Reaping ROI from copy tests

Market Logic Team

USD $540 billion is spent each year on paid media across companies globally according to 2016 eMarketer. Of course, ROI on such a huge investment is one of the key success factors for marketers – so understanding the potential impact and success of a campaign with copy testing is essential.

This also makes copy testing a significant chunk of the primary research budget. Companies commission the big market research agencies to test and re-test tons of different KPIs to predict the success of a new copy. They look at values such as attention, brand fit, relevance, involvement persuasion, innovativeness, credibility, brand differentiation, etc.

But when the test is done and the results come back, they are only presented once and never looked at again. Of course, agencies share historic data sets with KPIs from all the campaigns in spreadsheets, but these typically don’t offer a link to the creative that was tested or contain any qualitative learnings. So you have to remember the code name of the campaign to make sense of the scores and re-read the copy test results to glean any qualitative learnings.

So, how can these results and the investment they carry be made more valuable?

Our clients meet this challenge by introducing normative KPI databases to compile their copy test scores in one library. KPI results are directly connected to all relevant information, so you can view the tested copy as well as key background information such as the test market, test target, and a description of the copy and key qualitative learnings. This means you can quickly understand what worked well and what didn’t. The benefits are pretty straightforward: you can calculate benchmarks for key KPIs, compare results, and learn from past successes and failures.

Let’s say you have an idea for a summer Christmas campaign in Australia. Did your company ever try something like that? Was it successful or did it bomb? Just enter the library and use free text search to enter Santa Claus, and beach. Instantly you’ll see any relevant copy tests. If there’s plenty of material to review, sort by main KPI scores to understand which of the copies ranked best in relevance or persuasion. Finally, review qualitative learnings to see how you can leverage past experience to design a winning creative brief.

How do you leverage your old copy tests – would love to hear any ideas.