When I started my business, I’d spend a lot of time reading through online forums and other small business advice sites. I found some good advice (along with a lot of really crappy stuff from self-styled experts).
One issue that came up again and again was whether the owners of these new businesses should refer to themselves as “I” or “we” when writing about the business in brochures and other materials. (Websites were still new enough that people weren’t agonizing over them.)
Another simple way to gauge your copy’s potential effectiveness is to highlight it in two different colors. Whether you’re developing a letter, a brochure, a web page, or any other channel, take a few moments to highlight all of the sentences that are really about your customer and his or her needs. Let’s do that in pink. Next, highlight all the sentences that are about your company and what it does in yellow.
Now look at the page. What color is your page?
There’s a company from which I’ve been buying products off and on for the better part of three decades. I bought when they were primarily a catalog marketer, and kept buying after they made the move online. I don’t buy a lot from them — maybe something once every three or four years — but enough so they continue to stay in contact.
But I’m about to break off that contact and press the evil unsubscribe button. Why? Because whoever is in charge of their online marketing strategy seems to believe that the best way to maintain my loyalty is to stuff my emailbox with email after email — and the frequency keeps increasing.
I’ve read a lot of great books about advertising and marketing, but none even comes close to one I read as a teen. It still occupies a prominent place on my bookshelf.
It’s a 1972 text called “Madvertising (or Up Madison Ave.),” and it was created by the same geniuses who guided Mad Magazine through its glory years. Many of those writers and artists had cut their teeth in the advertising industry, and they used the book to skewer the many tricks and techniques major advertisers employ.
Nearly everyone likes humor. We enjoy telling jokes, and we enjoy hearing them. So it comes as no surprise that companies try to spice up their advertising by using humor.
They reason that humor will catch the reader’s eye or listener’s ear, and make them more amenable to the sales message that will soon follow. Unfortunately, more often than not, those attempts at humor backfire.
Wonder how well your next ad, website, or brochure will communicate with your readers? Here’s a simple test that’s remarkably powerful.
Count the number of times that your company’s name appears in the text. Then count the number of times words “we,” “us,” and “our” appear in there, and add it to your first number.
Looking for a way to catch the attention of your audience and focus their full attention on your message? Instead of telling them what you want to hear, ask them a question that matters to them.
You may have heard that asking questions in headlines and opening statements is a bad idea. For example, I once had a boss who became furious anytime I presented an ad or brochure with a question in the headline. His reasoning is that the reader might give the wrong answer and lose interest.
The men and women who sell advertising are among the nicest people you will ever meet. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll also tell you that I’m a salesman’s kid, so I have a soft spot for good salespeople. Many of them have a genuine interest in you and your company’s success, and want to do everything within their power to help you make that happen. But if you’re going to regard salespeople as trusted advisors, please don’t lose sight of who employs them and how they are compensated.
There’s nothing wrong with asking for advice, or even accepting it when it’s handed to you without a request. But before you base your decision on the advice, stop to ask yourself whether the person who provided it has a stake in what you’ll do.
Looking for ways to increase your overall sales? Maybe there’s a way to increase the size of each sale you already make. One effective technique is suggestive selling, which fast-food restaurants do exceedingly well. “You want fries with that?” “Would you like a drink with that?” They don’t do it to annoy you; they do it because it works!
But suggestive selling doesn’t have to be annoying. Handled cleverly, it can even tell customers that you really understand and care about them. I remember reading about a fine dining restaurant that dramatically improved its per-customer sales in a simple, yet effective, way.
Back when computers were the size of your garage, programmers often summarized a particular situation as “garbage in, garbage out.” It normally referred to either bad data or bad instructions that, when fed into a computer, led to worse results. For example, if the programmer’s client didn’t provide a precise description of the program’s objectives, the result might not be what was expected. Or, if the data being fed in was inaccurate, the results could be even worse.
The same comment applies to writing. No matter how much talent a writer may have, the results he or she will be able to produce are entirely dependent on the quality of information that’s available. If a client can’t express the objectives or parameters, there’s a good chance that what the writer does won’t meet expectations.