Testing Real Life Copy and Why Stealing Works – Part 1
Today I went to my dermatologist for my 3-month refill for Enbrel. While waiting in the office for 20 fucking minutes, I found no less than 8 different skin care brochures, ranging from injectible Botox to creams that help erase wrinkles. Hmm, I know a little something something about wrinkle cream sales, so I started flipping through these brochures and was pretty stunned by the quality of the ad copy.
Evidently the drug companies know a thing or two about what can be said to a female that would result in said female opening up her wallet and dropping some coin. We’ve all used corporate copy on a landing page at some point, but when you think about it for a moment, it’s pretty obvious the pharmacuetical industry has a LOT more money than most merchants who pitch Acai and ResV. It’s also true their research/marketing teams are a LOT more experienced than the previously stated merchants.
So as a test, I’m going to not only jack the copy of these brochures to use on a few underperforming sites, but I’m going to jack the images and layout as well. Sometimes we seem to get so caught up trying to find the cheapest traffic, most attractive banners/ad copy, and the best A/B split that takes our CTR to 50%+, that we lose focus on what people are seeing IN REAL LIFE advertisements.
I’m going to do a LOT of television watching this week, specifically on the “TV for idiots” channels such as WE, Lifetime, and Food Network, paying close attention to the beauty and skin care commercials out there. What points are the commercials driving home, how do the websites listed in the commercials look/feel compared to the television ad, etc., are all things that these corporations have likely spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing via focus groups, geographic testing, etc.. It’s reasonable to assume that since it works for them, we can find success with the approach as well, even if it has to be tweaked a little for our own niche product.
I’ll post back here in a few weeks with stats on how the new sites I add this copy and images actually perform.
Popularity: 2% [?]
I was just researching skin care last night. I was a bit disappointed about how difficult it was to actually get results on legitimate products rather than the miracle cure of the week. By the time a person can sort through all that they could’ve just got shot up with botox at the derm office! Still – hopefully it goes well on your end. Good luck!
yup mags are fun to see the type of wording they use. I like watching pitchmen cause they are good at that kind of stuff.