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June 18, 2009 | 1 Comment »
When I was eight years old, I won a school basketball-shooting contest.
I was only 45 inches tall at the time, so this was probably my greatest life achievement. I defeated every basketballesque girl in my K-8 school with my peculiar shooting method.
Apparently, I’m pretty good at shooting baskets, but only if I do it underhanded.
And, because I was eight years old, this was allowed. Although most of my competitors shot overhanded, there wasn’t a rule that I had to. Besides, I didn’t have the upper-body strength to do it that way.
So, I just shot in the way that came easiest for me.
As it turned out, I made more baskets than the tallest 8th grade girls at my school, and was subsequently selected to play in the district championships. It was so easy. I didn’t understand why everyone else didn’t shoot underhanded. It was a basketball shooting contest. Why not?
I have to say, it felt good to win. Especially after I’d failed to get that final gold star in gymnastics for never managing the left splits. But I can’t say I didn’t feel a twinge–just a twinge–of guilt. My way was so easy, and everyone else was doing it the hard way.
There’s actually a marketing-related point here, I swear.
I have learned to entertain the idea that just because something is easy, and everyone else is doing it the hard way, doesn’t mean I can’t do it the easy way, when I want to.
In fact, sometimes the easy way makes an even bigger difference than the hard way.
Let’s call it the Underhanded Basketball Theorum of Marketing.
Is it cheating because it’s easy?
(How to get your customers to write your copy for you.)
For example, say everyone else has data points and proof points, but you don’t because your business isn’t yet full-grown. Kind of embarrassing. But don’t go home yet.
Here’s the Underhanded Basketball Marketing shortcut, excellent for anyone on a tight budget:
Before you write your copy, ask your customers what they think about what you’ve done for them.
Get them to help you make the basket. Yes, it can feel uncomfortable to have these conversations directly. “So, tell me more about how great I am.” Awkward! That’s why I have my virtual assistant Robin do the honors. If I didn’t have Robin, I’d probably find a graphic designer and swap services, with each interviewing the other’s clients. (Email me at kp [at] copylicious [dot] com to get a good list of testimonial questions.)
Here’s why asking customers first is a good idea:
- It’s super easy. You don’t have to be creative or to conduct endless market studies. Just sit back and let them talk.
- It’s a great way to develop your messaging, your positioning, and even your copy. (Use some of their words and phrases verbatim to give your copy that homey target-audience feel.) If you’re developing a new program, you can write out the details and ask your clients or target audience for their objections. Why wouldn’t they want this? What would it take for them to say yes?
Example: I got my landing page in shape by “cheating”–asking my target audience what they thought. Their feedback helped me to strengthen my offer, and reminded me that I’ll never know as much as my target audience about what matters to them. Sometimes feedback feels like cold water in the face, but that’s also why you’ll like it. You’ll always learn something valuable–always. And, it’s free. I always remind myself that getting feedback now ups the chances I’ll make more of a difference later.
A couple tips to help you make this work for you:
- Pick one target audience. You can’t win with everyone unless you have a billion dollars. Even then, you’d only win by crafting a different message for every possible segment.
- Ask for their reaction. Don’t just send an email asking how they like it.
- Ask them to be specific in their responses. What about the copy or the message makes them feel that way? I’ll share my super-secret checklist for asking for feedback in next week’s blog post.
Hope this inspires you to let the 6-foot-tall Don Drapers of the world sit in their offices pulling lonely all-nighters and magically producing gleaming slogans in the nick of time. Be an underhanded basketball star every once in a while. It’s not cheating just because it’s easy!
March 4, 2009 | 12 Comments »
I’m a big, happy, anal-retentive, Excel-spreadsheet-loving, egg-timer-running believer in measuring stuff.
And by stuff, I mean:
Without measuring, there’s no way to know what’s working so we can tweak.
But sometimes measuring can feel like a dictator.
Take revenue, for instance.
Is revenue really the most reliable picture of whether your business is succeeding?
Relying too much on revenue is like standing at the counter spooning peanut butter into your mouth right from the jar.
It can’t be good for you in the long run–even though it feels really good at the time.
Be Not Like eBay, the Company That Had Had WAY Too Many Spoonfuls of Rich, Creamy Peanut Buttery Quarterly Numbers.
eBay is a great example of how rigid adherence to the bottom line can have dastardly effects.
A New York times Sunday Magazine article from October 2008 spelled out in excruciating detail how the company kept insisting on following profits rather than taking a chance on innovation.
According to the article:
“EBay has known for years that some Web buyers were looking for a different experience. Surveys suggested that auction participants were alienated by untrustworthy sellers and hidden shipping fees, and increasingly preferred the certainty of instantly buying items at a fixed price. Although eBay executives recognized and routinely acknowledged the problem, they never took bold, direct steps to address it.”
Speaking about the push to invest in digital media like Amazon and Napster a former eBay executive was anonymously quoted as saying:
‘Nobody really shut it down. The process shut it down. The company was obsessed with making quarterly numbers.’
In contrast, it was Amazon’s ‘willingness to be misunderstood,’ its ‘long-term orientation,’ and its ‘willingness to repeatedly fail,’ in the words of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, that ultimately helped it become wildly successful.
Obviously, we need revenue.
But revenue is merely a symptom of a thriving business.
Not the entire goal.
Revenue should be weighed alongside a host of other variables.
And maybe a strict return on investment shouldn’t always be the key consideration.
If professional services are really about relationships, we need to measure cumulative effects over time.
We need to measure qualitative stuff, too.
And that takes patience.
What if you stopped making revenue your number one goal, and added some bread and some strawberry jam, and maybe a tall glass of milk?
How would you measure the success of your business? Here are a few of mine:
- Is your website speaking to your favorite clients? How do they respond to what you have to say?
- How many projects or tasks are you able to delegate to other members of your team instead of handling everything yourself?
- How well are you setting limits and maintaining a regular schedule with no unexpected, rush jobs?
- How many weekends do you spend not working?
- What percent of your clients are repeat clients?
- What percent of your clients are ideal clients?
- What percent of your clients are buying packages so you’re not reinventing the wheel with every project?
- What’s your profit? How much money are you keeping?
- How well are you documenting systems and processes so you’re not wasting time on repeatable tasks?
- What percent of your proposals are accepted?
- What kinds of results are you getting for your clients, and what are they saying about it?
- What percent of your clients are coming from referrals?
Okay, I showed you mine. What are yours?
Image via Apryl Duncan at About.com.
February 27, 2009 | 2 Comments »
When I posted about going on a marketing diet a couple weeks ago, Lorraine didn’t see how that would help her business.
“I’d be out of work within weeks, homeless–and my eldest son would have to come home in shame from his semester in Berlin,” she wrote in the comments. “I know–Attitude of Scarcity. But I’ve been freelancing through a few economic cycles.”
And she’s absolutely right.
No one wants their business to starve by stopping all marketing altogether.
Some businesses don’t need to go on marketing diets.
But other businesses need to slim down. Like, a LOT. You know them. They’re ones who email you all the time, pitching you something without ever offering anything in return. They’re the ones who would really benefit from a marketing diet.
And by benefit, I mean they could increase their revenues by reducing their marketing communications. Not just by reducing the number of their communications, but also by changing the kinds of communications they send out.
As Lorraine writes: “The truth: I don’t do mass mailings, just try to stay in touch, stay credible and yes, prove I ‘provide value.’”
Exactly. For some reason, that’s not really a common practice amongst companies. I think it’s a problem of them having too much money and not having to really think about what really works.
Hence, the need for a marketing diet.
Here’s a real-world example of a company that needs to go on a marketing diet.
I’m not naming names. But let’s just say I’m absolutely in LOVE with their product—and I’m their ideal prospect who hasn’t yet made the leap to buy.
I subscribed to their newsletter a few weeks ago, and now they send me a semi-daily email on some kind of sale they’re having.
The copy is adorable, but it’s basically a sales email.
So, I’m getting a sales email from this company every other day.
Even though I subscribed to their newsletter. And not to sales emails. (Paging Seth Godin.)
None of these sales emails is ever going to make me buy from them.
Even though I really want to buy. And tell all my friends about them.
Why not? Because price isn’t the reason I haven’t bought in the first place.
If I was ready to buy, I would have bought already. A sale isn’t going to make me flip the switch.
Instead, I’m mulling over practical concerns like whether I’d really be able to use it enough, if I could lift it up the stairs every day, and what I would do if I needed to use it after dark.
What would be some better ways for them to encourage me to buy?
Here are a few things they could do instead:
- Create a 7-part, 30-day email tour with helpful tips on how to actually use the product to get benefits or solve problems.
- Include success stories about people who are using their products in the real world.
- Start a referral program to get people who already love their stuff telling their friends about it, and reward them with cash or some other incentive.
Doing these things would help them engage the right customers.
It would help prospects like me imagine ourselves actually using the product, and it would help overcome our objections as we read about how people just like us had transitioned to the new and better way of doing things.
