If the call to action is underlined copy, visitors realize it’s a text link. If the call to action is a button, it’s obvious that this is click-able. Don’t tell the visitor to “click here” in order to engage them to click. Instead, persuade the visitor to click with the use of keywords or “trigger words” that speak directly to the visitor’s motivations and needs within the link, based on what they came searching for in the first place.

A great link uses an imperative verb that calls the visitor to take action, and it absolutely needs to clearly describe what the visitor will experience when they click.

Here is RelationshipHeadquarters.com’s homepage. Let’s look at some of their calls to action.

There is a big button in the active window of their homepage (the Primary call to action) that says “Are you a woman that men adore? Take free quiz.”  The first portion of this language engages the visitor by speaking to their interests and motivations, and the second portion is the action that you’re recommending they take which is “…take free quiz.”

The links in the active window (the Secondary calls to action) each engage the visitor to help them find solutions to their problems:

• “Understand men”
• “How to get him back”
• “Be the woman men adore”

There are many things you should consider when optimizing and testing your calls to action, but first and foremost, remove all of the “click here” language that might currently exist in your links and buttons.  A quick audit of your site to write better calls to action will provide a great return on your investment in terms of persuading more prospects to take the action you want them to take.  Don’t believe me?  Run some tests and see for yourself

Editor’s Note: No mannequins were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

Most valuable writing lesson ever.

“Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.

It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.

Nobody wants to read your shit.

There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too.

They won’t. The market doesn’t know what you’re selling and doesn’t care. Your potential customers are so busy dealing with the rest of their lives, they haven’t got a spare second to give to your product/work of art/business, no matter how worthy or how much you love it.”

Every online copywriter – no scratch that – every writer, marketer, advertiser, business owner, and entrepreneur should go read this post in its entirety.

This very powerfully states what Future Now has long taught: prospective customers are task oriented – they have lives and they are not on your Website because they are interested in you, or your company, or how you’d like to “position” yourselves within the industry.  Your online visitors have a problem and they are really only interested in whether or not you have a viable solution.

Once you understand that, you can move away from we-we copy in order to focus on providing visitors with:

• Ongoing visual and text assurances that they’ve come to the right place to find their solution – i.e., provide good scent.

• Copy that speaks to them about what matters to them.  Establish empathy with WHY they need your solution.  Figure out what has driven them to need your product or service, and make sure you address those felt emotional needs as well as ALL of their lingering, sales-killing questions and doubts.

• Pathways/links that allow each visitor to choose their own path, to either take the express train to grabbing what they need and converting, or to drill down to richer content on those elements where they need to assure themselves that you are, in fact, selling a real solution to their specific problem.

Nobody wants to read your copy.  But if they’ve voluntarily come to your Website in search of a solution, chances are good they will scan, skim, and yes, even read copy that addresses their task at hand.

The difficult part is often the task of separating out “your sh**” from the copy that’s actually needed to address visitors’ concerns.  Hiring outsiders often helps with this.  Personas are also extraordinarily helpful.  And so are the guidelines outlined in Steven Pressfield’s post – go read them!

And then go kick some online marketing a**

P.S.  If the name Steven Pressfield seems familiar, you may have read his (highly recommended) non-fiction book, The War of Art.  Or possibly his extremely popular historical fiction (also recommended).

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

My friend and brilliant copywriter, Chris Maddock, frequently exhorts his writing students to “Just say the thing.”  This advice is based upon Chris’s extensive experience in what’s working right now for radio ads – and just as importantly,  what’s no longer working for any type of copywriting.

Google and the Internet have trained us to ruthlessly sort for relevance, and we now demand messaging formatted for, and adapted to, rapid sorting.  If visitors can’t get on your website, perform a 7-second scan and immediately see exactly:

• what it is you do,
• what your offering, and
• why they should care,

those visitors will leave.   Basically, you’ve gotta “just say the thing”  (after which of course you still need to go on to close the loopholes, substantiate your claims, provide rich content, etc).  And these web preferences have spilled out onto our demands for traditional media as well.

Great creative enhances the clarity and power of your message…

…But often times, the finished product won’t necessarily “feel” creative.  Non-copywriters will tell you it’s too plain.  No one will be impressed.  Even visitors might not be impressed- yet they’ll convert!

Here’s a perfect example of that:

So first a caveat: this Kodak landing page isn’t perfect.  As an incentive for already established Kodak Gallery members, it’s a strong offer.  But Kodak has left themselves an out/loophole by reserving the right to end the free shipping beta program.  And this kills its ability to draw new members.

Frankly, I don’t want to upload all my photos to their gallery based on the promise of free shipping, only to then have the free shipping yanked away from me.  How much better would it be if they had a free shipping Opt-In program for new and existing members, a program you automatically join with any $12 or higher purchase from their gallery, and a guarantee from Kodak to continue to honor free shipping privileges for all existing members of the program even if they end the program.

Nevertheless, the thing to concentrate on here is how simply they just laid out the deal right in the headline.  The copy just says “the thing” and it’s straight-up about their intentions.  Also, notice how stunningly clear the comparison chart is.  Not fancy, just brilliantly clear in conveying shipping savings available through Kodak Gallery.

And even though no one will remark on what brilliant writing Kodak’s copywriter cranked out, or on how freaking cool the graphic designers chart is, both the copy and the chart are remarkably effective.

The trick is to not let the “plain” style fool you.  Just test it against copy with more snap, crackle and pop.  Test it against a prettier graphic, or against whatever “feels” right to you.  Over time, when clarity consistently wins out in your A/B tests, what “feels” right to you will change – and you’ll start writing much more effective copy.

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

Selling expertise face-to-face is quite bit easier. The true Expert’s skills come across in their body language, their confidence, their humility, and how they carry themselves. Most of this non-verbal communication isn’t accessible online, so how can you use the Web to market and sell your expertise?

Here’s six ways we’ve found, in no particular order:
1. Persuasive Copy – One of the biggest (unspoken) challenges of selling expertise is persuading the prospect that it’s OK for her to give up control. The risk (especially in the B2B market) is that you bring in an Expert, and they do such a good job that you yourself are out of a job! How do you know that the Expert will make you look good to your bosses instead of bad? No one wants to feel stupid, and no one wants to lose face, so overcoming this objection online is very tricky. Persuasive copy is probably the best way to solve it. Look at this copy from Jeff Sexton’s sample fitness/training website from his post.

p.s. Once, a very long time ago, when I had just gotten my license, I was with my father in a rather [expletive] of a snow storm in the mountains of North Carolina in my new car.   The weather was awful and I was scared to death… and I’m not ashamed to admit that.  We were seriously in danger of sliding off the edge of the mountain.   Then, I remembered something he had told me years ago when I was a kid.

He taught me that if you’re ever in a situation where you happen to be traveling in a DANGEROUS situation, give the controls of that vehicle to the person with you who is most skilled at operating a vehicle under those types of conditions.   That means you should not necessarily take control yourself… or to give them to the person that’s been driving the “longest”… or to the person that has the most driving “certifications”…

You should give the wheel to the person who is BEST at navigating that car through that particular dangerous terrain.

So, rather than let my pride possibly take my car away from me:

I gave the controls to my new car in that dangerous situation to my father!

In this situation… ask yourself… “Who should I give the navigational controls to?”

See how the copywriter used a parable to let prospects learn it’s OK to give control to an expert who can handle a particular situation?

2. Video Testimonials – We talk about testimonials all the time on this blog, but text-based testimonials are intrinsically “fake-able,” and some skeptical prospects may dismiss them as less than real or authentic. We’re not sure why more companies aren’t leveraging video testimonials, which are a lot harder to fake. When someone believes in their heart that you’re an Expert, and they’ve placed their trust in you, that emotion should come across in a good video.

3. Search Engine Optimization – Let’s face facts…buying a Pay Per Click ad to tell me you’re an expert isn’t very persuasive. Seeing you (or even your name) a few times on the first page of organic search results is. There aren’t many businesses that don’t need to be working on their SEO, but if you’re selling expertise, you’d better be putting some resources towards showing up organically for your target keywords. NOTE: Proceed with caution–overly-aggressive search optimization practices can hurt your credibility with searchers AND search engines!

4. Have a credible web presence – there’s a whole field of study around online credibility, so I won’t spend much ink on this, but it’s worth mentioning that the credibility of your design, content, and even your social networking accounts will definitely have an impact on your ability to market your expertise.

5. A Good Track Record – Maybe this one goes without saying, but make sure your prospects can find your “track record” — your case studies, before and after comparisons, etc. And please don’t make them submit a lead form to get to them. Put the content out there and if they’re interested, they’ll reach out to you.

6. Publish or Perish – Somewhat related to numbers 3-5, what I mean by “publish or perish” (apologies for jargon from Academia) is that you have to be constantly proving and re-proving your expertise. Especially in the technology space, just because you were an Expert 18 months ago doesn’t mean you are now. So make sure that your case studies stay fresh. Keep updating your website to deal with hot topics in your field, and when you don’t have time to do either one, you’d better be blogging or micro-blogging. If you give out a strong, consistent signal, prospects gravitate towards you. If you get lazy, they’ll flounder around for a bit, then follow the newer, stronger signals.

[Ed.: If you didn't already know, FutureNow is the acknowledged Expert in the conversion optimization space. To prove we take our own advice, check out our website to see how we apply these same six principles to our own online efforts.]

