Vidalia Media

The Customer is Everything

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When you’ve got something glorious to sell, loaded with the latest features and perfectly synced with it’s companion app, that comes in all the best colors and that’s won all kinds of prizes… it’s easy to forget that none of that matters, if the person you’re selling it to doesn’t fit somewhere near the very front of you’re selling equation.

A friend and fellow copywriter once revealed a secret about how he finds his best sales pitch ideas. It’s so good, I envy him for saying it first. But I’ve also used it ever since.

What he said was that, instead of sitting down with a product… and looking it over and talking about it and asking each other what’s so great about it… and then setting out to show it to the customer so he can appreciate all those great things too… trying doing the reverse.

That is, forget the product.

Ask yourself, what is it that’s really on your prospect’s mind already? What’s he worried about, excited about, angry about, or simply craving to have?

Fight the urge to only look for those things that fit what you’re selling. Resist even those things that you know you’ll be able to link up later to your general product category.

It’s the customer that’s everything, there is nothing else.

Well said, Mr. Forde.

© 2014 by John Forde
You can get $78 worth of free gifts from John at:
http://copywritersroundtable.com/signup

Does Product Information Influence People?

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It's fascinating to me how easily conventional wisdom gets a grip on people and won't let go. I wonder if it comes down to an unwillingness to think. I know it's true for me—it's much easier to follow the crowd and copy what other people are doing than to think for myself.

Nowhere is this more evident than the way folks conduct their marketing. One of the most entrenched approaches to marketing is a focus on the company and its products. Afterall, isn't Product the first "P" in the 7 Ps of Marketing?

To be fair, there are many important considerations related to product. Getting clear about the product – the need it addresses and the benefits it provides – is vitally important. But is product-focused marketing appropriate in the current environment?

It’s often helpful to think back to "first principles" when you're considering an appropriate course of action. What is it, exactly, that we're trying to accomplish? Fundamentally, we're trying to influence people. What do we know about what it takes to influence people?

Dr. Robert Cialdini (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion) is one of the foremost thinkers on this subject and has expounded on the 6 basic principles of influence. MindTools has put together a really useful summary of these principles (including some tips on how to resist influence). The thing I want to point out is that "abundant product information" is nowhere in the list.

The reason for this is quite simple—information about your product is (or should be) easily obtained and has very little to do with influencing someone to make a purchase decision. Again, product information is important and making it easily accessible is clearly a priority. What I'm saying is that its role in a marketing message is diminishing. It's highly unlikely that your prospects will make a purchase decision based on who provides them with the most or best product information. And yet, this is the conventional wisdom. Everywhere you look, marketers are preoccupied with getting their product information in front of the consumer.
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Ten Commandments of Copywriting

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By Jack Forde

If there were Ten Commandments of Copywriting, what would they be? I found myself asking the almighty "Big G" (Google) that very thing.

And wouldn’t you know it?

It turns out their ARE Ten Commandments of Copywriting. Or so say the half-dozen or so sites that listed different versions, for a total of sixty plus "commandments" when I stopped counting.

Wow.

Still, I couldn't resist handing down my own tablet of commands. Naturally I expect you to accept them as gospel truth. Or at the very least, as very strongly worded suggestions.

See what ye thinketh …

MY TEN STRONGLY WORDED SUGGESTIONS

I. THOU SHALT TOTALLY IDOLIZE THY CUSTOMER.

Here's a no-brainer and one you surely saw coming.

Without your customer, you're a zero. So it only makes sense that you think of your customer first.

II. THOU SHALT NOT MAKE THY BIG, FAT, LIFE-CHANGING PROMISES IN VAIN.

Promise, direct or implied, is the soul of selling.

But be careful, in your copy life, not to treat promise-making like the perfunctory exercise it might seem to be for most other marketers.

III. THOU SHALT WORK WEEKENDS.

… the copywriting life IS a writing life. Which means that no matter where you go, there you are … followed by the writing ideas you've been germinating all week.

If you're doing this right, you can’t escape it. You’ll be writing down ideas on napkins … spotting and hungrily reading clips related to your pitch, even off hours … starting one-sided conversations about your idea with strangers … and, no doubt, working on weekends, Sabbaths included.

IV. THOU SHALT HONOR THY MENTORS AND GREATS.

There IS a chance that you could be a natural-born persuader, with a brilliant ability to write sales copy that could make a dead dog drool for more.

More likely though is that your copywriting talent will grow by leaps and bounds thanks to the input of other great and more experienced writers.

