After writing my last post I remembered a story about a friend of mine, TJ Rohleder who is a very intelligent direct response marketer. TJ has made over $100 Million in his marketing company, and has relayed many interesting stories of his experiences in marketing in our numerous conversations. My favorite TJ story is the one he told me about how he made $18 million with 1 salesletter.
TJ told me that he always tests 10 headlines on his salesletters. So one time he had written and tested 9 headlines and 1 definitely outperformed the other headlines he tested. He almost didn’t test a 10th headline because he couldn’t think of one worthy of testing. But rather than divert from the testing 10 headlines process he has used to be successful, he decided to test a 10th headline.
He didn’t like the headline, and really thought he was wasting his time testing it.
But to his surprise, the 10th headline outperformed the previous best by 800%! He used
that headline on his salesletter and made $18 million sending it out to his database. If he
hadn’t tested the 10th headline, he would have made about $15,750,000 leess on the same promotion.
What this proves is that you never know which headline will outperform the others by choosing your favorite, or asking your friends, family and colleagues. The only way to have this type of marketing breakthrough is to go through a systemized testing process. TJ tests headlines on postcards with identical body copy so that the only difference is the headline. He tests a minimum of 1000 on each headline so that he has an accurate sample.
So if you’re looking for a breakthrough in your advertising, I recommend you test your headlines first because the headline has more to do with print and Yellow Page ad design readership than any other component in your advertising. If you lose your prospect at the headline, what’s in the rest of the ad design doesn’t matter because they will never see or read it.
That was a really great article… Please keep writing because I love your style a lot.