Security blanket? Human pack instinct? A desparate distraction from lack of substance? Most people cringe at buzzwords, yet they’ve become such a common part of how businesses talk within their walls that it’s spilling over into how they talk to customers, even how they see their customers. “Well the employees seem to love synergy, let’s invade customers’ ears with this meaningless abomination of the english language,” might be the thinking, more likely though it’s just around so much that no one takes notice, no one is there to put a stop to the madness. It’s corporate turrets. Some new words are truly needed, with new meaning, usually born of necessity due to some new technology. Others were once just fine but have been twited or overused and left weak, boring, even annoying due to this. Still others are and always have been simply silly. What’s the answer? Here are some of the buzzwords (and a fast-spreading grammar disease) that should be permanently laid to rest.

Innovative –
This means new and creative, as you no doubt know. It’s overused to the point of meaning nothing really. Most people just sort of shut off for a few seconds after they hear it today. Plus, the word creative inherently means new anyway. If something is creative it’s by default new and if it is not new, well then it wasn’t creative. Creative has the added benefit of not putting people to sleep and not being in the tagline of a million tech companies. Everyone uses innovative though… we even use it, we’re trying to get better but it’s so easy to fall off that wagon. Try this, the next time you hear or see the word innovative, replace it with “genius” or “creative” and see how much better it sounds. There are pleny of other words that work the same and are more exciting, less cliche too. Not being facetious (farcical, flippant, frivolous, droll, fanciful, ironic, sarcastic, whimsical, waggish, sprightly, satirical) at all, the thesaurus really is underused.
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For the last 10,000 years two-thirds of the buying and selling (or trading) process has been controlled by the seller. The seller has control over the product, the seller has control over information about the product (for the most part) and the only aspect the consumer controls is whether or not to buy.

That is no longer the case, not to the extent it had been. Today the customer is framing the information around the product to a far greater extent, and it’s going to continue to increase.

It’s not doom and gloom though, it’s a good thing. It means better products and service for consumers, which means better businesses rise to the top regardless of bankroll or tricky messaging. Think about it, as scary as it sounds at first to lose control over much of your messaging, would you rather let the customer decide, let the chips fall where they may? Or risk some business like yours, but bigger and richer coming in and putting you out of business, just because they have 100% control over perception and the ability to drown your business out? Wouldn’t you rather a fair fight? (more…)

Business is about success, right? Success this, success that, every business that wants to work with you talks about their success, how they’ve made others successful, how you’ll be successful if you work with them. When you sell your product or service part of the pitch is success one way or another. “We’ve been in business for many years.” “We’ve served X number of happy customers.” “We have this award, that ranking with the BBB.” And it goes on. And that’s fine, we talk a lot about shifting the pitch toward what that means to the customer, we’ve covered why being “The #1 car dealership in whatever city” is less powerful than a good price on a sexy car. But it’s everywhere anyway, and is often the focal point of marketing. Success can build trust. It’s good background once you’ve broken through the recognition barrier and the affinity barrier to making a sale.

But rooting for the underdog is a powerful thing in the American psyche. It’s part of who we are. We root for the Cinderella team in the NCAA Tournament, we want the awkward guy to get the girl in the movies. We like it when great odds are overcome despite overwhelming adversity. It inspires us. (more…)

1. Provide a good service or product.
2. Ask.
3. Tell them how to leave a testimonial and make sure it’s easy.
4. Bribe them with offers.
5. Have someone physically attractive and with a pleasant demeanor ask.
6. Yes, we’re serious about number five.
7. Make sure you have options to leave testimonials on all of your social sites and your main site, control what does and does not show up, and try to have an offer in place for anyone who participates. (more…)

Many businesses find themselves making decisions based on expected outcomes. It makes sense on the surface, you look at a decision or idea, try to determine an outcome, then go forward based on what you expect to happen. This is a passive way to approach any situation however, and may lead to missed opportunities, even loss of control of the direction of your business to a degree. Instead think about intentions. What do you want to do, not what you expect the outcome to be. This leaves you and your business in a better position to change as needed while heading toward a goal because you’ve taken away the expectation of the decisions you’ve made.

