Yesterday I was researching/browsing interesting and inventive print ads on the internet and came across this one:
If you can’t make out the print, it says “Extremely Fast Interent” right next to the brand name and logo of what I can only assume to be some kind of ISP.
Clever, right? But will it drive sales?
Probably not. And there’s two reasons for this:
1) No Call to Action
2) No supporting facts
Now, the call-to-action part is obvious to anyone with any direct response copywriting experience whatsoever. How do I find out more about this “extremely fast internet”? How can I tell if it’s offered where I live? In other words, how can I buy the darn thing, you’re supposedly offering for sale?
If you want people to respond (usually by buying) it helps if you give them clear, easy directions on how to do so. Sort of a no-brainer, that one is. But at the risk of drawing the ire of the DM crowd, I have to say that…
If I’m Interested Enough, I’ll Find My Own Path to Buying
While I don’t want to diminish the importance of the CTA, I really think that the absence of substantiating facts in this ad is, if anything, more harmful to its effectiveness than the lack of any sort of Call to Action. If you get me interested enough in what you’re selling, I’ll figure out my next action on my own. Google is great for that; I can just search “OI3 Netvision” and see what comes up — IF, and only if, I’m interested enough.
But I’ll never be interested enough if you just show me the clever visual analogy and think you’ve made your point. My natural instinct in this situation (really, anyone’s natural instinct) is to assume parity. You say you’re fast, but you’re probably no faster than my regular internet provider. Clever ad, but it’s still an ad, meaning its messaging is assumed to be self-serving bullshit until proven otherwise.
Factual Romance
And then there’s “Factual Romance.” Factual Romance is the term J. Peterman came up with to describe his philosophy towards product selection and merchandising, as used in this semi-famous quote:
“People want things that are hard to find. Things that have a romance, but a factual romance, about them.” — J. Peterman
And what I believe the man meant by this was romance bolstered by some hard truth or fact that prevented the logical mind of the buyer from dismissing the romance as so much self-serving BS. J. Peterman can romance the Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrella as the “King of Umbrellas” because it is, in fact, the umbrella of kings — the company actually has a Royal Warrant to provide umbrellas to the Royal Family.
Likewise, it’s fine to romance the speed of Netvision’s internet connection, but you’ve got to provide a bit of fact to go with it. How much faster is it than regular DSL or the average cable modem? What does that mean in terms of downloading a movie or talking over a VOIP connection?
Imagine that ad with a big, bold, white font on the back of the computer screen proclaiming “2X Faster than DSK. Download High Definition movies in 3 minutes or less.” Wouldn’t that make for a more effective ad? Even without the CTA, it would at least get me interested enough to research the company/claims, and maybe, just maybe, stick in the back of my mind, should I ever become disenchanted with my current ISP.
Want an example of how to do this right? Check out this old Union Carbide commercial for their high-tech insulation:
Yes, they’ve got the drama of the baby chicken. What a great product demo. But they also provide lots of cool facts. Some stated plainly as facts, such as “it’s 25 to 100 times better than [any other insulation] we’ve had before.” And some are stated in terms of concrete, almost dramatic examples: “One inch of super insulation wrapped around a railroad tank car can keep liquid helium at 420 degrees below zero all the way from New York to Los Angeles.”
The drama keeps you riveted to the screen in anticipation, and the facts let you know that it’s not BS. You leave convinced. And that’s what it takes for your ads, too — regardless of whether you’re using print, radio, TV, or Web-based advertising.
Or, as my business partner, Roy Williams puts it:
- “Details and specifics add credibility. Names! Dates! Problems! Solutions! Any thing less is an unsubstantiated claim and will be summarily dismissed by the customer.”
- “Always sat isfy the left brain when you can. It holds veto power when the right brain wants to do some thing that is obviously dangerous or foolish. No, I’m not saying that logic trumps emotion. I’m saying only that lazy writers too often try to work the heart because it’s easier. They’re unwill ing to do the research and hard work required to sat isfy the mind.”