Unanswered questions keep visitors from buying/converting — that’s not theory; it’s a fact!

So why, oh why, would you knowingly allow your persuasive copy to ignore a frequently asked question?  Why would you possibly be content with hiding the answers to your prospective customers’ questions in an FAQ page?  Are you trying to weed out all but the most determined of customers?

While I don’t have confirmed experimental numbers to back this up (yet), common sense says that for every customer willing to search for an answer on an FAQ page, there are dozens more who simply give up on the purchase or look to your competitors for the answer.

So instead of erecting a sign saying, “Beware of persuasive pothole, please drive around this hole by visiting our FAQ page,” and hoping your visitors are motivated and alert enough to navigate such an alternate route, why not simply fix the persuasive gaps in your copy.  Here’s how to do that:

If you currently have a FAQ Page, Here’s What to Do/Check

1) Determine where visitors are most likely to access your FAQ page. Look at your analytics to see where visitors are within their site visit/shopping process when they attempt to look at your FAQ. Do they do this early on in the process or later,  as a last resort?

2) Get a sense of context by going to those identified FAQ access pages.  You’re not just interested in the questions themselves, but in the context in which they are asked, so look at the page in terms of why visitors would be on that page.  Note that a persona-based or scenario-based analysis helps with this.

3) Go to your FAQ page and think about the emotional concerns behind the questions. Here are a few examples taken from actual FAQ pages, along with the emotional concerns that probably underlie those questions:

• Will we have access to the instructor to ask questions during the online ____ course? Translation: “how interactive is this course – how much better is it than just buying a book or a CD  DIY-type course?“  Going one step deeper: “I’m afraid I might not get the support I need to actually improve my skill level — how can you reassure me that your course will help me actually kick ass, rather than being an unused resource that makes me depressed about my own personal suck-factor?”
• How long will a [durable home good] last? Translation: “you’re asking a premium price and presenting yourself as the last ____, I’ll ever need – so what kind of proof do you have/historically, exactly how long will one of these suckers hold out?”
• How do I know that my ____ is working correctly? Translation 1: “You’ve sold me on the theoretical benefits of your fancy schmancy _____, but I still feel like I might be getting suckered, so how can I confirm for myself that your device is really doing what you say before my 30-day refund clock runs out.“  Translation 2: “I know this is crucial to making sure my ____ doesn’t die an early death, so how can I reassure myself that I’m not breaking my very expensive and brand-new _____?”
• What are your return/exchange/warranty policies? Translation: “Hey, idiot, you were too stupid to put any kind of point of action assurance near your buy/add to cart buttons and I’m not about to give you my money without knowing this stuff.”
• What differentiates you from other _____? Translation: “Someone told me I should check you out, but I’m not impressed so far – either you’re oblivious as to how hard you’re making it for me to figure out what you do and why I should do business with you, or you just plain suck; so which is it?”
• What kind of care/cleaning/maintenance does ____ require? Translation: How will this fit into my life?  Will I have to baby this thing?  Can it handle the normal knocks and dings of daily life without falling apart?  In 6 months or 2 years, will I look back on this purchase as a waste?

4) If you have live chat or a published phone number, comb through those records or ask your customer service reps for the questions people ask and where they are on the site when they launch the chat service or call in.  Once you have the list of questions gleened from Live Chat and Phone trasncripts/experience, repeat the process used in #3 by examining the emotions and concerns behind the question. How do those results differ from your FAQ?

5) Address underlying concerns or questions within your regular Website copy. You don’t necessarily have to do it with copy, as pictures, testimonials, videos, user reviews and other site elements can also address these concerns, but make sure the questions get answered.

Are there any excuses for having a FAQ?

Well….yeah.  Sometimes when you really need a “knowledge base” library, but you don’t want to call it that, or when you want to make the hard core geeks in your audience feel better about asking their un-frequently asked questions, a FAQ page can work.  Just make sure you ALWAYS provide links back to sales pages from within your FAQ answers.  Once you’ve answered the visitor’s question, move them back onto a persuasive path.

Oh, and sometimes there are some Q&A’s you might actually want to hide, like in this Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 FAQ – notice the first question ; )

But seriously, realize that an FAQ is basically a junk drawer; you’re shoving stuff there because you haven’t taken the time to find a proper home for it.  You realize this question may come up, but you haven’t figured out where it would come up – do the hard work to uncover the context and emotion behind the question and finding a better place for the answer within your copy becomes relatively easy.

[Editor’s note: The author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com

“Brilliant post. We get this all the time, when designing websites for our clients……..But our clients will often use the line “but my customer understands this terminology, these acronyms, my customer is from a particular niche and they all use this terminology”…….It can be hard to argue this point, the client knows their customer better than us…… Yes usability tests would be a good way to prove to a client this problem, however it can be very difficult to find users who fits the persona.”

Thanks for the comment, Hamish, and I’ve run into that situation a few times myself.  So here are a few strategies for dealing with that which have worked well for me:

In working with the client

• Properly frame the discussion: “So what you are telling me is that if prospective clients come to your site and are not as familiar with these acronyms and terms as your “ideal candidate,” your OK with turning those prospects away and losing the sale?” Ultimately, it’s their site, if they want to only speak to “insiders” and the hard core, then that’s a legitimate business decision, just frame the question in business terms so they can acknowledge the bottom-line costs to such a strategy.

• If the client relents when you ask him the “are you willing to lose the sale” question, suggest that you create and link to early-stage and newbie-friendly material. There is certainly no harm in taking an industry term and giving a fresh nuts-and-bolts analysis of it.  At best you’ll get a chance to demonstrate your expertise; at the least, you’ll get some keyword rich and internally linked content.

• Perform a Marketing Copy Autopsy on a piece of their current collateral.  Pull out all the self-applied labels and adjectives to show them how the jargon is really just covering up a lack of substantive content.  That should open up the client’s eyes, and if the autopsy reveals copy with substance, that’s a good sign that maybe the client is correct in their customer-knowledge assessment.

• Do what Seth Godin suggested in the first place: get a flip cam and interview some past or current client customers.  Don’t just test to see if they know the terms, but ask about the implications involved.   Knowing what a graphics card is isn’t the same thing as knowing why it can be critically important to have a powerful one if you’re looking to play hard core video games.

In crafting the clients Web copy

• Spell out acronyms at least once per main landing page, so if, say, COTS was a heavily used acronym, the site would say Commercial Off-the-shelf Technologies, once in a while, as sort of a reminder or lifeline for the reader.

• Insist that no more than 1-2 terms or acronyms appear in any sentence. The problem is often not just that jargon or acronyms are used, but that they are triple and quadruple stacked on top of each other in complex-compound sentences.  That’s when you end up with something like this: “Drawing on our long-term experience as systems integators, solid relationships with our suppliers, and a commitment to the successful execution of the concept of COTS in mission-critical applications, our reputation — and our customer base — has grown.”  Whew!  Even rough familiarity with the industry terms isn’t enough to save most readers from having their brains “go splat” while reading those kind of sentences.  The more complex and technical the material, the more you need simple sentence structures.

• “Aerate” the text with videos, graphs, and photos that provide a sensory experience of the most important technical terms or acronyms.  Imagine a sidebar or box that shows a COTS case study, complete with before and after pictures of the off-the-shelf consumer item and its new military cousin along with a cost comparison showing the savings involved.  As another example, I suggested showing beam shots of the different power LEDs in my product page critique of BalckDiamond’s Headlamp.

An now for a dissenting opinion.

Legendary copywriter Bob Bly has a well known article titled, “Six Things I know for Sure About Marketing to Engineers.”  Point number five plainly states that:

“5. Engineers are not turned off by jargon—in fact, they like it. Consultants teaching business writing seminars tell us to avoid jargon because it interferes with clear communication.

This certainly is true when trying to communicate technical concepts to lay audiences such as the general public or top management. But jargon can actually enhance communication when appealing to engineers, computer specialists, and other technical audiences.

Why is jargon effective? Because it shows the reader that you speak his language. When you write direct response copy, you want the reader to get the impression you’re like him, don’t you? And doesn’t speaking his language accomplish that?

Actually, engineers are not unique in having their “secret language” for professional communication. People in all fields publicly denounce jargon but privately love it. For instance, who aside from direct marketers has any idea of what a “nixie” is? And why use that term, except to make our work seem special and important?”

As I said, if you are narrowing your focus to a special group of insiders – or at least want to appear that you’re doing that – then an unapologetic use of jargon can work great. But I’d still try to test working in a few of my bulleted strategies

And here’s a little desert video on advertising terms – fair warning, though, George Carlin’s language may not be workplace appropriate:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sorry about the headline – the 80s flashbacks are getting to me.  Still, I really do “play stupid” as a Website optimizer and online copywriter.  Or at least I play ignorant.

Why?  Because all those terms and concepts you think everyone understands about your business and what you’re selling – well, you’re wrong about them!  Wrong about both the terms themselves and your potential audience.  If you think I’m mistaken, go back and watch the video again.

Or keep reading to see some real website examples. Either way, let me reassure you that way more of your website visitors just fundamentally don’t “get it” than you’d ever suspect.  Either those visitors:

1. have no idea what the industry standard terms you are using mean,
2. don’t really understand the finer distinctions the terms are supposed to represent, or
3. fail to draw the all-important conclusions and emotional implications that you may be basing your persuasive messaging upon.

Any one of those might be enough to kill your chances for a conversion.

