Remember the door-to-door salesmen who used to call on your house when you were a kid? I often wondered how hard those guys had to work just to make a few sales. They had the advantage of ‘being there’ with the customer so their sales pitches could not easily be ignored. But many, if not most of these face-to-face prospects would listen politely, but never buy anything.

On the web, we don’t come to the buyer, he or she comes to us. We call out to those who may be interested in what we are selling. We have at our disposal a  neon sign to call those readers who may have an interest in what we sell, it’s called a headline. The headline is the most important piece of a sales letter. The headline functions as an announcement to all ‘passers by’ just what the offer to sell is about, and most important, why the reader should stop and read more.

A headline calls to those, and only those who are interested in what we have to say- and those are the only people that interest us. Think about how you read the newspaper. You scan the headlines and stop to read more when the headline offers something that is compelling to you. You may not be interested in a story about gardening – but understand that there is some reader out there who can’t wait to find that story about trees and shrubs that you simply passed by.

Web surfers read at a more frantic pace than even newspaper readers. Your job as a marketer is complicated because visitors to web sites are used to ads, sales pitches and offers. Our job is to get them to pause and read. The most carefully-crafted ad copy is useless unless the reader stops to read. Spend as much time on your headline as on your sales copy.  Make your headline clear, but compelling – offer the reader a benefit to consider your offer. Don’t try to hide your intent – the reader knows you are selling something, make them glad they stopped to read.

One of the most often overlooked aspects of long-term copywriting success is testing. Top copywriters and marketers are always be testing their successful ad copy against variations. Will shorter or longer sentences work better in a sales letter? Should the headline be changed? The only way to ever know the truth is to test. It is ultimately the buyer who decides which is best.

Don’t allow yourself to come to any conclusions about your ad copy unless it is supported by testing evidence. If you don’t have a method to test new copywriting variations and measure the results, you wont maximize your copy’s potential. The sole reason for your ad copy is to make a sale. It is not designed to enhance your image or to win any creativity contests. Your ad copy only exists to make sales.

Don’t rely on gut instinct or the opinions of other to evaluate your ad copy. You buyers will ultimately tell which is your most effective ad copy. It doesn’t matter if you use multivariate testing or split testing, just test! Once your buyers have told you which copy is the best, make this your control copy. Now try to beat that control with something new. Often, your proven ad copy will prevail over the new copy.

Don’t let that deter you. You have to test to uncover all of your customer’s likes and dislikes. Stop guessing in your marketing efforts and start continuously testing your ad copy. Listen to your buyers in a measured and scientific way. Only trust your buyers to tell you the truth. This is the only way your will know.