A few week’s back Jeffrey Eisenberg sent me the following video clip taken from mtvU’s show, Stand-In. And after watching the clip, I instantly considered it a must-watch for those interested in storytelling and/or online marketing. [If you don’t see the embedded video right away, give it a moment. Or watch it over at mtvU.] At any rate, here it is:
For those of you who don’t have the two minutes to watch the video, here are the main takeaways:
1) Every Scene Has To Be Entertaining
You can’t get away with a scene that’s nothing but exposition, or that flat out isn’t entertaining, isn’t funny, etc., as a shocking amount of your audience simply won’t stick around past the end of that scene. Like they say in journalism, “The easiest thing in the world for a reader to do is stop reading.”
2) Your Storyline is Broken If the Words “And Then” Fit Between Any Two Scenes or Beats
So if you say, “this happens AND THEN this happens” you’ve got a broken storyline. There’s no causality in the plotting of things. Instead, between every scene you should have either a “therefore” or a “but,” as in, “this happens and THEREFORE this happens,” or “this happens BUT (instead of the expected outcome) this happens (causing complications).”
That’s a HUGE insight baked into a very easy to understand and actionable format. And it’s also, in my opinion, THE “hidden in plain sight” key to making your Website analytics actionable. So let’s transform this from “story” language to Conversion Rate Optimization language:
Every Page Should Have a Persuasive Purpose for your Visitors
If any page on your site is non-persuasive or irrelevant to your visitor, you run the very real risk of losing that visitor; the easiest thing in the world for your Website visitor to do is to exit your site, as an internet full of competitors is no farther than a Google search or a click away.
So if your home page or product page or about us page is filler content that you’ve just kind of put up because you’re “supposed” to have a ____ page, you’re violating the “every scene has to be entertaining” rule, which I’d transform into “every page has to perform a persuasive role for the visitor who links to it” rule.
That means that you need to know:
- WHO is coming to your site,
- WHY they’re coming (i.e., what they’re hoping to accomplish), and
- WHAT they need to know, feel, and believe in order to convert.
Then you have to figure out the kind of messaging and content you need for each page that will adequately inform, impassion/reassure, and persuade your visitors into taking the next step towards conversion. Because if you don’t know what a page is supposed to be doing for a customer, how do you expect to tell when it’s failing to do it?
So that’s Rule #1 for Online Persuasion and Actionable Analytics. Here’s rule #2:
Your Analytics Should Tell A Story — And YOU Have to Supply the “Therefores” and “Buts”
You need to look at the behavior of your visitors as indicated by the analytics and then attempt to explain the behavior. Except that you can’t let yourself get away with “and then” linkages. People don’t land here, “and then” go to this page, “and then” go to that page, “and then” leave. You have to use “Because” and “But” linkages.
For example, if you see people going straight from the home page to the gallery page (on say, a site for a professional Web developer), and you then see them leave, you’re job as the analyst is to use your knowledge from Rule #1 in order to construct a reasonable hypothesis of WHY people are leaving. Something like:
“You have a bunch of people coming to the Home page of your site after searching “Professional WordPress Design” BECAUSE Google’s organic search results direct them to your index page. BUT, your Home page doesn’t talk about Word Press above the fold. In other words, a visitor has to scrolled down below the fold in order to get confirmation that they are in the “right place” for “Professional WordPress Design.” THEREFORE these visitors look to get confirmation of your WordPress Blog-designing skills on your gallery page. BUT these visitors don’t yet realize that lots of Websites (rather than just blogs) are now created on WordPress and not just blogs. THEREFORE, when they only see professional looking Websites on your gallery page, this CAUSES them to conclude that you don’t really offer what they’re looking for (“Professional WordPress Design) and to then leave your Website.”
The Bridge Between Analytics and Action Is a Testable Hypothesis
This exercise will not only causes you to try to explain observed visitor behavior (as seen through your analytics), but it will also highlight your assumptions while providing your with a set of reasonable hypothesis for optimization. You can now try to test a variant of the home page with “WordPress Development” messaging placed above the fold. And/or you could split test having a separate “Blogs” gallery, or at least a “blogs” section of your gallery.
Now, if the tests are positive, you’ll have some indication that your hypothesized motivations were correct. And if the tested changes turn out negative, you’ll have learned something about the presumed motivations or concerns of your visitors. And the elimination of a false assumption can be every bit as valuable as a lift in conversions. Now you can go back and try to figure out what the real motivation is.
