Next After invest in a lot of research and testing to uncover what’s working in the world of driving non-profit donations. I attended their inaugural summit last year and had the good fortune of being asked to speak again this year.

This video sums up just how much fun this event is. (Watch out for my bull-riding prowess)

My talk looked at how easy it is to become disconnected to your target market when we write copy. Despite being driven by a desire to attract, engage and convert ideal prospects, things can get in the way when filling the blank page with a marketing message.

One such thing is forgetting to give prospects a taste of the experience you’re asking them to accept.

Let people try before they buy (without giving everything away)

Whether your call-to-action is to sign-up for a webinar, phone your office, join a course, buy, register for your newsletter, there is some kind of experience waiting for your audience. It’s easy to focus on the call-to-action as the end result, but really you want your prospect looking beyond that. You want them to anticipate and feel invested in whatever it is you’re asking them to commit to.

When your audience is being bombarded with demands on their time and attention, you’ve got to work hard to sell what you have, even if you’re giving something away for free.

But it can be hard to think that every time you sit down to write something, you’ve got to ‘sell’ it. So I created a four-part, simple prompt to help you focus on the key levers for moving your audience.

What’s more, it rhymes. Which is important for helping things stick. Just ask Dr. Seuss.

Here we go…

1. What’s new?
2. Says who?
3. Give me 2 (or 3)
4. So I can do…

Let’s break this down using an example I walked through at the NIOSummit. I picked a non-profit organisation, in this instance, Friends of the Earth. One of their campaigns is to prevent the decline in bee numbers.

Let’s imagine we want people to download our information pack. Some typical copy might be:

Download our information pack and see how you can help save bees.

Now, let’s apply the four-part system above to see if we can sell it by giving our potential donor a peek inside.

1. What’s new?

People read and watch the news to stay updated not missing developments in their areas of interest. One thing you can do in your copy is ask yourself, why is what you have relevant, and indeed necessary in today’s world. What’s new? What is happening that your audience may not know about.

In our bee example, we could think about what donors may not know about this cause. People may not know how integral bees are not only to the pollination of flowers, but our food, drink and even clothes. They may not realise the severity of the situation, or what’s about to happen that could impact the cause. For example:

Bees pollinate much of the food in our diets from apples to coffee. Even cotton clothing is possible because the cotton plant was pollinated.

But they’re in danger and some species face extinction.

The UK government and the EU are about to make key decisions that could make the situation worse.

You may need to do some digging and research what’s happening in your industry, but if you can tie what you have to current affairs that your reader cares about, you’re elevating what you have to a newsworthy standard.

Next, we have:

2. Says who?

I like to think of this in 2 parts:

1. Who are you?
2. Who do you help?

Give your audience a little bit about who you are and what makes you qualified to make your offer, and also provide a glimpse into the lives of people you have helped. This may be through testimonials, or awards, reviews, case studies etc. For our bee campaign we may want to outline previous campaigns, or share testimonials from people who have previously downloaded and enjoyed our information pack.

At Friends of the Earth, we’ve saved areas of natural beauty from destruction, raised money for flood defences and more.

And we’ve do this by working with donors like you.

“The children were so engaged by the materials. Learning about bees is a fantastic classroom project” A. Teacher.

3. Give me 2 (or 3)

This is where my rhyming abilities were tested. I would usually lean towards three, but if two means you’re more likely to remember this step, that’s a bigger pay off.

This is about giving your reader a handful of discoveries, key takeaways or points that they will learn by engaging with you. It ties into making your message ‘new’. People won’t engage or take action if they think they already know what you want to tell them.

When writing these, you want to keep some of the information back, for example:

• Revealed: The national garden centres now banning pesticides that harm bees
• See how to make a ‘bee hotel’ in your garden or school
• Get your ethical guide to buying honey that keeps bees healthy and happy

If you have a gardening enthusiast, they may want to know which garden centres are taking the bee problem seriously. A teacher may be intrigued by the bee hotel as a classroom project, and an ethical shopper may want to avoid doing anything that could make the bee problem worse.

Always try and prompt yourself to think what are the 2-3 key takeaway points my reader or customer will learn (hint: it has to be something they care about of course!)

This leads subtly into the final part which is…

4. So I can do…

This final part encourages you to include the impact of what you have to offer. If your audience takes your call-to-action, what can they do that they couldn’t do before?

If you have a newsletter, you don’t want to just say ‘sign up and get the latest news’ – ask yourself what your reader can do with that news.

• Can they find out about events they care about in advance?
• Can they make better decisions?
• Can they save or make money with your advice?
• Can they save time by following your advice?

Asking the simple question – what can my audience do with my offer makes it more likely that you will write copy that focuses on a transformation, not a transaction. With our bee example, it might be:

• Reverse the bee decline and be part of the generation that saves bees
• Transform your garden into a bee-friendly haven

This encourages your reader to think further than clicking a button and anticipate the impact you can offer them.

I’d love to know how you sell the experience of your offers, whether free or paid. And hopefully this four-part narrative can keep you focused.

Let me know in the comments below and in the meantime, enjoy me rocking the mechanical bull at the NIO Summit party:

A critical habit was drummed into me long before I knew I’d use it in pretty much ever aspect of my copywriting career.

