AMiable Solution #113: Buildup is for Beavers

If you want to pitch an offer, do it immediately.  Don’t produce it in stages, piling one small fact onto another, like a beaver building a dam, saving your biggest sales pitch for the final paragraph or final page of your campaign.  Most readers aren’t that patient.  If you don’t get to the point quickly, they won’t stick around long enough to hear the big conclusion.

Instead, treat your direct mail letter, web page, product description, brochure, or other marketing vehicle like a newspaper article.  Start with your most important information--your strongest sales pitch-- first.  Then, after a few seconds (which is usually all the time you get to hook a reader) if your reader abandons your copy, then you know he or she left fully informed.

If your format allows, get your main sales pitch out in other areas, too.  Incorporate it into your subheads.  Repeat it in your last paragraph.  Emphasize it in your postscript.  State it on your envelope or brochure cover.  Illustrate it with your pictures, picture captions, and other images.  Restate it on your order form. 

Strong marketing campaigns do require strong foundations.  However, most readers would rather know that you can hold the water back, not how you laid the sticks.

AMiable Solution #112: Remember Who’s Important

As professionals, we love adding things to our credentials: awards we’ve won; titles we’ve earned; honors our organizations received; personal and organizational appearances in newspapers, magazines, conference programs, and Twitter feeds.  Sometimes we get so caught up in our achievements and our expertise that we lose focus when we write.

Have you ever received a direct mail letter that contained more paragraphs beginning with the word “I” or “we” than not?  Have you ever written one like that?

Your customers, members, donors, and prospects need to hear what makes you qualified to solve their problems, but what they want to hear is how you’re going to do it.  They want to know what you can do for them, how long it will take, and how much it will cost.  The fact that Washingtonian magazine named your organization one of the “best of” in the areas will give your audience more confidence in you, but it won’t keep them glued to your promotion.

How can you be sure you don’t toot your own horn too loudly?  Take a close look at your copy.  Circle every word that refers to your organization, whether it’s your organization’s name, “our company,” “We,” “I,” etc.  Now circle every “you” and “your” in the copy.  If “we” outnumbers “you,” try rewriting the text with your target audience’s interest, not your own self-promotion, in mind.  The more you can put yourself in your market’s shoes, the sweeter your music will sound.

AMiable Solution #111: Small Success

Want an easy way to make your marketing copy more readable?  Try not to sound so smart.  In other words, use shorter, simpler words over longer, “more sophisticated” ones. 

According to John Caples in his book, How to Make Your Advertising Make Money, word choice is incredibly important.  Changing just one word in a headline caused “How to Fix Cars” to out pull “How to Repair Cars” by 20%.

Want more proof?  How far do you get in the following paragraph before you get turned off or your mind starts to wander?

The critical component to composing understandable text is to maintain simplicity.  Communicate using compact verbiage.  Author highly edited messages.  Employ language any recipient will comprehend.

Now read this version:

The key to writing clear copy is to keep it simple.  Use short words.  Write short sentences.  Use language any reader will understand. 

Just because you or your audience knows big words doesn’t mean you need to use them.  The less you make your audience work, the more they’ll reward you.

AMiable Solution #110: The Un-Tease

Including teaser copy on the outside of your direct mail envelope or selfmailer is a great move…unless you don’t follow through. 

Teasers, by their nature, create interest.  They turn “regular” mail into “must open” mail.  They promise the answer to an interesting question, a solution to a problem, the end to a story, a benefit for simply opening up the mailing.

But when a reader opens a piece of direct mail and doesn’t find the promised contents, you not only lose credibility and a response to your offer, but you also risk angering your audience and discouraging response to any future offers.  You leave your market feeling duped.

Teaser copy isn’t just a strategy for getting your mail opened.  It’s the string you use to lead your readers through your offer.  The bread crumbs you drop for bringing them through the woods and to safety.   The focus of your sales pitch.

Writing teaser copy isn’t complicated, and you have many approaches to choose from:

·        Tell your readers what’s inside: booklet, checklist, membership card, etc.

·        Make a provocative statement.

·        Establish urgency.

·        Offer a benefit.

·        Start a sentence or story.

·        Ask a question.

·        Make a challenge.

·        Appeal to your audience’s interests or identity.

·        Identify a problem and hint at the solution.

Writing your “outside” copy first—not throwing it together at the end of the creative process—will both help you determine the direction your “inside” copy takes and will help ensure your readers are satisfied once they get there.

AMiable Solution #109: Summer Assignment #4

Do you ever find yourself writing or reading the same phrases or the same descriptions in your marketing over and over, or worse, reading similar phrases and descriptions in your competitors’ marketing?