And that’s the key to making your Web analytics actionable.
Before the big iPhone unveiling today, if someone told you that they had real pictures of what the next generation of the iPhone looked like, and they just showed you some photos, totally devoid of context, would you believe them?
Of course not. The claim lacks all credibility.
You can’t possibly look at photos like that without wondering:
- How could you possibly have gotten these, given how passionately Apple protects their upcoming projects?
- Even if you DID get legitimate photos, why aren’t Apple’s lawyers sending you a cease and desist letter?
- What evidence do I possibly have that these are real, and weren’t simply photoshopped?
- And so on.
In short, the context is all wrong, so we just know the photos are fakes (or “artists renditions,” at best). But what about this video?
Somehow, this video fooled a lot of people and created quite a stir before it was proven to be faked. But why? Why is this video so convincing when the typical “leaked” photos aren’t?
Context.
The video provides a context which preemptively answers all of these credibility-killing questions and more. According to the non-verbal storytelling in the video, the guy who made the video accidentally discovered an “unreleased” page to Apple’s German Website, and took a screen recording of it. That’s how he got the photos, that’s why Apple can’t stop him, because they’re the ones who put the content on the Web, etc.
More importantly, the very style of the Web pages created by this hoaxster convinces us. When we look at these “accidentally discovered” Web pages, they look so faithful to Apple’s own design aesthetic, and the pictures of the phone look so faithful to the rumors about the new iPhone (curved, metal back, larger screen, thinner, etc.) that we tend to believe that maybe the video is for real.
Making This Dynamic Work for You
The truth is that we ALL rely on context every day for almost every decision we make. Manipulate context and you manipulate people’s perceptions and, ultimately, their decisions, too:
- If you’re an ice cream parlor and you simply put canisters of sample spoons up on the counter, that context will cue people to ask for free tastes, without any other change required.
- An HVAC guy who shows up in a corporate-branded truck and uniform will look like he’s from a big company, even if the company consists entirely of him, his cellphone, and that truck.
- Tell me you have the best food in the city, and I’ll be a lot more likely to believe you if you serve that food on linen table cloths rather than plastic trays.
Good fiction writers know the importance of this instinctively, which is why they go to such lengths to establish the right pretext for their big moments — they “set you up” and then “pay it off” later. Though I am absolutely not advising anyone to hoax their customers or to adopt a conman’s mindset, I am asking you to think about the believability of the claims you make, and how the right context can create customer confidence that you might not create any other way.
So what context cues are you using now, and what cues should you be using going forward?
In advertising, it’s not so much what information your words communicate to the prospect, but what experiences they call forth from the prospect. What images and associations do your words bring to life in the imagination? And how many words does it take to create these images?
Perhaps the most famous example of breathtaking brevity coupled with brilliant imagery is Hemingway’s short, 6-word story:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
And while many people have admired that 6-word story since it’s creation, few have gone on to emulate it — until recently! It seems there’s now a series of books featuring 6-word memoirs, starting with memoirs of “Writers Famous and Obscure.” Here are a few of the memoirs I managed to pick out from reviews (haven’t ordered mine yet):
- Woman Seeks Men–High Pain Threshold.
- Study mathematics, marry slut. Sum bad
- Found true love. Married someone else.
- My first concert: Zappa. Explains everything.
- Aging late bloomer yearns for do-over.
- Girlfriend is pregnant, my husband said.
- Just in: boyfriend’s gay. Merry Christmas.
- Let’s just be friends, she said.
- Afraid of everything. Did it anyway.
- Still lost on road less traveled.
- Can’t read all the time. Bummer.
- I love my lady … and bacon.
- I wrote it all down somewhere.
- Atheist alcoholic gets sober through God.
- Father: ‘Anything but journalism.’ I rebelled. —Malcolm Gladwell
- The miserable childhood leads to royalties. —Frank McCourt
Even the teen’s get in on the action:
- Hair’s pink to piss you off.
- Met online; love before first sight.
- According to Facebook, we broke up.
