggest thing though… Also like Stew said, is it’s the exact same traffic.
You can try different traffic sources, but…
when you’re doing this testing… you want to do it with the same traffic source.
Like if you’re doing what this with Facebook ads than while you’re testing…
You want to make sure that it’s a steady same type of traffic… like the Facebook ads.
Then, if you’re going to go like buy an ad from a site or you’re going to do something with email marketing…
You want to make sure that you’re tracking those sources separately.
So, you know what the conversion rate is on that copy.
And you may even want to create duplicate pages.
So, you can track those separately… and really keep those numbers honed in.
So, this assumes that you have a heterogeneous source of traffic.
So as our homogeneous… sorry… homogeneous… not heterogeneous.
Heterogeneous would be lots of different traffic sources.
Homogeneous would be a single one.
Stew Smith: There you go
Jim Edwards: The point though is… that it’s the cough syrup talking…
So, the thing to understand is… that it’s by testing that you’re able to increase your profit exponentially and…
There are virtually unlimited things that you can test, but…
The things that you want to test that had been proven to have the greatest effect on your conversion results, the fastest are…
Your HEADLINE… Your HOOKE… the FIRST paragraph of your copy or… the FIRST minute of what comes out of your mouth in a video.
And then pricing… and then other things to test our order bumps… one time offers and… you want to measure all those things and…
Then, see how when you make changes they impact stuff.
Now some things understand about actually how to test… There are two different ways to test.
There is a way for us as mere mortals like Stew and me to test…
And then, there’s another type of testing which is for the, the gods on high.
Okay. The way that we test is what’s called AB split testing, which means…
You have one version and another version… and there’s only one difference between the two of them.
And you’re testing that one… that one difference.
So, for example, you have a website… a funnel where you’re selling something and… you want to test a headline, then…
You have two different versions of that headline that you’re testing, but…
Every single other thing on that page is exactly the same.
So, whether you’re using an AB split testing script that will just change out the headline on the same page by serving it in there, or…
If you’re using something like Clickfunnels where you have two totally different versions of the page…
That will get displayed based on some magical algorithm that attracts people and make sure that it’s being distributed evenly.
The only difference is the headline… So, if you’re testing headline A versus headline B… that’s the only thing that’s testing…
They’re both the same color… They’re both the same font… they’re both the same, everything.
The only thing that’s different is the words!
If you wanted to test color, then… it’s the exact same headline… the exact same words, but… one is red and one is blue.
If you want to test your price then… everything else on the page is exactly the same except for… the price.
So, that’s the thing to understand!
Now, the reason you want to do that is because that’s how you can test and measure and…
You can do it with the least amount of traffic.
So, the other type of traffic or… the other type of testing, rather, that you can do is what’s called multivariate testing…
Where you load in two or three different headlines and… you load in two or three different prices and…
You load in a couple of different graphics and… you load in maybe two different video sales letters and…
You load… just all these different things.
And then, this fancy software… will run through all of these permutations where it’ll say…
“Okay, this headline combined with this price… with this video sales letter… with these bullets and… this color is what gets you the best return on investment.”
The problem… return on investment… meaning what you’re spending your traffic.
The problem with that is that we… most of us cannot afford to bring in the amount of traffic that’s necessary… to get a significant test result.
I mean, that requires tens and hundreds of thousands of visitors and…
Once you start getting into five different versions of 10 different things… it takes forever.
You’re not going to get enough traffic to do that.
Also, once you’ve got an offer that’s working, you want to work on…
The points that are going to get you the best bang for your buck… as far as getting results!
It’s kind of like with a PT test when… once you can pass the PT test and then you want to start working on maxing it, then…
You’re going to do very specific things that are going to help you to Max that PT test rather than… going and doing jazzercise…
That’s not going to do it for you. Right?
Stew Smith: Right. You gotta get specific…
Jim Edwards: So, that’s the other thing with your copy, you’re going to…
Get specific because we know that… If you can get a headline to get more of the right people to stop, then… the rest of the copy’s going to do its job.
So, once you’ve got an offer that works, the number one thing you want to focus on is…
Just keep maximizing that headline and work on that headline.
In order to get more of the right people to stop… be pre-framed the right way so that they will buy!
So, that’s the big thing you need to understand about testing…
Why you want to do it? Because…
You make more money with the same traffic!
How do you test?… You do AB split testing.
And the next question is, “Okay, well how long do you test something before it’s the winner?” …And the winner is called the control.
So, the whole thing is you’re trying to beat your control all the time.
You’re trying to beat the one that is the current winter.
So, when you do an AB split test, if A is your current control, if B beats it and then B becomes the new A… that’s the control.