At school, English was by far my favourite subject, and even though I’d hope each assignment would pass with flying colours, it was the ones that needed work where I learnt the most (isn’t that the case with everything?)

Grammar, spelling, structure were usually easy changes to make. The comments that challenged me to hone my writing, nay my communication skills (I never thought I’d use nay in an actual sentence) were these:

What point are you trying to make?

And:

Can you prove this?

It was a polite way of saying:

Amy, stop being lazy.

My English teacher had a keen eye for when I was trying to fudge a point and sound like I knew what I was talking about. He had no time for it.

And neither do your prospects.

There is a distinct difference between my English teacher and your target market. He had to read every paper I turned in. Fudged or proven, vague or razor sharp, some part of his evening was trawling through the work of hundreds of students including mine. He could have just marked me down, but instead pushed me to transform the sometimes fuzzy thoughts in my head into clear and compelling arguments.

Now, your prospect is not waiting online, red pen in hand to ‘see what you come up with this time.’ They’re not waiting at all. They’re busy, interested in other things, and when it comes to taking action on your marketing, their default is usually inertia.

If your copy isn’t vivid, specific and emotive, it’s vague. And if it’s vague, it’s ambiguous

The problem with ambiguity in copywriting

You have seconds to communicate with a prospect, so being clear and laser-focused on your points counts.

But Amy – I am clear and laser-focused!

Wait a minute. You may think you are, but please check first.

Take your headline, or benefits or body copy and give it to someone who fits your target market, but knows nothing about your business. Ask them these 2 questions:

1. Can you describe my business, what it does and the results it gets for customers?
2. Would you like to know more?

If the answers sound like:

I think you’re a leading, professional service company that believes in excellence and you can help me unlock my potential and take me to the next level?  Do I want to know more…. umm, maybe? You’re standing right in front of me so this is a bit awkward if I say no. Can I say yes for now and check my diary when I get… *Disappears in a puff of smoke.*

Then theres probably ambiguity in your copy. The problem with vague, ambiguous phrases such as ‘leading’ first-rate’, ‘professional’ is that they’re open to interpretation.

For example, imagine my embarrassment when I told my friend:

I love Clowns!

And my friend replied:

Me too!

But when I turned up at his at 5am, with tickets to the clown convention, dressed like this:

There was an awkward moment or two.

If your prospects misinterpret the point of your marketing they may:

• Under-estimate your meaning  and fail to see the value of what you offer
• Over-estimate your meaning, buy and be disappointed
• Struggle to know what you do and not feel confident enough to buy

Ambiguity makes you invisible

The other problem with ambiguous marketing is that it’s easy to ignore (unlike my clown outfit).

Marketing that says the same as everyone else isn’t working hard to demand attention. Your customer’s brain thinks “seen that, show me something new.”

You didn’t go into business, or decide to market a business to sound like everyone else. you want to stand out, to be a beacon of hope to your prospect’s problems.

The challenge, is that the opposite of ambiguity takes some extra work. Just as I used to wish my English teacher would just give me a good mark on a first draft, sometimes I wish I could use the first draft copy that I write. The draft where I know what I want to say, but haven’t clearly articulated it.

But there’s no way around it. If my points are not clear, there’s more work to be done. And it’s worth the effort because…

Ambiguity doesn’t go unnoticed

“Ah Amy – caught you out! You just said ambiguity makes me invisible, now you’re saying it doesn’t go unnoticed! Have that!”

Have it I shall.

Ambiguity makes you invisible to many prospects, but there will be those with a keen eye who are watching you. As this recent discussion sparked by Manuel Da Costa, conversion expert at Effective Experiments:

Solving this problem is simple, but (as with most diets and exercise routines and all other stuff that is good for you *sigh*) not easy. 

Simply answer the same questions my English teacher asked me.

1. What is the point you want to make? 
2. Can you prove it? 

1. What is the point you want to make?

This may seem an obvious question.

I want to show customers that we can be trusted, and that we are professional.

Excellent points to make my good (imaginary) friend!

This is a perfect starting point, but you need to unpack these a little more, if you also want to answer question number…

2. Can you prove it?

The second part of this stops you from simply saying “we are trustworthy and professional”. It challenges you to outline more specific details rather than use those ambiguous terms outright.

Think about the customers who love what you do. Why would they say you can be trusted? For example:

• There was a fault with our first delivery and they replaced it the same day
• Every time I call, I’m talking to a real person in just a few seconds 
• I love that it’s a small family company, I really feel like I know them

Then build these elements into your copy. (Obviously where trust is concerned, testimonials, awards, customer ratings also work very well.)

For example… [Editor’s note – I was going to make up some copy, but I found a lovely snippet from a farm shop local to me, and it included a photo of a man with a sheep. What’s not to trust about that?]

Do we trust them?

• 240 years farming history
• Fifth generation at one location
• Pedigree livestock
• Protect the environment through Higher Level Stewardship scheme
• Smiling man in white coat next to a sheep

Now, you could say that ‘very high standard’ is vague and yes, I’d love to see a snippet of copy to back that up, but the site does go into further detail about how they farm their livestock and crops. In a relatively short piece of copy, you have a lot of rich detail that makes you feel like you know how they work.