And while there are some good reasons to only mention or allude to the “features” in order to hone in on the benefits, there’s also very few excuses* not to provide links, mouse-overs, and early stage content that can guide the perplexed to a better understanding of your industry and your messaging.

How an “idiot” could improve the Black Diamond Home Page

For those of you who haven’t heard of this company before, Black Diamond Equipment makes cutting edge climbing and skiing equipment.  And before we even look at one of their product pages, I suggest you just go to their website and get a feel for how user-friendly (or not) the overall design seems.  Seriously, go there right now.  I’ll wait.

Ok, now ask yourself this:

• Doesn’t it feel as if the company ONLY produces carabiners?  If you didn’t know the company produced headlamps, skis, tents, etc, would you ever think to look for those?
• Did it take you a while to figure out that the pictured carabiners could be clicked on and rotated towards you?  Or was that just intuitively obvious?  What do you think the designers felt about the “obviousness” of this design.
• If you weren’t interested in carabiners and never clicked on the “see all carabiners” link, would you ever have gotten to the pages dealing with other equipment?
• What do you think is keeping them from simply using a persistent top navigation scheme?
• Do you think “playing an idiot” for a day would help these guys out?

Idiot-Proofing Product Pages 101

Now let’s compare a product page on the Black Diamond site with one for the same product taken from backcountry.com.  We’ll start with a product page for a LED headlamp taken from the Black Diamond site:

What the heck is a “TriplePower LED”?

• Is it 3-times more powerful than a 5mm Nichia LED?
• Is it a 3-watt LED?
• Is it an LED with 3 power settings?

By using this terminology, Black Diamond has achieved the worst of both worlds, not only is the description not enough for a non-light geek to really understand, but neither is it technical enough for a light geek to feel confident in what he is buying.

How about underlining these terms and providing a mouse-over that would show comparisons of the LEDS, their real technical specs, and usage shots, so that an average user could get a sense of the light output and a techie could see the real specs?

And what about the “NRG Rechargable battery”?

• Is it a Lithium-Ion battery?
• Is it Metal Hydride?
• How much does it cost?
• Does it improve or hurt the battery life of the light?
• Can I buy the light already bundled with the battery and it’s charger, etc?

Finally, there’s the “single position switch.”  I’m guessing it’s some sort of rubberized button-looking thing and that you just have to keep clicking it to rotate through all 7 of the modes until you get the one you want.  But wouldn’t it be nice to know for sure:

• That a single position switch = clicky switch, like on a Mag-Light
• What exactly those 7 lighting modes are, and why I’d need that many modes
• Where the button is located?

From the pictures it looks like the “single position switch” might be on the bottom of the light, but assuming that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to link the term “single position switch” to a mousover of that picture along with an explanation of how the switch functions and what the 7 modes are?

As for backcountry.com’s product page for this same headlamp, the page is too long for me to snap an encompasing screenshot and place it here, but I suggest you go to that page and take a look at all of the content rich resources that are provided, including:

• customer photos of the product in-use,
• user reviews, Q&A’s, and
• some actual, non-bullet-pointed, real copy.

But since we’re focusing on the copy, I’ve cut and pasted it below.  Read it and see how many questions this copy answers that Black Diamond’s bullet points leave unclear:

“The Black Diamond Icon Headlamp uses two different types of LED bulbs to give you ultra-bright lighting when you need it and to save battery power when you don’t. The 3-watt center bulb has three settings for light up to 80 meters. Switch to the four SuperBright LED bulbs to get a 200-hour burn time when a lot of light isn’t necessary. This combination of long-distance lighting and long burn time makes the Black Diamond Icon Headlamp a stand-out choice for everything from backpacking to climbing to night skiing. In fact, it impressed Rock and Ice so much that they gave it their Best In Gear Award.

Bottom Line: The Black Diamond Icon Headlamp provides both bright lighting and long-lasting battery life for days on the trail, the rock, and the snow.”

Even if it’s not perfect, that copy is still much clearer, isn’t it?  And understand this: the majority of what isn’t covered in this copy is covered in the user reviews, Q&A’s, etc.  In fact, I’m convinced that the persuasive power of user reviews has as much to do with previous buyers unintentionally answering other customers’ questions within the reviews as it has to do with the increased credibility of user reviews.

Also, understand that this unexplained-term phenomenon isn’t exclusive to technical products, either; it happens in product descriptions for almost everything.  I could have just as easily used tents and asked what the hell a double-wall tent is and why it should matter to me, and so on.

Reverse “The Curse” with Idiot Exercises

While “The Curse of Knowledge” can be hard to overcome, here are a few** sure-fire techniques to get you started on your journey to idiot-optimized copy:

• Do usability testing.  Get someone outside your industry (go ahead and specify minimum industry knowledge in your user request) and watch them move through your site while recording their questions, thoughts, etc.
• Highlight every industry term, phrase, or concept on your site, write them down on a piece of paper, and start interviewing random people on the street about them, just like the guy did in the video.
• Willfully play the part of a 5 year old and ask repeated why questions regarding your industry terms and concepts.  It’s best to team up with a partner/colleague on this one.  Force each other to come up with answers a 10-year old would understand.

After having done any one, or all, of the 3 strategies, go back and re-evaluate your copy.

P.S.  Hat tip to Seth Godin for finding the video and creating a great blog post around it

* Actually, there’s only one excuse: you’re purposely excluding a general audience in order to tightly focus on a hard-core group.  In that case, go ahead amd talk the lingo without apologies, letting anyone and everyone else catch up if they can.  Just realize that you WILL be alienating visitors and potential customers in order to appeal to that smaller, hard-core group.

** Of course, the best sure-fire method of escaping the curse of knowledge is simply to hire an outside copywriter/consultant/optimization specialist

[Editor’s note: the author of this blog is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com

In fact, you may not like the product, either, simply because you’re probably not part of their targeted audience.  So make up your mind now to look past that in order to see the marketing decisions behind both the product and the site.

Let’s start by imagining that you’ve just been challenged to enter the fitness category. Not to sell some machine or piece of equipment, but to sell a workout program.  You can pick any angle of approach you want, and let’s assume you have the wherewithal to find the science or content to make the angle of approach you pick the “real deal.”

What angle of approach would you choose?

And for what audience would you tailor your messaging?

Now, let’s walk through the likely thought process behind the mystery website

• As far as dedicated gym rats go, who really makes up the bulk of that audience? Men.  Younger men, in fact.  I’m guessing, but I’d say probably between the ages of 18-35.

• Why do they work out? The same reason why most people work out, if you ignore the rationalized claims and scratch deeper into their real motivations: they want to look good.  And given this age group, that means looking good to women; they want to attract more chicks.

• Now here’s the million dollar question: how may workout programs are brazen enough to say, “This workout is THE workout for attracting women”? Answer: none.  At least none that I’ve ever come across, until – out of professional curiosity alone, mind you – I clicked on a banner ad for The Adonis Effect.

Now, do I actually like the Website?  No.  I think the cartoon character at the beginning is a huge turnoff.  So is forcing visitors to engage with your “Calculate your Adonis Index” tool before letting them past the splash pages and onto the real sales copy.  Nor do I make any claims for the validity of the statements made on this site or by these entrepreneurs.

What I DO like is the incredibly intelligent approach to marketing a workout program. The last workout program to take such a brazen approach was the infamous buns of steal videotape.  You know, the tape that became a cultural icon, that spawned a 22-tape “of steel” series, and that launched Tamilee Web into fitness icon status?

Always make sure your messaging/copy is On Target

While I don’t think The Adonis Effect will become as high-profile as Buns of Steel (and that might well be a Marketing to Women lesson for you right there), I do think it’ll make a killing off its target audience.  And here’s the take-away lesson from that:

Always make sure your messaging/copy is speaking to the real, deeply felt, emotional needs of the prospective customer.  Crummy writing that’s on target will always beat great writing that’s directed at anything other than the heart of the reader. And of course, that goes for websites as well.

You can ding The Adonis Effect for it’s cheesy Website(s) – along with any number of usability and persuasive faux pas – all you want, but the essential message is on target. And I’d be willing to bet money on their success because of that one factor.

Why Persona-based copy matters – and which copywriting legend would (likely) agree

Back when Holly Buchanan and I used to routinely teach Persuasive Online Copywriting, we’d have the class write a short piece of copy based on a standard demographic/target-audience profile, then we’d replace that crappy (but typical) marketing profile with personas and have the students re-write their copy.

Invariably, the second pieces of copy blew away the first – not because we had magically turned the students into better writers, but always because the copy went from stereotypical advertising appeals to emotionally on target copy for intended audience.

And you know who else preached this same “On Target” message?  The late Gary Halbert.  Just watch this video and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about at around the 1:40 mark:

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S.  Although a public/open session of Persuasive Online Copywriting hasn’t been held in about a year, you can still get the majority of the lessons from that 1-day course by attending Writing for the Radio and Internet at Wizard Academy.  Chris Maddock and I co-teach that 2-day course, with Chris focusing on improving core writing skills while I teach a specific methodology for creating and linking on target web copy.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

I came across this bit o’ trivia while writing my post on Ogilvy’s preferred ad layout.  I found it written up by Robert Rosenthal at Freaking Marketing, who had done the detective work to find and scan in this Pierce-Arrow ad that ran about 25 years before Ogilvy’s Rolls Royce campaign.