V. THOU SHALT KILL, KILL, KILL … THY DARLINGS.

All writing, sales copy or otherwise, gets better with editing.

And often that means going back and cutting the parts you loved the first time around … and pulling them out where they don’t fit the rest of the sales piece.

Even if they’re clever or cool.

VI. THOU SHALT LUST IN YOUR HEART … FOR ANSWERS.

If there's one common trait among creatives of all kinds, say lots of people who say lots of things on this subject, it’s that they’re hopelessly, almost helplessly curious.

About everything.

VII. THOU SHALT STEAL (JUDICIOUSLY).

[This] does NOT mean, of course, literally stealing the work or credit of others.

But what about "stealing" where it means studying what others are doing and finding ways to do it well yourself?

VIII. THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESSES.

In a copy context, I'm saying don’t try to fake your way through proofs for your claims.

Not with home-crafted testimonials. Not with stock photos of customers. Nor with nebulous studies, survey results, or chart information.

IX. THOU SHALT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S WIFE … AND COUSINS, FRIENDS, ETC.

Before anybody whacks me with a rolling pin, there’s a contextual meaning here you might miss.

Very simply, what I mean is this: You want as many good people on your "list" as you can get.

For the newbies, the "list" is simply the group of people that you’ll mail your sales message to.

X. THOU SHALT COVET (THE QUALITY) OF THEY NEIGHBOR'S GOODS.

This might be the commandment supreme in all copywriting, marketing, product-making or service offering … though you'll see it forgotten all over the place.

Nothing is easier to sell than something worth selling.

Period.

Okay, that's enough — this proclamation biz is thirsty work. Now take this message, which you just might be reading on your tablet computer, and spread the word.

© 2012 by John Forde
You can get $78 worth of free gifts from John at:
http://copywritersroundtable.com/signup

All Aboard the (Clue) Train

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That’s right … as in, the “get-a-clue” train.

It’s easy (and sometimes fun) to bash companies that don’t seem to have a clue. You have to feel sorry for them on one level. I mean, it’s very hard to keep up. How does a slow-moving company adapt to a rapidly changing business environment? It must be terribly frightening for the muckety-mucks in these organisations. How do I know I’m not going to miss the big trends and suddenly be viewed as a dinosaur or worse—as irrelevant?

If you’re one of those people and you’re fretting about your relevance, let me give you a place to start. You’re not alone—nearly every company of any size that’s been around for any length of time suffers from the same malady. Hint: It has to do with the way you speak to your market; your voice.

You see, there’s a time-honoured tradition having to do with the way companies communicate to their constituents. I’m not sure where it came from—probably from academics training legions of corporate-bound college students in “business communications”. You know what I’m talking about – it’s the sort of cold, detached voice that gives you the feeling you’re talking to a machine. (Is it any wonder big companies like the idea of machines that talk to people?)

Well, the times they are a changin’ and it’s time for those of us who care about our markets to wake up and work on our “voice”. The reason is very simple: our markets are talking amongst themselves like never before.

I really like the way this is expressed in the 95 Thesis at Cluetrain.com. If you did nothing else you couldn’t go wrong by internalising just the first 5 points in the thesis:

  1. Markets are conversations.
  2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
  3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
  4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
  5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

So there you have it – one of the most effective ways to avoid becoming irrelevant is to work on your voice. Go tooth-and-comb through every aspect of your communication strategy and ask yourself, “Am I talking TO people or having a conversation? Is this a human voice? Is this the way humans talk to each other? Or is it contrived, strained and unnatural?”

If you don’t, you may wake up one day to the cold, hard reality of the 95th point in the Thesis:

“We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.”

Death of the Corporate Monolith

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I’m often asked, "What’s your business strategy?" and thought I would answer it briefly here. I’ll take the problem/solution approach in the hopes of simplifying the answer.

The Problem is that most businesses (small and large) have failed to grasp the imperative of establishing and maintaining a relationship with individuals. This is important because the days are gone when you can present yourself as a corporate monolith and expect people to be attracted to you. Perhaps you’ve heard the age-old and oft-repeated notion that, “People don’t do business with companies, they do business with people.” That seems obvious but judging from the way most companies present themselves, you wouldn’t think it’s widely recognized.

Not only do people do business with people, they do business with people they know, like and trust (hat tip: Bob Burg). If that’s true (and I think it is) then the goal of your web presence should be to give people the opportunity to know you (as a person), and reasons to like and trust you. [Read more…]