Marketing without taking the time to build customer trust is like overeating without lifting weights.
If you take time to build your business muscles, the extra food turns to muscle, not fat.
When you let your marketing build muscles—instead of always trying to stuff sales into your mouth—your business will look a lot more enticing to your ideal prospects in the end. Mmmmm, don’t you just love that new-client smell?
Image by malias via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
February 13, 2009 | 15 Comments »
“Assume the prospect wants to buy because he probably does,” writes Zig Ziglar in his classic book, Secrets of Closing the Sale. “Then assume he is going to buy and he probably will. The ‘Assumptive Close’ makes it easy for him to buy. As a professional, that’s your job.”
I applied this technique to get out of 2 traffic tickets and, most recently, to grow my business.
You can, too. This post walks you through how to do both.
What do your prospects have in common with that police officer who pulled you over?
Like the police officer, your prospects are looking to solve problems.
The police officer, of course, equates you WITH the problem.
Both prospects and your customers hope you’ll be easy to deal with, and won’t shoot them.
You can convince them to give you a chance using the assumptive close.
“But that sounds manipulative!”
The assumptive close is much more than a manipulative cold-calling tactic like the well-worn, “So, would you prefer Wednesday or Thursday?”
The manipulative assumptive close happens when you’re recommending something despite what might be best for the prospect/police officer.
The authentic assumptive close means meeting the prospect where they are. You understand their problems, feel their pain, and want them to do what would be best for them. You truly believe you can help them. There’s no difference between outside and inside. I can haz integrity?
How to use the assumptive close to get out of your next ticket—or to attract your next prospect with your website.
Step 1: The police lights are flashing behind you. The voice of God is instructing you to pull over.
A prospect (or a police officer) has found you. Congratulations! No matter the outcome, right now they’re interested and engaged. So, you pull over. Now what?
Step 2: If it’s dark, immediately turn on your overhead light.
What officers want most is to feel safe. They don’t want to have to be on guard.
Make them feel like good guys by showing them you’re a good guy–or gal.
Turn on your overhead light.
It’s secret police language for, “I understand you’re wary, but I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Like cops, your prospects WANT to be reassured. Make it easy for them to see you. Here’s how:
- Let your website show YOU. Don’t hide behind some overly professional, corporate tone.
- Give clean navigation with the least number of buttons and options possible. Your prospects should not feel confused or uncertain.
- Don’t start off your home page with a bunch of “Are you this?” and “Are you that?” yes-or-no questions. It’s scary and invasive. Instead, ask open-ended questions like “How” or “What happens when?” You want to invite them to see the possibilities, to show them you feel their pain without putting them on the spot.
Step 2: Put your hands on the wheel.
When it comes to your website, putting your hands on the wheel means:
- Not forcing them to fill out a popup box before they know what you’re all about
- Not asking them too many questions on the home page
- Not trying to close the sale immediately with a premature call to action. Give them enough helpful information so they can make a decision at their own pace.
Step 3: When the officer approaches your window, roll it down and smile in a relaxed way (because you ARE relaxed).
Believe you are getting out of this ticket. There’s nothing to fear here, no need to overjustify.
Be quiet and listen.
On your website, think of your About page as that window rolling down and you smiling out.
It’s usually the first page people click on—before your Services or your Approach pages.
Being relaxed means letting yourself shine through, and not hiding behind a bunch of credentials.
Assume the prospect already believes you’re qualified. You don’t have to try so hard by listing out every possible way in which you are qualified; instead, you start with what they care about, and why you care so much about what they care about.
As an example, here are two About pages I wrote for clients.
Notice how each About page starts off by talking about the prospect, and not about the company:
Step 4: Show the police officer your Peace Corps ID (or WHATEVER you’ve got).
OK, I admit it. I never used to have my drivers license or proof of insurance on me. But, a few years ago, I DID have my Peace Corps ID. So, I dug around a bit and produced it.
“Where’s Guinea?” said the officer.
“West Africa.”
“What did you eat over there?”
“Bush rat stew. And lots of rice and sauce.”
“Well, you’re going to have to slow down. And maybe hire a professional organizer. Your car is a mess.”
“I know, I will.”
The end. I was on my way.
When you apply the assumptive close, you actually enjoy the process of “selling,” because you can relax, detach yourself from the outcome, and just focus on making it easy and safe for them.
Try it. See what happens.
Image by eflon via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
February 2, 2009 | 15 Comments »
It’s Monday, and a tiny Bob Bly and a tiny Merlin Mann are having breakfast at a tiny dinette set inside the tiny breakfast nook inside my head.
Bob Bly prefers to drink his coffee back in his wood-paneled executive home office, but Merlin Mann insisted they have a real breakfast with fresh orange juice, fried chicken, and waffles. Bob is indulging Merlin, but he’s just itching to get back to work.
They’re having another one of their non-argument arguments, where no one is talking and yet a great deal is said by the way one asks for the syrup and the other passes it. Bob Bly is reading the Wall Street Journal, and Merlin Mann is making up limericks. He likes limericks.
They’ve been having this argument for a while now, here in my head’s dinette. I just can’t tolerate another unpleasant breakfast, so I’ve decided to air things out. Here’s what they have to say for themselves.
The World According to Bob Bly
Bob Bly says, “Write more, sell more.”
He wrote the book on it. It’s a good book. I read it back in 2002, and still think about it today.
Bob Bly’s worldview, as represented in engineer-friendly, bullet-point fashion:
- Apply nalgas to chair: the proven formula for inspiration.
- Get wife to bring meals to home office.
- Write more to sell more. Don’t kill yourself trying to perfect every word.
- Stick to a schedule and discipline yourself to achieve success. At every moment, ask yourself, “What’s the most important thing I could be doing right now?”
- Work more by cutting out everything that isn’t billable. Outsource so you can work more and earn more. Don’t do anything yourself unless it’s billable or could bring you business.
The World According to Merlin Mann
The Merlin Mann in my head says, “Write less, say more.”
He wrote a blog post on it. It was such a good post that I invited Merlin Mann over for breakfast with Bob Bly, and they’ve been living together as The Odd Couple ever since.
Merlin Mann’s worldview, as interpreted by me: Don’t be a webcock. Protect your time. And if you’re going to Tweet, post, or write, have something inspirational, meaningful, or wildly entertaining to say.
So, after listening to these two go at it every morning over breakfast, and after giving the Bly Worldview several good tries, I’m thinking of marrying them–to each other.
The Odd-Couple-Get-Married Worldview:
- Go running and tramp before applying nalgas to chair. It’s much more fun than willpower–and effective, too.
- Have breakfast by the window, at an actual breakfast table.
- Take out my own trash and do my own dishes and laundry. Yay, chores!
- Every once in a while, take a pointless, unbillable WALK with my dog.
- Follow own internal schedule. Do things when I have the energy to do them—while still meeting deadlines, of course. See Productive Flourishing’s awesome heatmap.
- Be as kind to myself as I would be to others. If I feel like stopping for the day, stop.
- Work less by focusing on the really important stuff. Accomplish more because I’m working on projects that FEED energy instead of projects that TAKE it away.
Maybe the “write more, sell more” model’s time has passed.
If everyone is writing and marketing as fast as they can, does everyone really need to market more, sell more?
Is it possible that it’s actually market LESS, sell MORE?
When I think about the businesses I LOVE, they don’t send too many marketing emails.
They do less “marketing” marketing—and more Fried-Chicken-and-Waffles Marketing.
Hanging out, being of use. People like Andy Wibbels, Mark Silver, Daphne Gray Grant, and the Communicatrix market less, but I’m positive they sell more. I recommend them with more passion than an affiliate–and the return I get is knowing I’ve linked another person to their awesomeness.
They’re just that helpful.
3 questions for your consideration over breakfast:
- What would happen if you put your business on a Marketing Diet?
- Do you think your business would improve if you sent out FEWER messages, and made each message count?
- Have you actually TRIED this, and how did it work?
Image by inuyaki.com via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
January 21, 2009 | 14 Comments »
If you’re in business, then you’re in the business of making ideas.
How do you come up with good ideas on deadline, all day, every day?
It’s not just about keeping your Creative Fun Fountain spraying.
It’s also about managing stress and fear so you CAN feel creative. Since it’s physiologically impossible to be creative and afraid at the same time, getting creative means finding ways to cope with fear and stress.
I think I’ve discovered the closest thing to a miracle cure–and am starting a 30-day experiment to see how it works.
It’s difficult to measure my “before.” How do you count your good ideas and compare them with your bad ones? So, instead, I can only report the way I feel now. And, at the end of 30 days, I can report back. How creative did I feel? What kinds of connections did my brain make? Any epiphanies I’d care to share with the class?
Remember the gigantic trampolines we all loved as kids?
I grew up with what you might call a healthy exposure to them.
- I took gymnastics throughout elementary school, where we practiced our tumbles on a gigantic trampoline every day.
- Whenever my parents were at work, I’d pile up all the couch cushions and do running aerial somersaults off my mini-trampoline.
