15
May
In a salute to all the new graduates this spring, I’m replaying one of my favorite posts, about the most gifted book a graduate is likely to receive…
Saying What Your Customers Can’t
If I told you one particular book sells almost 300,000 copies every single year, what would you guess actually drives those phenomenal yearly sales? Want a few hints?
- It’s not a how-to, Chicken Soup, or For-Dummies book
- The vast majority of those 300,000 copies are sold in the spring
Give up? The book is Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go – an incredibly popular gift for graduates.
That book manages to powerfully communicate what hundreds of thousands of parents and relatives all want to say but can’t quite seem to say nearly as well as the good Doctor. And because he has so graciously supplied them with the means of saying it, Dr. Suess continues to sell huge amounts of books spring, after spring, after spring — for as long as there are proud parents of new graduates needing to hear the message.
The question for you, dear Business Owner, is what are you helping people say?
- What are you helping them say about themselves?
- What are you helping them say to others?
Because not quite knowing how to say what’s on your heart is something we all suffer from - and something most of us will gladly pay for relief from.
Are you willing to harness the same profit engine that Dr. Suess has used to sell millions upon millions of copies of Oh, The Places You’ll Go? This brilliant radio ad by Adam Donmoyer represents a perfect example of how to harness this power to drive sales:
That ad sold more watches that Fathers’ Day than that jewelry store has ever sold on any day, ever. All because they helped plenty of daughters say what they really wanted to say, but weren’t quite able to give voice to on their own.
What are you helping your customers say?
8
May
Not only is it possible to animate your advertising with the proven cartooning principles of squish and squash, but it works even better when you apply some of that same strategic animation to your business itself.
But to do that, we have to understand how Squish and Squash is related to exaggeration and visual impact. Here’s an excellent example I downloaded and swiped from Mark Kennedy’s brilliant blog:
Before Squash and Stretch
After Squash and Stretch
The difference is pretty astounding isn’t it?
Full alignment with the direction of movement + exaggeration of the line of movement. And just to drive home the “exaggeration of the line of movement” part, take a look at this other swiped picture from a Willard Mullin download (also downloaded via Mark Kennedy):
What’s This Got to Do With Your Business?
First of all, understand that there’s the product or service your selling, and then there’s what your REALLY selling. Because unless your hawking commodities at commodity prices, what you’re really selling goes way beyond product or service and get’s down to brand promise.
And the delivery of brand promise within your business is where you need all that alignment and strategic exaggeration.
Take Starbucks, for example. Did they really need to call their small, medium, and large coffees Tall, Grande, and Venti? It’s almost kind of silly, isn’t it? The kind of thing that’s easily parodied.
But it’s also an exaggeration designed to make the names aligned with the brand promise (not to mention the brand prices). Same thing with the music, the decore, the ludicrous choices and special lingo for how you want your drink prepared, etc.
This kind of exaggeration and alignment takes guts precisely because it’s easy to make fun of. But the added profit makes it easy to endure the laughs : )
Bottom Line: the experience of whatever it is that you’re *really* selling could easily be improved with a little animation via alignment and exaggeration. You just need the desire and the guts to do it.
P.S. I apologize for the “brand promise” jargon. I generally try to steer clear of marketing-speak, but that was the only term I could come up with to get at the non-tangibles that allow a branded product to easily charge premium prices.
2
May
When animators, and often times writers, wish to show an internal, emotional state, they’re forced to look for and use “objective correlatives.” In other words, they have to use the outward cues and signs that correspond to the emotion.
And just as importantly, they then have to “animate” those cues and signs through a form of artistic exaggeration. For instance, when a man sees an excruciatingly attractive woman, his pupils will dilate, his eyes will widen, and his heart will race a bit, or “skip a beat.” This is all relatively subtle (even if the attendant leering and head snapping is not), but subtle is not how animators need to do things. So this is how they represent it:
Understand that this is not just crude exaggeration, but instead represents a process of:
- Finding the right cues and signs (aka small specific details) for a given emotion, reaction, or situation
- Exaggerating those cues and signs through the animation principle of Squash and Stretch.