So… how do you apply that to your advertising?
Well, you could:
1) Write a 6-Word Story that encapsulates your prospect’s mindset
Think about the kind of precipitating events that cause people to need your product or service. What kind of emotions surround those events? How would you summarize the bridge from event, to conscious desire for your product, if you had to do it in only 6 words. (or heck, cheat a little and use 8 words : )
2) write a 6-Word Story describing your advertising challenge
What’s the problem you need to overcome to really bring your audience to action? Can you summarize it in an evokative 6-word story?
3) Write a 6-word story that conveys your core message.
Can you condense your message into what Chip and Dan Heath would call your “core” message, encapsulated in a power-packed six words? Does the story merely “tell” the truth, or does it cause the listener to realize the truth?
4) Forget 6-word stories; evoke images and emotion with your copy
As one sales pro has described it to me, selling is nothing more than getting your prospect imaginatively engaged with a vision of future benefit, and emotionally committed to taking action to make that vision a reality.
Now that’s a long way off from “conveying information,” isn’t it? So why do so many ads merely try to inform? Or brag? Or do anything other than imaginatively engage and emotionally commit the audience?
And the key to doing that is to make your message participative and interactive, even if you’re using a so-called “push medium” of radio, television, or print. You don’t have to limit yourself to 6 words, but you do have to engage the imagination and emotions of your listener.
Want to get better at doing that? Write yourself some 6-word stories. Oh, and feel free to post them in the comments, too 
P.S. You can also take a gander at Post Secret for more, truly evokative “short stories” presented in a multi-media format
When writing copy for products and services designed to help someone do X, the best persuasive tactic is to re-sell them on the dream.
In other words, whenever prospects got into X in the first place, they did so because they had bought into a dream. For instance, most people take up blogging because they buy into the dream of blogging: be able to put their “voice” out into the world and finding an appreciative, receptive audience that not only tweats, re-tweats, comments on, and forwards their posts, but also finding financial benefit through that same audience buying their books, come to their conferences, etc. That’s the dream most people are chasing when they start up a blog.
Needless to say, the reality frequently falls short of the dream. And the frustration at the gap is where the incentive to buy comes in.
So if you’re selling a service to help people with their blogging, you not only want to sell the prospect on the service, but also re-sell them on the dream. More specifically, you want to sell them on the ability of your service to help them re-capture the dream.
Why?
Because they already bought into the dream once, and they haven’t yet given up on it (they’re still X–ing, aren’t they?), and nothing is easier than selling someone on the dream they’ve already bought into. Doesn’t matter what the dream was, and it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in; the easiest sale you’ll ever make is selling the prospect on the dream they’ve already dreamt.
Jonathan Morrow’s new product BoostBlogTraffic.com is a perfect example of that. Check out the product announcement over at Copyblogger and see for yourself. What’s Jonathan doing for the first 2/3rds of the copy? Invoking the frustrations and dream-reality gap involved in blogging, and then re-selling the blogging dream, baby!
Because Jonathan Morrow knows what he’s doing.
- So what dream where your prospects chasing whenever they got into your market?
- Are you minding (and mining) the gap between the dream and the prospect’s current reality?
- Does your copy re-kindle the dream?
Sometime this summer I lost my blogging mojo and decided to take most of July and all of August off. Very European of me, actually.
But the school year is back in session and so am I, with apologies for my absence during the summer and an amends for anyone interested in my guest-blogging activities while I was away.
You see, I have been writing, just not for my personal blog. I’ve been scribbling down PPC Ad Writing tips for BoostCTR’s blog (since I’m now managing their writer community) and guest posting my Facebook Ad Writing thoughts over at PPC Hero.
If you’re interested in such things, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite posts here:
- The psychology of Geo-Targeting
- Make ‘Em Look Where You Want
- Clarity Comes Out on Top
- Secret Formulas Work — But Searcher Psychology is the Real Key!
- Strengthen What’s Already Working
- The One and Only Surefire PPC Ad Writing Rule
- Eye Tracking, Heatplots, and Ads — Oh My!
- Visually Striking Photos — Beyond Headshots of Pretty Women
- Keeping Social Media Ads Social