Hooked Marketing Content Blog

How to Write for Non-Readers

2011-10-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

Jakob Nielsen, the famous web usability guru, says people don’t read online—they scan.

Unlike some gurus, Nielsen has facts to back up his proclamations. He actually observes how humans interact with a website, so there’s good reason to listen to him.

He’s amassed a lot of good data, and if you could summarize all of it into one idea, it’s that people online are looking for specific, reliable information. And they’re usually in a hurry. Good SEO will get people to your site but if the page where they arrive doesn’t quickly satisfy the need that drove them to the Web, you lose them.

Nielsen also points out that your site visitors don’t think like you. They don’t share your knowledge or assumptions so testing copy effectiveness with people outside the company is an important step.

This link goes to the web page template I use to remind me of these points (and some others).

Finding the Forest In Spite of the Trees

2011-07-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

Trying something different to reach your audience...and get better response rates.

Sometimes we’re too close to what we’re doing to see how it could be better. Thanks to my position as an outsider on my client's project, it only took me about two hours on Monday to help him get a 200%+ lift in responses on an email campaign. He was trying to reach C-level execs on Sales Force.

He was grateful and I was really glad to help, but my point is that my distance from his project has at least as much to do with our success as my writing skill. I’m increasingly convinced that everyone could be a 10X better communicator if they would take just these three steps:

1. Write down what you know about the audience you’re trying to reach in as much detail as possible

2. Write down what you want that audience to know and/or do as a result of reading your message.

3. Put these away for a few days and when you come back to your document, put yourself in your audience’s shoes before you start writing. Consider where they’ll be when they receive your message, what other things will be pulling on their attention, and what you could say—as shortly and sweetly as possible—to get them to take the action you want them to take.

If you don’t have a few days to kill, get help from someone (friend, spouse, customer, colleague), ideally outside your company. Show them your lists from items 1 and 2 above and then ask them what they see as the key benefit/message/etc.

When you're ready to write, focus on that ONE key message and explain it in concrete detail as quickly as possible. (Freewriting is a good way to access some good right-brain insights on how to do this.)

In the case of my client, we asked a favor (“could you forward this info to the appropriate person?”) and built the subject line and message based on that request. For an audience of CXOs who are receiving pitches everyday, requesting a favor stands out from an inbox full of catchy subject lines marketing features and benefits.

The Dangers of Using the Over-used Words

2011-07-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

If your offering is so “innovative” & “cutting-edge,” why are you describing it with the same tired language everyone else uses to explain theirs?

For starters, words like “solution,” and “proprietary” put your audience to sleep. They rely on the same tired ideas everyone else is using to market their product. Someone shopping for what you’re selling has already read these claims a dozen times by the time they arrive at your site. It’s a good way to blend in with the competition and numb your audience’s brains.

Even more dangerous is what using these words does to the quality of your own thinking about your offering. Our thoughts are manifested by the language we use. If you’re bilingual, you know, some words can’t be translated between languages; in fact, some thoughts can’t truly exist without the words we need to say them to ourselves.

When you think about your offering in the same terms as your competition, you’re numbing your own brain too, and missing an opportunity to make a fresh statement that will attract a prospect’s attention.

“Solution” is a great example of a word that creates white noise. It has its place, but if it shows up more than once on a webpage, it’s a clear sign that your copy needs to be more concretely descriptive. What words could you substitute that rely on the senses? What does a customer see, hear, feel, taste or smell when their problem is solved?

Put yourself in your reader’s shoes for a minute… Why are you spending your valuable time doing research online? What do you hope to accomplish? Now read the home page—or a relevant landing page—on your website, and then look at your competitors’ sites.

Differentiating your offering by describing it in bright, juicy language—the kinds of words that paint a picture for your readers—will help them see they’ve arrived at a website that’s worth their time and that they’ve found a company that understands their problem.

Want to see some lists of words to eliminate (or at least consider carefully before using)?

Look here and here.