Then you have a new one. Here’s the reality…
There are… and I’m going to full disclosure here.
I got a D minus in statistics in business school and got thrown out of business school, but…
When my money is on the line… all of a sudden, my math skills are like A1
Stew Smith: Niiice
Jim Edwards: All right. No, no worries about that.
So, there’s the thing you need to understand is that…
Different people will give you different answers to this question.
How long should I test? When is a significant or… when is it, when is a result good enough?
And so, my thing is always, I think in terms of a hundred actions for me has always been pretty good!
If I’m testing purchases, then… I will try and get a hundred purchases when I’m testing something one against another.
Okay. If, I get a hundred purchases total and on one I get 60 purchases and the other version I get 40… it’s pretty obvious that the one is there.
If I get 51 on one and I get 49 on another, that’s pretty much means they’re pretty much even… all right.
Even, though one’s, well… this one had two more. Yeah….
But, when it’s only a hundred sales, they’re pretty much even…
On the flip side, if while you’re doing a test… you have one version that’s got 20 sales and… you’ve got another one that’s got zero sales…
I don’t need to wait until one has a hundred sales and the other one’s still has zero or… two sales to know that this one’s probably going to win.
Does that make sense?
Stew Smith: Oh, absolutely.
Jim Edwards: So, that’s more of kind of a common sense approach as well.
So, there’s science to it and… there’s common sense stuff as well.
There’s other things with the long term value of a customer and…
Conversion and when we’re talking about purchases…
It’s different than we’re talking about people just opting in versus…
People who opt in and turning into money.
I’ve seen situations where say one offer or… one thing of sales copy will have a much higher opt in rate when people are getting something for free but…
Then has a lower conversion rate on the backend of them actually buying anything as opposed to…
Something on the front which has a lower conversion rate for the free optin but…
A higher by rate on the backend because people are pre-framed the right way.
So, you got to keep an eye on not just the initial conversion rate where you might be thinking… “Oh I’m getting a ton of opt ins and I’m going to get rich”…
And they never buy anything!
You also have to keep an eye on not just the upfront conversion but…
The end run conversion that you’re looking for… which is people buying stuff.
So, I know that’s getting kind of out there a little bit, but…
The thing to understand is that a hundred sales when we’re talking about results…
A hundred sales is to me a much more statistically significant thing than a hundred optins… for a free thing… if that makes sense.
So, it might be that in order to really test something to see whether you’re going to make money…
You might have to test something against another to… a thousand optins
To then see what that means statistically as far as your bottom line dollars in your hand type thing… I don’t know, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s the cough syrup talking Stew…
What questions do you or thoughts do you have at this point?
Stew Smith: I guess my big take home for this, for everybody listening is…
Don’t get too caught up in the weeds with the math right now. Right?
Simply go out there and test one thing. Right?
I will tell you this… the two biggest changes that I made in a test that went from being a B to an A and… a permanent, A… were a headline or a title/headline and…
A picture, right? That’s all… Right? And those were the biggest…
I mean 30% plus increase in revenue… right?… Almost immediately!
Just by doing those two things… and I know I’m sometimes captain obvious here on these podcasts, but… when you have a page that is dedicated to whatever product you are selling…
Yes, you got to have a good headline title, but… in that html where it says title… that also needs to change, right? Because…
Here’s where I screwed up a couple… for about a year… once I created stew smith.com…
Is that my title on all of my web pages was stewsmith.com Right?
And so, once I started creating an FBI workouts and… you know, ranger workouts, I realized that I needed to change my titles… in the html at the top to be that.
And once I did that… completely off the charts increase because why…
Because Google can find you a little bit better. Right?
So, it… I know we’re talking a little bit about the same things, but…
There’s some little common sense things too that can go a long way in producing better results.
The other one was listening to Jim and changing all of my eBook covers to a professionally done eBook cover… done by fiverr, you know… for 10 bucks.
And that was once again, off the chart increase in sales permanently, right!
As a permanent growth curve… It wasn’t just a spike then came back down…
It was up 30%… Stay there… steadily growing…
Jim Edwards: There you go…
Stew Smith: That that makes a big difference too.
Jim Edwards: Awesome. Yeah…
The one last thing I want to tell you guys too… and that brings up a great point…
What just said there. I mean there’s tons and tons of stuff that you can test…
I mean there’s… not discounting what you said about the freaking meta title…
Stew Smith: Yeah, exactly!
Jim Edwards: That’s we need to have the idea that the mind set of paying attention to minutia… and in other words… once something’s working…
Then we need to start looking at the little pieces… and seeing what we can tweak to make it better.