Let your prospect visualise WHAT it is you do

Ambiguous copy builds a barrier between your message and your prospect’s interpretation of that message. To them it can feel like looking through frosted glass, when what you want is for them to understand within seconds just how your service or product will impact and transform their lives.

Keep those two simple questions in mind when writing your own marketing copy, and feel free to unpack any ambiguity below. Want tips on how to make something more specific and less vague? Let me know in the comments and I’ll dive in to help you out!

When you struggle to write copy that connects you can feel it.

You might not be able to put your finger on what it is, but you know it feels out of sorts. Like wearing ill-fitting clothes. You might be able to force it, but it won’t be pretty (or comfortable).

Your copy should be easy for prospects to read, and I’m not talking about plain-speak and nicely edited sentences, it should be easy because it feels comfortable, familiar. In my last few posts I’ve talked about trying to put yourself in your customer’s mind, to speak to the conversation they’re already having in their head, and the technique I’m about to share with you should be another tool to help you do just that.

When I was going to be a famous scriptwriter…

I studied screenwriting for film and television for 3 years. Earned a degree in it.

No mum, I don’t think I’m going to be a barrister any more, I don’t think I need a law degree I’m going to be a scriptwriter, and this is the only degree of its kind in the country! My future will be set.

Fast-forward 3 years.

I’m burned out. I am NEVER writing again.

*How to tell parents…?*

Mum, dad, I’m not going to be a barrister scriptwriter anymore, I’m going to Canada for a year! The degree? Bossed it. Everything’s fi….

*Line goes dead*

I got a good degree, but I never wrote anything for the big screen. Oh wait. But the narrative lessons I learned were invaluable when I started copywriting. One of those lessons was the ‘character monologue’.

You can’t write a well-rounded character unless you’re really in their head. If you know what they think, what they say, what gets them upset.

Most importantly – What they would say that you wouldn’t.

My tutors saw a lot of students writing stories about… students. Who sat around and had conversations about… being students.

“Stop it. Stretch yourself. Write about someone who isn’t you.”

They encouraged us to create characters that weren’t like us, and to do so effectively you had to research these people. You had to build their background, know how they spoke, uncover their values.

Sound familiar?

Even though we were writing about fictional characters, to feel authentic you had to work hard to get to know them until they became real. We would write reams of background documents on our characters, highlighting the events that shaped their lives and outlooks, and at some point we would write a character monologue.

This could be a character randomly speaking to themselves, but to make it interesting it worked well when they were experiencing conflict. A mother about to have her daughter taken into care, a sea fishing apprentice working on a trawler for the first time.

You would write as them. In their voice, in their words, and with their cadence until the essence of you was removed. At that point you really just became a vehicle for their story. The result could be some powerful writing that could unearth new plot points, and deepen the character in your mind so that you could write about them with authenticity.

Do this for your customer

I stole was inspired by this technique and use it in my copywriting workshops, only it’s a customer monologue.

I LOVE seeing the results from this exercise, especially people who need more confidence when it comes to writing copy because it shows to them that they know much more about their customer than they think they do. As people read out their monologues you can almost see a switch being flicked, a change taking place as they take a step closer to their customer – by momentarily becoming their customer.

What’s wrong with a customer profile? 

Nothing. But you write them from an external perspective. For example, a brief, high-level customer profile might be:

Hotel-owner looking to get more leads and bookings so they can increase capacity

I’m deliberately keeping the detail light but the point I want to make is that the above content is you writing about someone separate to you. How would it sound if you were writing as though you are that hotel owner?

Conflict reveals character

Lajos Egri wrote The Art of Dramatic Writing which is an excellent book for fiction writers, but also for copywriters if you want to learn how to write a compelling narrative. In the book, Egri talks about how conflict reveals character. When a character is placed under stress or duress, you will see what they are really made of. Will they run away? Will they stand up to the pressure?

When I ask people to write a customer monologue I want them to think about the conflict their prospect faces. And I provide a simple 3-part framework to follow which is:

1. I’m sick and tired of…
2. I wish I could…
3. But I don’t know…

In our above hotel owner example – what might this look like?

“I’m sick and tired of the hotel industry being dominated by big chains with no character. It kills me when customers tell me we’re so much better than other hotels, but that they found us by accident and decided to ‘take a chance’. I wish I could let people know we’re here but Hotel booking sites take too much money and I just don’t know how to compete online without a massive budget.”

Now we have some evocative and emotive ideas that we can work into our copy. Whether our product is an airbnb style site, or sales and marketing training, we have themes of frustration and desire that we can play with as ideas to test in our copy.

But for me, it’s really a technique to help shift perspective, to bring you closer to your customer, so that when you write your copy you can ask yourself: is this tailored to my customer? Or am I trying to force copy that just doesn’t fit?

In my experience, businesses know this information, but it’s so deeply ingrained it’s overlooked. The customer monologue makes you revist your customer from a slightly different angle, and who knows what great copy ideas might emerge if you go through the process yourself?

What do you think?

Can you see this working or do you prefer a traditional customer profile? How do you transfer what’s in your customer’s head to what you write on the page? Let me know in the comments!

Few people I know enjoy a hard sell. When someone is pushy, it’s easy to zone out because you’re not part of the conversation. There’s no listening, just someone telling you what to do.

