Copywriting

The Myth of Selling Without Selling

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It seems like nobody likes sales people (at least when they’re customers), and “sales” seems like a dirty word these days. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Nothing I can think of sells without selling. Not even candy bars in vending machines.

Let’s explore that thought experiment for a moment. Imagine one of those vending machines with the glass front that allows you to see its contents. In this one, all the merchandise is packaged in identical, completely nondescript containers. Perfectly cube-shaped, unmarked cardboard boxes.

You have no clue what’s inside any of them. Could be anything.

When you happen across this vending machine, what are you going to buy? Will you press A1 or E7?

I’m willing to bet you’ll choose to keep the dollar in your pocket.

Why? Because nothing is being sold. It’s just there. It’s available for sale, but it’s not being sold.

Now let’s imagine the vending machine is in the middle of a sweltering desert. There’s nothing else in sight but sand and scorpions. And you’re getting really, really thirsty.

What do you do now? Remember, you can’t tell what’s in any of those containers. Might be bottled water, or a bag of cheese curls. But since you have that dollar in your pocket, you might take a chance and pick something at random. You desperately need something to drink, and you have no other options. So you take a chance.

Why? Because your thirst is more important, more urgent than your dollar bill.

A Salesman’s Journey

I’ve sold lots of different stuff over the course of my career. Everything from warranties to watches. I loved it. The rush of closing a deal. The battle of wits and wills when overcoming customer objections. The competition between peers and with myself

At one point, I felt like I could sell anything to anyone.

Then, Harry Browne smacked me across the face with his painfully simple, brutally powerful book, The Secret of Selling Anything.

The question is often asked, do salespeople sell, or do customers buy? I always held to the position that salespeople sell. When transactions take place, the success is 90% due to the ability of the salesperson.

Reading Browne’s book, I found out that I was wrong. I was introduced to what Browne referred to as the “universal fallacy:”

“The universal fallacy is the belief that an individual would willingly accept something unprofitable to himself.

“No individual will give up some of his own resources for something he values less. When you think he will, you’re headed for failure. He may very well make an exchange that you would never make — but he will not willingly make an exchange that will lower his values.” (Author’s emphasis)

No one willingly does what she does not want to do.

Jonathan Edwards, considered by many to be the one of the greatest minds in America’s history, had this to say about making decisions: people “always act according to the strongest inclination they have at the moment of choice.”

Edwards is saying that, from the options available to us, we always choose what has the strongest, most desirable emotional impact on our lives in that moment. Period.

Back to the Vending Machine

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot.

If you were responsible for the sale of just ONE of the items in the vending machine, how would you get the guy in the middle of the desert to spend his dollar on your product?

For starters, you’d make sure that he knows it’s a refreshing liquid.

In our example, where does the selling power come from? It comes from the thirst of the guy in the desert.

On the other hand, could you sell salty potato chips to him? I don’t care how good a salesperson you put on that job, he’s not going to have much success.

We see that people buy what they want. Selling is (or at least it should be recognized and treated as) giving people what they want. Helping them satisfy their desires and needs.

With the vending machine, you’re not selling without selling. You’re selling without being obnoxious. There’s a major difference!

Guess what. Your salesmanship is nothing more than increasing the likelihood that your product in that vending machine is the one that gets picked.

The argument isn’t so much whether salespeople sell or customers buy. It’s both! The desire comes from the customer. It is the job of the salesperson or marketer to help the customer make the best decision.

Better Writing in Just Six Decades

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Here are 6 tips from legendary author George Orwell, writer of 1984 and Animal Farm. Use them to punch up your own writing.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

These directions come from Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language.” It’s 65 years old, but the content is just as valuable and applicable now as it was when it was written. You can read the entire piece here.

The One Change that Changes Your Response the Most

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While I was still in school, I always enjoyed math class. I’m feeling a little mathematically inspired right now.

Remember word problems? Let’s work through one together. We’re going to combine two direct marketing axioms to see what we come up with.

#1. “If you want to dramatically increase your response, dramatically improve your offer.” – Axel Andersson

#2. Ed Mayer’s 40-40-20 Rule. Mayer gives us a breakdown of what determines the success or failure of a direct mail package which I’ve found applies to pretty much any marketing message. Simply stated, 40% of the effectiveness of the message depends on the quality of your list. One thing I talk about all the time is understanding your target market so that you can communicate with them in the most compelling way. 40% of the effectiveness comes from the quality of your offer, and 20% from the creative (copy, design) itself.

(Side note: Denny Hatch estimates that the ratio is 70% offer, 10% list, 20% creative for internet direct marketing.)