If you consider yourself a student of advertising, you’ll want to read Robert’s entire post to get all the historical details, but any copywriter should find it worthwhile to compare the two headlines and analyze the improvements Ogilvy made to his version.

First, let’s look at the two headlines

So here are the two headlines for comparison:

The only sound one can hear in the new Pierce-Arrows is the ticking of the electric clock

vs.

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the ticking of its electric clock.”

Why the Ogilvy Headline was far more powerful

1) Specificity: The Ogilvy ad gives an actual speed.  Not only are specifics  always more believable than generalities, but in this case, the specific speed makes the reader think that an actual test was conducted to determine this fact.  By comparison, the Pierce-Arrows ad reads like hype.

2) Quote marks:  The quotation marks around the Rolls Royce headline indicate to the casual reader, scanning the page, that this was a remark made by someone, perhaps by a tester or engineer.   And indeed, the subdeck and first bullet point confirm that this is the case.  Again, the Pierce-Arrow headline has none of this credibility-building substantiation.

3) Believability of the claim itself: Notice the change from “only sound” to “loudest noise.”  For the reader, conjuring up a mental image of driving in a car in which the electric clock is actually louder than the engine is relatively easy, whereas the mind rejects the idea of a moving car making absolutely no noise except for that of the clock.  Consequently, the Pierce-Arrow ad practically provokes skepticism and dismissal from the reader.

4) Words fat with emotional associations: the difference between sound and noise may seem subtle, but the emotional connotations are miles apart.  Sound could be anything, and all else being equal, the word alone usually has positive associations.  Noise, on the other hand, is a nuisance.  Tell me I won’t hear a sound in a car, and I’ll think you’re exaggerating or  speaking figuratively – would anybody even want to drive in the kind of sensory deprivation chamber that that would require?  But tell me that the loudest noise in the car comes from a ticking lock, and I’ll want to experience the serenity of such an exquisitely engineered car/cabin that is capable of nullifying the unpleasant noises and nuisances of the road.

Why the Ogilvy Ad was far more modern

In some ways, my comparison is simply not fair since the Pierce-Arrow ad hails from a far less cynical age than the Rolls Royce Ad.  One could suppose that back in the days of the Pierce-Arrow ad, “yeah, sure” and “prove it” probably weren’t the automatic responses to any advertising claim that they are today.

But the transition in audience attitudes wasn’t instantaneous.  In fact, you can already see the need for proof and substantiation by the time Ogilvy’s ad rolls around.  That’s why the Rolls Royce ad:

• Includes engineering and expert testimonials or quotes.
• Provides no less than 12 bullet points of factual copy – facts proving the extreme quality, engineering, and attention to detail that goes into making a Rolls Royce
• Openly states the price of the car without dancing around the subject.

How to apply this to the Web

If you are an online copywriter here’s what you need to ask yourself:

1) Are you doing the research that Ogilvy did in order to come up with powerful headlines?  And once you have that angle of approach, are you anywhere near as careful with your wordsmithing?

2) More importantly, do you think the public has grown any less cynical since the time of that Rolls Royce ad?

3) Most importantly, are you providing more substantiated copy, proof, and pricing information than Ogilvy’s Rolls Royce ad does?  Or are you providing less?

All copywriting stories are “nested.”

In writing copy you inevitably create – at a minimum – one frame of reference: the one between your authorial voice and the reader.

In fact, copywriting teachers often advise aspiring writers to “talk” onto the page as if they’re talking to a best friend, simply because that mental exercise animates that almost invisible frame of reference in the mind of the writer.* Writers who forget that frame of reference tend to produce artificial, corporate-speak copy.

So introducing a story into your conversation with the audience instantly “nests” that story within the larger “narrative” of your copy, one frame of reference within the larger frame in which you’re “speaking” to the prospect.

But most readers are consciously oblivious to this frame-shifting because the nesting often takes place rather quickly.  And also because great copywriters smooth-over or hide the frame switching in much the same way that a film editor cuts between camera angles without drawing attention to the cut.  You don’t consciously realize that your TV show changes camera shots an average of every 4 seconds do you?  Don’t believe it?  Count it out for yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And just as with the TV film cuts so it is with frame switching in copy: once you know what to look for, this technique will start to jump out at you.  Let’s take a look at one of the more famous examples of this written by Martin Conroy:

“On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both – as young college graduates are – were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.

Recently, these men returned to their college for their 25th reunion.
They were very much alike. Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same Midwestern manufacturing company, and were still there.

But there was a difference. One of the men was manager of a small department of that company. The other was its president.

What Made The Difference

Have you ever wondered, as I have, what makes this kind of difference in people’s lives? It isn’t always a native intelligence or talent or dedication. It isn’t that one person wants success and the other doesn’t.

The difference lies in what each person knows and how he or she makes use of that knowledge.

And that is why I am writing to you and to people like you about The Wall Street Journal. For that is the whole purpose of the Journal: To give its readers knowledge – knowledge that they can use in business…”

Did you notice how quickly the nesting took place?

If not, the beginning of this, perhaps the most famous direct mail piece of all time, initiates the story telling frame by starting in storybook fashion, except that instead of “once upon a time,” Martin Conroy starts telling his story with “on a beautiful late spring afternoon.” And with that one phrase Conroy establishes both his authorial voice, speaking to you, and establishes the inner frame of reference – that of the business parable.  Pretty cool huh?

Now recall the important lesson from my previous post on frame-switching:

Emotions created in one frame echo across to the other

So if a story told within your copy is necessarily a nested story, then the emotions created within that inner story will echo across to the sales conversation of the “frame” story, i.e. the rest of the copywriting.

Do you see where this is going?

If not, what’s important to realize here is that a copywriter can say things in story format that he cannot credibly state within regular copy.  Conroy can’t really start his ad with “Hey, if you don’t buy The Wall Street Journal, you’ll never rise above middle management.”  Undoubtedly, that line of copy would have created a firestorm of complaints.

And yet the emotions behind that statement – nay, even more powerful emotions, since they’ve now been given life within the mental image of facing either success or frustration at a college reunion – slide under the radar screen and into the minds of Conroy’s readers under cover of this story.  The nested story emotionally primes the reader within the safe confines of “just a story”, while simultaneously positioning that emotional charge t0 jump across to the rest of the copy.

So when Conroy changes frames by slipping in a direct address to the reader with his first subheading of “What made the difference?” his readers are already emotionally primed to eagerly anticipate and take advantage of this all-important “difference” between the two young men.

This causes many readers to interpret Conroy’s offer that The Wall Street Journal will provide  “knowledge that they can use in business” as ‘the WSJ will help me get the promotions I deserve’  – a conclusion made more powerful because it comes from within the reader and not explicitly from the copy itself.

Yet while just thinking about this technique as presented, in terms of explicit story telling, will cause you to spot scads of examples from famous copywriting ads, you won’t really see how widely the technique is used until you realize that:

Referring to the past = Story Telling

For instance, does anyone really think that John Caples’ brilliant headline, “They laughed when I sat down at the piano,” is any less of an introduction to a nested story than Conroy’s “One fine spring day”?

Or how about this one from Sean D’souza’s Psychotactics Newsletter:

When I first started in business, I’d spend hours in meetings.
 I’d be driving to meetings. I’d be sitting in meetings. And
 then I’d get back to my home-office (I no longer work from
 home). And then have to do the job that the client and I agreed
 upon. And I’d do this six-sometimes seven days a week.
Fifty-two weeks a year.
=====================================
I was too afraid to go on vacation
=====================================
I was afraid that a really big job would come along, just as I was getting on the plane. I’d have nightmares about how the client would call; find me away; give the job to my competition, and then continue to work with the competition.
=====================================
I was living in a bit of a trap
=====================================
And I couldn’t get out. And then I discovered the power of copywriting. That copywriting was more than just copy.  It was control…

Sean establishes his nested story with the simple phrase “When I first started in business” and then goes on to shine a bright light on the sensitive emotionally needs of his audience – without offending them!

Nested storytelling and frame switching are everywhere

• Joe Karbo Frank Schultz used a nested story in his famous “Fluke of Nature” grapefruit ad, which starts with, “I’m a farmer, and the story I tell you is the absolute truth, as incredible as it may seem”

• Joseph Sugarman used it for his first BluBlockers ad, wherein the first subhead reads, “When I put on the pair of glasses what I saw I could not believe.  Nor will you.”  And his first line of copy?  “I am about to tell you a true story.”

• Ogilvy frequently made use of stories within his Schwepes and Hathaway campaigns.

• The old Charles Atlas ads certainly used storytelling, as the ad writer, Charles P. Roman, headlined them with the immortal, “The insult that made a man out of Mac”

• Frank Irving Fletcher created his famous “A $10,000 Mistake” ad as a short form story.  Here’s the entire ad: “A $10,000 Mistake: A client for whom we had copied a necklace of Oriental Pearls, seeing both necklaces before her, said: Well, the resemblance is remarkable, but this is mine! Then she picked ours! Tecla; 398 Fifth Avenue, New York”

• And if you really want to see short form story taken to the realm of art, wherein the whole of Conroy’s WSJ opening is recast in 9 short words, then take a look at this:

Finally, for those of you who stuck with me on this, I offer you a dessert ; )

If you really want to see a master of nested storytelling, just watch any of the Bill Cosby videos available on YouTube and pay attention to how Cosby effortlessly switches from being within the story to talking to the audience directly.  I think this one on “Jeffery” is a great one to start with:

Click here to view the embedded video.