But I see and understand this from the other side.

When you are so steeped in your product, it can feel frustrating to educate your customer that they will love what you have.

Why won’t they just trust you when you say it’s what they need?

As a result, we can write copy that suggests our product or service is the only way to do things, rather than being a better way to alternatives.

The marketing rugby tackle

Let’s say you have a friend running towards you, but you want her to go in a different direction. You could slam her to the ground, pick her up and point her which way you think she should go.

But this takes a lot of effort to overturn her current momentum. Instead of attracting someone to your way of thinking, you may just attract assault charges.

An easier way would be to run along side your friend, gently leaning on her until – using her own momentum she is going the way you want.

The marketing rugby tackle is the marketing equivalent of saying:

“Buy my stuff… do things my way”

Compared to:

“Hey – I see what you’re doing there. That looks like a good idea, but there’s an even better way…”

‘The Workaround’ copywriting technique

When it comes to copywriting, running alongside your customer means addressing the conversation they’re already having in their mind.

In the same way LEGO gets into the mind of customers, you need to do the same and articulate that knowledge in your copy.

Last year I was working in Gothenburg, Sweden and flew with Norwegian Air. I’m becoming a big fan of the airline but that’s neither here nor there. However, in the in-flight magazine I spotted this advert which is a great example of ‘The Workaround’ copywriting technique. 
I’m not a huge fan of Regus because of the office-enquiry debacle of 2017. They were one of the companies that hounded me under a bait-and-switch ruse.

However, this is a good advert from which to learn The Workaround copywriting technique.

The Workaround is when you address the fact that an ideal prospect knows they have a problem, is trying to solve that problem, but isn’t using you. In this advert, Regus are asking the question:

What other methods are prospects using to try and solve the problem we solve?

The ‘try’ part is important. You want to highlight a method that is, of course, inferior to yours. You don’t want to highlight something that works better than what you have (as if that’s possible!)

So in this example, we have someone looking for an affordable way to run a business and using cafes and free workspaces to do so. This solves the problem of keeping costs low. Unfortunately it comes with pitfalls that could create more danger to them, including harm to their reputation plus additional annoyances of noise, interruptions, etc.

The Workaround Formula

To use the workaround in your copywriting, I recommend building out the following narrative points in your notes:

1. Here’s a problem you face
2. You might be using this method to solve it
3. That makes sense!
4. It’s just a terrible idea…

Which, without the conversational aspect, translates to:

1. Problem
2. Workaround
3. Logical reasoning for workaround
4. Dangers of workaround

It always makes me think of the scene in the film Step Brothers where Dale and Brennan-2 forty-something stepbrothers-want more space in their shared bedroom. They decide the best solution would be bunkbeds that they build themselves…

And, this seems to make sense. They can use material they already have and get a march on with the project without having to wait for a professional. The result seems blissful:

But, there are hidden dangers.

As the step brothers discover when the beds collapse.

If we look at the above formula we can see:

1. Problem – Lack of space
2. Workaround – Build bunkbeds (themselves)
3. Logical Reasoning – Materials to hand, cheaper and faster than hiring a professional, (plus permission from parents)
4. Dangers – Potential collapse

What you need to do is identify your prospect’s workaround, then build a compelling argument that shows you understand why they are doing it this way, but then point out the hidden dangers. Here’s a quick example crib sheet that we might build for a business that provides invoicing software for small businesses.

To build your own, simply answer the following questions:

1. What problem does your prospect want to solve?
2. How are they trying to do this?
3. Why does this make sense?
4. What are the potential dangers of doing this?

If you build these pieces and use them in your copy, it’s an alternative to the marketing rugby tackle. Instead you meet prospects where they are and guide them to your (much better, less dangerous) solution.

What would you discover by answering the above questions? What workaround is your prospect using, and what are the dangers of them continuing down this path?  Let me know in the comments!

Last week I wrote about the customer disconnect, which happens when our copywriting focuses on what we want prospects to do and forgets why they would want to take that action.

I want to share with you an experience I had firsthand when I realised the copy on the pages there to trick me into becoming a lead, and not to help me solve my problem.

Let’s dive in…

Recently I’ve been looking for office space to rent to set up a dedicated film studio for AmyTV. So a few months back I hit Google and one of the top listings caught my eye because of its location:

The address in the top left hand corner is about 5 minutes from where I live. And from the thumbnail of the exterior building, I even knew where the offices were located.

This may seem like I’m labouring the obvious at this stage, but just as you know James Bond is going to use that laser cutting Rolex, the following is pertinent in the subsequent sequence of events:

I knew the specific location of these office units and I was interested in them.

Happy with the terms on the page, I decide to take them up on their offer and “Get a quick quote.”

‘Get’: Sneaky trick number one?

In persuasive writing, it’s recommended that you start with verbs. The active language makes your copy punchy, and it gives the sentence momentum:

• ‘Create your image’ instead of ‘you will have created your image’
• ‘Stay ahead of the competition’ instead of ‘The competition will be behind you’
• ‘Write that bestseller’ instead of ‘you will have written a bestseller’

You get the picture.

And ‘Get‘ is a key copywriting word because it suggests ownership. 