We see that Andersson and Mayer are really agreed on the point. If you want to get the biggest bang for your buck in response to your marketing efforts, you must improve your offer. Pretend you’re the Godfather and make your customers an offer they can’t refuse. Claude Hopkins said that “The right offer should be so attractive that only a lunatic would say ‘No’.”

Using the same logic and math, you’d get identical or very similar results by improving your list. But taking that approach is less controllable. Once you know your customers really well, there’s not much you can do to improve your list. You can almost always improve your offer. You can nearly always give more.

Don’t tell any of my copywriting colleagues that I’m letting the 40-40-20 Rule out of the bag. According to Mayer, the creative part of your marketing has less effect on response than the other elements. So rather than running out to hire one of us, or trying to rewrite your message yourself, give your offer priority. Then focus on your list of potential buyers. Make sure you’re giving as much as you can profitably offer to an audience whose desires, fears and problems you are increasingly familiar with.

5 Judo Moves Every Copywriter Should Know

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If you’ve been involved in copywriting for any length of time, you’re painfully aware of how challenging it can be to grab the attention of your desired readers.

Once you succeed there, you still have an intimidating uphill climb ahead of you. It takes hard work to keep that attention, channel desire, and close the sale.

You may have heard it said that marketers and salespeople without a system for selling are at the mercy of the prospect’s system for not buying.

A million thoughts and emotions scream for attention. Distractions seem to pop up at least once a minute. Then there’s the ever-present resistance to “being sold.” Like I said, your copy has a tough uphill battle.

But what if you could leverage the mind’s strength against itself, much like a judo master redirects the force of an opponent?

Let’s briefly consider 5 points of psychological leverage you can use in your copy. Each can strengthen your persuasive power by causing forces already active in the mind to overcome its own resistance.

1. Self-Perception
The most important factor in the buying decision is how people categorize themselves. The way they think about themselves and their place in the world affects everything they do.

To a tremendous degree, they choose products, services, and brands because of how they tie into their perception of themselves. That applies to both how they see themselves now, and how they hope to see themselves in the future.

For example, how many millions of dollars does Nike make selling equipment to people who are athletes? How many more millions do they earn from those who dream of being athletes?

Find out how your customers identify themselves. Use the insights you gain from that research to make your business and your offers more relevant to customers.

Develop serious rapport instantly by connecting with who your prospects and customers really consider themselves to be.

2. Belief
Gary Bencivenga said, “Almost everyone in the world, in every field of human endeavor, is desperately searching for someone to believe in. Be that person, and you can write your own ticket.

“Belief is today’s most overlooked yet most powerful key to boosting response to any ad, in any medium. Harness it and you unleash the core atomic power for exploding response. Because the hunger for belief is so vast in every market, so deep-seated in human nature itself, you can tap into it again and again — infinitely — to make yourself and your clients rich.”

Actually be trustworthy. Then present yourself or client to your prospects and customers as an individual or business with integrity. Never abuse their trust. Never give the impression that you’d deceive them.

Finally, build whatever credibility you can, and exploit it to the fullest. Experience, education, endorsements, etc. They all make you more believable.

3. Mental/Emotional Momentum
We hear it said all the time, but you can never hear it too much: good copy, good advertising, good sales pitches all enter into the conversation that the audience already has going on inside their minds.

Hitch a ride on a train that’s already in motion. Grab onto a motivator your reader is already being driven by. The stronger the motivator, the better.

Which do you think is going to get better results: adding another voice to the noisy cafeteria of your customer’s mind, or talking with him about something he’s already thinking about, caring about, and ready to do something about?

4. Curiosity
Claude Hopkins mentions in Scientific Advertising that curiosity is one of the strongest human incentives. Once it’s been aroused, we can hardly sleep until we satisfy that curiosity.

How can you add curiosity to your business, product, or service? To your marketing message?

5. Likeability
People like to do business with people they like. I’m sure you know of instances where the only reason people continue to hire less-than-ideal service providers is that they have good relationships with them.

When customers like you, barriers are removed, doors are opened, and everyone feels good about the process.

Personality is of the utmost importance when attempting to be likeable in print. No one enjoys stuffy, emotionless, impersonal wording.

Write until it sounds as if you were talking directly to one of your prospects. Be yourself. Don’t manufacture a personality. Sounding contrived can be worse than being boring.

Even great copywriters in hot markets convert less than minor league baseball players. In many cases, you’re getting legendary results if you can close 5 sales from 100 leads.

That’s why I encourage you to stop fighting against potential customers and simply use their mental and emotional momentum to get the results you want.

