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]

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?

Customers want the real deal. Your customers want to to know “what is in it for me?” HOW DOES YOUR COPY MEASURE UP? Care to find out?

Let’s take a look at the words on your we site. Are you talking about all the wonderful ways your visitors can benefit from your products or services, or are you talking about all the great features of your products, services, or company? In other words, are you speaking the language of “you,” or are you caught up in the language of “we”? As our friend Roy Williams asks, “Are you WeWe-ing all over yourself?” Your customer focus ratio is not a perfect predictor of success (there are lots of variables, of course), but it has proven to be so useful, that Seth Godin and Anne Holland have written about it. More importantly, it’s already helped a lot of people improve their conversion rates.

You really should link to the we we calculator and play with it before you read on.

The Customer Focus Calculator / We We Monitor, parses your page for self-focused words such as “I,” “we,” “our,” and your company name (which functions much like “we”), as well as for customer-focused words such as “you” and “your.” Then we calculate the ratio of customer-focused words to self-focused words. Run the tool to check your site; run it to check a variety of competitors’ sites. You’re likely to have an eye-opening opportunity to see your site through your customer’s eyes. This should be part of every audit process in your copywriting. A score between 60% – 70% seems to have the most natural tone. We have two versions; one that works on web pages and other where you can can copy and paste your text.

So how does your “We We” measure up? Check your site and paste the results in the comments below. We’ll pick a few of the sites and show you how you could have changed a phrase here or there and make it more customer-focused.

Run the Customer Focus Calculator on text
or ad copy or fill the form below to test a web page.

This December, I’m featuring my Top Ten Countdown. These are the articles Future Now, Inc. has published, here and elsewhere, that have inspired folks to write (in droves), click through, investigate more and take notice. Whether you are revisiting the material or discovering it for the first time, I hope this issue encourages you to jump start your New Year’s resolutions for your business plans, online and off, in 2007.

And however you celebrate your holidays, may your preparations fill you with the inspiration of the season, may your relationships bring you joy, and may you experience it all in wellness and safety.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 144

A few weeks ago, we saw this outdoor disaster: “Martinis Shaken and Stirred you are not. Continental Airlines.” Another, for dog food, featured an adorable canine. But I had to take notes to recall the billboard was for Pedigree.

The other 32-plus billboards we graded didn’t fare much better. Getting out at the parking garage, we were shaking our noggins in disappointment.

“Where’s the beef?” we asked. Where’s the relevance?

No company plans to spend huge dough on a bad billboard, Web site, TV spot, or online banner ad. So why is it so hard to find relevant messages? Where are the ad campaigns and Web sites that speak to the customer’s heart? Where are the memorable campaigns that move people to take a buying action?

A recent Harvard Business Online article states some sorry numbers. A survey of 500 businesses shows an average ROI (define) of 4 percent. Ouch! Another cited study shows doubling ad spend resulted in an average 1 to 2 percent sales increase. According to the article: “Marketers aren’t unhappy because they can’t measure marketing performance. They’re unhappy because they now can — and they don’t like what they see. They need to go beyond metrics and take a hard look at why the numbers are so bad.”

Most of these companies hire smart ad people whose every intention is to craft an effective campaign. Yet something is lost in translation. On- and offline marketing suffer the same problem: relevance is elusive and just out of reach.

Our experience suggests the absence of relevance is a result of some common mindsets. Do you recognize any of these in your company?

Continue reading my column at ClickZ…