Prospects are looking for solutions, help, information and the word ‘get’ suggests that, unlike Bono they will soon find what they are looking for.

So what’s wrong with it? What might make it a sneaky trick?

When you don’t give what you promise they will get 

I click on the “Get a quick quote’ button and fill out the form (note the below is an example – I used my real details first time round):

Next copywriting trick: ‘NOW’?

“Woah woah woah Amy, ‘Now’ is a great word to use! It suggests urgency which we know is important for encouraging people to take action.”

That is true. And indeed, in this very instance it made me want to take action because I did want a quote now. So I filled in my details and clicked the button.

Only to see this:

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw this page. Remember I am on a pretty specific office page. I know the location, there must be a number of units to choose from, so why do I feel like I’m sliding down a snake on a board game and pushed several steps back?

Who does the ‘NOW’ belong to?

It made me think about the language they’re using and I realised that ‘now’ didn’t belong to me as I first thought.

It belongs to the company. They want their lead NOW, I get my quote SOON.

Tricked and trapped by the copy

From there it goes from bad to worse. First I get an email within minutes from one company that has more office listings – unfortunately none are anywhere near me:

Then a different company contacts me to let me know how to get started…

I feel like I’m travelling backwards in my search journey. I had found somewhere I was interested. I was a warm lead. I was at the stage of asking for a quote. 

“Give me a quote”, is not the same as “show me some generic properties”. So why was I being put on this path?

Well just as I mentioned in last week’s post, it’s like those booths at train stations. The company thinks if they can just get me close to their ‘stuff’ they can convert me.

But they are using copywriting techniques to trick and trap, rather than build a bridge between what someone wants and what that business can provide.

And that is not a good conversion technique.

I love this quote from conversion heavyweight John Ekman. Chief Conversionista at Conversionista.

(I will be speaking at this year’s Conversion Jam in Stockholm and Norway – Join me!)

Best practice copy becomes a trick when visitor goals aren’t met

I heard a great quote recently in an interview of Jeff Patton by Mike Cohn. They were discussing user stories and story-mapping for software development, but trust, me this applies to copywriting.

I’m paraphrasing here, but Jeff said something along the lines of:

When best practice becomes dogma, you forget the problem you were originally trying to solve.

In other words, when you find yourself blindly following rules, because ‘they’re best practice’ your approach can become outdated fast. You lose your curiosity, which dampens innovation and most critically, harms the customer experience.

If you focus on the words, and forget the problem you want to solve for your ideal target market you can find yourself on a slippery slope to snake oil tactics.

The antidote? Know your prospect and stay curious

When you forget about your prospect, tactics can take over. Keep in mind who you want to reach, what their questions and problems and pains are, and reinforce how you can help them go from where they are to where they want to be.

And stay curious, keep checking in with customers and their needs.  Revisit your own marketing, put yourself through the process and ask:

Are the promises you make for you? Or your prospect? (Hint – it should be the latter )

What do you think? Have you seen any good copywriting practices gone bad? Let me know in the comments…

Unfortunately sometimes we focus too much on what we want people to do and not why they would want to do it. When this happen, you get what I call a ‘Customer Disconnect’ and your copy becomes invisible to the very people you want to reach (and help.)

In this post I want to introduce the problem of the customer disconnect, how LEGO used the customer perspective to flourish from massive loss, and how you can start building a pain connection in your copy.

Forgetting your customer’s world: The train station promotion…

I’m always struck by companies that choose train stations or the entrances of supermarkets to promote a product or service that requires education, consideration, and a financial commitment. Insurance companies or animal protection sponsorships for example. Representatives ask if you have “just a few minutes” to speak to them, as they encourage you to stand by their booth of pamphlets and forms to be filled out.

I can understand it from a visibility point-of-view but in terms of getting people to sign-up there and then, it’s a classic customer disconnect focused on what the company wants, not what is easy for prospects.

Let’s see this scenario from the customer’s point-of-view

You’re at a train station. You are possibly…

• Catching a train
• Buying a ticket
• Collecting your tickets
• Queuing for a ticket
• Hoping you don’t miss your train
• Running to catch a train
• Meeting someone
• Checking the departures board for information

Your head is filled with  platform numbers, connections, begrudging the cost of your ticket, finding people in a crowd, delays, cancellations and getting to where you want to be on time and with the minimum amount of fuss possible.

This is a transitional place. It’s not a place people come to ponder and meander as they contemplate saving wildlife.

It’s the same situation with supermarkets. Who turns up to the supermarket early to consider anything other than what’s on the list and getting a bargain? These booths rarely attract a crowd. Instead there’s usually a repellent invisible force field of about 4 feet that people don’t cross in case they get nabbed and have to say ‘no-thank you’ before quickly shuffling on.

Why does it happen?

I understand why companies do it. They’re thinking in terms of crowds. Large watering holes. Where is there a lot of footfall? Supermarkets and train stations get a ton of traffic, surely if they can skim even just a small slice of that it will be worthwhile?

However, these numbers don’t mean anything if you’re not building your marketing from your customer’s point-of-view.

On the other hand, when you get the booth at a train station giving away samples – especially food or drink, they’re never short of interest. I can’t testify whether or not this type of promotion translates into sales later down the line, but at least they know one thing – compared to the information leaflets that many people ignore, their marketing is at least being consumed (literally).