How to Get A "Do-Over" on A Crummy Day

2011-07-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this interesting article, "Five Reasons to Keep a Work Diary". To a writer, of course, this sounds like a good idea, but it’s actually worthwhile advice for anyone.

The idea is that a few minutes of recording what worked and what didn't, before you close up shop, gives you a “do-over”—a new way to look at the day, learn from it and see that maybe it wasn’t as bad as you thought.

Have you ever had a “shower moment”? All you have to do in there is bathe, and with so little demand on your brain, a brilliant new idea can present itself without your conscious mind blocking it.

Writing about your work day—even for as little as ten minutes—pushes your brain into new ways of expressing itself. It works differently than a shower moment but the results are the same. By re-structuring your thoughts in the form of text, insights that would otherwise be lost come to the fore.

Maybe you wrestled mightily—to no avail—with a way to communicate your idea to your team or a customer. Spending ten minutes to freewrite about it opens pathways in your brain you couldn’t see when the high weeds of the day were too thick to push through.

Aggravated by a phone call that went badly? Re-living it on paper (or your monitor) will reveal clues for setting the situation on better footing—or reveal that it didn’t go as badly as you thought.

Hate writing? Make your work diary an oral one. Use a Dictaphone (or your smart phone—surely there’s an app for that). On your drive home, babble incoherently into the thing and listen back later. The act of verbally confiding to your recorder can also free your mind. You may find yourself, mid-rant, coming upon a gem of genius.

According to the author of the article, Richard Branson wrote his bestsellers by referring back to and reworking his daily diary ruminations. Who knows? By the end of 365 ten-minute work diary entries, you may find you have the foundation of a book, or an e-book.

The trick is disciplining yourself to do it, especially on a bad day, but I've tried it and this kind of daily reflection really does pay you back for the effort.

Oh brother, not another “study”…

2011-07-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Radio Ad Bureau (RAB), a trade marketing body for radio, has released “Media and the Mood of the Nation,” a document they’re referring to as a study.

According to RAB, respondents to their survey recorded a 100 percent increase in happiness when listening to the radio, compared to not consuming any type of media at all. RAB surveyed 1,000 people in Great Britain to collect this data.

Certainly the Radio Ad Bureau has nothing to gain by developing a biased questionnaire comprising a number of leading questions about how great the radio-listening experience is—and then using it to conduct “research.” Nowhere on their website is there any detail on how their study was conducted.

I’m sure this isn’t the most blatant example of this sort of publicity strategy but it’s really sticking in my craw today. The worst part is that The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and American Public Media’s Marketplace blog among others covered its publication—and they all did so with a straight face, presenting it as useful information. (You can see The Telegraph's story here.)

I don’t fault RAB for it on one level: it seems to have been fairly effective—especially if you believe that there’s no such thing as bad press, but are news outlets that bereft of real news? To run news articles on this “study”—really? Do these publications have that many readers who are that lacking in critical thinking skills?

From a less agitated perspective, this approach is not so different than what content farms are doing to play the search engines, cranking out “content” purely to draw eyeballs to pages full of ads. I just wonder that the RAB isn’t embarrassed to present their schlocky report.

Probably their marketing department would say, "our site traffic and mentions in the press are up," in other words, the ends justify the means. I’d say, credibility is becoming a powerful differentiator.

What Are Your Prospects Hearing?

2011-04-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately they can’t hear what’s in your head. If they could, they'd automatically know all the great benefits of your product or service, and you’d be able to attract more clients instantly.

In Made to Stick, one of my all-time favorite business books, the authors explain an experiment in psychology that shows how the curse of knowledge--all that stuff in our heads--can make effective communication almost impossible.

In the experiment, a group of “tappers” are asked to choose one of several very well-known songs (“Happy Birthday to You,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” etc.) and to tap that song on a table while another person listens and attempts to guess what song it is.

Only 3% of the listeners are able to determine what song is being tapped. But what’s really interesting is that the tappers expected to be much more successful in the exercise—on average they predicted a 50% success rate.