Seems a bit vague so let’s give an example of a locksmith with the expectation that they would increase their business with a website redesign if, as part of the redesign, they focused on the most profitable services. We cover this example in an earlier entry.

So the expectation was that by refocusing on more valuable services their base customer numbers would stay the same (actually hopefully increase since they were doing more marketing but let’s go easy on them) but profit would increase because these expensive services came first. Long story short, that’s not what happened at all. Business decreased because it turned out some of the less profitable services are what brought customers in, and those customers would come back for the more profitable (and less common) services some other time if it was a good experience. They lost those potential customers to competitors. Those customers didn’t come back for the more profitable service, they went to the place that made a simple duplicate key instead, or whatever the case may have been. Seems like an easy fix (and it is) until you factor in the power of expectation. The locksmith had a preconceived notion of how the site would work. It’s hard to let that go. It’s easy to blame the drop in business on other things because there was an expectation. Had the focus been on the intent however, it takes the ego and the disappointment out of the equation. It almost makes changing an expected part of the process—which it should be.

Advice from a professional copywriter, for when you can’t afford to hire a professional.

1. The tendency within a business is to get sort of too involved in the product or service to look at it from a consumer’s perspective. That’s understandable and probably helpful for a wide range of reasons having to do with running a business, where it does not help is in marketing and advertising, which is why the vast majority of the most successful marketing in history was outsourced to agencies or individuals not so invested in the business. And often those creative types had to fight to get their idea approved by the business despite the eventual success of the ad campaign or marketing just because from within the bubble of that business, it seemed very different compared to what they were used to. Be aware of that and do your best to take an outside perspective. It might take some effort but that is usually where the really good ideas lie, against the company grain.
2. Clearly define a problem for your customer. Once you know the problem make the solution as broad as your imagination can get while remaining relevant and grounded. Let’s take plumbing since we use that a lot. So the problem is clogged pipes let’s say. But what’s the real problem? Inconvenience? Okay. Smell? Hopefully not, but maybe… how about embarrassment? Go beyond the simple product and get to the emotion underneath it, but keep it realistic. If you fix pipes don’t start thinking world peace or eternal happiness, but do get to the immediate emotional trigger.
3. Prioritize benefits, or problems solved. Keep them separate in content. Don’t try to say everything at once, take it step by step from most important to least.
4.  Once you have one main problem that you are going to solve, put it in words and make it the headline. Here’s an example of a headline that worked really well, “We have the cure for over 60% of all disease.” Sounds crazy right? There can’t be one thing that cures 60% of disease right? Well there isn’t if you are thinking pills or potions, but there is something and it is exercise. It was the headline for a gym that targeted baby boomers (if it was for a younger audience they would have wanted to focus on body and sex, not health per se, that’s thinking like a copywriter).
5. In the next paragraph or two or three, use data to backup the existence of this problem, “By 2030 over 80% of Americans will be obese” etc. Chances are you have a lot of data about the problem your product or service solves, time to get it out and reword it in a concise manner. Keep sentences short. Focus on the most impressive stats. Use just enough to backup your main point because there is a thin line between convincing someone and boring them.
6. Get personal. Use your own words to highlight a specific case. “Fitness is a passion of mine ever since my mother died of heart disease brought on by obesity. I promised myself that if I could save someone’s mother, someone’s father, someone’s child, that I would do it.” You don’t have to talk about you; you can talk about someone else. You need to make a human connection here though.
7.  Next re-state the solution to the problems listed, in order of priority. Bullet points work great here.
8. Have a call to action. You always need to tell them what you want them to do. In this example it’s obvious you want them to get a gym membership right? But don’t make that assumption. The exact same content converts almost 60% better when a call to action is added to the end.