Why? Because it fits into the prospect’s life who is: busy, in a rush and possibly hungry / thirsty.

Learning from LEGO – “Camp With Consumers”

So how can you prevent the customer disconnect in your own marketing? Take a lesson from Lego. The company reinvented the brand to go from sales being down 30% year-on-year in 2003, to announcing profits of £660m in 2015.

The downfall of LEGO happened when they focused on diversification into products customers didn’t want and into areas outside of their expertise such as theme parks, a move that almost bust the company.

When they moved the focus back to fans of LEGO and delivering what they wanted, it was more successful. But what struck me in a recent article was this:

“We call it ‘camping with consumers’,” says Anne Flemmert Jensen, senior director of its Global Insights group. “My team spends all our time travelling around the world, talking to kids and their families and participating in their daily lives.”

They see how children play with LEGO, how they interact with each other, and they take that insight to their business development and marketing.

I’m suggesting that you do the same when thinking about writing copy.

I’m not saying you have to  physically move in with your customer, but you should try to imagine what it would be like to live with them.

A day in the life of your customer – what does their pain look like? 

When you spend time being your customer there are many ways you can use this in both product development and marketing, but I want to focus on one particular aspect of copywriting: describing their pain.

You need to describe your customer’s pain so that it is vivid, evocative, and elicits elation at the idea of eliminating it.

Too much copy relies on generic terms, and while this may make you feel that you’re reaching a wider segment of a target market, it just makes your copy bland and without the punch of someone who feels you’re writing copy just for them.

One way I recommend doing this is to use what I call ‘copywriting symptoms’. Just as a cold manifests itself through a runny nose, sore throat, headache etc, you need to know how your customer’s problem manifests itself in their life.

For example, let’s look at a property management firm. I’m picking this because I recently finished a few projects for clients in this industry. Our prospects is a landlord who is managing their own property. The problem may be they don’t have the time to take on all the tasks of managing it.

But what does that really mean when it comes to writing copy as a firm that can make that problem go away?

How does the problem of managing their own property manifest in their life? What are the symptoms?

• It could be that early morning call from a tenant to say the boiler’s on the blink and they’re having a cold shower before work.
• Or the gnawing feeling when a tenant says they paid the rent, but the bank account shows they’re lying. How do they escalate the situation when they hate confrontation?
• Or the apprehension of tenant’s moving out and having no idea what state the property will be left in.
• This might be a first investment and they’re not sure if they’re setting the rent at a rate to get them the best possible returns.

Highlighting pain isn’t about being sadistic, it’s about drawing your prospect’s attention to the problem they have, and then elevating your value as the person who can make that problem disappear.

There are many different ways your copy may be disconnected to your prospect, and not highlighting the problem specifically enough is one I see a lot.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at the Call to Action conference in Vancouver. I mentioned using symptoms as part of a campaign I had worked on to launch a new video course called Better User Stories for Mountain Goat Software.

To highlight the idea of symptoms showing up in a customer’s life I often use this advert example: 

Now the problem here is gum disease. But the advert doesn’t say:

Do you have a problem with gum disease?

Instead, they’ve focused on the copy on something vivid and evocative that an ideal customer can relate to.

Beyond identifying symptoms

I encourage clients not to stop at identifying prospects’ symptoms. Instead, plot out and highlight:

1. The symptom
2. The underlying problem
3. The risk of not solving the problem and eliminating symptoms

For example: 

These were a couple of examples I walked through briefly at the conference, but I’m certain you could fill a page of notes based on your individual symptoms (and I really recommend you spend time to break these down).

By building your notes this way, before you write any copy it forces you to ‘Camp With Consumers’ and see the world from a prospect’s point-of-view. If you maintain that perspective when you write your marketing, you’re more likely to overcome the customer disconnect.

Have you experienced a customer disconnect in marketing?

How do you try to make sure the copy you write is written from the customer perspective?

Let me know in the comments below!

I notice when the customer perspective is missing in copy, but I also have a keen eye for content that hits the mark with prospects.

Today’s example comes from my brand new dentist. My previous dentist (who I was happy with) moved away. I was on the lookout for something new. After a recommendation I looked up Centre For Dentistry (CFD) which, from what I can gather, is a national franchise with local practices. My local practice is a relatively new one.

I signed up, got booked in and went for my first appointment.

I was impressed with the practice – clean, friendly, and a couple of personality touches:

The appointment was great, but what I really liked was the follow-up service and a couple of things struck me:

• What they’re doing is simple
• What they’re doing take minutes to execute
• What they’re doing will be essential to survive as competition increases and consumers have more choice
• Most businesses don’t do this…

How many times do you ignore the follow-up message?

First things first, the follow-up email.

How many times do you get a text email or phone call after a service?

Take this quick survey and tell us how we did!

Click here to fill out a short questionnaire about your experience…

If you’re like me, you pretty much delete them as they came in. But there was something that caught my eye with the CFD email:

Perhaps it’s because I’m a copywriter, but what I loved is that they weren’t asking for a survey, they were asking for a specific review.

It was an explicit call-to-action that was easy to do, but more than that: I felt that as a customer I was being listened to.