Kinda like judo…

Framing for Failure

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If you’re anything like me, you find yourself “framing” quite a few of the statements you make in day to day conversation. This can be constructive or detrimental, depending on how you do it.

Framing is simply saying something to prepare your hearer or reader for what you’re about to say. For example, “Listen up! What I’m about to tell you is important.” That’s an example of positive framing.

You can do some harm to your cause by setting up your comments with something like “This is gonna sound really dumb, but…” (I’m really bad with that one.)

I had thought about this topic before, how negative framing such as the second example hurt your chances of being persuasive or sounding authoritative. Why do I talk like that? Why does anyone do it?

It all came to a head when I was looking at a letter my sister wrote yesterday. She used the other “bookend” to frame her argument after she had said what needed to be said. It was something like “This may not sound like the best idea, but I believe in it.”

So, why do we talk and write that damaging stuff? Here’s my thinking on the subject.

We lack confidence in our position. We think something is wrong with what we want to say. Or that the audience is going to shoot us down.

So we choose to soften our statements by framing them. It’s more for the us than for them.

Rejection will come easier because we have prepared everyone for it.

Imagine using these kinds of remarks in a sales pitch. “You may not like this product, but here it is anyway.” “Most people choose the competitor, anyway.” “You don’t really want this additional feature, do you?”

See how much that hurts you?

Negative framing is something that I’m going to work on eliminating from my speech and writing immediately. I encourage you to join me. Let’s get some guts about ourselves to make strong, bold statements without feeling the need to cushion them. No more self-destructive talk.

The Ophiuchus Effect

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Facebook and Twitter were abuzz this week with rumors that a mysterious 13th sign called Ophiuchus has been added to the zodiac. As the “news” went viral, emotions ran high. You’d have thought that World War III had been declared by the way some people reacted.

Now, I’m not into astrology, but all the commotion surrounding this ordeal can give us some valuable business insight.

Peter Drucker said that “The purpose of business is to create a customer.” No matter what industry you’re in, your product or service is all about people. The dynamic that generated such a strong emotional reaction with so many people can also have a profound impact on your customers and prospects.

What’s Your Sign?

The primary reason for the stir surrounding this topic is that it strikes directly at the way in which many people identify themselves.

The mind automatically moves into self-defense mode when confronted with any perceived threat to one’s view of the world and his place in it. If you’ve ever had a disagreement with someone about religion, politics, or even sports teams, you know this is true.

Many people take their zodiac signs seriously.  Their identification comprises a major part of how they think about themselves and the world around them.

Millions check their horoscopes as part of their daily ritual. Important decisions are often made based on what they read. Every newspaper has an astrology section. And there are countless places to check horoscopes online and even on cell phones.

The idea of changing this way of thinking has proven to be earth-shaking.

Every interested individual is forced to ask the question, “Am I what I have always considered myself to be?”

It’s the same reaction that people have when they find out that they were adopted. Everything they think they know about themselves is challenged.

Putting the ‘Ophiuchus Effect’ to Work

What are the key lessons you can take away from this phenomenon and apply immediately to your business?

1. One’s perception of who he is forms the very foundation of every choice he makes, including purchasing decisions. No one buys from you because of who you are. They buy what they buy because of who they are.

2. The main reason people form connections to certain products, services and brands is because they tie into how they think of themselves.

Apple shines in this area. Their products and services appeal strongly to those who consider themselves to be creative, intelligent, free-spirited and cutting-edge. Apple has created a cult-like following by participating in customers’ self expression.

How do your customers think about themselves? How can you fit your business into these parts of their lives?

3. People are firmly attached to their own personal categories. You need to know how your customers and potential customers categorize themselves. If you don’t know, find out immediately. Think about the way Democrats and Republicans “brand” themselves. The concepts of “liberalism” and “conservatism” carry powerful emotional ties and fierce (often blind) loyalty. You can use the same strategy to build bonds with your audience.

4. It may be possible to create a category for your business, but it is much easier to become associated with what your customers and prospects already love. Tommy Bahama is a good example. The lifestyle of perpetual tropical vacation is one that certain individuals aspire to. Those people will naturally relate to products like the ones that Tommy Bahama offers.

Make a bold statement of who you are as a company. You will attract the kind of customers you want to do business with. Lukewarm relationships will decrease proportionally to the strength and specificity of the stand you take. Instead, you’ll form passionate, long-term relationships.

5.  Affirming the worldview of your customers and connecting with their categories they identify with will help build instant rapport and trust. You are “one of them!” As such, they will feel that they can trust you and relate with you. They believe that you understand them and their needs.

