AMiable Solution #141: The Other Side of Emotional Marketing

We’ve all read about emotional marketing--appealing to consumers’ values or beliefs to evoke a response.  In fact, we at AMi have even written about it in this blog.  The idea is to get your readers, your listeners, to FEEL something and then act.

The real question, though, is what do you feel?  When you sit down to write the copy for your promotion, are you as connected to your material, to your product or service, or to your offer as you expect your target audience to be?  If you’re not, your text may sound insincere, overly dramatic, or simply disconnected.

How can you prevent this from happening?  Look at the offer from your audience’s perspective.  Don’t just look at the customer data.  Imagine your customers are your neighbors, your good friends.  What would you say to them?  What tone would you use?  What words or stories or examples would you give to convince them that you can help solve a personal problem or that they can contribute to solving a bigger, more global problem?

Getting your head in the “helping” mindset instead of the “selling” mindset may help keep your copy more realistic and less dramatic, more specific and understated instead of broad and overstated.  It may help you strike just the appeal you’re reaching for: a heartfelt one.

AMiable Solution #140: Banishing Bloopers

We all make mistakes.  We distribute campaigns with typos and errors.  We gamble on new rental lists or lists that have inconsistent histories and they don’t generate responses.  We try new technologies and strategies that don’t work out.

What do you do when you or your marketing team makes a mistake or endures a failure?  Who takes responsibility?  Who takes action?  How do you handle the problem and prevent it from reoccurring?

First, make sure the mistake or error was made honestly, not

out of laziness, sloppiness, or indifference.  Marketers who don’t put a legitimate effort into your marketing activities create bigger problems than a misspelled word in the catalog and need to be dealt with immediately.  However, errors made out of good intentions and sincere efforts should be regarded as a learning experience and shared, productively, with the whole team.

Then, work as a department to correct the mistake and set up new protocols to prevent the same mistake or failure from happening again. 

If a typo was overlooked or wrong information was included, double check that the promotion went through the prescribed proofing channels.  Sometimes the individual working on a campaign becomes blind to errors because they know the material by heart.  Require all materials to be read by at least one other set of eyes. 

If a risk didn’t work out and joins a growing list of other risks that didn’t work out, reexamine your situation, your resources, and the gambles you’ve made.  Then, use that information to establish new guidelines for determining how much and how often you’re willing and able to make these types of decisions.  Risks must be taken to expand and grow, but when they consistently far short of breaking even, the risk for the organization overall becomes greater than the potential reward and should be stopped.

You can’t prevent things from going wrong in business.  But you can learn to view glitches and poor choices positively and use them to make better decisions in the future.

AMiable Solution #139: Beating the Blues: 3 Other Colors that Work Well in Marketing

People love the color blue.  In fact, it’s one of the most popular colors in marketing, according to Dean Rieck, copywriter and marketing consultant.  Why?  Blue is easy to read in text and in headlines.  It allows you to highlight something subtly.  It makes good tints.

But if you want to keep your current audience engaged and interest a new one, you can’t market in the same color all of the time: you have to shake it up now and again.  Here are three other colors to consider adding to your promotions.

Red.  In 2009, the journal Science reported that the color red makes people’s work more accurate.  At least that was the conclusion drawn by researchers at the University of British Columbia when they tested the affect red, blue, and neutral computer background screens had on the cognitive performance of 600 people.  In the study, people who worked on computers with the red background did better noticing and recalling detail.  If you’re trying to sell something, that’s good news!  Highlighting key offers, benefits, prices, or contact information increases the likelihood of your prospects remembering your product or service and, hopefully, acting on it.

Pink.  While it may seem like a color best suited for attracting gender-specific audiences, it actually has a wider appeal and purpose, according to Derrick Daye.  In his June 22, 2008, article, “Color Psychology in Marketing,” “Shoppers who plan and stick to budgets respond best to pink, teal, light blue and navy.”  Furthermore, Daye says, “Traditionalists respond to pastels -- pink, rose, sky blue.”

Orange.  Like red, orange is an attention-grabbing color.  It stimulates the eye and creates a sense of warmth and energy.  But it also implies a good value, according to psychotherapist Amy Morin in her February 4, 2014, article, “How to Use Color Psychology to Give Your Business an Edge.”  If you’re promoting a lower-cost offer, incorporating orange into your marketing may just be the edge you need to turn your prospect into a customer.  According to Derrick Daye, “Impulse shoppers respond best to red-orange, black and royal blue.”

We can’t argue with blue’s coolness, and we certainly wouldn’t argue against anything with a proven success record.  But the next time you’re looking for the perfect color for your campaign, remember that “warm”--red, pink, and orange--is cool, too.

AMiable Solution #138: Besting Your Blurbs: 4 Tips for Writing Descriptions that Sell

If you’ve ever written a blurb, or description, of a product or service for your organization’s catalogs, brochures, websites, etc., then you know it can be challenging.  Whether you’ve written a handful or hundreds, you can increase the odds of getting your desired outcome--a sale, subscription, membership, or donation--if you keep the following four tips in mind.