But I just felt I had to call out an example of how poor copywriting and writing for search engine robots can ruin a decent Unique Value Proposition.

I was referred to a site to look at their homepage design (see screenshot, highlighting is mine), and immediately noticed that they had a prominent Unique Value Proposition (UVP) statement, which was promising.

The UVP statement wasn’t the best I’ve read, but at least it was an attempt that could be tested and refined. But the sub-text under the UVP was what irked me enough to write this post.

Someone decided to “we-we” all over the UVP! And it looks like they also tried to write for search engine robots instead of humans with credit cards:

“We specialize in custom ties, custom bow ties, bowtie / cummerbund / handkerchief sets, custom cufflinks, matching gift boxes, women ’s scarves, and much more. We can custom make your neckwear any way you desire. We have both standard ties and clip on ties as well as extra long ties for your custom ties. We even have custom ties for boys as young as 6 months. Our products are great for corporations, organizations, churches, choirs, schools, uniforms, athletic teams, fraternities, formal and special events, and many more.”

Notice that by focusing on SEO only, they end up with copy that will resonate with no one.

Here’s the official tally from our free We We Calculator:

Your Customer Focus Rate: 37.50% (3 customer-focused words)

Your Self Focus Rate: 62.50% (5 self-focused words, and 0 mentions of the Company Name)

You speak about yourself about 2 times as often as you speak about your customers. Might that have an impact on your effectiveness?

I’m not a Search Engine Optimization guru, but I’d wager that any SEO prowess you lost by fixing that kind of copy could be made up by 1 or 2 quality, keyw0rd-rich inbound links from reputable, related sites, don’t you?

What if the seller told an amusing story about that particular pack of Pokemon cards in the product description – would you bid more based on that?  Do you think others might?

Sounds silly, but based on a real-life incident, one mother collected $103.50 from the top bid (out of 44 other bids) on her pack of Pokemon cards simply because people fell in love with the story she told about how she came to own the cards in the first place.  Nothing changed about this under-7$ pack of cards except for the story.

And now, one of the coolest web projects I’ve seen in a while is attempting to recreate a similar phenomenon with a variety of objects but with a really cool twist – they want the buyer to know that the story behind the object is fake!  Here’s how the project website describes the process:

“The project’s curators purchase objects — for no more than a few dollars — from thrift stores and garage sales.

A participating writer is paired with an object. He or she then writes a fictional story, in any style or voice, about the object. Voila! An unremarkable, castoff thingamajig has suddenly become a “significant” object!

Each significant object is listed for sale on eBay. The s.o. is pictured, but instead of a factual description the s.o.’s newly written fictional story is used. However, care is taken to avoid the impression that the story is a true one; the intent of the project is not to hoax eBay customers. (Doing so would void our test.) The author’s byline will appear with his or her story.

The winning bidder is mailed the significant object, along with a printout of the object’s fictional story. Net proceeds from the sale are given to the respective author. Authors retain all rights to their stories.

The test’s results — photos, original prices and final sale prices, stories — are cataloged on this website. The project’s curators retain the right to use these materials in other venues and media. For example: Maybe we’ll publish a book.”  [emphasis mine]

Go ahead and treat yourself to a few of the objects’ stories, you’ll get sucked in, I promise you.  And what’ll you want to bet that these items end up selling for far more than the “few dollars” paid for them?

How this applies to selling “normal” products online

There is a dangerous assumption that because the public demands more straightforward or honest copy, that the best bet is to simply provide little factoid like bullet points rather than actual, detail-rich product copy. Here’s an example of bullets vs. copy taken from a flip-flop manufacturers website:

So focus in on the first, fourth, and final bullet points, if you would.  What you’ll find are the following facts:

• 1st bullet = 2 piece custom bottom unit mold is an OM exclusive design
• 4th bullet = Super soft Crosslite topsole…
• Last bullet = Croslite is soft, comfortable, lightweight, superior gripping, and odor resistant.

So here’s the question: do you think a little storytelling on the reasoning behind and development of the 2-piece bottom and Crosslite topsole might help increase the perceived value of these flip flops?

Just as an example, here’s what the bottom of the shoe looks like (courtesy of Zappos):

Now, do you think the two piece design might allow the shoe to flex more easily with your foot?  Do you think that might improve the comfort and possibly even eliminate or minimize the annoying flapping sound generated by most flop flops?

What if the company told you that this 2-piece sole was born of extensive gate-testing of 100s of flip-flop designs?

Would you pay more for the flip flop knowing that?

Same thing with Crosslite.  I’m betting a good story about it’s odor fighting properties, especially regarding how and why crosslite can fight foot odor, would also up the sandals perceived value.

As of now, the flip flops go for $35 on the company’s website, and slightly more than that from Zappos.  That’s about $15 cheaper than a pair of Reef Fannings.  Now, I don’t own a pair of Ocean Minded Sea Weeds, but I’d bet they’re roughly comparable to the Reef Fannings in terms of construction, fit, comfort, etc.  And I’d also bet that much of the Fanning’s popularity is tied up in the story behind:

1. Mick Fanning’s input into the design of the flip flop
2. The Fanning-inspired bottle opener embedded into the flip-flop’s sole

Yes, I’m probably simplifying things a bit.  I realize Reef is a bigger brand name than Ocean Minded and that the Fanning flip flops also have Nike-like air cushioning in the heal.  But from where I’m sitting, a good origin’s story just might account for the majority of that 42% increase in asking price.

The difference between increasing an item’s price and increasing its saleability

Will you always be able to charge more because of a good story or great product description?  No.

Sometimes you’ll just sell the item more easily, which usually translates into selling more of that item.  If I’m trying to decide on a pair of flip-flops to buy, there’s a chance that I simply won’t pay the same for a no-name brand than I will for a pair of reefs.  But that I might buy a brand like Ocean Minded’s at a discount as long as I had a reason to trust their quality.  And that’s where the product development stories come in: the stories would increase the sandal’s saleability, if not the actual selling price.

So, rather than only 1 visitor in 50 pulling the trigger on a pair, the right storyline might cause 1 in 5 browsers to buy.  You didn’t increase margins, but you did boost your volume and conversion rate, which is a lot more than industry-standard bullet points can ever claim.

This past month, I shared my 10 step process for optimizing copy for websites or landing pages on my Market Motive training call. I was able to convince my friends at Market Motive to let me share the full presentation video with you (normally they only share the first few chapters unless you are a paid member). Unfortunately, it will only be available to be viewed on the blog until June 3rd.

If you don’t know what Market Motive is; Market Motive was started by my good friends John Marshall, Michael Stebbins and Avinash Kaushik. They provide online training and certification in Internet Marketing. There are over 300 videos like this one already in their archives. This is especially critical now that travel and training budgets have been slashed. It features some great instructors who present monthly trainings, answering questions from audience members, as well as a great online forum where you can ask additional questions afterwords.  Market Motive Instructors include:

• Greg Jarboe, Jamie O’Donnell on Online PR
• Alan Rimm-Kaufman on Paid Search / PPC
• Matt Bailey on Social Media
• Avinash Kaushik, John Marshall on Web Analytics
• Todd Malicoat on SEO
• Michael Stebbins on Email Marketing

Enjoy the presentation (it will take less than 20 minutes to watch)! I’ve also included the 10 steps with additional references below.

(If you are having problems displaying the video in your browser
click here to Play Now.)

The 10 Steps to Optimizing Copy

When evaluating and improving copy I work through these 10 steps one at a time.

1. Headlines

Why are headlines first?  They are the critical attention-getters that allow your visitor to determine if the page is relevant to his or her need in just a few seconds. Readers of your pages use headlines and sub headlines (headers and subheaders) to grok the content on a page and decide if they want to read more of your copy. Headlines aid in the visual task of scanning and skimming, which helps your visitors organize the information you present.  Worded appropriately, they encourage your visitors to go deeper into your persuasive copy.

2. First Mental Image

This is usually a combination of your headline and how it ties into your first few sentences of copy along with your first picture (if you have one in the paragraph).  We’ve written several post that illustrate the power of a good first mental image.  You may remember the post about how to convert a visitor in under 8 seconds. A strong mental image is achieved by choosing the best copy perspective for your message.  Did you miss the copy perspective series by copywriter and copywriting instructor extraordinaire Jeff Sexton?

3. WIIFM

Everybody’s favorite radio station – what’s in it for me. Are you speaking to the reader about what matters to them?  And are you speaking their language?  Different personality preferences have different ways of engaging with your content and making decisions.  This is where (and why) using personas to decide your content strategy can be so valuable in improving your conversion rate.

4. Check for We-We

If you use your own name or “we” too many times in your copy you’ll end up sounding self-centered rather than customer focused.  Face it: you’re not Denny Crane.  So use our we-we or customer focus calculator to see how self-centered vs. customer-focused your copy is.  You can also read our post to better understand how to measure your we-we.  I’ve had many people tell me that they boosted their conversion rate by improving their we we score and creating more customer-focused copy.

5. Remove the Black Words

Eliminate the black words. Avoid words that do not contribute toward a more vivid or colorful mental image.

6. Reformatting for Readability

Your online copy must be formatted to make it easy to digest online. You want to maximize skimming and scanning just the way Amazon reformatted their page.

7. Improve Your Verbs

Your copy can always be improved by pumping up your verbs and writing in active not passive voice. You can change a couple of setting in Microsoft Word to check for passive voice for you.