- The first short story I ever wrote–at age 5–involved a cherry doing somersaults over a goat.
- In 4th grade, I wrote an essay about my favorite present ever, which was–you guessed it–a mini-trampoline.
- I frequently dream about flying.
- I would have become a trapeze artist, but I was always terrible at gymnastics.
These days, I spend most of my time in a chair, reading small type on a computer screen, living and making my living in my head.
I love writing just a wee bit more than I love trampolines, so it’s worked out okay.
But what would happen to my head if my body started moving?
I’m not talking about just exercise. I’ve been running and lifting weights since junior high. I’m talking about the kind of movement where you lose control of your body for a few moments, until gravity takes over and brings you back down.
I’m talking about furious Tiggeresque bouncin’.
I’m talking about trampolines!
Astronauts swear by them. And, well, I just bought one. As usual, inspiration came by way of my dear friend Havi Brooks, who recently wrote about her business-altering experience with a trampoline.
My new trampoline feels like the gigantic trampolines I used to have as a kid, only smaller. Small enough to fit nicely into my studio apartment. It gives me a soft, incredibly bouncy bounce–with my head just inches from hitting the ceiling. Possibility of serious injury in my own apartment? I like this!
So, my experiment attempts to measure the following:
What happens when I substitute tramping for my usual 10-minute break activities? For 30 days in a row?
Instead of the internet, instead of Twitter, instead of making myself a snack: I will tramp.
TRAMP TRAMP TRAMP TRAMP out the blues. Tramp out the reds. Tramp out the yellows, the oranges. Just tramp it out.
I have to say, after just three days of tramping, I feel pretty amazing.
I can’t put it down to exercise, because I’ve been exercising already.
There’s something going on at a cellular level.
Oddly, the trampoline both calms and elates me. I’ve only had 6 hours of sleep for three nights in a row and I feel fine. That’s unusual for me.
I’m curious what happens after a few days of these endorphin rushes.
Will I need more and more time on the trampoline just to feel normal again?
And, what happens if, in addition to tramping every day, I’m also:
- Practicing 10 minutes of Shiva Nata daily (also courtesy Havi Brooks). This is the epiphany-generating dance-like thingy that I have YET to really stick with. OK, I’m ready for my epiphany now.
- Writing on a Moleskin with a pen, because I like it. Although writing on paper is slower than writing on a computer, my theory is that because I enjoy it, I’ll get better business benefits by having better ideas, which leads to more revenue. Since I don’t bill by the hour, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes. When I get good ideas, everyone wins.
For a long time now, I’ve put off doing enjoyable things because they weren’t business-related.
Now, I’m finding a business purpose in the enjoyable.
Delight, joy, humor, pleasure. These things that don’t require discipline are somehow minimized.
But maybe we’re tired of doing things we’re supposed to want to do.
Maybe we just want to do the things we WANT to.
And maybe–just maybe–the business purpose is even greater there?
And, if everyone is enjoying life a little bit more, does it really matter?
Want to start your own 30-day experiment?
Or, want to test drive a trampoline? Show some comment love and I’ll point you in the right direction.
January 12, 2009 | 2 Comments »
If you want to traumatize someone for years, here’s one way to do it.
Fire them from an $8-an-hour customer service job. As you’re giving them their papers, murmur these five little words with heartbreaking sadness:
“You’re just not Starbucks material.”
This didn’t happen to me, but hearing about it made my skin crawl. Who says stuff like that? Mean people, that’s who.
What happened to the guy who heard these awful words, you ask?
Some people would have slowly transformed into the guy you see on the left.
Not this guy. He went on to become a neuroscientist.
Turns out, they were right. He wasn’t Starbucks material after all.
He was lucky.
How do you keep your marketing emails from getting rejected and becoming balloon-sculptors in Seattle?
Getting in front of the right prospects is the best strategy. Prospects who already see you as THEIR material.
It’s the He’s-Just-Not-That-Into-You Factor. Should you really be all that upset when you weren’t all that into him, either?
In business as in life, you want to match up in ways deeper than just “solution meets problem.”
Second, you want to write a subject line that’s subject-line material.
A subject line prospects deem relevant to them. (And write an email that’s relevant and useful, too.)
The right subject lines targeted at the right people have special powers. You can soar over gatekeepers’ heads and smack dab into your prospects’ windshields. But in a very charming way. (Twitter and LinkedIn are great for this kind of thing, as long as you follow the rules.)
There’s magic in the right subject line.
The magic happens during that split-second between when someone reads the subject line and when they open the email. Together, you’re creating a story. You’ve provided the hint of what’s to come, but they’re still filling in the empty parts themselves. This moment of hopeful expectancy is almost like being pregnant. Yes, you’ve gotten your prospects pregnant. And, by opening the email, they’re ready to have your baby. OMG, congratulations!!!!
Remember the old Zig Ziglar sales trick?
You ask your prospect a question they’re sure to answer affirmatively, just to get them into the habit of saying yes?
By getting them to open the email, the right subject line gets prospects to say that little “yes.” Just by opening your email, they’re a bit more receptive. If they’re a C-level executive, you’ve just accomplished something amazing.
Here are a few tips to ensure your next email campaign is subject-line material.
Warning for experienced marketers: These are the most obvious tips in the world. Seriously, you will not learn anything new here. But I really want you to keep reading, so I’ve combined these tips with real-world samples, some of them written by professional email marketers. So, go ahead and bask in the glow of that “I-already-knew-that” feeling. Then, see what all the other email marketers have been up to.
- Make it about them. Think about the individual you’re trying to reach–yes, not the audience, but the individual. That lady eating the tunafish sandwich at her desk? That one. Write your subject line to her.
- Keep it short. Studies show subject lines with 4 to 5 words usually get the best response rates.
- Count the ways. Subject lines like “5 ways to get prospects to open their emails” tend to pull really well. You’d think people would get tired of seeing the same numbers-inspired subject lines, but they really don’t. It’s like an addiction. They’ll always want to know if there’s something they don’t know. And you’re about to tell them. So, don’t kill yourself trying to think of something creative if something practical and useful will do the job.
- Write the subject line first. Think of a really good subject line, and then write the email. The email almost writes itself. Almost.
- Use the word “you.” You’re reading this blog post, aren’t you? I hand-crafted the title to compel you to read it. Consultant Al Peterson reminded me of this old standby during a workshop he gave at the IMC NorCal Workshop on January 10th. His workshop, called “Partnering at the C-Level: How to be a valued client executive resource,” revealed his secret tactics for getting in front of C-level executives. Al used to cold-email C-levels with great success, so I asked whether he had a magical subject-line formula. “It usually has the word ‘you’ in it,” he said. One subject line that’s worked for him: “You’ve just taken over the CEO position… and I can help you.” It’s a bit long, but it got their attention, and that’s all that matters.
Subject Line Hall of Fame (and Lame)
Courtesy of My Personal Email Swipe File. Because, Yes, I Collect Emails. And Read Them for Fun.
Here are a few other subject line examples with variations of the word “you” in them, taken from my ongoing swipe file.
Delete. Do Not Pass Go.
These subject lines were neither great nor horrible–not what you want for your email subject line. It’s almost better to err on the side of horrible. At least you’ll get people to open out of curiosity. I only opened these because I open every email. Trust me, your prospects and other high-level decisionmakers will never be that curious.
- “Get your brand noticed in 2009.”
- Not specific enough. What does that really mean? Why should I care?
- “Give your clients what they want”
- Despite the word “you,” it’s still weak. I opened it anyway, only to discover I’d never subscribed to this firm’s email newsletter. “Spam” button, activate. This is one of those fake “you’s.” It presumes to know me by saying “you,” but isn’t specific, which makes me question whether they really know me. They didn’t. Don’t do this.
OK, I’m Curious…
- “I goofed, which is good news for you” (Kathy Mallary)
- Love the honesty here. And how it combines her mistake with a potential benefit for me. This woman is human! She goofs! And she’s going to make it worth my while! OK, I’m in.
- “How to ask other people to read your writing” (Caduceus Strategies)
- What a useful thing to know. Yes, tell me more.
- “Why I write to you–a lot.” (Michael Port)
- This got me to open because Michael Port really does write me a lot, and I was feeling a bit fatigued. “Oh, not another email from Michael Port,” I was literally thinking before I read the subject line. His subject lines have this uncanny ability to read my mind like that. Result: I opened it. I read it. I didn’t act, but that’s okay. He got me and a few thousand others to open his email, and to refrain from unsubscribing. A mind-reading trick goes a long way.
- ‘I’m truly glad I decided to try your service.’ (AWeber)
- Using the customers’ own words in the subject line of an email that also uses the word “you?” Addressed to someone who signed up for a free 30-day test drive? Ding! AWeber gets a special price for that one–and likely a few new subscribers.
Wow! How Did They KNOW This About Me?
- “Should you meet w/ prospects?” (Ed Gandia)
- This question was on my mind that very week. Being specific and targeting your list to the right people is an awesome subject-line-writing technique. The more specific the audience, the better the subject line’s potential. Always.
