Anyone in marketing knows that driving traffic to their website is crucial in order to boost sales. However, it is not always clear how to get your customers to convert online. You’re deploying social media and google advertisements but is your marketing message actually breaking through the digital noise? How do you measure success? Your marketing messages should connect with your customers and drive desired actions. The best way to eliminate the guesswork and know whether your efforts will pay off is message testing.
What is Message Testing?
Message testing is the process of testing out different versions of your marketing messages. It’s experimentation at its finest and it can help you determine which messages drive the most leads and sales. In order to do campaign message testing, you start by creating very slight tweaks to your messages. From there, you can try pitting completely different concepts against each other for evaluation.
It’s essential to keep testing. Message testing market research should be an integral part of your marketing strategy as it helps align your brand’s story with your customers. Here’s a brief guide to help you test your messaging and improve brand loyalty.
Message Testing Process
To get started with message testing, it is best to use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. For e-mail messages and digital ads, analytics and other quantitative metrics can tell marketers which subject lines, taglines, calls-to-action, or landing pages get the most conversion. Conversely, qualitative testing methods take advantage of customer insights so that marketers can understand how their messages are perceived on an emotional level and why they are resonating (or not).
Qualitative research often involves customer surveys that ask poignant, open-ended questions that dive deep into a customer’s motivations, preferences, and lifestyle.
Frame your message testing survey questions around these key areas:
Clarity, conciseness, and focus. Does the customer read your messages and have an instant understanding of what you are expressing and what you want them to do next?
Customer benefits. Does your messaging answer the “what’s in it for me?” question? Do customers clearly understand your brand’s benefits?
Hook. Does your messaging “hook” them in and make them want to keep reading?
Truthfulness. Is your messaging accurate and truthful? Do you avoid exaggerations and unsubstantiated claims?
Language. Are you using language that your customers understand? Avoiding jargon or acronyms?
Social proof. Are you offering social proof in the form of reviews or testimonials?
Needs. Does your message uncover hidden needs? Are you highlights problems your customer didn’t know they had and offering your product or service as the solution?
Get Started with Message Testing
If you are in need of new marketing messages for an impending product or service release, it is imperative that you start message testing as early as possible to give you plenty of time to hone in on your strategy.
Try creating different versions of your marketing messages to see which one drives the best results. Keeping these things in mind, you can see huge returns on investment to help you achieve your global growth goals.
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