8. Wording in Links and Calls to Action

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen recently wrote about his research about the importance of keywords in your hyperlinks. Jeff Sexton shares how to write more persuasive hyperlinks and calls to action so you don’t sound like a “more-on“.

9. Words Exist in Other Places Than Just Your Copy

Don’t forget to evaluate and test the wording in your images, flash, video and audio content. One client changed the words on the Flash banner on his homepage and reduced abandonment by more than 28%.

10. When All Else Fails – Use the Sucking Wind Checklist

1. Do you offer a clear message and value?
2. Have you established Trust & Credibility?
3. Have you answered all the main objections?
4. Have you addressed the emotional “ownership” of the sale?
5. Have you substantiated your claims?
6. Have you made the next steps clear?
7. Could you have said the same thing in a 1/3 of the words?

Improving your copywriting is just one of the many efforts you need to continually improve your results and keep your goals on target.

P S If you enjoyed this post please consider Tweeting it please.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Here’s a few business examples:

• Sales results slide a bit, but aren’t really bad enough to push management into real action.  They look around at some of their sales training and sales recruiting options, but sit on that information as long as times are moderately good.  Then, when a competitor starts stealing away key accounts or the market starts shrinking it suddenly becomes time to buy sales training.

• A company’s e-mail hosting requirements grows increasingly more complex.  The in-house hosting becomes shaky at best and the IT manager knows it should be outsourced.  He takes a look at his outsourcing options, but he’s got about 10 other higher-priority items on his to-do list.  He might putter along like this for a year before suffering, say, a 2-day e-mail outage.  Now the IT manager/company is really in the market for outsourced exchange hosting.

What I’m talking about are precipitating events – the kind of things that move a someday/maybe aspiration into a firm resolve to buy.

Now here’s the deal: most companies involved with B2B and complex sales know (or at least the sales people know) exactly what their top 5 or so precipitating events are, but most B2B websites utterly fail to address any of the primary emotional concerns and questions of an individual or organization experiencing such an event.

As I’ve said before, B2B sales are far more emotional and personal than most marketers want to admit.  Failing to take into account how a precipitating event would effect your prospects emotions and concerns can utterly kill the sale before you’ve even acquired the lead.  My thoughts on exercise might look quite a bit different after a heart health scare than before.  I might well be less concerned about regaining my lost (and largely notional) athleticism than just plain fitting enough basic cardio into my routine so as to not end up a “dangers of sedentary lifestyle” statistic.

Think the very same thing doesn’t happen with organizations and the decision makers within them?

And if you want to go one step beyond the basics of relevant copy, you might even want to consider how you could take a visitor in the “faint signal” and someday maybe stage and seed them with messaging and a recall cue associated with likely precipitant events.  But that’s for another post…

For now, figure out your precipitative events and see how many concerns and questions your website leaves unaddressed and unanswered.

But (most) websites aren’t linear because hyperlinks break linearity (aka subvert hierarchy).

People don’t read (most) Websites one full page at a time in a numbered order; they read/scan/move from one link that interests them to the next link that interests them, often entering or starting on something other than page #1 (what bad web designers notionally understand as the home page).

This means “Long copy” and “short copy” only apply to Websites metaphorically at best, roughly translating to “content rich & substantiated” and “minimalist / pared down,” respectively.

The upside is that hyperlinks make it possible to get the best of both (offline) worlds. Visitors who want more substantiation and richer content can drill down on the links that interest them, and visitors who only want a quick, bottom-line summary and an express path to converting can get that too – all on the same site.

That said, long copy equivalents still tend to out-convert “short copy” alternatives.  Here’s why.

The crucial element: Are you answering their questions & concerns?

Two recent studies, one involving complex B2B sales/Websites and one on e-commerce sites, show that well over 50% of potential leads/customers fail to convert because the Websites studied failed to answer prospects’ questions and provide needed information.

I’ve experienced it myself: if I need to know a wireless card or piece of software will work on my Mac, I’m simply not buying until I get that answered. Similar dynamics exists with concerns rather than absolute requirements, and, yes, this is especially critical for services, complex sales, and lead generation.

Content rich sites typically out-convert minimalist designs because they more completely answer the prospects’ questions.

And as I’ve previously written, question-answering content isn’t just copy. High quality pictures answer questions and concerns. User reviews answer questions and concerns. So do videos, blogs, forums, etc. And, of course, there’s persuasive copy.

Modeling Customer Psychology and Persuasive Online Copywriting

Suppose you’re genuinely interested in buying something, talking to a salesman about it, and in the process of asking how much it costs. How many times can that sales guy dodge or ignore your question before he destroys your trust?

Once? Twice, maybe.

With online copy, visitors ask questions by scanning the page and clicking on links. If your web copy doesn’t facilitate scanning and skimming, and if you don’t provide hyperlinks and content to answer visitors’ questions, your Website will become that used car salesman who won’t give a straight answer to a direct question.

At Future Now, we’re big on Personas simply because we’re big on making sure Websites answer the questions and concerns of their visitors.  We find it essential to model and facilitate the flow of visitor-website sales conversations in order to avoid the “used car salesman” syndrome.

So rather than having any old interaction or conversation with visitors, personas allow one to reverse engineer conversations that lead to conversions. To do this, simply:

• Take a persona’s emotional state, concerns, and informational needs upon entering a Website
• Compare that starting point with what the visitor will have to feel, know, and believe in order to confidently take the action you want them to convert
• And then plan out the conversation your site will need to have with that persona in order to make that persuasive journey from starting point to sale.

Going through this process allows Website designers and copywriters to persona-lize the Website. They can plan messaging and links custom tailored for each buying behavior/motivation.  The visitor can then self-determine just how many rabbit-holes of information/assurance/question-answering she needs to in order to feel comfortable buying, thereby getting the exact “length” of copy that’s right for her.

Fast decision makers and late stage buyers that just need a quick and easy way to buy, get it. And those visitors needing a lot of information, insight, and assurance can get that too.

Think of it as an adult and sales-oriented choose-your-own-adventure novel. Or just think of it as a really sincere sales conversation performed by your best salesman who just happens to be available to talk to (and convert) customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What more could you ask from either long or short copy?

P.S. For a different (but congruent) take on the advantages of Long Copy (and it’s online equivalents), check out Sonia Simone’s excellent article over at CopyBlogger.

• Don’t waste hyperlink words on non-descriptive or generic words.  Make links keyword rich and ensure that customers can predict where the link will take them.  Plan and link for maximum “scent”
• Use plain language.  In other words, talk to the dog in the language of the dog (about what matters to the dog).
• Front load user- and action-oriented terms.  For calls to action, we’ve always recommended an imperative verb + (implied) user benefit

But one of the article’s baseline assumptions seemed off to me: do website visitors really follow the F pattern regardless of a page’s graphic design and layout?  What if you’re selling lingerie?  Wouldn’t you expect a different eye-plot than the standard F-pattern; something closer to this:

The whole point of a properly designed page is to direct and guide the visitor’s attention/eyes where you want them to go.  That’s why visual prominence is so important to page layout and why people (rightly) spend money testing it with sophisticated eye tracking equipment in order to get these kind of results:

And for more text-heavy sites and pages, wouldn’t skim- and scan-friendly formatting that makes use of bullets, bolding, and embedded links similarly affect or change the F-pattern described by Nielsen? We know the direction of your model’s eyes can affect how people look at your page.

I’d also imagine that just as buying a new car suddenly helps its automotive twins to “magically” appear all over the road, a strongly scented link can allow the reader to notice and pick it out amidst the rest of the text on the page, despite the fact that it may or may not have been entirely front-loaded to maximize the impact of its first 11 characters.

What do you think?  Do page layout and scent trump (or at least alter) F-pattern scanning?

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

So start your headline optimization process with a close look at scent.  These links will help drive home the point:

Bryan Eisenberg gets interviewed on Scent and Landing Page Stickiness:

Click here to view the embedded video.

How lack of scent feels like “bait and switch” to website visitors

Broken scent between e-mails and landing pages accounts for 35% of failed campaigns

Step 2. Angle of Approach: After you understand what it will take to provide continuity of scent, you’ll need to do the research and idea generation to come up with that compelling hook, or angle of approach that will compel readers to stop and scan the article.

Think of it this way, if scent is about matching information, keywords, and look and feel, angle of approach is about matching your copy to visitors’ emotional drives, motivations, hopes, dreams, fears, etc.  Of course, it’s also about introducing a compellingly interesting thought into the reader’s mind.  For some incredibly helpful tools and techniques on Angles of Approach,take a look at the following blog posts:

How to connect with your prospect’s dominant emotion

How to polarize an audience to speak to the prospects you most want

Roy Williams on Choosing Whom to Lose

Why writing to a specific person (or persona) Overcomes the 200 Headlines Myth

The power of Magic Words – and how to find them

Sean D’Souza on the Power of New & Knew

Sean on how specifics beat generalities when it comes to Angles of Approach

Roy Williams on Framing First Mental Images

Compelling the visitor to keep reading

Why your headline may want to refer to an unseen action

I’d recommend you come up with at least a couple of different approaches and test them.  This might cause you to rewrite your first paragraph or two of body copy for each test variant, but it’s well worth the effort.