• Surveys feel anonymous, I’ve never felt acknowledged of listened to through a customer satisfaction survey
• They were brave enough to ask me my to express my thoughts, in public, in my own words (not just tick a number on a scale that could get filed in ‘difficult customer’)

So I did…

And I felt listened to with their reply.

But then…

I’m feeling pretty positive about the whole experience. And then a few days later I receive this in the post:

A card. An actual handwritten thank-you note.

I’m impressed if I get that from getting someone a birthday present so this stood out to me.

My previous dentist did none of these things and I was pretty happy with their service.

But this dental practice went to extra lengths to delight, not just please me.

What’s the pay off?

The result of this simple action is that I’ve told people about it. I’ve recommended other people to the practice, I’ve written a review and this blog.

Obviously content marketing isn’t magic and can’t patch over a crappy product. I enjoyed the service, but their follow-up sequence prompted me to share it more than I normally would. 

Which is something to think about. Imagine if you had an automatic, simple on boarding sequence that encouraged say, every fourth or fifth person to review your business. How many would you accumulate over time? How many case studies would you be able to build?

And how many recommendations would be rippling out into your industry?

Till next time,

I’ve been to the same place the last two times, and want to share this simple but smart content marketing story that the local pub uses to make customers spend more money with them.

The pub is called The Gun, near Heathfield in East Sussex. As you open the first door, you enter a little porch with this on the wall:

And beneath this are placeholders with 10 different printed booklets:

Each booklet provides instructions for a country walk. Varying in length and style – from forest to bridleway to countryside paths. It’s a great idea: a country pub promoting country walks.

But the really clever thing is that they are all circular routes. And each of the 10 walks…

Starts and ends at the pub

And what do you do after a 3-6 mile country walk? Well, if you’re British you usually stop for a drink and a bite to eat somewhere. That’s what I did.

Talking to the barman, he said how people would come in in the morning, browse the walks, take a leaflet and then book a table for lunch for their return.

This is a fantastic and low-cost idea for turning prospects into ideal customers. making them literally work up a hunger and thirst for what the business has to offer. I also love that even though this creates value for the business, the content delivers value to the customer. It’s been created by really understanding their customers: people who enjoy the countryside, people who are perhaps staying locally and don’t know the area. People who like to walk, but aren’t serious enough to have plotted out their own routes.

This pub is very tapped into delivering a great experience to the customer. The barman also told me that the first thing the latest manager did when he started was sit in every seat in the pub and restaurant. At first the other staff didn’t understand what he was doing but then they realised: he wanted to see his business as every possible customer would.

That level of dedication to the customer perspective serves them well, and during my stay, I went there several times, and it was always busy.

How can your content create a need for you to fill?

Rather than promote their food and drink with leaflets, the pub is encouraging people to go through a process that makes them an even better fit as a customer. Is there are way you can do the same with your customer?

Currently I’m in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to speak at a conference for property managers. Their ideal clients are people who are looking to rent out a property, and as a growth conference run by some very smart marketers at  Fourandhalf and Lead simple, many of the attendees are creating this type of content. They’re taking a step back and providing information and education about how to get a property ready to rent. Not pushing their service, not mentioning property management, but providing value (and ultimately guiding prospects to them). Talking to the business owners here, this is working really well to generate leads.

Think about your own customer, where are they 1 or 2 steps before they’re ready to do business with you? Can you create an ebook, or blog series, or even booklets like this pub, that will take them through a process so that they are in a position that makes them need you even more?

I’d love to hear your ideas and thoughts in the comments below!

It was an inspirational event.

I love helping companies reach their target market, and to be in a room with organisations that are trying to bring help, aid, education and hope to those who need it, made it even more special.

Not to mention the craziest conference party I’ve ever attended which included:

• Pig penning
• Armadillo racing
• Mechanical bull riding

I was disqualified from the mechanical bull… (for putting my hand down – I should make that clear).

Now, a theme that cropped up more than once in the conference was the idea of removing friction and resistance from the customer (or in this case) the donor experience, and I wanted to write about that today and ask you:

Are you writing for the fastest part of the brain?

My good friend and fellow-speaker (I’ve warmed-up the stage for him twice this year), Michael Aagard, mentioned a concept in his talk about the two systems we have in our brain.

He learned about this from Bart Schutz, who wrote a great article about using this psychology to increase conversions.

In simple terms, it works like this:

We have two systems in our brain. One is intuitive and works quickly, easily influenced by emotion. The other works slower and is more analytical and reliant on processing information.

Guess which one is in the driving seat?

System one.

What does this mean for your copy and marketing? It means people are looking to make easy, quick decisions.

They don’t want to have to figure out your marketing.

This makes no sense to me…

I love British Airways. I always feel well looked after and I love their selection of entertainment (and bar service).

I am not one of those people who love the solitude of a plane ride to get some work done. I wish I was, I’ve tried, but get easily distracted.

I love to settle in, and watch as many TV and films as I possibly can. Nowhere else in my life is it really acceptable to watch 10 hours of movies and shows back-to-back… but on a flight to Dallas, on my own, my story-hungry brain is free to run wild.