What’s really amusing is the flabbergasted expressions on the tappers’ faces as they realize the listeners aren’t getting it.

What the tappers don’t understand is that while they’re hearing in their heads all the instrumentation, melody and lyrics that make up the song, the listeners are only hearing inarticulate tapping that sounds like Morse code.

It’s the things in our heads we don’t even know are there that prevent us from getting through to our audience.

So how do you get out of your own head and get through to your audience?

It’s almost impossible to overcome the curse of knowledge without getting some outside help. One of the best sources of this help is a client willing to read your ad, white paper or case study.

Present the draft with the question, “does this communicate the value of our offering?” and you’ll get some good clues on how to fill in the melody for your listeners.

You can also try putting yourself in your next-door neighbor’s shoes (unless she’s in the same business as you). Get away from your draft for a couple days and come back to it with the question, “would my neighbor understand what I’m saying?”

By making your document that straightforward, you’ll be forced to eliminate the jargon and opaque abstractions that are the curse of knowledge.

Trashcan and Buzzkill

2011-04-07T06:41:00.000-07:00

More thoughts on reaching the inbox…

My son, James, and his cousin were born six weeks apart. Besides the similarity in their ages, they have nothing in common.

Cousin Cameron was off the charts on appetite, weight and length from the day he was born. James is a slim little dude who can still wear a few of his 18-month-old clothes, even though he’ll be three in a few weeks.

Cameron is a nut, a loud little lunatic who enters a room at a full-on run or in some form of acrobatic stunt. James is a quiet observer who will occasionally flash a sly smile as he zings you with the equivalent of a toddler one-liner.

The family has already identified James as the future quarterback and Cameron as his blocker. Cameron’s stature and James’ evening grouchiness have also earned the duo the nickname “Trashcan and Buzz-Kill.”

As they grow up, I imagine they’ll be good influences on each other—Cameron setting an example for busting out of one’s shell, James being a careful voice of reason.

I think about these two as I write because I see a big opportunity in adding a little Cameron—a bit of “Trashcan” energy—to your emails and other online content.

There’s certainly a great deal of value in being the credible voice of reason, in providing useful content that helps your prospects do their jobs better. And of course it’s important the tone and look of your campaigns are business appropriate. But there is room within those parameters to show some personality, to share some clean humor, to let the information come from a person, instead of always being from The Company.

What if every now and then—instead of it always being “good-for-you” content—your company shared some soul-satisfying fried-chicken type of content?

It would probably take a little more time, but it would also keep people more interested for longer. This is particularly true if you’re buying lists. An article on BtoB’s site projects that this year the average individual will receive 5,000 opted-in emails, a volume that will rise to 9,000 or more by 2013.

If people don’t know your company outside the emails they get from you, they have no loyalty. As soon as they’ve decided (usually unconsciously) they they’ve learned all they think they can from you, they’re going to opt out—unless your messages offer something a little more than valuable content.

It is possible to make something entertaining without offending or undercutting your credibility—and by showing a more human side, it’s a lot easier to engage with all those humans in your market.

"When Should I Send My Email?"

2011-02-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

HubSpot hosted an email marketing webinar last week sharing some very interesting data, including click-through and unsubscribe rates based on time sent.

They used data from Mail Chimp which catalogs information from 9.5 billion (yes, that’s billion with a ‘B’) email sends. It showed that click-through rates (the number of people who click on at least one link in the email) doubled on Saturdays and Sundays.

Messages sent Monday through Friday have an average click-through rate of about 4.6%, while messages sent on Saturday and Sunday average about 8.8%, almost double the during-the-week rate.

What’s so interesting about this is that it’s completely opposite what conventional wisdom subscribes, which is to send on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, since that’s when people are more likely to have a little time to spare at work. But, once again, data trumps conventional wisdom.

The webinar host explained this surprising finding with another bit of data, a survey that shows most people get on email seven days a week. Also, more than 80% of them have only one inbox that in some cases receives email from multiple addresses.

