5 Step Copy Testing Process to Know if Your Copy is Any Good!

Every time you ask someone about the basics of copywriting, you have probably been told about writing a compelling headline, knowing your audience, communicating your unique selling proposition, being persuasive, keeping copy clean, etc.

When you get down to coming up with “compelling headlines” is when you realize how vague and unhelpful the advice can really get, because of how subjective a copy is.

That being said, you can judge if a copy is good or bad without relying on the volatility of opinions.

Here is the review process you can use, actual data, to improve your copywriting to create the desired reaction.

1. How are people you are trying to influence reacting?

The ultimate goal of your copy is to get people to take a certain action, whether it be to sign up, enroll or buy something.

So you need to figure out if your intended audience is getting drawn to find out more or are they struggling to finish reading the content. Thus, you need to do copy testing by giving the copy to the people you’re marketing to and gauge the reaction. There are a few tools that help you do exactly that.

2. How does your copy fare during a peer review?

Sometimes, you can figure out a copy’s effectiveness if they want to continue reading more if they were a customer. This is known as a Peer Review and often involves asking 4–6 people to rate a copy, on a scale of 1–4. These reviewers cannot comment or criticize and must rate based on their gut response, after reading the copy. Here,

1 means the audience would not read past the headline

2 means they would probably not read on too much

3 means the audience would continue to read, although not convinced

4 means the audience is very eager to read on

So how does the process go?

You get the group to read a copy and rate it on a scale of 1–4. They can use decimal points to accurately reflect their feelings for the copy. After they are done, one person can calculate the average ratings of the group. If the ratings are above 3.2, then your copy can be kept as it.