- “3 home page sins that will cost you clients” (Chris Marlow)
- Tried-and-true “numbers” tactic combined with isolating a prospect pain-point. If you know the magic formula, work it. There’s no shame.
- “You feel poor.” (McSweeney’s)
- Why yes, sometimes I DO feel poor. McSweeney’s makes me feel connected and happy about that, in this weird way I can’t explain.
- “If you can copy and paste, you can write a great email campaign.” (AWeber)
- AWeber breaking the “4-word-subject-line” rules again, but I’d definitely open this if I was trying to learn about email marketing software.
- “Please read if you’re not booked solid.” (Michael Port)
- If I wasn’t booked solid, I’d be thinking about my situation all day long. This email would jolt me out of my skin. “How does he know?” I’d think. Gratefully, this email wasn’t right for me, but I’ll bet it got excellent results.
Are you subject-line material?
Willing to share a magical subject line that’s done wonders? Or, want help sprucing up a subject line for its first date? Please, comment below.
January 6, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Writing this post feels a bit scary. Does my eyeshadow look okay?
Mostly because it’s about something that hasn’t happened yet. And because it’s about me, and because I’m still in progress.
I’ve drawn my ideal house with a mechanical pencil, but all of my shoes and breakfast things are in my current house. And my roommates are wondering what’s going on.
Of course, I want the house to be amazing. But maybe it won’t be. I don’t know. My future-predicting power tools are in the mail. And, if the good things I want to happen don’t happen, knowing this blog post is out there, spreading its SEO viruses all over the internet, might keep me up at night. Everyone will remember The Person who wrote That Blog Post this one time about What She Was Going to Do, and then didn’t do it.
But that’s okay. I’m telling my makeover story anyway.
This year I got the flu four times, finally hired a cook after living off burritos for months, allowed my dog to forget the way Lake Merritt smells in the afternoon, made mountains of new project planning spreadsheets, each intended to become The Ideal-Project-Planning-Mother-of-All-Hourly-Calculations-Spreadsheet-That-Will-Reveal-All-Availability-Possibilities-Forever, and, all the while, I kept getting this nagging feeling my business was running me.
Then, I realized no spreadsheet, software, list, or system would cure me. And I turned to a novel strategy: turning down work. That was fun, until it wasn’t. At last, I turned to business coaches for advice. One for monthly support. And another for a six-hour Ultimate Business Makeover.
Linda Brown at UpLevel Strategies became my regular coach in May, and UpLevel Strategies Founder Kelly O’Neil gave me my business makeover in October (which, by the way, was a hundred times more fun than the ones you get at the Laura Mercier counter at Macy’s).
This is the story of my business makeover with Kelly.
How to take advice from a stranger.
The thing with advice is, anyone can give it to you. And you could follow it and do pretty well for yourself. But if they don’t understand your business or your market, you could end up sandwiched between two space aliens at the Second Life Virtual World Health Marketing Conference sponsored by Coca Cola.
The more advice I got and read, the more I told myself it couldn’t possibly apply to my business. And I kept my pores clogged with un-acted-upon advice. No, I wasn’t ready for my close-up yet.
Linda was the deep-cleansing facial to Kelly’s makeover.
Linda got me ready for a makeover, helping me define my ideal clients, helped me discover what I was really best at, and kept me accountable as I redesigned and rewrote my website. She also helped me through countless sticky situations.
I decided to work with Kelly for one good reason. There’s no one like her. And I got the crazy feeling she could help me. She demonstrated a bottomless zeal for my business and its potential. I learned I had good bone structure. She also had a knack for understanding not only my business and my market, but also how my personality and values shape the possibilities for my business.
As her website home page proclaims, “I actually fall in love with what’s possible for my clients.” I definitely felt the love. Which is why I’m writing this blog post.
Anyone can give you a list of tactics to implement. But Kelly helped me envision my ideal outcome, and then she created a plan full of tactics and strategies that worked for me. Tactics she was confident I could actually achieve. I’m complicated, and that’s okay. No templates here.
Here’s what I got:
- A five-hour strategy session, in person.
- A big, fat marketing plan from A to Z, from the very high-level stuff to down-and-dirty creative tactics I’d never even thought of, and specific changes to my business model itself.
- Also, she threw in some phone calls where she coached me through challenges that came up as I was implementing the plan. And I got a free pair of pants! (Okay, no, but I did get a carne asada burrito.)
Best of all, my plan was all tailored to me, pushing me just slightly WAY past my comfort zone.
But only in the best of ways. Like a Jillian-Michaels’-30-Day-Shred kind of way.
I found myself committing to doing things I never thought I would do. It didn’t seem crazy because I knew this stuff worked. Kelly had already done it (and is doing it) herself. She’s wasn’t just telling me what to do — she was actually walking the walk. Some advice-givers have no shoes. Kelly’s got shoes.
It’s only been a couple of months since my makeover. But I’ve already done quite a bit. For example, in just these first two months, I have:
- Raised my rates. (Well hello there, prospective clients! So glad you stopped by.) I guess I could have raised my rates without Kelly’s help, but I wouldn’t have because I didn’t know whether it was the right thing for me to do.
- Looked for 2 copywriters to add to my team so I can scale. And actually ended up adding 10 copywriter-collaborators to my team. Again, I guess I could have thought to do this on my own. But I never would have. She held me accountable and didn’t let me make dumb excuses for why it might not work. Instead, she challenged me to imagine it actually working.
- Switched from hourly retainers to project-based retainers. Yes, could have done it on my own, but it would have taken me a long time to realize I should.
These are just a couple of examples. There are more things in the plan, but they’re secret.
Total return on investment:
It’s too soon to say. But I promise to report back.
There’s still a lot of hard work to do.
But what’s great about working with Kelly is even though our makeover is over, I still get to work with Coach Linda. She’s not going to let me get away with any of my usual mind tricks.
Changing my business model means I don’t get to do the Four-Hour-Workweek just yet. But the time I invest now takes on special powers.
Have you ever worked with a business coach? What’s been your experience?
January 3, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Some people use the week before the holidays to travel, go shopping, catch up on work.
I used it to collect brains.
Where there was just one single, solitary brain (mine), now there are ten bountiful, powerful brains.
Their names are Grae, Alison, Kat, Libby, Marissa, Heidi, Anissa, Jessica, Kathlyn, and Annie. And they are amazing writers who will now be collaborating with me on a project basis here at Copylicious.
Yeah, I know that’s a lot of brains. And I don’t expect everyone to begin writing all at once.
But my theme for this year is “Why not?”
In keeping with that philosophy, I’d like to slowly begin rolling out copywriters on small parts of projects throughout the year. My hope is that, by teaming up with another writer for each client, I can:
- Distribute the work evenly
- Keep working with as many ideal clients as I can handle
- Create better results for my clients
HOW IT CAME TO THIS
I’ve always been an independent person. In fact, I was so independent I didn’t know it. “She always seems like she’s off in her own world,” I once overheard my 5th grade teacher tell my parents. I’ve never wanted to manage, supervise, be responsible for others. Telling people what to do? I’d much rather work with them than on them.
All of this is to say I never thought I’d ever, ever subcontract to another writer. Ever.
But then this year happened.
And I realized a few things about myself.
Four things, to be exact:
1. I LOVE what I do and the people I work with. What I love most about working with my clients is that we become collaborators. By working together, two people create something better than what either of us could have produced on our own.
2. I have what Colleen Wainwright calls Eyes Bigger Than Stomach Syndrome. When it comes to taking on projects for ideal clients. I just can’t say no. And when I do, it hurts. On the plus side, giving out referrals to other copywriters made me a few friends, and got me some free, priceless advice from copywriting legend Ivan Levison, whose newsletter you should subscribe to immediately.
3. My dog misses our daily runs. I miss our daily runs.
4. With strategic collaboration, I could take advantage of 1, 2, and 3. Bringing in smart, savvy people to work on specific parts of projects would help me and my clients. These writers wouldn’t be “underlings.” Who gets anything out of that? Rather, they’d be collaborators whose perspectives complemented mine. Copywriters who gleefully flung fresh ideas at every project. Everyone wins! Even Harley.
HOW I FOUND FRESH BRAINS
These writer-collaborators came to me in a rather unusual way. I’d like to share it with you.
It all started when my business coach, Kelly O’Neil, advised me to write an ad like I was looking for a date.
My first thought: That’s ridiculous.
My second thought: That sounds like fun!
Once I got over myself and my fears of finding only random, scary people on Guru, I got excited about the types of people I might actually be able to attract.
After all, if I found my fella online three years ago, why not a copywriter?
So, I wrote a “personals ad” to my ideal writer-collaborator and sent it to a friend, Havi Brooks at Fluent Self. “Do you know anyone like this?” I asked her.
She then posted it on her blog, which tends to attract smart, creative, idealistic types.
Here’s what my ad said:
Wanted: Copywriter-Collaborator
I’m looking for someone smart who knows how to write and isn’t a flake.