So people don’t typically distinguish between their work and personal emails, and when they’re checking on the weekend, they’re seeing both sources. Over the weekend, they have the time and, apparently, the inclination to read more email.

The other thing that intrigues me about this is my own anecdotal evidence of how few companies test best time to send and other variables in their email marketing. It’s pretty easy to split test, send half the messages one day and half another, and the resulting data can help companies refine their email marketing approach and make it more productive.

Incidentally, the webinar also looks at unsubscribe rates, which drop over the weekend, making Saturdays and Sundays a no-brainer option to at least test in your email marketing.

2010-08-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Good Karma + Good Story = 669% Sales Increase

Great story from Amex's Open Forum blog tells the story of Mizage, a small software company that decided to be $14 worth of generous and how it unleashed a 669% increase in sales.

Mizage's window management tool for the Mac, called "Divvy" sells for $14. A prospect emailed the company asking if they'd consider taking $5 for it.

The sales team replied that they'd be glad to give it to him free and asked that he think about telling his friends about Divvy or Tweeting about it.

The grateful customer submitted the email thread to Reddit, and the story landed on the front page.

Since Reddit gets 8 million views per month, lots of new eyeballs read about Divvy and visited the site. Mizage was smart enough to post its own subsequent thread to Reddit, sharing before and after sales numbers.

The article's author highlights a few takeaways, number one being that "stories drive sales." What got people's attention the most is the story element: Guy asks for a favor from an anonymous company. Company grants it--and then some. Guy is grateful and returns the favor in spades. Company's good deed pays off. The fact that it's a positive story makes it even more viral.

Human beings have been storytellers since we were living in caves and our brains are just as compelled by stories as they've ever been.

Today's meager attention spans can still be expanded by a good tale, and once you have someone's attention, a good product will sell like iPhones.

What's the compelling story behind your brand? Every time you can focus on a true story about how your company's product or service has helped real live customers, you're hitching your star to the power of a story. Try it and see what happens!

Selling Hamburgers to the Chick-fil-A Cows

2010-06-01T05:21:00.000-07:00

I love the descriptions used for great sales people: "That guy could sell snow to Eskimos."

"She could sell a PC to Steve Jobs."

"Billy Mays could sell ketchup popsicles to ladies in white gloves!"

You can hear a bit of respect and awe in these descriptions, but, let's face it, the statements describe salespeople conning their victims. How could a lady in white gloves really want or have any use for a ketchup popsicle?

Like any field, sales and marketing has its detractors.
Plenty of their criticism is warranted. Everyone hates telemarketers and spam. Too many companies look at customers as replaceable, see them only as groups of demographics to be sold to. They blare their marketing messages loudly and widely, trying to reach as big an audience as possible.

What's cool about the Internet is how it's shifting the power structure.

It's so easy now for customers to change their settings, unsubscribe, fast forward through TV ads. Blaring marketing messages is less and less effective. Companies are having to listen and be more creative about how they attract customers.

Successful marketers--especially in the B2B world--are the ones who are shifting from broadcasting what they want to say to finding out what their customers want to know.

All this prologue to get to my point:
I've officially changed my company name from Impact Copywriting to Hooked, with my new tagline, "Marketing Content that Captures Interest."

"Haven't you just gift-wrapped a perfectly serviceable term ['copywriting'] by calling it 'content writing'?" one colleague asked when I told him my plan. But copywriting is a different skill from content writing.

Copywriting, in the strict sense of the word, refers to creating copy for ads. It gets used for other sorts of writing too, but top copywriters make their money writing ads for TV, magazines and direct mail.

They are masters at persuading an audience to take an action, whether it's to buy something, call a company or visit a website.

And it's that persuasion in this new age of savvy Internet surfers that people begin to detect. It can feel like a little like manipulation and it turns them off. People like to buy things, but they really don't want to be sold to.

Content writing, on the other hand, is about businesses making it easier for customers to buy. It's about sharing information their customers find valuable, usually online.

