Inbound Marketing and Content Strategy with HubSpot
It’s no secret that effective copywriting can be really tricky. You need to nail the words just right, and you also need to ensure that you’re putting your readers in the right mindset to be able to truly understand and appreciate your message. There are a variety of techniques and tools that can help you determine the effectiveness of your copy, but how do you actually go about testing it?
Fortunately, the good folks over at Copyblogger Media have you covered. They have developed a tool that can help copywriters like yourself determine the power of your copy simply by entering a few keywords and phrases into the search bar above. The results will examine the strength of your copy in comparison to other content on your topic, and it’ll even suggest improvements that will make it more effective.
Let’s take a look at how this useful tool works in practice, and we’ll also discuss some of the important things that you need to keep in mind before you start making any meaningful comparisons.
How To Test Copywriting Effectively
If you’re reading this, I assume that you’re either a copywriter yourself or someone who’s close to this field and wants to get better at what you do. Let’s cut right to the chase and examine how to test copywriting effectively. There are three primary things that you need to keep in mind:
1. The Importance Of Back-testing
It’s important to back-test your copy before you start making any kind of significant changes. Even when you think that you’ve got the perfect wording and the perfect tone of voice, there’s no guarantee that your copy will perform as expected in the real world. The last thing that you want to do is launch a massive campaign and see that it back-fires because the people who are receiving the message aren’t really interested in hearing it. Or worse yet, you could accidentally offend a group of people with whom you otherwise intended to keep in good relations.
When we test copywriting with the Copyblogger tool, we recommend that you go through the entire piece at least twice before you make any judgment calls. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the words themselves and forget about the bigger picture. Once you’ve re-read the copy a couple of times, you’ll be in a better position to see the story’s overall theme and the unique voice that the writer(s) uses to convey it. This step is important because it gives you a fresh set of eyes and ears with which to listen to and appreciate the piece. Let’s face it, sometimes when you’re in the midst of a writing battle, it’s easy to get so wrapped up in what you’re saying that you become blind to the fact that your words aren’t coming across as well as you’d like them to.
2. Use Plausible Words & Phrases
The second thing that you need to keep in mind when testing copywriting is to use plausible words and phrases. If you’re someone who likes to get everything written down on paper before you start typing, you’ll most likely agree that this step can feel like a chore. You don’t want to stuff your head with made-up words and weird turns of phrase just to have something to put into your piece. That’s a surefire way to confuse and ultimately turn off your audience.
When we test the effectiveness of copy with this tool, we recommend that you avoid using jargon and instead rely on words that your audience is more likely to understand. There are a variety of tools and apps that can help you find the right words for your copy, and you don’t have to keep sticking to big, mainstream brands. Instead, you can use tools like Google Trends to find the words and phrases that your ideal audience is already using.
3. Use The Right Keywords
The final thing that you need to keep in mind when testing copywriting is to use the right keywords. If you’ve got a limited number of keywords and phrases to work with, you need to make sure that they’re all relevant to your topic. When we test the effectiveness of copy with this tool, we recommend that you enter a few keywords into the search bar and leave the rest at the default setting. This is because each keyword and phrase that you add will affect the results of your analysis slightly. If you add additional keywords, the results may start to show more matches and take up more room on your screen. If that’s the case, go back and remove some of the other phrases so that they don’t eat up all the available room on your screen. (Don’t worry; you can always add them back later if needed.)
When it comes to copywriting, what you want to avoid is using a million different keywords and phrases because then you’re guaranteed to turn up a lot of useless information. Instead, use a couple of relevant keywords that will help your copy stand out from the crowd.
To illustrate this point, say that you’re writing a blog post about digital marketing and you want to rank for the keywords “digital marketing,” “inbound marketing,” and “content strategy.” If you type these keywords into the search bar, you’ll most likely get a lot of results, right? Well, that’s because these words are generic and could potentially match a lot of content that’s not necessarily related to what you’re looking for. If you want to find out how to do content marketing, for example, you wouldn’t want to use these words because they might bring up results for other types of content that are not relevant to what you’re trying to achieve.
If you use this tool to test copywriting, you’ll notice that most of the results are from blogs that are owned and operated by big, famous brands. This is because this tool looks at the number of times that someone searches for a keyword or phrase, and it measures the success of that content in comparison to other content on your topic. As a result, most of the results will be from blogs and websites that are associated with well-known brands. In other words, this tool will likely tell you that your content is over-optimized and that you’re not using relevant keywords. If you ever start to get nervous or worried about your writing ability, this is the kind of thing that can really help you relax and get back to enjoying what you do.
Keep In Mind
Before we wrap up this article, let’s discuss a few important things that you need to keep in mind if you decide to use this tool to test your copy. First of all, it’s important to use this tool in a healthy way. You don’t want to throw away your favorite keyboard just to prove a point to someone. Instead, you should try to find the results that you get from this tool to be as useful as possible. This means that you need to constantly re-evaluate your keywords and update them when new information comes to light. Secondly, it’s important to keep in mind that this tool is meant to be fun and inspirational—not something that you use to stress out about your writing. When you use this tool to its full potential, you’ll notice that it can actually be a lot of fun. Thirdly, it’s important to remember that this tool will only provide you with data and information that is relevant to your topic. If you ever get any results that have nothing to do with your topic, you should question their usefulness. If you’re not sure about how to properly use this tool, check out the blog’s author’s example or jump into the forums to get answers from other users.
In the near future, we’ll be releasing a whole series of blog posts about the ins and outs of using this tool. If you’d like to receive these posts straight to your inbox, just subscribe to our newsletter!