We are lucky to work with the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) which, for reasons that will become clear, I will refer to as “The Harvard of cooking schools.”
We work with them across platforms and tactics, and this means that we have the ability to run multiple tests.
On one such test, we’re A/B/C/D testing taglines ONLY. Ad copy, layout, images, body text – everything else remains the same.
The control here is the “hero” tagline, “FOOD IS BIG” – that’s our baseline. We’ll say that’s pH Neutral, neither good nor bad. Let’s label it “zero” and measure up or down from there.
Now, this campaign’s goal, is to get potential students to inquire (and then apply, and then enroll.) So let’s call an inquiry – a student filling out his information and asking for an admissions counselor to call him – a “conversion.”
We are testing “FOOD IS BIG” against these challenger taglines:
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STUDY ON THE HUDSON
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CIA is “the Harvard of Culinary Schools.” -Julia Child
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CIA is the best Culinary School in the World
I’m not going to give away CIA’s conversion metrics – I’m not going to tell you if the original FOOD IS BIG page converts website visitors into inquiries at 2% or 5% or 20%, but I will share how these 3 “challenger” taglines compare to the original.
And the results are striking. Challenger #2 – the one calling CIA the Harvard of Culinary Schools – converts almost 5% better. This means that for every 100 people that visit this website page, CIA will get five more inquiries.
5 more students is a big, important, serious number. If your agency isn’t testing taglines, please give us a ring 🙂