Applying This to Your Marketing
When asked what makes them different, unique, and better, a whole lot of Main Street Businesses end up with the response that “we care about the customer,” or “we simply provide better quality and better service.”
Yet while it’s wonderful that they do care — I wouldn’t want to write ads for a business owner who didn’t, frankly — you simply can’t put that in your advertising and expect results.
So what do you do?
You look for the objective correlates and you apply some squash and stretch.
In other words, what are the signs and cues of your caring and your superior quality? Caring is an internal state on your part. How does the customer end up sensing or experiencing that care? What actions do you take and what sacrifices do you make because you care?
If you insist on higher quality, how does that play out in the construction process? How does that impact the customers experience of your product? In what ways would they be sorry if they didn’t get that higher level of quality?
Now exaggerate and animate these things in your advertising. So let’s suppose you own a bakery that specializes in donuts and, well, you really care about the quality of your donuts. And one of the objective correlatives of that is that you’re willing to get up at an ungodly hour in order to ensure that your morning customers will get freshly made donuts each day. Here’s what a little squish and squash might do for you:
If the squish and squash part seems a bit tricky, you’re right to think so — it IS tricky. And if you’re guessing this doesn’t just apply to the ads, but to the business itself, you’re guessing right on that as well. Creating some objective correlatives and then exaggerating them a bit is a big part of imputing quality and “learning to think like the customer.” More on this later : )
Stories Affect Memory
We like to think our memories are both accurate and unchanging, but the truth is they’re far from either. Research by Elizabeth Loftus has shown memories to be extraordinary malleable and capable of being falsified. And pioneering research in social psychology has shown the mind-bending power of cognitive dissonance to alter our memories.
So what does this have to do with advertising and small business?
The Festinger and Carlsmith Experiment
First, let’s review the research in cognitive dissonance. Here’s a quick and dirty write-up of the original experiments conducted by Festinger and Carlsmith:
- At the beginning of the experiment, student volunteers were asked to perform a simple and boring task.
- Then, before the subjects left the experiment, the experimenter asked if the subject would be willing to do a small favor for the experimenter, specifically asking if they would tell the next subject in line that the experiment was fun and enjoyable.
- Subjects who agreed to do this were paid either $1 or $20. Subjects in both groups typically agreed to tell the next subject that the experiment was interesting.
- But when experimenters followed up with the subjects, the highly paid subjects confessed that the experiment was actually boring, while the lower-paid subjects were more likely to say that the experiment was “not bad” or that it was “interesting.”
So why the difference in opinions between the lower-paid and highly-paid volunteers?
Cognitive Dissonance and Cialdini’s Influence
Psychologists call it Cognitive Dissonance, but if you’re a fan of Cialdini’s book, Influence, you probably know it as an example of Commitment and Consistency. Either way, social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen it in the absence of strong outside pressure.
So for the Festinger and Carlsmith experiment, a large reward (like a $20 payment in 1950s money) counts as strong outside pressure, while a $1 payment does not. That’s why the lower-paid volunteers (and not the higher-paid ones) changed their judgement to reflect the “stories” they told the other “volunteers” — the story that the experiment was fun and enjoyable!
OK. Now how would this apply to you and your business?
Business Applications
Despite what you may be thinking, the applications do NOT involve some Machiavellian plan to implant false memories or employ psychological pressure on your prospects/customers through cognitive dissonance. And for the record, I truly do NOT recommend such schemes.
What I do wish to emphasize, however, is this fairly straightforward bottom line:
*People Remember What Gets Reinforced Through Re-Presentation*
So the great results you get for people? You might want to ensure that experience gets reinforced, right?
And the best thing that people remember from your work? You might want to reinforce that, too, right?
And the time you jumped through some hoops to get them something extra or extra-fast? Ditto.
So how do you make sure these things get Reinforced? Through Re-presentation. And what the hell does that mean?
