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5 message testing methods to launch the best messaging campaigns for your brand.

Bring the best messaging to market with the help of the best message testing methodologies.
Newristics 24 March 2021

What is message testing?

For those who are unfamiliar with market research, message testing can come off as a foreign term. Message testing is a tool that brands use to find out how their messages are perceived by potential customers. It is a type of market research that allows an organization to find messages that resonate with its target audience. Message Testing can be a powerful tool to shape your overall marketing strategy and improve the chances of finding winning campaigns.

The importance of learning how to test messaging

Message Testing is an important step that must not be overlooked because it can make or break your product or service. How you market your product is extremely important for attracting new customers, and to do so correctly you need to make sure that your marketing messaging will attract, engage and retain more buyers.

Message testing helps you refine a product message that people can identify with. Connecting with your target audience is the key to success - and the right message testing tools can help you connect your brand's story to the ideal customer.

If you are someone who works in the world of marketing, then you know first-hand how easy it is to view target groups or customer segments as abstractions and lose sight of the end goal. If you think too broadly about your product and its end users, then there is a very large probability that your marketing will not pan out.

Similarly, you and your marketing team can be too close to the product, and messaging might hold onto insider language and fail to connect with the target. In these circumstances, Message Testing can be a helpful tool to hone in on your segments and see how the message resonates with real people in real time. Now you know you need to start message testing. So how to do message testing?

How to test messaging

There are various ways in which message testing can be conducted. Choosing the right testing method for your business objectives may be one or a combination of methods. How to test messaging with the top 5 types of message testing methods dominating the market today:

In-Depth Interview
An in-depth interview is one of the most efficient ways of finding out the public perception of your project from a subject from your target market. This is a great way of gathering data, which now can also be done online. You can also harvest lots of data for very little. 

Focus Groups
A focus group is a very effective way of testing a product or a message across a certain demographic of people. It is a group of people sharing a key trait who are exposed to an idea. They are then asked for their opinions regarding all these ideas. 

Web Surveys
Web surveys have become very popular in today’s world, as they allow brands to reach out to a wide range of respondents with only a small investment. Making a survey is also very easy, and it can be put together using platforms like Google Forms.

Quantitative Studies
If you want to come up with in-depth, long-term research that will see diverse applicability across many fields, then you should consider investing in a proper quantitative study. These are studies that will allow you to conduct market research and access valuable data useful in the long run. 

Social Media Analysis
Another way in which brands can find out about how their messages stack up is by leveraging the immense potential of social media. By properly analyzing social media responses to your messages, you can gain a number of valuable insights.

The Takeaway

By investing in good quality message testing frameworks, you will be able to gauge how effective and successful your marketing campaign is. Apart from highlighting areas for you to focus on, you’ll also be able to allocate your resources in the best possible way. Learning how to test messaging is also critical when you want to test the waters amongst your target market with a new product. When choosing how to do message testing, it is important to carefully consider both the advantages and disadvantages of current message testing methods.

While there has been significant innovation in the market research industry at large, little innovation has been put forth on how to do message testing to find the best marketing message. Advancements in science, technology, and artificial intelligence have paved the way for innovation in the field of message testing. There is potential for an ideal message testing system with deliverables that can be more actionable and campaign-ready.