1. Know the material, product, or service.  This may sound silly, but you can’t sell what you don’t understand.  It’s not your job to read every book you publish, run every machine your company owns, or visit every client or benefactor of your services.  But it is your job to become a sort of expert in all of the things your organization does.  How do you do that?  If you don’t have firsthand knowledge or experience with the products or services, talk to someone who does.  Talk to the designers, creators, installers, etc.  Have a good understanding of what the product or service does, who needs it, how it works, and what benefits it creates.  Don’t forget to address or include any emotional response or benefit.

2. Know your audience.  Are you writing for someone who has never heard of your organization before or a loyal customer?  Do your readers prefer technical language or less formal, more colloquial terms?  What motives them?  What needs do they have?  The more you know, the better you can tailor your text.

3. Include all the important details.  Don’t assume everyone knows everything about what you’re promoting.   If a piece of information--dimensions, frequency, times, etc.--could help determine the suitability of a particular product or service for a customer, include it.

4. Include all the benefits.  Features are important and should be included in your description, but remember that your product or service was created for a reason.  It serves a function, and that function is to help someone.  Highlight all the ways your product or service saves users time, money, effort, etc.

Once you have your blurbs written, remember that they’re not ever completely done.  Review them occasionally and update them whenever you have new information to incorporate: new endorsements, new credentials for the creators, new ways of explaining typical benefits, etc.

AMiable Solution #137: Beating the Blahs—3 Basic Tricks for Boring Layouts

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your promotion looks, well, boring.  Maybe it’s undeniably and unavoidably text-heavy.  Maybe it’s just a small space.  Maybe it’s the limitations of black-and-white.

No matter what kind of marketing you need to spruce up--print ad, postcard, email, renewal form, etc.--you can make your “blah” an “ahhh” with just three easy tips.

Use an initial cap.  It’s just a larger letter to start off your text, but it’s enough of a graphical change to create contrast with your text and to give your piece a little visual pop.  Just be sure to choose a size and style that suits your format.  For example, a noticeably bigger (than the message text), ornate initial letter works on a half-page or full-page ad, but only a modestly bigger and simpler initial letter should be used on smaller ads.

Remember your white space.  Nothing suffocates a promotion like a promotion, especially if you’re trying to cram a large amount of information in a small space.  Remember that space is your friend.  Space is inviting.  Space makes text easier to read and more inviting to do so.

Box it up.  If your format or your volume of information simply doesn’t allow for graphics, color, or anything else that helps make a layout more visually appealing, don’t forget about the power of a simple box.  If you hope your readers pick up on just one piece of information, whether that be a deadline, a phone number, or the crux of your offer, highlight it by setting that text in a box.  Even in a “boring” layout, it says to your audience, “read this.” 

AMiable Solution #136: Getting in the Mood

If you want your customers or prospects to respond--which we all do, or we wouldn’t engage in marketing at all--you need to persuade them.  You must convince them that they have a problem and you have the solution.  One of the best ways to do that, of course, is to clearly identify the benefit of using your product or service.

But describing the benefits alone won’t necessarily lead someone to pick up the phone, pull up your website, or mail in an order.  To make the sale, you not only need to focus on what you tell them, but also how you tell them.  You need to give directions.

The best way to do that?  Tell your audience what to do.  Called the “imperative mood,” it’s the practice of using verbs to make requests or to give orders, commands, warnings, or instructions.  For example, using the imperative mood lets you tell your audience to

·        Look inside

·        Call to order

·        Open immediately

·        Detach here

·        Visit online

·        Read on

·        Return this form

By detailing exactly what it is you want your readers to do, you not only make sure your audience gets the information you’re trying to share, but you also eliminate any confusion about how to request more information, contact your organization, make a donation, renew a membership or subscription, etc.  Just be sure to make your directions as specific but also as brief as possible.

Of course, it pays to use your manners, too.  “Please” and “thank you” carry more weight than you may realize.  And coupling “instruction” words with “timing” words like “immediately,” “in the next 10 days,” or “before May 30” will add urgency to your instructions.

AMiable Solution #135: Changing Color

Now that winter seems to have lost its grip on our daily lives, we find ourselves eagerly embracing the emerging signs of spring.  Temperatures on the rise.  Robins singing in the trees.  Little bursts of life sprouting from the ground.

Green is good.  And not just outside.  In marketing, the color green carries its own merits.  Used in marketing promotions, it evokes a variety of different feelings, which can translate into the ever-important response. 

Green is warm.  It invites attention but doesn’t scream or overwhelm.   It draws readers in gently.

Green is pleasant.  It generates peaceful feelings and represents some of the things most valuable to us: nature, health, growth, and goodwill.  It’s the color of money.

Green is easy on the eyes.  According to the design and development folks at ThinkBrilliant.com, green is one of the easiest colors on the eyes, a quality you want in your marketing pieces if you want your clients or prospects to keep reading.

Not every campaign can or should feature this color, however.  Different colors evoke different emotions, emotions that will vary depending on your audience and your offer.  But it’s good to keep a versatile color like green in your back pocket.  It’s good to think green.