Understanding and Using Re-Presentation
At it’s simplest, representation is nothing more than a recounting of events through narrative. When you tell me what happened, you are re-presenting the experience and also solidifying the memories of that experience — but only for those memories that get included in the story. What gets recounted in the narrative gets reinforced, and those aspects left out of the narrative get diminished from memory.
In more elaborate form, a re-presentation can involve making abstract benefits tangible. Or providing a symbolic marker/event for an accomplishment earned over time.
When weight loss services give you a bag of sand that weighs as much as the fat you lost, they’re reinforcing the benefit through a dramatic re-presentation of your weight loss. Same thing with the before and after snapshots.
When a martial arts dojo gives your kiddo a new belt through testing, they are helping to commemorate progress with a symbolic marker/event. Same thing with breaking boards. What’s more likely to stick out when you tell someone about your experience at the dojo: all the times you sat watching your kids work through forms, or the moment you saw one of them break a stack of pine boards with their bare hands?
So what’s the best method for ensuring your clients most favorable memories get reinforced?
Use symbolic and tangible markers combined with narrative re-presentations to really ensure those positives get cemented in memory. Don’t just hand the successful weight loss client a bag of sand, tell their story, and then get their emotional response and testimonial on video tape. Your retelling of the story, plus the dramatic re-presentation of their accomplishment, plus their own recounting of their success and happiness at the event will ensure they never forget the way they feel about that accomplishment.
So what symbolic markers and tangible, dramatic re-presentations are you using? What kind of narrative re-presentations?
Don’t leave positive impressions of benefits to chance. Reinforce them through re-presentation.
17
Apr
Seth Godin posted this with more of a “consumer protection” spin on it, but I think it’s fundamental to marketing as well, so I’m going to quote part of the post here, and then elaborate on it a bit. Here’s the excerpted quote, but you really ought to read the entire post:
Here’s one reason we mess up [big decisions about money]: Money is just a number.
Comparing dreams of a great [car] stereo (four years of driving long distances, listening to great music!) compared with the daily reminder of our cheapness makes picking the better stereo feel easier. After all, we’re not giving up anything but a number.
The college case is even more clear. $200,000 is a number that’s big, sure, but it doesn’t have much substance. It’s not a number we play with or encounter very often. The feeling about the story of compromise involving something tied up in our self-esteem, though, that feeling is something we deal with daily.
Here’s how to undo the self-marketing. Stop using numbers.
You can have the stereo if you give up going to Starbucks every workday for the next year and a half. Worth it?
If you go to the free school, you can drive there in a brand new Mini convertible, and every summer you can spend $25,000 on a top-of-the-line internship/experience, and you can create a jazz series and pay your favorite musicians to come to campus to play for you and your fifty coolest friends, and you can have Herbie Hancock give you piano lessons and you can still have enough money left over to live without debt for a year after you graduate while you look for the perfect gig…
Do you see the connection with marketing?
Making numbers, or more commonly features, tangibly and compellingly real to the buyer is exactly what good copywriters are paid to do. And they do it the same way Seth does in that quote:
- By converting numbers and features to human-scaled concrete measures
- By identifying the benefits that really matter to the customer
- By dramatizing those same end benefits and creating identifiable scenarios around them
Telling me that this lightweight luggage is X pounds lighter doesn’t do much for me. It’s just a number, unconnected to anything I might really care about.
Telling me that the saved weight equals the combined weight of an extra sport coat, shirt, and pair of dress pants, basically an entire extra change of clothes without incurring any weight penalties, and I just might become interested in the luggage for an upcoming extended trip.
Remember, a number, unless it’s a dollar-figure that’s going into my bank account, doesn’t directly address the all-important What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) question. But a vision of me enjoying some tangible benefit does.
That’s the obvious part — the tactical practical, must-do part. So if you’re not converting your features into “which means” benefit statements, and then converting those benefits into dramatic, visualizable scenarios, then get on it… and start answering WIIFM with load, clear, and vividly dramatized benefits.
