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 
29
Mar
Do the HOMEwork too!
When it comes to Advertising, Marketing, and Persuasion, are you a student of what’s come before you?
- Do you know the history?
- Do you try to learn from the greats by reading their books and studying their works?
- Do you look at all of it? Or just a narrow slice?
If you didn’t answer Yes to the main question and the first two bullet points, you can stop reading now. Really. There’s no hope for you.
But I find that quite a few serious copywriters get hung up on the third bullet point.
These copywriters have studied the direct mail lineage — Hopkins, Caples, Collier, Schwartz, Halbert, Kennedy, et al — but haven’t looked at any of the giants of Madison Ave style advertising beyond, maybe, Ogilvy. And vice versa for broadcast advertising guys who’ve never studied Direct Response marketing.
Or they’ve never thought that the Theatre Arts or Rhetoric or Comedy Writing or Sales Training or even say, Comic Books had anything to teach them.
In other words, they dismiss stuff that’s not directly in their field or that they don’t “get” right away. Big mistake.
So today’s lesson: be a student of the game — the whole game. Learn what’s great from the past. Study it. Note that “study” doesn’t mean passively reading it. When in doubt, figure out what other great talents that you DO like see in the “greats” that you don’t get.
And here’s two great links to get you started on the path:
- This New York Times article on Ed McCabe [hat tip to The Escape Pod for turning me onto this article]
- This Invisible Ink post on learning from legends you don’t “get” at first contact.
P.S. That NYT article mentions the same Volvo ad I used as an example in my last Theory Thursday post and I managed to snag a screen shot of it. Here it is:
A bit of common wisdom for lawyers goes something like:
“When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are against you, call the other lawyer names”
Great advice, but how does this translate into advertising terms?
Ah, to get that, you have to go back to the Rhetorical advice from which this common wisdom came. And when it comes to Rhetoric, I always look to Jay Henrichs, author of Thank You for Arguing and Word Hero. Here’s what Jay has to say in chapter 12 of Thank You for Arguing:
“If facts work in your favor, use them. If they don’t (or you don’t know them), then…
Redefine the terms instead. If that won’t work, accept your opponents facts and terms but…
Argue that your opponent’s argument is less important than it seems. And if even that isn’t to your advantage…
Claim the discussion is irrelevant.”
Redefining Terms Read more
I’m re-publishing this post for Practical Tactical Tuesday because I like it and because very little is more practical than “How To” advice on writing better headlines.
Hope you enjoy:
My confession? Even though my copy always had great headlines, my blog posts frequently didn’t.
I wasn’t (yet) struck by the need for trouble — and without a hint of taboo, or a challenge to the norm, or a perceived conflict, or at the very least a paradox, most headlines just never get off the ground.
Here’s why there has to be a sense of trouble living at the heart of your headline:
Your headline needs to hook the reader into reading your “story,” and stories are created by and live off of conflict. In fact, another phrase for trouble is “story appeal.”
Your goal: entice the reader with a hint of conflict, and then she “has” to click through so she can know how the conflict is resolved and what kind of transformation takes place as a result.
4 Ways to Create Conflict in your Headlines: Read more
If actions speak louder than words, how effective can a TV ad be if its imagery contradicts its sales message? Don’t think this happens? Check out this ad FedEx ran during the Super Bowl no less:
The message: You shouldn’t judge something based on a name; FedEx ground is faster than you think
The imagery and action: You CAN judge things by their name and the only person who doesn’t question that is the only relatable character in the entire ad.
And this sort of thing happens all the time, usually in the name of humor or entertainment, where the ad ends up with imagery and on-screen action that belies the sales message.
But here’s what it looks like when you do it right — when the imagery perfectly aligns and strengthens the sales message:
The message: Benihana turns an ordinary dinner out into an EVENT
The imagery: Glamourous people flocking to Benihana to be delighted and thrilled and entertained by the kinetic choreography that is a Japanese steak house.
Hey, if you’re going out for a special dinner, why not make it an event? Now that’s a near-perfect ad with absolutely perfect imagery.