You’re crazy about books. You collect active verbs. You obsess over the order of words in a sentence.
And you have this knack for getting people to believe in your crazy ideas. Maybe you convinced a hundred people to sponsor your charity ride. Or you persuaded investors to fund a puppet show production. Or you sell tamales.
Whatever it is, you’re interested in things. Lots of things. Maybe too many things. And it would be nice to have another income stream—and a learning opportunity—that rewards curiosity and enthusiasm.
That’s where I’m hoping we can help each other.
For the past year, I’ve been suffering from what people keep telling me is a “good problem.” My copywriting business is now taking up my evenings and weekends. I want to keep growing, but I can’t do it on my own. Enter you.
I’d like to collaborate with you, smart, non-flaky writer. You’ll get a flat-fee for each project, and also a quarterly performance bonus.
I’ll handle all the client stuff and the strategy stuff and the marketing stuff. Your job, and your only job, will be to write (and self-edit!). You’ll write websites, lead-gen emails, landing pages, white papers, and more.
This could take up to 12 hours a week of your time. Or less. Or more. Let’s work something out. I’m looking for a long-term relationship that helps both of us grow.
If you’re new to copywriting but have been writing as long as you’ve been walking, I will help you.
We will collaborate. And at the end of the day, you will get paid well for doing what you love.
Future writer-collaborator, I hope you’ll introduce yourself.
Within 3 days, I had gotten nearly 80 responses from people all over the world.
I knew Havi had an extraordinary audience, but this kind of amazed me. After much thought and many conversations, I narrowed the list down to 9 people to start working with.
I found one more person on my own, whose dating blog I’d been reading for the last 2 years. She’s definitely a keeper.
Lesson learned:
Just because everyone else does it this way, doesn’t mean you can’t do it that way.
In fact, if doing it that way feels fun and comfortable, you’ll almost certainly get better results. I was only planning to find one or two people, but when 10 emerged, I had to reinvent what I thought was possible.
If I’d done the traditional job post on Guru, Craigslist, forums, lists, I would have gotten BLAH, which no one wants.
By taking a chance on a ridiculous idea, I helped not just myself, but also 10 other people in this blankety-blank economy. (BTW, if you haven’t seen it yet, this NY Times article is going to inspire you all year long. I read it several weeks ago and still can’t stop thinking about it.)
So, why not act on one of your own ridiculous ideas this year?
And, if one of those ridiculous ideas happens to involve marketing your pants off—well, 11 fresh brains are ready to do your bidding.
November 21, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Getting the flu is like getting a mini cancer. You wonder–is this what it’s like to be old?
Last week I embarked on my annual forced business retreat–aka the flu–where thoughts finally outnumber daily tasks and my brain is flooded with ideas from the cafeteria lady who lives there. For such an unproductive period, it was an incredibly productive period.
Being in pain attunes you to others who are in pain, like changing a channel. Suddenly, everyone seems to have the flu. It’s a whole new world of people in pain, people who aren’t just walking around moaning, but who are struggling to use all the milk before it goes bad, who forgot to cancel their fitness membership, who still laugh at LOLcats. Or is it just that you’re paying more attention?
You also become highly attuned to b.s. from marketers who presume to understand you. Liz Strauss had a great write-up about Motrin IB’s latest commercial. I’m not pregnant, but if this had been made about people with the flu, I can see how it could grate.
Writing from a place of empathy feels good. It’s good to be reminded that the best source of inspiration is other people who are in that place. Not in a creative brief.
I’m not always there, day in and day out. Sometimes, against my better judgment, I’ll type, even though I know my heart is in writing everything out longhand. It’s that desire to always be efficient, to do things faster and faster. When I write things out longhand, the copy tends to be even more results-inducing than the copy that comes out when I’m just paying attention to rules and best practices and typing efficiently away.
Could Microsoft Word be the reason so many messages fail to resonate?
Wouldn’t it be nice to get these insights every day, without having to get the flu?
I would like to push myself (and my clients) to be more authentic.
Authentic in that we see the problem as an experience, and our solution as just one piece of it. We address that whole experience, and we do it in their language. Companies that come to me when I have a flu, for example, and don’t offer me medicine for my symptoms, but offer me 5 ways to give yourself permission to be sick. I can deal with the symptoms, you know. It’s all the things I experience around the symptoms that really bother me. This constellation of worries.
I also worry about the risks of following the money, and missing something magical that might happen when I have an unstructured day, and risk being surprised. I think my clients worry about that, too.
What the flu taught me about marketing is that no message can be crafted without really understanding the prospect’s experience; and that often the best ideas come when we snap closed our laptops, stop typing away, and let the crazy cafeteria lady in our heads start talking.
Maybe the prescription for improving your marketing is getting sick at least once a year. On the other hand, a few strategically placed life-altering problems might work, too.
October 26, 2008 | 2 Comments »
How do you get hundreds of people to attend your event, download your white paper, read your article, buy your service?
This is actually the wrong question.
The right question is: How do you get as many of your ideal clients to take action?
And that is not just with the right title, but with a focused approach.
It’s easy to find online articles on how write irresistible titles: “3 secrets to…” “5 reasons why…” “Are you making these mistakes…” etc. We’re not going to cover that here. Instead, we’ll discuss how to approach your title–before writing it. You see, the title is just the icing on the cake. You need to make sure you’re icing the right cake.
Here are three steps to take BEFORE you write that amazing title:
1. Don’t write the title, plan the event, or hire the copywriter until you’re almost scarily-clear about your audience. Like, they think you know them personally and it kind of freaks them out.
Ever sign up for a seminar based on its title, only to find it isn’t relevant to you at all?
You never want to put anyone else through this. The copywriter may have congratulated herself on those high response rates. But response rates are meaningless if half the attendees vow never to return. You need to know attendees found the seminar valuable, relevant, timely.
The antidote to annoying anyone is focus. Even if focusing means a lower number of overall responses, it also means a higher number of high-quality responses. You’re more valuable to them–which makes them more valuable to you.
2. Specialize on a subset of the audience, and their problem.
You don’t need the whole world. You just need the people who are crazy about you. The people you connect with. The people who want what you have because you can help them solve their problem, meet a need, and get ridiculously successful and happy.
Even if you’re selling something like gumballs, you’d do well to differentiate this way. Who are these gumballs for? When you can narrow it down, you can make a bigger difference.
“Yes, but I don’t want to exclude anyone by picking just one group.”
What happens when you say you’re for everyone, and someone who hires you discovers you’re not right for them at all?
Why not just say whom you’re best for, right from the start?
What if you specialize in helping “business owners and entrepreneurs,” and leave it at that?
Too general. It’s like saying you target employees. Or American people. Or people who drive cars. It’s so broad that most of the people in that group will discover you’re not speaking to them and their needs at all.
Here’s a good example.
Havi Brooks targets business owners and entrepreneurs—but that’s just the broader category. She actually targets a specific type of business owners and entrepreneurs –creative entrepreneurs who feel they’ve got a lot to say but aren’t quite ready to put themselves out there.
See the difference? If you’re a creative entrepreneur who feels that way, you’re going to be sending her fan mail real soon. Which happens quite a bit. Notice she’s not saying “graphic designers.” But she’s clear about the type of person you can really hit home with.
Whatever the size of your budget, focusing is just the smart thing to do.
3. Respect your audience’s time. Deliver on your title’s promise.
How I Spent Saturday Not Phone Banking, Not Eating Pancakes, Not Walking Around Fort Funston with My Dog, and Not Sleeping In
On Saturday I went to a conference for “business owners and entrepreneurs.” Period. No mention of the types of business owners and entrepreneurs. Just. Well. ALL of us. My bad. I learned my lesson.
The title of one of the talks in the agenda was “10 Secrets to Email Marketing.” The actual talk delivered was “Best Practices in Email Marketing.”
When you call your talk “10 Secrets to Email Marketing,” those 10 things had better be secrets.
A best practice is, by definition, something most people already know. A secret is something few people know. Big difference.
So the session actually revealed not secrets but the most obvious facts about email marketing that most of us already know. Example secrets from the talk: “Include your name in the ‘from’ field.” “Let people subscribe to your newsletter from your website.” “Make the subject line descriptive.”
REALLY? These are email marketing secrets? Well, that is the biggest secret of all.
When promoting an event, a webinar, a speech, or a white paper, why would you want people to attend if they won’t find it relevant? What good are responses if they’re not the right responses?
Instead of saying the event is for “business owners and entrepreneurs,” why not be clear and say it’s for “business owners who want someone to slow down and explain all this social marketing stuff in English.”
Isn’t it better to have 250 raving fans than 500 annoyed people who wish they’d slept in and resent you for wasting their time? Sitting through a 45-minute talk on stuff I already know. At 9:30am on a SATURDAY morning. Instead of eating pancakes in bed with my human and my canine. Not fun.
