How to Wordsmith your Ad to Perfection
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
-William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Words have tremendous power. They can make or break your commercials. Professional politicians know the importance of words – they even fight over how to call something: “climate change” vs. “global warming”, “death tax” vs. “estate tax”, etc.
Politicians find out what words work by constantly testing. With Spot Trender, you can use the same advanced techniques political operatives utilize to maximize your spot’s persuasion:
- Ask key questions about messaging in your surveys:
For example:
- Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with the statements below [likert, strongly agree-strongly disagree]:
- The message in the ad is easy to understand
- The message in the ad is relevant to me
- What did you like about the message in the ad?[open ended]
- What didn’t you like about the message in the ad? [open ended]
- Analyze results
Look at survey results to see if audience perception matched your desired results. For example, if they find the message easy to understand or if it’s relevant to them. Pay special attention to the verbatims, especially the words people use to describe what they like and don’t like about your message.
- Improve your message based on data:
Once you figured out how respondents felt about your message, improve it. For example, you received many verbatims that say “the ad made me feel like I’m the only one with that would use this product”, you’d include “1 in 5 women in New York use our product…” in your next version.
To maximize persuasion, test your new version against previous one to see if your modified message moved the needles on key metrics, such as Likelihood to Purchase. Let’s say your results look like this:
You can see while version A (original) scores slightly better in believability and likelihood to recommend product, it is not statistically significant. Version B (with new message) scored better with statistical significance in Brand Opinion, Likability, and Likelihood to Purchase. The new message worked, you did it!
Looking to test your ads and increase sales? Spot Trender is a full-service ad testing company – we help our clients test their concepts/storyboards all the way to post-produced spots. Contact us now, we’ll work together with you to craft powerful messages.
