It’s all about the Opportunity
Yes, opportunity. You’ll never be able to test headlines unless you give yourself the opportunity to do so. You need opportunity, testing, and measurement to find insight. Once you have insight, that’s when the light bulb in your brain turns on and you get that “ah ha” moment all small business marketers strive for.
Just last week I showed you how to write, format, test and measure marketing headlines on your website. I briefly mentioned how BoostSuite can help you accomplish all of that and today, I’ll show you exactly how to do it.
How do you give yourself the opportunity to write and test marketing headlines using BoostSuite?
- You need a website with a content management system (CMS). This allows you to create marketing headlines on each of your pages and edit them whenever you want. Content management systems allow you take matters into your own hands. You do not have to bug someone whenever you want something simple changed. It also allows you to install the BoostSuite Tracking Code. More about why that’s important later.
- You need to install the BoostSuite Tracker Code. This allows us to easily switch out the headlines so we can test the effectiveness of each of them.
- You need to set at least one Conversion Point. This allows us to measure the goals of your marketing website. Without conversion points, a website is simply a brochure, not a living, breathing marketing tool.
After you have all of these items covered, you’ll start getting conversions in your BoostSuite account. That’s awesome. The more conversions you get, the more business you’re generate! But just because you have a headline on a page doesn’t mean that it’s the best headline for driving conversions.
That’s why you need to test different marketing headline iterations in BoostSuite
Here’s how. Once you starting having some conversions on your website, you’ll see a new Headline Opportunity suggestion in your suggestion stream that looks like this:
To get started, Click the green “Do This Task Now” button. This will expand the suggestion and show you the full dialoge with some help test. It looks like this:
As you can see in our example, we currently have a headline that reads, “How to end ‘disappointing sales’ forever”. BoostSuite has found that this webpage is a bottleneck in this website and BoostSuite is asking me to write up to three alternate headlines to address it.
BoostSuite asks that I use calls-to-action in the headlines because we know that they drive my visitor to lead/customer conversion rate up.
Using what I learned from my previous headline article, I know that the current marketing headline I’m using is a “How To” headline. I’m going to write three new headlines using some of the other techniques. Here’s what they look like after I’ve added them:
As you can see, I’ve used 3 marketing headlines that follow the 4 U’s:
- Be USEFUL to the reader,
- Provide him with a sense of URGENCY,
- Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow UNIQUE; and
- Do all of the above in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way.
My first headline iteration uses the “Direct Headline” technique – “Disappointing Sales Hurt Morale – End Them Now”.
My second headline iteration uses the “Question Headline” technique – “Want to End Disappointing Sales Forever?”.
My third headline iteration uses the “Reason Why Headline” technique – “3 Reasons Why Disappointing Sales Hurt Morale”.
Now that I’ve written three solid headline iterations that I feel comfortable moving forward with, I’m ready to run with them by clicking the “Save and Verify” button.
Once I do that, BoostSuite will automatically start showing each marketing headline iteration randomly to my visitors. After one of them reaches statistical significance, meaning one iteration has resulted in considerably more conversions than the rest, BoostSuite will only show that headline moving forward. This guarantees that my visitors see the headline that is most effective at generating leads/customers for my business. How cool is that?
After you’ve set up at least one marketing headline test, you can head to the Headline Optimizations interface (Conversions>Headline Optimizations) to view all of your tests. There you can view the results of each test and pause or play any of them.
Real Results Achieved by Small Business Marketers Using BoostSuite Headline Opportunities
- An alternative energy product retailer increased the number of monthly visitors submitting their Request a Quote Form from 38 to 160. That’s an extra 122 sales leads every month!
- A software startup in Charlotte, North Carolina increased the number of online sign-ups for their product by 2,600%.
- A boutique hotelier in New York increased reservation inquiries by 33%, resulting in 135 more new leads over two months.
Increasing your conversion percentage is the cheapest and fastest way to get more results from your website. Follow BoostSuite’s new marketing headline optimization suggestions using the same techniques I showed you above and you’ll start seeing more results almost immediately.