Step 3. Wordsmithing: Once you have the angle of approach and the “Scent” requirements, then it’s time for some of the traditional wordsmithing normally associated with writing headlines.  Can you sharpen the point?  Can you increase the curiosity factor?  Should it be a statement or a question?  Can you swap out words to create different emotional associations or connotations?  Can you test fractions vs. percentages?  What kind of presuppositions can you bury in And so on.

Here’s a monster list of links containing some of the best stuff I’ve seen on Headlines:

First, go sign up for Sean’s newsletter and get his free PDF report on Why do most headlines fail.

Second, read through Jay Abraham’s list of 100 Greatest Headlines Ever written

Third, listen to Gary Bencivenga’s explanation of why you should build credibility into your headlines

Now feast on Brian Clark’s brilliant headline articles:

5 Simple Ways to Open Your Post With a Bang

10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work

7 More Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work

Warning: Use These 5 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas at Your Own Risk

How to Get 53% More Readers for Every Blog Post You Write

And for sheer tonnage of listed techniques, it’s hard to resist Chris Bloczynski’s post:

99 Headline Techniques Revealed

Or SEO Blackhat’s 54 Headline Templates That Sell

Of course, it goes without saying that with all these choices, you’ll want to test and optimize, and the Grok’s own post on Top 10 Ideas for Testing Your Headlines is a great place to start, or you can watch the webinar on testing headlines and calls to action:

So it’s only fair to ask: can you get sophisticated and wary audiences to buy pseudo-snake oil simply by switching from extolling the virtues of a single miracle product to praising the miraculous combination of two semi-wondrous products?  As in this teeth whitening example:

Well, yes, actually.  The tactic works because having to use two products is a type of downside.

By implying that the promised miracles are too big for just one product and that you’ll need to combine a couple of wonder-products to get the results, the copywriter is tacitly admitting a downside to the strategy: you’ll have to buy two products instead of just one.  And admitting the downside boosts credibility.

Moreover, the “housewife just like you who stumbled into a miracle cure of the decade” bit (the part that’s “enhanced” by the false home town claim) comes off as a lot more credible because more people can see themselves discovering a combination of existing products than discovery a single miracle cure.

But, wait: I can get you a trial sample of both for free!

Ah the copy writer givest a downside, and then the she taketh it away – almost.  If I can get both products for free, it’s not much of a downside that I need to combine the two of them, is it.  Plus, I can see if the combination really works before having to buy.

And then the auto-renewal on your credit card snags ya.

P.S. As a follow up to the Jenny Perfect Skin article, Grok reader Steve Chase snagged this screen shot from Calcutta and it seems that Jenny has a twin sister living there!  And she ALSO figured out this amazing skin combo.  Incredible, huh?

So creep past the security guard of the analytical, logical, linear, give-me-the-facts left brain. Speak to the emotional, intuitive dimension every human possesses and relies on – write to the right brain. And then listen to the fabulous tune your cyber-cash register can sing – Ca-ching, Ca-ching, Ca-ching!

We know a lot about your brain. We know it has two hemispheres – left and right – and we have a pretty good map of what goes on in the left brain, with its centers for sensory input and associated memory, motor coordination, planning, judgment, and emotion. We say it’s the seat of logic, objectivity and details. We know less about the map of the right brain, the seat of intuition, subjectivity and big pictures. But we know the left brain is always checking things out with the right brain. Just as the child glances at the parent for approval she’s on the right track.

Now hear this: Human persuasion is a right brain process. To persuade effectively, you must let your emotional hair down and snare your prospects by singing the right brain’s song.

How to do that? I’ll give you some pointers my dear friend Roy Williams, one pumped-up right-brain dude, shared with me on how to free your Grok!

Just Do It

First, don’t be afraid. Just write something. Anything. If it’s worth doing at all, it doesn’t matter if you do it badly at first. You’ll get better at it along the way. It’s called practice. We all gotta start somewhere and it’s a heck of a lot better than being stuck in analysis paralysis!

The Flow of the Process

Don’t even dream of beginning at the beginning. Instead, begin at the end. Decide what you are trying to accomplish – the ultimate purpose of the communication – so you know where and how it needs to end. Remember Alice?

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

`I don’t much care where–’ said Alice.

`Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

(Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)

How many movies have you seen that have a great plot, interesting characters, thoughtful dialogue, and the whole kit and caboodle go down the drain in a lousy ending? What a disappointment. And the left-brain stomps in to take charge, discounting all that came before. Knowing where to end is that important!

When you’ve got your end, you can begin. Where? Anywhere. Pick a word and go. The more unusual the better. If you’re stuck, open the morning paper, place your finger on any word, think relevance and where you are going, and voila! You’re on your way.

Suppose you’ve got a really cool gadget that allows customers to get more traffic. Start your announcement using the word “behead” (see below for a solution one of our FutureNow guys came up with).

What to Leave Out

Much as you know and love what you do, it’s easy to get trapped trying to convey everything in one fell swoop. You need to leave stuff out. First, folks can only maintain their interest for so long. Second, when you tell them something they already know, you bore them (see the left-brain marching in). Third, the greatest magic is often present in what is left unsaid. Roy Williams says: “Speak to the customer in the language of the customer about what matters to the customer.” And the unsaid magic? Think iceberg: one-eighth above water, seven-eighths below, but nobody would mistake what it is.

End, begin, omit. Got it? Now revisit some of those ideas about revving up your writing and start writing “right.” Go on, free your Grok!

—

“Behead?” He puzzled for the briefest moment. “You’ve beheaded the monster of frustration. You’ve just installed our gadget and, suddenly, getting tens of thousands of visitors to your website doesn’t take forever.”

*originally publsihed 4/2002

Consciously using rhythm techniques helps you generate sight, feeling and, yes, even sound images for your reader.

Rhythm as Visual Mood

People internalize what they read as visual images – that’s one of the great beauties of sitting down with a good book: it gives you the opportunity to create mental worlds. And the pace of your writing reinforces the mood of its visuals, in an almost movie-like way.

To inspire an excited, fast-moving feeling in your reader, punctuate intentionally, and impart motion through the use of action verbs and short, rolling words. If you want to convey a relaxed feeling, a sense of rest or of moodiness, lengthen your sentences, use abundant punctuation and appropriate descriptives, and pay very close attention to detail.

Your pulse races, hands clenching your ticket as she comes flying into the homestretch. Whispering a prayer, you watch her cross the line. A photo finish. Too close to call. Eternal silence. Bated breath. The announcement crackles in your ear. She lost. By a nose.

How do you feel? Breathing just a bit shallower? This example is full of short, incomplete sentences. Lots of periods that bring readers abruptly to the close of a moment, yet leave them hanging, so they want to move on. Visually, it’s choppy, a montage of images that gives you more information than actually appears in the words themselves.

Now read this:

Your pulse races, your hand clenches your ticket, she comes flying into the homestretch. You whisper a prayer, she crosses the line, a photo finish, too close to call, eternal silence, bated breath. The announcement crackles in your ear. She lost by a nose.

Pretty much the same short sentences, but a different scheme of punctuation. Does that change the images the passage creates in your mind? Me, I visualize this event in a softer focus. The montage isn’t as stop-and-go; instead it almost flows with a strange quality of suspended motion that is at odds with the obvious speed of what is happening.

You gotta use a technique like this sparingly – heaven forbid you should create a whole Web page or email of it. It would quickly bore your readers by becoming predictable and would lose its inherent power.

Now let’s set a different mood:

Your fingers finally uncramp and ease their vise grip on damp paper, a palpable weight in your open palm, the embodiment of hope that has become failed dream. You shred precisely, with contempt, then surrender the useless burden, and the tatters flutter like betrayal to the stained concrete at your feet, no longer distinguishable in their promise from crumpled candy wrappers and empty plastic cups.

Now how do you feel? Can you see the palm opening in slow motion, ticket fragments falling like decayed petals? Can you sense the despair?

Rhythm as Verbal Music

One definition of rhythm is: an alternating recurrence of similar elements. Songs have rhythm; jokes have rhythm in their timing and delivery. Good copywriting has rhythm that is revealed in the variation of sentence length – and it is precisely this sort of rhythm that gives your reader a sense the copy “sounds” compelling.

When you consistently write sentences that are all the same length, your writing develops a plodding predictability. To avoid this, mix up your sentence lengths: a short sentence, a long sentence, a long sentence, a medium sentence, then another short sentence. This last sentence will carry some impact, because the reader wasn’t expecting it. Another short sentence might reinforce the impact. Then a long one. Give your reader the experience of rhythm in variety.

Interestingly, there is a “rhythm in three.” When you incorporate a series of things into a sentence, three seems to be the magic number. It has a nice rhythm – we hear it as complete and satisfying. “We leap into the boat, setup the sail and venture out onto the sea.”

So plan your words to create just the right pace, then give it a good beat.

I keep telling people this. I don’t think that optimizing a site for conversion is a “Call to Action” science. It’s a usability science. People aren’t going to click something because its big round and yellow, and says “Click Me”. The reason people click this types of links is because they’re already looking for where to click, and you’ve just made it easier for them.

I don’t disagree; a button that is big, round, and yellow can make it easier for a visitor to follow that call to action. But optimizing a site for conversion is not just a usability science.

Usability is its own discipline and science. And, of course, the science of usability is an important part of the broader scope of conversion optimization.