It's the email newsletter I send out. It's a white paper that helps an architect decide if his firm really needs to investigate cloud computing. It's the website that's structured to address buyers' problems, not promote the company's products and services.

Content marketing helps companies transcend the practice of blaring messages people want to ignore. They can build relationships with their market by providing expertise on topics customers genuinely want to know more about.

It allows companies to position themselves not as vendors but as trusted advisers, to steal Ardath Albee's observation.

I'm really excited to be focusing my business in this area.

And I'm curious if people disagree that there's a difference between copywriting and content writing. Leave a comment!

Giving It Away

2010-05-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

Marketing gurus with tons more experience and smarts than me (David Meerman Scott, Seth Godin, Tom Peters) talk about the importance of giving away content for free—not just without charging, but without requiring registration or an email address. In that small part of my 40-something brain that remains idealistic, I love the idea.

It’s interesting to me the way Godin and other marketing gurus are great at speaking to that part of our brains:

When I give away an ebook, I just give it away. I don’t say, ‘give me your email so I can extract your attention on an ongoing basis.’ That’s a transaction. The challenge with transactions is both sides expect it to be even. I give you $10,000, you give me a used car. If the used car ends up being worth a lot more than $10,000, you feel like it’s a lousy deal. If it ends up being worth a lot less, I feel like it’s a lousy deal. The transaction implication is that it’s going to be even.

But if I give you an idea, if I give you a blog post, if I give you a PDF and say, ‘Here, take it, spread it around,’ it starts by its nature being uneven. And since it’s uneven, it can be a gift, and when it’s a gift, it can be art and when it’s art it can make a change.

That’s some persuasive and very lofty language—and I like the idea as a philosophy—but in come cases it just doesn’t make practical sense to miss an opportunity to collect contact info about the people who are interested in the ideas I’m sharing.

It brings up a dichotomy I notice between B2B and B2C approaches to online marketing and social media.

I was at Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) meeting last week that featured a panel on integrating social media into the marketing mix

One of the four panelists was solidly B2B—he talked about defining leads and using proven methods like email marketing and white papers to find and nurture qualified leads. The other three panelist’s business, best I could tell, seemed to be mostly B2C—or at least those were the examples they kept referring too.

“I’m mayor of Doc Chey’s in Decatur on Four Square and so I got a reserved parking space in their parking lot—in Decatur, where parking is terrible. Doc Chey’s won a ton of loyalty from me for that. I don’t want to lose that spot!”

B2C online marketing is all about the fun and excitement and lofty ideals. It makes sense: a lot of companies in this space are selling lifestyle.

The thing is I rarely hear details of parallel examples in the B2B world, at least not in a from-scratch situation, e.g., start-up or a company just beginning with online marketing and lacking widespread name recognition. Does it really make sense to trade in proven practices for an unproven, more philosophically appealing approach? These companies need to know who’s accessing their expertise online in order to establish and maintain the relationship.

Online Marketing and the Jedi Mind Trick

2010-04-23T11:07:00.000-07:00

You've probably had the experience of crafting an email marketing piece and feeling like the force just wasn't with you. Or you've worked and worked on a case study and doubted it would ever help sway your customer away from the dark side.

The next time you need to use language to persuade, try this mind trick to insert your idea into your prospect's mind: use a metaphor.

What's a metaphor? It's what I used to start this article.

I could have titled the article, "Using Metaphorical Language to Persuade." But this abstraction is the opposite of a metaphor. There's nothing concrete in it to anchor the idea in your reader's mind. It just rushes through the brain like a train speeding through a station without stopping.

More examples of metaphors: In the previous paragraph the phrase "anchor in the reader's mind" is a metaphor. So is the last sentence, which connects the idea of abstraction with a train speeding through the brain without stopping.

Metaphors compare one thing to another. They allow you to tie abstractions to the concrete world so they can be understood more easily. They allow you to paint positive pictures in your prospect's mind that are memorable.

Especially with dry material, you can keep your reader interested by peppering in a vivid metaphor to help them see your offering's value.