K atie c ouric

Advertising Titles Are Important
Wilcox explains that the title of your content (or what we called headline in
chapter four
) is extremely important. The reason people interact with
content, or provide their email address in exchange for downloading
something, is because they think it will be of value. If your title is good
enough to get people to want to learn more about your product, or sparks

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their interest in any way, then even if they don’t read the rest of the article
you’ll still get a higher conversion rate.
A/B Test and Hypersegment Your Audience
As with all the social media platforms we’ve discussed, testing is a critical
part of the equation in learning, experimenting, and figuring out the best
way to engage with your intended audience and maximizing your marketing
budget. The most important component to test is how the different segments
of your target audience respond. This helps you understand how your
message or offering resonates with various people within an organization.
Wilcox says that the best approach is to test specific job titles so you
can measure and learn about the types of messages that are most effective
for different roles. Each role in a company has specific motivations and job
responsibilities, which alter the most effective way for you to communicate.
For example, if a client comes to him and says, “We can sell our products to
anyone in marketing,” he will turn that into separate campaigns. He’ll
segment out marketing directors, marketing VPs, and CMOs. He’ll launch
the same content, in separate campaigns, to each targeted audience so he
can learn how CMOs interact with the content versus how managers
interact with it.
Wilcox adds that job titles can affect the way people act in regard to
their click and conversion behaviors. The most sophisticated marketing
teams in the business-to-business space know this and track every step of a
lead. They study behaviors of qualified leads and figure out what loses or
closes a deal. If you track behaviors all the way through the process,
fascinating insights can come to light.
Perhaps you’ll discover that CMOs are high to convert but then really
hard to get on the phone; or that managers are easier to get hold of but are
less likely to convert. (Keep in mind that these are just examples—you’ll
have to test to learn what’s true about your audience and prospective clients.
There are no shortcuts in this process.)
And after analyzing your data, you may discover that although you
thought you’d rather have CMOs using your product, perhaps it’s more
realistic to target managers for a higher return on your investment. But you

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won’t know unless you separate your audiences out and test them.
Essentially, you may have a general assumption going in, but you should
test that assumption before you put all your money in one direction.
After Wilcox has figured out which audiences are best to target, he
starts looking at image size, introduction word length, and characters in the
headline. Each of those aspects has a different level of importance. The
image in the ad is really important because if people see the same image
two or three times in their news feed they’ll permanently ignore it. Wilcox
explains that it’s crucial to change up the image to keep an ad looking fresh
so that click-through rates (CTRs) don’t drop over time. He also knows that
introductions are super important to test because it’s what people read to see
if your ad is worth clicking on.