In this 2005 column, I described how usability fits into the overall Web site optimization picture:

Usability examines the site’s interface and process barriers that keep visitors from accomplishing a conversion task. Usability is:The ability to effectively implement knowledge concerning the human-computer interface to remove any obstacles impeding the experience and process of online interactions…

A usability test can’t measure two key factors in the conversion process: persuasive momentum and individual motivation. A visitor’s willingness to click through to a site and participate in its conversion processes is directly tied to her intent and motivations and the relevance of the product or service to her needs.

The ability to use a Web site to accomplish a task valuable to a business goal is, no doubt, both a usability issue and a conversion optimization issues. But that doesn’t mean every experience the visitor encounters on a site is a usability issue. That would be like saying merchandising and packaging at the neighborhood Target are usability issues.

Most sites want to sell more or increase leads, and that requires the application of several disciplines and sciences. Here are just a few:

Web Analytics and Analysis

Here is more from the same 2005 column:

According to (Jakob) Neilson, “In usability studies, participants easily pretend that the scenario is real and that they’re really using the design.” However, it’s much harder for participants to fake a need they don’t have. If you disliked pungent cheese and were asked to shop for the best Roquefort, could you simulate the actions a true cheese lover would take?Web analytics, on the other hand, track actual actions taken on your site from very large sample groups. They provide a true measure of activity and persuasive momentum.

Couple usability testing with Web analytics for a more holistic picture of what is (or isn’t) happening on your site.

Web analytics provide the most accurate and objective measure of how individuals interact with a site. Usability studies provide insight into what’s happening in particular instances.

Copywriting and Direct Marketing Techniques

I have already written a book and several columns (like “The Complexity of Closing a Sale,” and “Gr8 Web 2.0 Copy” about the craft of writing persuasively online.

Psychology

My firm retains a consulting psychologist to advise in the science of human behavior. Florida Design’s comment above read that ‘they’re already looking for where to click”. And that is true in some cases, but how did the visitor come to know what they were looking for? Who or what sold them to hit the “buy now” button. What are they broadcasting they really need when they click on “learn more.” Do they just want more data, or can we write that data in such a way that will move them to buy?

Testing

What header persuades more? What big yellow button moves more people to take a profitable action? What lead form fields work best for my visitors? These are all questions that cannot be answered by usability studies, but rather by some sort of A/B or multivariate testing. And any effective testing requires some sort of scientific rigor.

Marketing and Selling

These are also disciplines that are established and several proven methodologies existed long before the Internet age. The prominence of social media today and the baby giant of search engine marketing are beginning to gel into tougher and more accountable disciplines.

The Lesson

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Web site optimization is way too broad to be a subset of another honorable science like usability or information architect. If you are struggling in your optimization efforts, it might be time to examine your tools. You could be trying to solve a copy issue with design tool. Or you could be using a design tool to solve a persuasion problem.

Take the time to learn a little bit about all this disciplines so you can be sure you are using the right tool.

Unique Value Proposition (or Unique Campaign Proposition), is a brief, concise statement about what makes your website/business unique, and why customers should buy from you and not your competitors.  It’s been a central part of our Persuasion Architecture methodology from day one.

At our recommendation, our friends over at Accepted.com ran a UVP test on their website.  We worked together to draft a few versions of their UVP, worked with the designer to make it look professional, and ran an A/B/C/D test with three versions of their UVP against the control.  The UVPs expressed the length of time Accepted.com has been helping customers, how much success they’ve had, and the problem that customers are looking to solve.  The control was a stock photo graphic without a UVP statement.

The result?  Sure, you might expect some sort of lift.  How about an over 30% increase in conversion, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in extra sales?

So if you haven’t sat down and brainstormed your Unique Value Proposition, maybe take 30% of a day and work it out.  Then test it and let us know what happens.  If the test seems daunting, try crafting a Unique Campaign Proposition and testing it in campaign messaging, assets, and landing pages.

Most people don’t want to draw that sharp line of distinction, and it’s why their marketing efforts blend into the clutter.

Discernible edges and silhouettes allow us to visually “grip” an object and separate figure from ground.  Eliminate those edges and you’ll effectively camouflage yourself.

In the picture above, notice how the legs present a solid silhouette and are easily identified, while the man’s upper body camouflage breaks up his silhouette and blurs his edges into the background of trees and snow.  As a result, it’s much harder to make out his his torso and arms.

Like our eyes, our minds also depend on edges and silhouettes.  We define by giving parameters, mentally grasping a concept by its boundaries.  Without the “edges” of contrasting reference points, a concept or term remains ambiguous at best.

That’s why grabbing after an “infinite” market and seeking to be all things to all people ends up camouflaging one’s brand and messaging; without contrast it all just blurs into the background.

Want to stand out?  Sharply define the edges between you and your competitors.

The better you do this, the more strongly you’ll turn-off some customers.  But wouldn’t you rather powerfully persuade some of your market than be overlooked by all of it?

Just follow the example of this doctor:

I found this ad in my local newspaper and was immediately struck by the bold headline:

“You don’t want me to be your family doctor.”

Pretty ballsy headline for a doctor, huh?  Wouldn’t you feel compelled to read more about this doctor with the courage to so brazenly declare what he wasn’t?

Having gained the reader’s attention, the body copy further explains: “Neurosurgery is one of the few medical specialties for which I am well-suited.  I am not warm and fuzzy.  I could never be successful as a pediatrician or in a family practice – no one would come back a second time.  But I am very good at what I do.”

Dr. Goodman then substantiates his claimed expertise with a list of very impressive professional qualifications and accomplishments, rounded off with some examples of his extreme commitment to surgical excellence and his patients’ well-being.

While his professional qualifications are truly outstanding, most readers would never have read them without Dr. Goodman’s use of reverse camouflage in his headline.  Saying what he wasn’t allowed him to stand out amidst the clutter.

So here’s 3 sure-fire ways to reverse-camouflage your messaging.

1.    Get yourself an enemy and/or reject a reasonable alternative position
Nothing fires the blood quite so much as declaring what (or who) you stand against.  But you get no points for tearing down straw men; rejecting a reasonable alternative position puts teeth into your message.

2.    Present a tightly focused perspective
Once you’ve narrowed the group of customers that you’re most interested in attracting, focus your messaging to speak most directly to their felt needs, desires, and frustrations.  People who don’t share those experiences will feel excluded, but your core audience will feel an instant connection.  Both will instantly recognize you.  Tim Miles offers a brilliant example of this on his “About Us” page.

3.    Explain what costs you’re willing to bare and admit the downside to your offer/product.
This one is more about credibility than definition, but amidst a background of ad-speak, solid credibility acts as its own form of reverse camouflage.  Plus, you don’t just want to be seen, right?  You want to be believed as well.

Finally, if all else fails, you can always use your new-found knowledge of camouflage to escape weekend chores (just ditch the boots in favor of camo socks)

What simple statement about your business or brand — just a quick, clear sentence or two at most — tells your prospects that you are the only alternative for them? Sounds like a response should just jump out at you. Yet most businesses (on- and offline) cannot provide an answer that simply rolls off their tongues or, even more appropriately in the case of e-commerce, appears on their home pages.By USP, or unique selling proposition, I don’t mean a slogan or a phrase that will appear in your advertising, although that’s one potential use for it. Rather I mean the concise and memorable phrase that answers your prospect’s always-implicit question, “Why should I do business with you and not somebody else?”

A unique selling proposition is mucho importante. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Linda Bustos, an e-commerce consultant at the Get Elastic blog wrote:

Why should your ideal customer purchase from you rather than from anybody else?I would even go so far as to ask yourself, what one thing about your company, your product selection, your customer service or your customer loyalty is so compelling, that even if a product was out of stock, or some functionality were broken on your site, a customer would stick around and buy something?

The folks at Marketing Experiments believe so strongly in the importance of the clarity of the value proposition that Dr. Flint McGlaughlin was bold enough to say if you get your value proposition right, you can get many other things wrong on your landing pages and still improve conversion dramatically.

Several years ago at our company, we adjusted the term a bit by replacing “selling” with “value.” What we didn’t change was our work with clients, helping them clarify or even create a unique value proposition for use on their site (among hundreds of other factors).

I was reminded of this recently when our newest conversion analyst and one of his clients turned in their most recent optimization success story. A single test on this client’s unique value proposition increased overall conversion rate by 33.8 percent. What did this client do that worked so well? It hired a good writer (at our suggestion) who wrote several suggested unique value propositions, as this company didn’t have one at all. Then we tested the several unique value propositions, until we had a clear winner. Not only did our client see a conversion rate increase, it gained customer insight that can be used to optimize other site areas.

Every Landing Page Needs One

In recent years, I’ve even started suggesting clients use unique campaign propositions (UCP). These are meant to reinforce your offer from banner ad or PPC (define) campaigns by enhancing the landing-page scent. When visitors take their precious eight-second first impression, you want them to know why they should buy from you and not your competitors.

Strengthen Your Unique Value Proposition

Creating a unique value or campaign proposition isn’t for chumps or posers. Your value proposition must be clear, relevant, and easy to understand. Here’s a quick, easy process for writing a more powerful unique value proposition:

• Ask your personas what they value most about your product/service/campaign; make a list. (If you don’t have personas, you can ask a few dozen of your most faithful customers. Yes, you can ask both if you want).
• On your list, look for repeating themes and list those separately.
• Hand the list to a good writer. Ask that person to write 5 to 10 versions of a potential unique value proposition based on the list.
• Test three to five of the most promising unique value propositions.
• Pick the best-performing unique value proposition.

How strong is your unique value proposition? It could be the key to a better conversion rate.