On the flip side, you also have to understand is as your tweaking stuff to make things better…
This is kind of a dirty little secret of testing…
Most of the tests, especially once you are really getting it dialed in… most of the tasks will not win.
In other words, you will lose more times than you’ll win… and that’s okay because all we’re trying to do then is…
Get that last incremental little pump!
And then, once you get it to the point where you can’t meet it or… beat it anymore… and you get bored, then
You can make the choice of, “Hey, I want to stop testing this and I’ll start working on other stuff.”
But there’s always stuff to test but just understand and especially when people are doing things… they’re just getting started.
Or when they have dialed it in a little bit… they start to get negative when you can’t beat the test anymore… And it’s weird. It’s weird.
It’s like, “Oh, that’s no good. Oh, that’s no good. Oh, that’s no good.”
And the thing you need to understand is that there’s… the thing that you think is going to be amazing… usually sucks.
And the thing that you think is just… why would anybody be interested is…
Is going to be the giant killer!
And so, that’s where you gotta be super clinical about your testing.
And you have to be really… You need to leave your ego at the door when you’re testing.
Like I had a situation with a… I’ll leave you with this…
I had a situation where the headline for a product that I’d created… that I thought was the most amazing headline ever and…
I was making a few sales and I was like, “Oh, I guess people aren’t as interested in the products I thought they would be.”
And then I said, “Well, let me test a different headline.”
And I pulled a headline from a video game magazine.
It was the original headline was… Grand Theft Auto 5 Vice City Secrets you’re not supposed to know…
And I put in there… the eBook marketing secrets you’re not supposed to know.
And I use that headline and… it took off and I was like…. Damn!
So, usually the headlines and stuff that are ego driven… don’t work as well.
And I mean that on two levels… The one you think is amazing usually is NOT!
And any headline that has to do with you personally and…
Your ego… really is not! When you think it’s amazing because it’s about all about you…
That’s going to be the headline that’s going to do the shittiest.
So, just keep testing… keep testing… keep trying to better your best… trying to beat that personal record.
It’s like a run or pushups…
You know… you may set up a personal record for pushups one day and…
You might go a year before you can even equal that again because you just had that magical amount of sleep… and nutrition… and motivation… and everything.
And you just aced that one test and then you’re like… “Oh, that’s my new normal.”
And then, you’re trying to beat it… and beat it… and you can’t do it for another year! But…
Does that mean you should stop training? Does that mean you should stop working out?
No… And that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep testing… and looking for ways to better your best!
So, that’s what I had to say about testing and why testing is important…
You don’t have to make it super complicated!
It doesn’t have to be a real onerous thing… You can make it fun… You make it a game!
You make it something where every week you’re running a test… What am I going to test today? What am I going to test?
Because the worst thing it’s gonna do is it’s going to show you that, okay, compared to this… I’m doing… I’m doing well… let me try and beat it again.
And the best that it will do is… help you make a crap ton more money.
And I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like making a crap ton more money without…
Spending any more money to do it!
Stew Smith: Yeah! You know what… It’s funny you said about the ego driven…
I had this one that I was really fired up about and it was the common sense approach to Acing your PT test.
Jim Edwards: Uh Huh
Stew Smith: And that’s exactly what people thought of it. But…
When I said the top 3 mistakes people make in their PT test… completely different animal…
Jim Edwards: Everybody wants to do it.
Yeah! Yeah!
Everybody wants to pay attention…
That’s why the dirty little secret of how to pass your PT test… even if you haven’t trained in the last six months.
Here’s the dirty little secrets… Tubby…
You better get your ass out on that road… right now while you’re reading this article.
Um, anyway. Cool! Well… Thank you Stew! I appreciate it!
I appreciate you and everybody. I apologize for the coughing.
If you’re listening to this, we’re actually going to be doing something pretty cool here…
We’ll let you guys know more about it in the not too distant future, but…
If you are getting a bunch of traffic to your website and you would like my help in doing some testing…
We’re actually going to be doing that and…
It won’t cost you anything to be able to be a part of that.
So, ask yourself a question…
“Hey, I’m getting some cool traffic and I have offer that’s working and Jim Edwards would help me test it??? Holy Crap! I want to know more…”
So, keep your eyes peeled for more details in the future.
We’ll let you know. That’s right! It’s everybody!
Have a great day and we’ll talk to you soon!
Oh, and… if you’re not a member of the Facebook group… Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks Facebook group… you are wrong and you need to be in there!
Now you can sign up for that at thejimedwardsmethod.com/group.
So, I’m Jim Edwards… Have a great day!
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