On this trip alone I watched:

• The Ones Below (1 hour 40 mins)
• The entire season of Happy Valley 2 (5 hours)
• 3 episodes of Billions (Just under 3 hours)

I loved them all.

There’s only one thing I don’t like about British Airways, and it’s a small, but recurring problem I have with their website:

I’m logged in, so where do I find my bookings?

Must be here… right?

Oh… wait – friction!

Can’t I get to my booking in 1 click?

So why can’t you give me this on the home screen?

So, here’s my question to you:

Are you making your sign-posts obvious?

Your prospect may be tired, or in a hurry, or furtively comparing your solution to a number of competitors.

Are you making them work to find out pertinent information? Or are you making the experience an effortless journey?

Not sure? Here are some tools to help:

• A friend – ask them to find something important on your site or a piece of key information with your copy – how long does it take?
• The 5-second test – Take a screenshot of your site, website, direct mail piece, upload it and find out exactly what information absorb in just 5 seconds
• The 6-foot test – (introduced to me by my friend and NIOSummit speaker Angie Schottmuller.) Stand 6 ft from your computer screen. Is the key message, or focus-point on your home page or landing page obvious from that distance?

That’s all for today, I’ve heard there’s a rodeo happening tonight so I need to get booted-up (to watch and not partake, obviously).

Every now and then I find myself having the same frustration in my local library.

I volunteer as part of their home delivery service, taking books to people who are housebound or find it difficult to get to the library.

It’s a fantastic service, I love meeting my clients, getting to know their tastes and chatting about books.

The problem occurs when I get to the library to choose a section of title I think they will enjoy. Sometimes clients will give me titles of authors they like, but they may just say ‘light thriller’ or ‘mystery’. And I like to try and look for something new and interesting to keep them engaged.

So I get to the library, I head to the different fiction sections and it takes about 30 seconds before my brow furrows because I’m overwhelmed by choice.

And the dust-jacket gives me very little help in making a decision

Okay, instead of just browsing the shelves, I could spend more time online researching, reading reviews, whittling it down to a number of books, putting in my request to the library and then heading out to pick them up.

But I just don’t have time.

And sometimes, neither does your customer. Sometimes they’re making decisions not by getting to know you and your business specifically, but by ‘browsing’ your company and the competition. 

So, I trust the dust-jacket, or description on the back of the book to decide if I should hire it out or not.

Exasperation ensues…

Let’s take ‘mystery’ or ‘light thriller’.   I pull out a title to review:

What do we know about our heroine?

1. Her father left when she was twelve
2. Her life was thrown into turmoil
3. She’s a drug user and alcoholic
4. She gets clean after a car accident
5. She looks for her daughter
6. She has an ‘unsettling’ and ‘life-changing’ quest
7. She’s helped by an unlikely person

We know the facts of her life and the story, but what do we really know about her?

Will we like her? Why was she so close to her father? Was he a good character? Was the car accident her fault, or is she more of a  victim?

Now, someone might say:

Amy, read than dang book and find out…

But that’s not how it works. In marketing, those above 7 points would be the features, but not the benefits. They tell me what happens, but they don’t give me the meat that tells me:

Is this book going to match what I enjoy

Is our heroine a rebel? Is she kind-hearted? And don’t just tell me she is, show me something she has done which gives me a flavour of her character. Did she cause the accident? Did she steal the car? In the above description, life mostly happens to her. She does nothing until she decided to look for her daughter. So I’m thinking well, perhaps she’s just passive and the story sort of swirls around her.

It’s not distinct enough for me to pick it and go back to my clients and then explain why I chose that book for them.

Would you buy just to try?

But Amy. These are just books. Why are you getting so het up about it?

Well one, because someone has spent years pouring their heart and soul into writing a novel and then there’s this slip of writing which isn’t working hard to sell the value of those blood, sweat and tears.

And two – because it relates to how customer evaluate and choose your business. 

Your customer isn’t just looking at your solution, they’re considering a number of possibilities.

Take your home page / landing page / web copy / brochure and line it up side-by-side with 5 of your competitors. 

Does yours sound different? Does it convey the value you have to your customer.

Or does it leave them with questions like:

Can I trust them? Why are they different to this other company? Will they go above and beyond for me? Do they have expertise that will help me achieve what I want?

And if your customer has questions, would you say to them:

Buy the dang product and find out…

Probably not. And you’re not going to see that in a marketing campaign anytime soon (I hope).

Sometimes people do judge books by covers (and even buy by them)

We are immersed in our products, just as a novelist is immersed in the ins and outs of his or her book.

But new people are given just a small window into what we have before they decide whether to find out more (and even buy). So are you telling a stand-out story?

If you were to line up your competitor’s messaging alongside your own – would your customer know which one they would want to read more about? Or would they be scratching their heads thinking:

It all sounds the same? Which is right for me?

If it’s the latter, that’s absolutely fine, because at least you now know what everyone else is saying. 

Which means you have a starting point for saying something different…

How did you fare? Is your story description unique? Or are you using similar phrases and language to the competition? Want help standing out? Let me know in the comments below.

The post Is your copy competitive or a commodity? Take the library book test… first appeared on HarrisonAmy Copywriting.]]> https://harrisonamy.com/commodity-copywriting/feed/ 0 23083