You can be much more effective in making people buy if… you repeat their own words. Exactly as they used them.

Simple, right?

Have a look at this test’s results below.

The test hypothesis was this:

“If we match copy on a landing page dynamically with the exact verb used as a keyword in someone’s original search query, we imagine we’ll achieve higher perceived relevance for a visitor and (thereby) a greater chance of conversion.”

In other words, the company wondered whether the precise verb someone uses in their Google search has an effect on how they perceive doing something with a product, and whether this would increase conversions if they were to see this exact same verb on the landing page.

In the case of email marketing, for example, if a prospect typed: “design on-brand emails” into Google, ‘design’ is the exact verb they’d see in the headline and CTAs on the resulting landing page (vs. ‘build’ or ‘create’, or another alternative). The company wanted to carry through the exact verb no matter what the prospect typed into the search bar for relevance, but outside the verb the rest of the headline would stay the same.

The question is, would a dynamic copy swap actually increase conversions?

Below you can see a few samples of what the variants could have looked like once the keywords from search were pulled in.

Note: if a parameter wasn’t able to be pulled in, “create” was the default verb.

What were the results?

When the test concluded after 77 days, Campaign Monitor saw a 31.4% lift in conversions using the variant in which the verb changed dynamically. In this case, a conversion was a signup for a trial of their software, and the test achieved 100% statistical significance with more than 100 conversions per variant.

This experiment ultimately helped Campaign Monitor understand the verb someone uses in search can indeed help increase signups.

The result of this test tell us that when a brand mirrors an initial search query as precisely as possible from ad to landing page, we can infer the visitor understands the page is relevant to their needs and are thereby more primed to click through onto the next phase of the journey and ultimately, convert.

Message match for the win!

See How Dynamic Text on a Landing Page Helped Increase Conversions by 31.4%

PS. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.