If so, it might be time to rewrite tired text.

It’s hard, okay impossible sometimes, to keep someone’s attention--much less make a sale--when you have nothing new or beneficial to say.  Unfortunately, once we find a phrase or pitch that works, we’re hesitant to change it.  But sometimes change is just what we need.  Sometimes the “most effective” language becomes the least effective simply because our market has heard it before.

What should you look for when changing up your copy?  Start with words like “finest,” “best,” and “leader.”  Not only are these terms used subjectively, but they’re also empty.  Anyone can claim to have the “best” product or service.  What not everyone does is offer supporting information.  Instead of claiming superiority, describe the qualities your leaders, volunteers, or employees possess that make your organization so exceptional.  Qualify your claims. 

Next, check your marketing copy for overused terms and phrases. You know you’ve used them: we all have.  Innovative.  Experienced professional.  Unique.  Make a difference.  Don’t say your technology is innovative.  Describe what unique benefits it offers your audience.  Don’t tell your readers their donations will make a difference in the life of a malnourished child, show them the impact past donations have made on similar recipients.

Finally, try to avoid relying on adjectives to make your case.  Instead, explain your product, your service, or your offer in simple, clear, direct terms.

A summer slump doesn’t have to last until fall.  Change things up in your marketing copy today.

AMiable Solution #108: Summer Assignment #3

It feels like we just kicked off summer with Memorial Day, and suddenly the July 4^th celebrations have already been accounted for.  In a blink, the new school year will start, and we’ll be facing down the end of the year.

Are you ready?  Here are three ways to prepare:

1.      Review your rates.  We never plan for promotions to underperform, but sometimes they do.  And sometimes we make long-term plans based on the assumption of those promotions’ success. If response doesn’t come in as expected, we set ourselves up for additional disappointments and consequences.  Bad history doesn’t have to repeat itself.  Before you get caught-up in the last days of summer, check your year-to-date campaigns and their response rates.  Make sure, based on current data, that your existing fall/winter plans still make sense.  If not, adjust accordingly.

2.      Change your tone.  If you’re a non-profit, you probably notice a marked difference in donations between the beginning of the year and the end of the year, when thoughts turn to tax-deductible donations.  In their Network for Good June 29, 2010, article, “Get Ready for Year-End Fundraising,” Rebecca Higman and Julie Stofer suggest communicating regularly with donors, not just when you’re asking for money.  According to Higman and Stofer, non-profits who give supporters “content of value as it happens, rather than just at the end of the year,” help development relationships with donors, increasing their feeling of investment, which results in higher gifts.

3.      Create a calendar.  You have a marketing schedule—a list of all upcoming promotions with due dates—but do you have an actual marketing calendar?  Keeping an actual calendar marked with your due dates not only helps you plan, but it also helps prevent dates from sneaking up on you.  Use it, too, to remind yourself of regular projects or maintenance items, including website updates, that are too easily overlooked or procrastinated.

Enjoy the summer while you can, but make sure you see the year’s end on the other side of this season’s sun.

AMiable Solution #107: Summer Assignment #2

You keep tabs on your competition: you know when they change prices; when they roll out a new campaign; and when they add a new service, product, or feature.  You probably also keep a file of their mailers and print campaigns.  You know all you need to know, right?

That depends.  How much time do you spend with your competitor files?  How well do you know your competitors’ marketing habits?  If you study your competitors’ efforts, really study them, not only could you gain insight into their strategy and positioning, but you may also learn a trick or two for reaching your market better.

For starters, look at the format.  Is there something new and intriguing about it?  How does it differ from yours?  Is it a standard format for your competitor or a test?

Now look at the graphics.  Do they enhance the message, draw your attention to it, or draw your attention away from the message?  Are the graphics effective?  If so, what makes them work?  How do they compare to the graphics used in your campaigns?  Do they convey a different tone or emotion than yours?  What’s the benefit?

Next, examine the fonts.  Are they clean and traditional or unconventional?  Do the font choices, size, placement, and color work?  Do your competitors’ efforts work or make more work for the reader?

Finally, study the text.  Don’t just read it: dissect it.  Is the language loose and colloquial or formal and businesslike?  How much detail do the descriptions provide?  What tone does the text convey?  How easy is it to read?  Does the text sweep you smoothly along or feel choppy and pieced together?  What phrases or descriptions jump out at you?  How is your competitors’ approach different/better/worse than yours?

Digging deep into someone else’s work can feel tedious and time-consuming, but the rewards of striking insight “gold” could repay you dearly.