A side effect of not focusing your event is you attract an unfocused audience. The conference let us choose from 10 kinds of name badges organized by industry. But they didn’t have MY industry (the “communications” label actually referred to computer hardware and networking). By attracting a hodgepodge audience, they eliminated any potential benefit of easy networking with likeminded others. So I didn’t have a good reason to stick around. If they didn’t have a name tag for my industry, what were the chances I’d meet anyone in my industry?
The Moral of the Story
Strategy and focus provide juicy steak in times of economic gristle.
Trying to please everyone is wasteful, like giving heavy whipping cream to a dog. The dog gets a stomachache, you regret it later. Finding the right fit means nothing goes to waste. So before you write that amazing title, be sure you’re focusing your event, white paper, and your business. Companies can’t afford to work with generalists. And you can’t afford to be one.
October 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »
So, you “deliver results?” 12,500,000 others do, too.
I looked it up on Google.
“Produce results?” You’ve got company. 22,700,000, to be exact.
Hope you have enough clean plates to share your clients with everyone.
By simply scanning the results of my Google search, you can see why this approach isn’t doing them any favors. Bear witness:
“We Deliver Results… Consistently. Sanford Group is a leading consulting firm providing. strategic marketing, marketing communications, design…”
“Sterling Marketing Solutions • We Deliver Results
At Sterling Marketing, we pride ourselves in professionalism, integrity, hard work, and above all, being a results driven company.”
“Motif Creative - we develop brand solutions that deliver results
Motif Creative is experienced at developing brand communication strategies that differentiate your business, engage with your customers and, …”
“INTEGRA PRODUCTIONS | INVENT | INNOVATE | INSPIRE | WE DELIVER RESULTS
Integra Productions specializing in project management and execution of private corporate meetings and special events nationwide.”
“Welcome to OracleCMS - We Deliver Results!”
“Deliver Results
Rigorously applied project management principles and processes deliver results. … We assure project customers quickly receive tangible, measurable results …”
“Welcome to Birthday Card Marketing - We Deliver Results!”
How we deliver results: Teleservices technology
To meet the sophisticated needs of our clients, we must utilize cutting edge technology. Our systems are unique because they provide us with unlimited …
Marketing Strategy Experts that Deliver Results. - Marketing …
We have searched high and low to find the most effective, fastest-results yielding tools. Our clients come from every business, industry, and background …
FreeStyle Communications - We deliver results.
We can handle any job big or small. Short deadline? We can get it done. And we will do the job right! We will complete your project on time, on budget and …
Gecko Webs :: About Us We Deliver Results
We blend exceptional technological skills with old-fashioned business principles and customer service to deliver uncommon results. …
Emerging Productions | We see Potential | We Deliver Results
print | video | web | contact.
So many companies deliver results, you’d think ‘results’ had hypnotic powers, enabling anyone to instantly attract all audiences and compel them to take action.
But, as you can see from the above search results, saying you “deliver results” simply makes you sound like everyone else. And if your clients and customers want to work with the best, they’re not going to work with someone who uses the same language as both Bowflex and a birthday card delivery company.
Strangely enough, the worst offenders–and by worst I mean most common–appear to be the marketing firms. Marketing consultants, marketing communications, graphic design, web design. In other words, people who really ought to know better.
But wait. Who cares if 22,500,000 others are saying they deliver results, too? That must mean delivering results delivers results, right?
Isn’t this just one of those ways we writers like to show we’re better than everyone else, to make you feel inadequate without us, so you’ll never feel complete without a thesaurus? While I admit the image of everyone carrying around a security-thesaurus like a blankie pleases me, there are more honorable reasons not to sound like everyone else.
Using a word like “results” isn’t going to help anyone understand what you can do to help them.
Introducing the Stop, Drop, and Roll Procedure. Everyone should practice and know this important marketing safety technique.
Even if you don’t need help, you never know when you’ll be called to help a friend, colleague, or relative.
You’re welcome.
The Stop, Drop and Roll Procedure
How to Safely Eliminate RESULTS from Your Marketing Copy
- STOP generalizing—specify instead! How exactly do you help them? Be like Thinkshift Communications.
- DROP a story on ‘em. Detail details, name names. Be like Jen Benz.
- ROLL it all up into the problem you help solve. The thesaurus is not the answer to all of life’s little writing challenges. First think about your clients and how you help them with their own stuff. Be like Mark Silver.
Still shaky after your near-mediocrity experience? Here’s a time-tested trick to help you avoid danger:
Test key phrases of your website by typing them into Google and seeing what comes up. Hundreds of thousands of other matches, with people who share an identical tagline, is not a good sign.
Oh, and a memo to the clean tech industry: Please add “triple bottom line” to your list of phrases that must never be allowed to slip into a corporate website or brochure. No one who is in the power of making decisions about sustainability is new to the idea. They get it. Let’s move on to how specifically you help them achieve this.
If you would like to share your own life-threatening experience with results, please do it below.
October 15, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Talk Soup recently ran this ridiculous clip from an obscure morning show, appropriately named The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet.
During a feature on binge drinking, the show abruptly cut to a clip of a cat eating spaghetti. The cat is never mentioned, nor is it included in any part of that show.
Spaghetti Cat became an instant legend, making the rounds on blogs and sparking much speculation. It was only after Spaghetti Cat became famous that the show finally explained Spaghetti Cat’s purpose. It was their new ‘bleep’ feature–appearing in lieu of bad words.
First: Brilliant. Now I and 500,000 other people know about The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet.
Because they didn’t mention Spaghetti Cat, they managed to intrigue the world.
Second: Just like word spread about Spaghetti Cat, it can also spread about your company when problems go unaddressed. Spaghetti Cat reminds us what NOT to do when things go wrong.
Take Apple, a shining example of how a good company can sometimes get it wrong.
Customer service IS marketing. Apple gets that. Except for the times they don’t.
Ever since I got the new iPhone, I can’t stop complaining about it.
Complaining about my iPhone has become a kind of hobby for me, the way Raiders fans love to complain when their favorite team is losing.
The problem is my 3G service causes my phone to become useless. It drops calls for no reason at all, and will suddenly show “No Service” even though I’m in a green coverage zone. A few internet searches revealed I wasn’t not the only one with serious issues.
Months later, Apple still refuses to say a word about it. The AT&T customer service department is no better.
“No Service? Hmmm, well, have you tried resetting it? Are you in one of our coverage areas? Maybe you should replace your phone.”
When Apple finally issued a software fix, they didn’t say what specifically they were solving. And the problem is still only partly fixed. My phone’s 3G service is still so spotty that I keep it turned off to avoid missing calls. Customer communications, Spaghetti-Cat-style.
A better way to deal with this would have been to acknowledge the problem, as Apple did with the MobileMe release. I just got this email a few weeks after that infamous kerfuffle:
“We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users’ patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.”
I think most companies would like to respond this way all the time, but fear gets in the way. Fear of admitting they messed up. Fear of disappointing shareholders. Next thing you know, you’re interrupting your morning show with an image of Spaghetti Cat. This is how it all starts.
So, what to do when stuff goes wrong? When something like, say, the equivalent of a cat eating spaghetti appears, how do you handle it? The cat eating spaghetti says to your customers, “something is happening that you do not understand.” Do you stop what you’re doing to explain the cat, or do you soldier on, pretending like nothing ever happened?
Look to your communications to meet the problem head on. Come right out and admit it. Yes, there’s a spaghetti cat in the room. It’s not just you. No, you’re not crazy. Yes, we’re working on fixing it. Honesty works, honestly. Then, when you fix it, let them know you fixed it. Or, if you only partially fixed it, say so, plainly. Mark Silver had a great post on what to say when you’ve messed up: “Handling complaints without making things worse.”
This is how you deal with a Spaghetti Cat in the room. One Spaghetti Cat at a time.
August 6, 2008 | 2 Comments »
An old coworker of mine had a knack for always being right.
He could disagree with a room full of senior executives in a way that compelled them to agree with him.
He always got his way. Even when that way was, at first, enormously unpopular.
How did he do it? He was a usability expert.
For some reason, every usability expert I’ve ever met has been a walking encyclopedia of data.
Usability experts have a true and undying zeal for statistics. “30% of users do this when you do that,” etc.
True to his calling, this coworker had a statistic for practically everything.
I don’t know how many of these statistics were actually made up, but they were very compelling.
Who can argue with a statistic?
Like beauty, being right is in the eye of the beholder.
Especially when the beholder is your client or your boss.
How do you get buy-in for creative when your boss or client disagrees with you—
but you just KNOW you’re right?
Arguing won’t get you very far.
You can do what Erik did.
Arm yourself with compelling statistics.
(Statistics that are also verifiable and from a trusted source.)
But what if you’re not an encyclopedia of statistical knowledge?
And what if you don’t have time to spend 3 hours hunting for some obscure statistic on how email subject line lengths affect open rates to prove your point?
Thanks to Marketing Sherpa, you don’t have to.
