You will test your best value proposition on five people and rewrite it based on what they say.
You have your questions and you know where to find five people. This is the part most owners skip, because it means showing unfinished work to strangers and hearing what they really think. It is also research you can do with no budget at all. Each conversation takes about five minutes, and the whole exercise, including the rewrite, fits in an afternoon.
You need your best value proposition from lesson 4.1, the three questions you wrote in lesson 4.3, the test sheet below this lesson, and five people from your target group.
Put your headline and supporting line on a phone screen or a printed card, with nothing else around it. No logo, no photos, no price, no explanation. You are testing the words, and anything extra gives the reader clues the real ad or web page might not.
Use the same card for all five people. If you change the wording halfway, you won't know whether different answers came from different people or from different words.
With each person, show the card for about ten seconds and then take it away. A short look is closer to how people meet a real ad or the top of a web page, often while doing something else. If the message only works when someone studies it for a minute, it won't work on a phone in a queue.
Don't explain anything before or during. If they ask what it means, say you'll explain afterwards.
Once the card is away, ask what you offer, who it is for, and what would stop them from trying it. Use your own wording from lesson 4.3, but keep the order. The first two show whether they understood. The third shows what proof is missing.
Let silences run. People often give their most useful answer after a pause, when they have stopped trying to be polite.
Record what each person says as close to word for word as you can, in the test sheet. Don't paraphrase into your own language, and don't tidy up their grammar. "Clothes for work that are still covered" is worth more to you than your summary of it, because it is exactly how a customer talks.
These exact words are raw material. You will use them in this rewrite, and later in headlines, ads and product descriptions. Keep the sheet.
Resist the urge to change the value proposition after the first or second person. One person's reaction can be unusual, and if you rewrite after every conversation, the loudest opinion steers the result and you end up testing five different statements once each.
When all five are done, lay the answers side by side. Look for patterns, such as the same misreading from two or more people, an objection that keeps coming back, or a phrase several people used, and only then rewrite.
Farah sells modest workwear online. Her value proposition from lesson 4.1 read: "Workwear that covers what you want covered and still looks sharp in a meeting. Modest blouses, dresses and trousers in breathable fabrics, cut for women who commute in Singapore heat and sit in air-conditioned offices all day."
She showed it to five women who fit her target: two from a neighbourhood community group, one past enquirer who hadn't bought, and two colleagues of a friend whom she had never met. Their answers, as she wrote them down:
Tester 1: "Office clothes that are modest. I'd worry about the size, I'm between sizes usually." Tester 2: "Work clothes that are still covered but not boring. Is it expensive?" Tester 3: "Modest workwear, breathable. I'd want to see it on someone my height." Tester 4: "For women who wear hijab to work? Not sure if it's only for that." Tester 5: "Covered work clothes that don't look frumpy. Sizing would stop me."
All five understood the product. Three raised sizing, which told her the size chart and exchange policy had to appear right under the headline. Tester 4's uncertainty showed that "modest" alone left some readers unsure whether the clothes were only for women who cover their hair. Two testers used the word "covered" without being prompted, and two said "not boring" or "don't look frumpy".
Her revised version read: "Covered work clothes that are not boring. Blouses, dresses and trousers in breathable fabrics for women who want to dress modestly at the office, with or without a hijab. Free size exchanges on your first order."
It uses two phrases from her testers and answers the most common objection with proof.
A finished test has five sets of answers recorded word for word, notes on the patterns across them, and one revised value proposition that uses at least two phrases from your testers. Keep the original next to the revision so you can see what changed.
Fill in the sheet as soon as each conversation ends, while you can still hear how they said it.
Record the five responses in the test sheet and write a revised value proposition that uses at least two phrases your testers used.
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