Take time to get to know how your customers view the world. Find ways to affirm their way of thinking. You’ll discover your interactions with them will be more beneficial both for your business and them.

The addition of Ophiuchus to the zodiac may be the latest tall tale, but the emotional reactions are no myth. The psychology is real and powerful. Apply the lessons this event has taught you; your business may never be the same.

5 Ways Twitter Improves Your Writing Skills

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People keep telling me that the internet is making people dumber. To be honest, I don’t know whether or not that’s true. But did you know that Twitter can make you better writer?

If you are purposeful in your how you approach your use of any microblogging platform, there are 5 ways that you can they can skyrocket your writing ability.

1. You learn the value of every word — no, of every character. In writing, especially for marketing and sales, the tighter your message is, the better. When you have only 150 characters to work with, each letter has to earn it’s place. It has to pull it’s weight. This forces you to think carefully about your choice of words.

If you’ve ever gone over the character limit and had to edit your tweet, you know what I’m talking about. “How can I say what I need to say in the allotted space?” You have to be ruthless. If that comma isn’t serving a purpose, it’s gotta go!

2. You begin to break free from some of the “rule” forced on you by your English teachers.  The best writing is the plainest.  How many people do you know that speak with perfect grammar 100% of the time? In my neighborhood (Calumet City, IL, in south suburban Chicago), it’s probably less than 10%.

When you are communicating via the written word, sometimes there’s a desire to be super-formal.  Believe me, that’s not the best way to get your message across to the average audience. Unless you’re talking to English professors…

George Orwell’s sixth rule for good writing is to break any of  his other five rules before ”saying anything outright barbarous.”

Writers need to have the freedom to say what they mean, forsaking the rules when necessary.

3.  You have to learn to communicate in such a way that your reader will understand exactly what you mean. How many people do you know who don’t quite understand this principle? I see plenty of tweets that have no clear meaning, or that can be understood in multiple ways. Thoughtful writers will take the restricted amount of communication space to heighten their concentration. ”How can I eliminate any ambiguity and say what needs to be said so that the message is plainly understood?“

This is great focus training for any writer.

4. You are forced to choose exactly what you want to say.  In an age where noisy chatter is constant, a Twitter message makes you strip your message down to the core. The way it should be. There’s no room to go off on tangents or talk about about non-essentials.

When brevity is required, you see who really knows how to communicate, and who’s just talkin’.

5. Twitter can give you extra writing practice. Tweeting is writing on a small scale. More practice is always a good thing. A high percentage of Twitter users access the social network with their cell phones. So even if you don’t have a pen and paper, you can practice crafting clear, compelling messages.

Headline Analyzers? Do These Things Really Work?

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A discussion in one of the groups I’m a member of on LinkedIn brought an interesting tool to my attention. It’s the Advanced Marketing Institute’s Headline Analyzer. This tool will take a look at the emotional value of the words in your headline and give you a score.

From the site:

This score indicates that your headline has a total of ***% Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) Words. To put that in perspective, the English language contains approximately 20% EMV words.

And for comparison, most professional copywriters’ headlines will have 30%-40% EMV Words in their headlines, while the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words in headlines.

A perfect score would be 100%, but that is rare unless your headline is less than five words.”

Let me post my response to the group on this topic:
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There’s another pretty cool tool, the Carlin Ad-Speak Calculator, which will tell you if your headlines sound to “salesy” or “hypey.”

Maybe the two could be used in combination

It probably goes without saying, but I’d like to note that it’s impossible for a computer to “know” the emotional power of any given headline. Human psychology can’t be broken down into logorithms.

No one really knows how words will hit home. Headlines will affect different groups of people differently. Current events, whether national or personal, will also determine the impact words will have on an individual. For example, the “foreclosure” is a pretty compelling word for many of us.

To add some perspective, I tried the AMI Headline Analyzer, just to see what happens.

It appears to simply add the “emotional value” of the individual words in the headline.

Example: Having an idea of a couple highly emotive words, my first attempt was “Free Money Now.” Guess it was too short, because that didn’t get a result.

So I tried “Get Free Money Now.” Guess what? 50% EMV. Not bad, eh? My personal analysis would be that there may be some power in that headline, but a lot of skepticism would accompany it. Who could believe it?

Next, I added the most powerful word in any language. “You Get Free Money Now.” The score: 60% regardless of where in the sentence the word “you” is placed. “Get You Free Money” got the same rating.

Finally, for whatever reason, I removed “get” from the headline. “Free You Money Now” scores at a full 75%!

(Incidently, each of those headlines scored low [less than 2%] on the Carlin Ad-Speak Calculator that I promoted myself.)