And then, of course, there’s the more subtle part: talking about what this or that feature or characteristic means not in terms of immediate benefit, but in terms of self-identity and shared values. It’s a bit less practical-tactical, but perfect for Theory Thursday…
3
Apr
There’s a simple axiom amongst direct response copywriters: “make it easy for the customer to say yes.”
Sounds like a “duh” piece of advice, but it’s amazing how often this advice gets botched. And it usually get’s botched in one of two ways:
1) The copy doesn’t make it easy for the customer to realize WHAT she would be saying yes to.
In other words, the site doesn’t clarify:
- WHAT is being offered for sale,
- WHEN or in what FORM the customer should expect the actual deliverables to arrive
- WHY this is a good deal and better than the other options
- HOW MUCH the offered product or service will cost
2) The copy doesn’t make it clear HOW to say yes and take that next step.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of having different conversion points for early, middle, and late stage shoppers (where appropriate), but you shouldn’t let that get in the way of having a nice, clean, simple Call to Action. If prospective customers have to decide between 14 options just to buy, you’re making them work too hard, and your sales will suffer accordingly.
You Might Be Messing This Up If…
What’s really insidious about this particular conversion flaw is that your marketing and Web teams are unlikely to know about simply because they’re suffering under The Curse of Knowledge. To them the offer seems perfectly clear, and the different options for buying are a bonus rather than a burden. So even if you don’t think you suffer from this, you might want to check to see if:
- You have unusually high bounce rates on your home page.
- People are clicking on your Calls to Action and then backtracking to “How it Works,” “FAQ,” and “About Us” pages — almost as if they’re looking one last time to see if they can’t find some answers.
- You have unusually high exit rates from “How it Works,” Services, and Product pages
- Your cart or checkout abandonment rates stay high despite a high-quality check-out process and repeated optimization efforts aimed at this portion of your Website.
I’m not saying these issues are proof positive that your messaging and basic offers need work, just that the represent a good reason to look into it.
How to Fix It
The best advice is to hire an outside expert. I realize that sounds a bit self-serving, coming from a messaging-driven Website Optimization professional, but, well, what can I say? It’s the simple truth.
But if you’re trying a DIY approach, here’s what I recommend:
A) Try the “Here’s the Deal” Exercise.
Imagine that you’re at the bar with an acquaintance who knows almost nothing about your product or service, but who would benefit from it, if only she understood a few things. If you were to turn to her and say, “so here’s the deal,” what sort of short and sweet pitch would you give to her that would get her ready to say yes or commit to learning more in 120 seconds or less?
Also, make sure you don’t use jargon — remember, this prospect isn’t an industry insider — during your “so here’s the deal” speech, and make sure the benefits are dramatized and compelling.
B) Try Using Schemas
I had Baba Ghanoush for the first time a few months ago, and when I asked what it was, a whole bunch of people started to explain it to me, with varying degrees of success. But then Bryan Eisenberg — a consumate marketer and my personal Website Optimization mentor — nailed it when he said it was “eggplant guacamole.” Boom. Suddenly everybody got it.
Why?
Because Bryan invoked a schema we already recognized, guacamole, and then modified it with eggplant. Isn’t that a much more elegant explanation than Wikipedia’s, “a Levantine dish of eggplant (aubergine) mashed and mixed with virgin olive oil and various seasonings”?
The same thing happens with movies, too. According to Chip and Dan Heath, Speed was initially pitched as “Die Hard on a Bus.” Boom. You get it. Aliens is a science fiction movie, but it’s nothing like Star Trek. Totally different feel, right? But if you say “Jaws in Space,” you instantly grasp both the concept and the feel of the movie.
So what schema could you use to describe your product or service?
Caution — the schema you use can greatly impact the customer’s expectation of value and price, so choose wisely.
C) Streamline Your Call to Action and Conversion Process
Now, don’t get rid of your lead nurturing program or anything, but do consider whether you might narrow down your offerings and options. Or at least consider making one option the “default” and most promoted option. And as with any piece of Web Optimization advice, test it out. See what actually converts the best. You might just be surprised at the results.
And that’s today’s Practical Tactical Tuesday Tip 