Here’s your new Emergency Rightness Deployment Plan:
1. Sign up for a free trial membership of Marketing Sherpa.
- It’s $397 a year, but if you just get the free trial in a pinch, you can cancel at the end of the month. Don’t cancel, though. I’m not getting any affiliate commissions. It’s just that this really is the most valuable resource ever created for marketers. (Sorry, I don’t have a statistic for that.)
2. Click here to get in touch with your personal Marketing Sherpa librarian. This is a real librarian with a Masters in Library Science, whose job is helping you find what you need. Her name is Erin. You can call or email her what you’re looking for, and she’ll let you know where to find it.
- Maybe you’re looking for proof that shorter subject lines are more effective.
- Or, that having a call to action on the right side of the page works better than on the left side.
- Or, that having a subscription embedded in the page itself will be much more effective than making it a link.
- Do you have time to hunt through their thousands of articles to find what you need? Me, neither. Now your personal librarian will find it for you!
3. Armed with your statistic or best practice, present it with a flourish to the client.
Success! Not only did you just make your case, but you reduced the chance of future arguments.
Now, you may say your boss or client hired you because you’re the expert. They should trust your recommendations. And, if they don’t agree with you, that’s their loss.
In reality, even though most people want to hire the best experts, it’s difficult for them to put aside their opinions all the time. It’s our job to help them see the light. Think of it as part of the service you provide. You want to help them get out of their own way.
Without getting in your own way spending the day hunting for statistics.
Now that you know how easy it is to be right, go forth and librarify! (And let me know how it went below.)
July 21, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Once upon a time in a far away land, I decided to become an executive assistant at a private equity firm.
I was greener than the greenest blade of grass on the greenest hill of Ireland on the rainiest day of Spring.
For the first 3 months, I made every mistake possible.
I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Marketing a growing business means quite a bit of the same.
We’re all bound to make mistakes, to irritate our customers, to not know what we didn’t know.
Just know this: Even though there’s always a mistake around the corner, at least you can use the bad feedback and objections to make better marketing. Yes, all those pesky mistakes & resulting complaints and objections are excellent background reading for your friendly local copywriter.
For example, I’m currently working on several online & web writing projects for a growing clean tech company.
To start me off, they provided some existing marketing materials and a Word doc with the key marketing messages, including benefits & reasons their product was better than competitors.
This was all very compelling. But it just so happened that I had read Joseph Sugarman’s masterpiece, The Adweek Guide to Copywriting. (Highly recommended!)
He emphasizes the importance of asking why someone WOULDN’T want to buy from you.
That’s where the juicy stuff is.
‘So,’ I asked my client, ‘why wouldn’t someone want to buy from you?’
He remembered an old Powerpoint document a market research firm had put together.
Not only did I get the golden reasons why people didn’t want to buy their product, but I also got the most compelling benefits of the company’s products, in order of importance.
It was Christmas.
How does one use this document?
To address prospects’ objections in a very subtle way, before they even know they have them.
So, by the time prospects get to the end of the email or landing page, they don’t have any “reasons why not” left.
And, they feel like they can trust the company, because no one is trying to cover up the truth by hiding behind exciting benefits.
So, next time someone says ‘No!’ write it down. When you need to create your sales messaging or your marketing copy, you can create it with both objections and benefits in mind.
I keep all my random notes on Backpack, which makes it easy to collaborate with others (or with my multiple personalities).
Tell me, why WOULDN’T you want to comment here to share your thoughts?
July 14, 2008 | No Comments »
You know the feeling. You’re in a nice restaurant, meeting with Important People, and you’ve just taken a big bite. A bite slightly too big for polite society, but it’s too late now.
Now your cheek is bulging and you’re trying to chew it all before anyone sees.
And it’s now that the Most Important Person turns to you & asks you a Very Important Question.
Your mouth is full of juicy steak & potatoes & gravy & cranberry sauce. You know if you open it to speak, juice will drip down your chin and you’ll embarrass yourself.
But the sense of urgency you feel around speaking as soon as possible and giving as much information as possible is overwhelming.
You know this person could easily turn to someone else while you’re finishing your bite and you’ll lose this critical opportunity.
So, what do you do? You do what marketers have been doing for years.
You talk with your mouth full.
Juice drips down your chin as you expound on the intricacies of data mart consolidation.
Meanwhile, the person you’re trying to impress?
Besides trying to hide his amusement/disgust, he’s also got no idea what you’re saying.
Your mouth is full.
But he’s polite. So he smiles, nods, and then turns to the next person.
So long, Important Opportunity.
There’s a marketing equivalent of talking with your mouth full.
It’s trying to give the prospect too much education at once.
(Or, skipping right to the call to action without letting them chew on benefits.)
In response, the prospect checks out, vowing never to visit your website again.
Are you trying to do everything at once, all in one step?
Educating the prospect on every little detail of what it is, how it works, and 50 FAQs?
Maybe you feel a sense of scarcity, because you’re afraid prospects will never get another chance to face this plateful of cookies (aka your website) again.
Here’s a quick and easy solution that actually gets better results.
Build an appetite for your services over time by combining education and benefits in bite-sized servings.
Within each serving, invite them to take the next step.
Whether it’s downloading a white paper or signing up for a 10-day tour, keep them engaged.
Keep serving them courses.
This gives both of you time to finish chewing.
Embrace the chunk. Your dining companions—and prospects—will thank you.
June 12, 2008 | No Comments »
Here’s an example of a company that makes you fall in love with it, that’s not Apple. It’s called MOO. Their tagline? “We love to print.”
How can you not love that tagline? It’s simple and direct. It’s not trying to sidle up next to you breathing in your face with its pork-rind breath. It’s friendly and approachable in all the right places.
Now, MOO has a remarkable product. You can print a pack of business cards, each with a different image on the back—and choose from any number of ‘hey-where’d-you-get-that-cool-business-card’ formats, including itty-bitty business cards, cards that stand up on one end, note cards, thank-you cards, birthday cards–you get the picture. And if you don’t, they’ve got that taken care of, too. You can choose images for your card from several talented designers. You have to try hard to try to create cards that look bad.
To match their remarkable product, MOO also boasts remarkable design and copy. Golf claps!
This isn’t extraordinarily difficult to do. Lots of growing companies have remarkable products and matching remarkable websites. But here’s where most of us get into trouble: we quit while we’re ahead. Maybe we grow so fast that we forget about a few little details. I’ve been banned from using the word “experience” in this context, but it’s true. They forget about the customer’s brand experience. The carpet doesn’t match the drapes.
Here’s how it usually happens: You get an automatically-generated email from a customer service bot that says something like “Your order has been processed. Thank you for shopping with us. Click here to track your order.” (I always end up clicking on that link before my order has shipped.)
I don’t even notice when emails like this come, because they come all the time. Most of us don’t expect any better. It’s almost as if companies stop trying once you become a customer. NOOO! You and I know that our customers are possibly our most valuable sales tools. They can send us referrals. They can become sources of repeat business. They can write blog posts about us out of thin air.
If you want to give your customers and clients a good time–a good time that’s consistent with the remarkable time you’ve given them so far–you need to pay attention to the tiny details like those pesky emails and secret, hidden pages.
When a company does get it right, people definitely notice. And I’m all about getting extra points with customers. Aren’t you? MOO is one of those companies. Here’s what I got when I ordered my pack of Moo cards:
- A follow-up email to let me know my order had been “dispatched” (see below)
- A modest little package of MOO cards fastened by a pink sticker that said, simply, “YAY!”
- A reorder form
Here’s the email in all its glory:
Hooray!
The following items from your order are in the mail:
1 x Ready Made Notecards (16)
Please note, as your order will be shipped via First Class/Airmail, it
should be with you in around 5-7 working days, but that it won’t have a
tracking number.
Remember, I’m just a bit of software. So, if you have any questions
regarding your order please first read our Frequently Asked Questions
at:
http://www.moo.com/help/
and if you’re still not sure, contact customer services (who are real
people) at:
http://www.moo.com/service/
Thanks,
Little MOO, Print Robot
Hooray, indeed! Moo delivered a consistently good time.
This didn’t happen by accident. Someone actually planned it this way. So, how can the rest of us be like MOO?
Step 1: Create a list of your target audiences.
Step 2: Create a process map of how they interact with you. When do they communicate with you? When do exchanges take place? When is information conveyed? When do you have an opportunity to communicate with them?
Step 3: Make sure all the emails, landing pages, letters, and packaging they receive reflect the tone and messaging you gave them from the start.
Not only does taking the time to do things right make you look good, but it makes your customers feel reassured. Like you actually know what you’re doing. Which cuts down on those emails they’ll send in the middle of the week asking about “status.” The word “status” is actually derived from an ancient Greek term meaning “I haven’t heard from you in a while and I’m afraid you’re a flake but I don’t think you are please respond & let me know you’re still alive.” So, it makes them trust you more. And it makes them smile. And most of us would like more people who can make us smile in our lives.
