What Do Contact Lenses Have to Do With Copywriting?
Bifocals. The mere mention of the word is enough to make you feel 10 years older. So when my eye doctor told me that’s where I was headed, my neck got stiff, I sat straight up in the chair and firmly declared, “I will not!” Although, in reality I did notice that I’d been wearing my glasses (which were originally for reading and driving) more often than not. My doctor suggested contact lenses.
I’d tried contacts a long time ago (at least 15 years ago) and they didn’t work out for me for several reasons. But my doctor began to explain all the advancements manufacturers have made in all that time. Contacts worked much better now for people with astigmatism than earlier versions. They were much thinner, permeable and comfortable, too. So, I decided to give them a shot.
My doctor wanted to try and outfit me with bifocal contacts to start with arguing that they would be easier to adjust to since my eyes were only borderline on needing bifocals. But, because of my astigmatism, he needed to put one type of contact with my distance prescription in one eye and another type with a reading prescription in the other eye. Supposedly, this was going to be easy to adjust to. Uh… not!
By the time I got home, I couldn’t read a thing. Considering I work on a computer all day, that’s not good. I was asked to wear them 4 hours a day for a week then return to the doctor’s office. I didn’t make it a week. When I saw my doctor again, he started tweaking things to help me see better. The process reminded me of copywriting.
First he assessed what the problem was. He asked what I could see and couldn’t see. I was put through a series of visual tests while wearing the contacts. All this was to give him a better idea of what was wrong so he could make it right. We, as writers, do this when testing copy. My doctor only wanted to change one thing at a time so he could measure the results and know for sure what was affecting what. The same holds true for copywriting. If you change the headline AND the opening paragraph AND the offer content AND… you get the idea… you won’t know which of those things made the difference.
My doctor switched me to a different type of lenses where both eyes saw with the same prescription. Then, gradually, he tweaked the axis and other things until we had a winner! I was able to see (and without bifocals, I might add) 
That’s what happens when you test and tweak copy. Keep adjusting slowly and gradually then give the changes time to take affect. Soon you’ll have a piece of copy that performers better than you thought it possibly could!
Karon Writes SEO Copy: MarketingWords.com
Read Karon’s Copywriting Blog: MarketingWords.com/blog
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