On the other hand, “Stop Your Foreclosure Now” only produced a 25% emotional value?

Those are the scores you want. But the limited ability of tools such as these is demonstrated.

Your best bet is to bring your writing prowess to the table, coupled with an intimate knowledge of exactly who you are speaking to.

What do you guys think?
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I mentioned the Carlin Ad-Speak Calculator on in an earlier post, which you can see here.

Courtship Copywriting

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A thought for your consideration (which happens to be a comment that I made on John Carlton’s blog last summer)

Selling is just like a marriage proposal. You can’t just walk up a stranger and ask her to marry you. You have to take the process one step at a time, starting with small, easy-to-make choices (“hey, wanna catch a movie?“). Make the first step for your prospect irresistibly easy to take. Over time, the actions get larger.

Long copy allows the message to start small and move the customer increasingly toward making the purchase. Short copy doesn’t have that ability-there’s no time!

Long copy is can be a “greased slide” to the sale. Short copy is one big step, and grease on a step (stair) is not usually a good idea.

This is what Gary Bencivenga called “throwing the monkey fist.”  Most big tasks can’t be accomplished in one move. Master salespeople (that includes smart marketers) use a sequence  of expanding steps to move the prospect to take the desired action.

Think about it…

More importantly, implement it.

7 Guidelines for Writing Eye-Grabbing Headlines

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1) Use surgical precision. Know who your prospective customers are so that you can concentrate on stopping them in their tracks with your headline. Determine which words and themes appeal to your target right now; what is he thinking about? Wondering about? Worried about?

Headlines really serve a single purpose: they use words to get your advertisement read.

Advertising forefather Claude Hopkins, in his legendary work Scientific Advertising, further explains:

“The advertisement is read only by interested people who, by their own volition, study what we have to say. The purpose of a headline is to pick out people who you can interest……what you have will interest only certain people and for certain reasons. You care only for those people, so create a headline which will hail those people only!”

A headline must not “cast too wide a net.” There is no way to appeal to everyone without decimating the strength specificity creates in capturing your target. The attempt gain everyone’s eyes is an error that is all too prevalent in advertising today. The headline will only appeal to people who are interested in the product or service offered. Readers will not waste any time investigating an ad that isn’t selling something that pertains to him. Men don’t generally care much for tampon headlines…

Keep in mind that YOU are reading this article for a reason. Most of the people surfing the web will never read this article.

2) Go for the heart! Almost any expert (and anyone who is genuinely honest about their own purchasing patterns) will admit that people base their buying decisions more on emotion than logic. Shoppers buy what they want, and use reason to justify their choices. The most powerful purchase-driving emotions include Fear, Greed, and the Desire for Love and Prestige.

3) Focus on the Customer. The headline should be more about how the customer will benefit from the product or service than about the thing itself. As the old sayings go, “People don’t buy drills because they want drills, but because they want holes,” and “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” Readers care about what you offer only insofar as they care about what they get out of it. Construct your headline with this in mind

4) Avoid hype. You will lose credibility if you rely on it. There are far too many superlatives and big promises that don’t reflect reality. “Super Awesome Cogs” sounds great, but that headline doesn’t convey any meaning to the reader, other than a setup for disappointment (which the he will protect himself from at all costs.) “New Cog DOUBLES Your Car’s Gas Mileage” better describes what the product does without resorting to hype.

5) People hate to be sold. They love to buy, though. If you can show your audience how to get something that they already want or know they need in a way that is easier, cheaper, or better in some other way, your advertisement will produce good results. Trying to convince a reader that they need something they know nothing about is a losing endeavor. Don’t fight against your target; go along with him. Help him get what he wants.

If the ad is for something that may be unfamiliar, the headline will have to appeal to a need or desire that the reader is familiar with.

6) Test Rigorously. Try different headlines. There is no need to guess at what will work. Find out with certainty by testing different word usage, benefit presentation, etc. This is a good rule in general, as each market will respond uniquely to different parts of your advertising.

7) Consult the masters. Advertising writers and marketers find instruction as well as inspiration from successful advertisements put together by others. Copies of headlines and body copy are often kept in “swipe files” for future reference. What worked well for others has a good chance of working for you.

The other aspect of learning the art of headline writing is studying classic works on the subject. From legends of the past such as Hopkins, John Caples and Robert Collier to contemporary pros like Clayton Makepeace and John Carlton, there are many lessons to learn. Discover the secrets of advertisers that have produced millions of dollars in sales. Continuing your marketing education will always be profitable, especially for a beginner.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of headline-writing guidelines, but following these seven tips is essential if you want to reap the benefits of effective advertising.