If you want to get right down to the day-to-day communications, especially for those of us who are one-man-shows, you don’t have to spend hours thinking of the perfect turn of phrase. Simply apply this process to the most common types of reasons that you email people. Then, create standard sentences that you can use over and over again.
If you use a Mac, you can automate this process using a program called TextExpander, a customizable typing shortcut tool. With TextExpander, you can create triggers that tell the program to drop in standard bits of text, like sentences and paragraphs. It’s an easy way to create a unified experience for the repeatable tasks, without having to kill yourself with daily microcopywriting projects.
With today’s technologies, even a little guy can seem like a big guy. Which is especially important if you’re a little guy who sells to big guys.
What companies do you know of that deliver a remarkable brand experience from start to finish? Do tell.
May 15, 2008 | No Comments »
A successful graphic design firm came to me with an emergency.
Cradling the near-lifeless body of a white paper, they asked whether there was anything I could do to help.
This wasn’t a white paper for a client. It was their own white paper, which they planned to distribute to clients, demonstrating thought leadership on green design best practices.
Like a much-loved velveteen rabbit, the white paper had been tended to for weeks, a process that seemed to have had the unfortunate effect of making things worse.
Now, with just a week to go until clients would start expecting the white paper, they realized it wasn’t anywhere near finished. They weren’t quite sure what to do about that. But they knew they had to do something. And they had less than a week.
I donned my gloves and turned on the lamp. An engaging, readable writing style indicated a strong, steady pulse. But its lack of a cohesive structure or title gave it a sickly appearance. It resembled a series of loosely-knit-together case studies. Inner organs on the verge of spilling out. Not pretty.
This white paper was in no shape to be trotted out in front of clients and prospects. If we didn’t act quickly, it might be too late.
I wasted no time in putting together a proposal. When they accepted, I suited up. Snacks were arranged by my work station so I could operate and eat without interruption. A sturdy Sigg bottle, filled with fine Oakland tap water, kept me well-hydrated.
Then I began the operation–a series of 3 simple procedures.
1. First, I looked at the white paper from the reader’s perspective. The primary benefit people seek to gain from a white paper is getting new ideas to help them solve their problems and overcome their challenges.They seek insider information. Things they can’t find on the street.
With this principle in mind, I gave the white paper a title, “What’s Green Got to Do with It?” and a subtitle: “How to Incorporate Sustainable Design Practices Into Your Overall Marketing Strategy.” Already the color was starting to come back into its pages. A simple title structured around the problem and how to solve it guided the structure for the rest of the piece.
2.Secondly, I restructured the rest of the white paper by writing an introduction, a description of the challenges–and the opportunities–an overview of the solutions, and then a few examples of approaches they and others had taken. This is where the existing case studies fit in quite nicely. I also wrote a conclusion that included a call to action.
3.Finally, I added headlines throughout, breaking up the copy with bullet points and boxes to make it easy on the eyes. Scanners would be rewarded, not punished. I also added a touch of polish by editing the 10-page document from head to toe.
Today,the white paper has just finished production and is ready to be presented to clients. The firm now faces the good problem of how to get their baby in front of as many eyeballs as possible. They provided expertise and did the research; and, with a little help from a skilled copy surgeon, they can now be seen as thought leaders by clients and prospects alike.
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I’m writing my company blurb. You may think it’s boring. I think it’s impressive.
If it’s good enough for big, important companies, it’s good enough for me.
This is my first day using my new, enterprise-class company blurb to pitch my services.
Let’s have a conversation!
You: Hi Kelly. What’s up?
Me: Hi. I’m Kelly Parkinson. An innovative, industry-leading copywriter with cutting-edge marketing solutions, superior copywriting capabilities, deep insights, and the proven ability to get bottom- and top-line results for leading global companies around the world.
You: Why are you talking funny?
Me: Whatever do you mean?
You: I don’t understand a word you just said. I mean, I understood the individual words, but together they formed a convergence of confusion.
Me: Let me simplify things for you a bit. I’m innovative. That’s all you need to know.
You: Oh! I’ve been waiting for someone truly innovative to come along. What makes you innovative?
Me: I help people solve problems. But I do it in this really high-tech way that you’ve never heard of and that I can’t tell you about because it’s patented. It’s my secret sauce. I can’t describe it in any detail without giving away my formula, but I did give it a great name. Do you want to hear it?
You: Sure.
Me: Sign here first, please.
You: An NDA?
Me: Lawyer’s orders. It’s called the Linguistic Marketing Capacitator. It’s the engine powering all of my copy for my clients so they can save more time and earn more money.
You: Wow. Okay.
Me: I’d love to have a conversation with you sometime to further explore whether we might be able to work together.
You: Well, I’m in the middle of something right now. And I still don’t understand what it is you do or how you can help me solve my problems.
Me: It sounds like you just need more information.
You: Yes! I need to understand how exactly you can help me.
Me: Why don’t I send you my datasheet, brochure, and white paper, and add you to my once-a-week enewsletter? Also, I will add you to my lead tracking system and keep following up with you so we can develop a relationship and, over time, I can reveal myself to you. By this time next year, you’re going to be so impressed with everything I can do!
You: Sure. See ya!
Would you hire me with this pitch? What went wrong?
I modeled it after the leading companies. I used the word “innovative.” I sounded intelligent.
I failed to connect.
You wanted someone to speak to you in clear, jargon-free language. And you wanted someone to speak to you in terms of the problems I could help solve.
So, what’s good for the big, important company wasn’t necessarily good for me. And, I’d argue, it isn’t good for that company, either.
Why not let the boring companies confuse and obfuscate, while you connect clearly with your target audience in a human, authentic voice?
Here are a few tips:
If your blurb uses any word you wouldn’t actually say in real life,
if it focuses on you and not on the problems you help solve,
if it uses 3-syllable words with abandon,
abandon it!
It’s just going to cause you–and everyone who hears it–significant emotional distress.
Stop focusing on yourself and on perfecting the ultimate description.
Focus on your customers.
It’s the only way to truly impress them.
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During my senior year of high school in Southern California, a friend told me about a job opening at Chuck E. Cheese.
This wasn’t just any job opening. It was for the actual character of Chuck E. Cheese.
To be Chuck E., to inhabit him completely, meant so much more than being a gigantic, life-sized mouse.
It meant embodying a symbol of friends and family, birthdays and straight-A-report cards, and my first favorite flavor combination: pizza and root beer.
Also, it meant making wild gestures and dancing on tables while hiding my true identity. In other words, a dream job.
My qualifications were stellar for the oversized-animal-character industry. I had already worked for 3 years as a puppeteer/actor in a Sesame-street like production for kids. And, I had 3 years babysitting experience. Who better qualified than me, I asked myself? Who?
I aced the first interview. The assistant manager seemed nice enough.
Her boss–my second interview–wasn’t so nice. I could feel him scanning me for signs of moral weakness. It seemed I lacked the gravitas Chuck E. required. This made me sad, which detracted from the cheerful, half-crazed, up-for-anything image I had created for myself.
Then he asked me this solemn question: “Are you a leader, or are you a follower?” I had to be honest. I conceded I was a follower. But a follower who loved Chuck E. Cheese. This must not have been the answer he was looking for. I didn’t get the job.
Since then, I’ve come to loathe the word “leader” and all the things it implies.
It’s as if leaders inhabit this special, higher plane of being, while followers trail slime and drool behind them.
When it comes to marketing, we’ve all heard the benefits of becoming a thought leader. But no one talks about the benefits of becoming a thought follower.
All of that seems to be changing, though. The internet is ushering in a new era for followers and followership, making it easy & respectable & normal to become a thought follower–and even to use this as a way of increasing your business’ revenue.
I was turned onto a book called “Connect! A Guide to a New Way of Working from GigaOM’s Web Worker Daily” by Anne Truitt Zelenka (thanks, Pam Slim).
This book finally helped me “get” what all the Web 2.0 fuss is about. Blogs, I get. RSS feeds, check. But IM & Twitter & Facebook just seem like distractions. “I’m washing my cat now.” “I’m drinking coffee.” “I just found an old sock.” “I’ve been turned into a Zombie!” Who cares?
But then I realized that Twitter and all the rest are really just better ways for us to follow each other. Not necessarily to show off everything we know, but to ask questions, to have conversations, to learn from others. The point of communications–and marketing–isn’t necessarily to persuade, to lead, to argue our points, to tell people this is this and that is that. Rather, it is to be open-ended. To invite discussion, iterations, disagreements, whatever. Just to be open.
We can start by never answering Twitter’s question: “What are you doing?” In fact, as a rule of thumb, we shouldn’t answer questions. Maybe we can start by asking them instead. Or, exploring the questions, the problems, without telling someone what they should do or what they should think.
Sometimes I learn more by posing a question than by answering one–especially with blogs.
It’s scary putting myself out there. Like that Chuck E. Cheese interview all over again.
But that’s the risk we take when we rise above the slime to reach out to human life forms.
So I will be proud. I will stand tall in my thought-followership. Because when I follow the right way, it helps me to be a better leader. And I won’t need a mouse costume for that.
