The Secret to Sales Copy that Actually Sells: Don’t Overthink This
So, you’ve got a new product or service launching in the new year. I imagine one of the tasks you’re dreading the most is actually writing the offer.
You can create a remarkable new product. But write sales copy? It’s like pulling teeth.
Here’s how you avoid the pseudo-painful task: you use fancy flourishes of speech and clever turns of phrase. You dangle big broad concepts in front of the people you want to serve. Then you quietly suggest their lives would in some small way be better for buying this product or that service.
All that beating around the proverbial bush means one thing: you have no idea why this product or service is really important to your Most Valued Customers.
Not true? Prove it.
- What are your customers doing now to try to solve the problem they have that your product solves? How would that change if they used your product?
- What kinds of things do they say to their friends or colleagues about what they really want?
- How do your customers feel about the problem you’re trying to help with? What fears exist there? What secret desires?
There now, that wasn’t so hard. If you seriously answered those questions, using words your customers would actually use–not silly things like “speak my truth” or “create synergy through multiple verticals”–you’re well on your way to more effective sales copy.
It’s a simple exercise in Empathy.
Empathy is a stunning act of imaginative derring-do, the ultimate virtual reality – climbing into another’s mind to experience the world from that person’s perspective.
— Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind
Will you put yourself in your customers’ shoes? Can you know what they’re thinking and feeling?
That, my friends, is the secret to sales copy that actually sells. No tricks. No techniques. Just being human.
Unfortunately, we all too often–myself included–try to put our smarty pants hat on and impress our potential clients with our knowledge. Not. Effective.
Our customers just want to be understood.
And they want solutions and services that speak to them where they’re at now and get them where they want to go.
Because I find the writing of sales pages such a joy (I’m not kidding!), I put together a training resource called the Sales Page Kick Start guide. It’s one of the many resources you’ll find inside Kick Start Labs.
It might just save you hours of headaches and put more money in your bank account.
Want access to that guide, many others, a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, and my expert guidance? It’s time to join Kick Start Labs, because being independent shouldn’t mean being alone.
“Shop small” is so last year. This year, celebrate big opportunities.
It seems cliche but small – even micro – businesses are the backbone of our [global] economy. In the United States, 91.5% of businesses have fewer than 5 employees. And according to the US Census Bureau, $837 billion in sales are generated by non-employer businesses (businesses of one) in 2009. That’s equal to about 70 Apples. That’s big business.
Small businesses employ more people and turn more dreams into reality.
Small is mighty.
No doubt your inbox, mailbox, Facebook stream, and main street are littered with “Shop local” and “Support small business” flyers this weekend. Between cash mobs, Small Business Saturday, just general Black Friday backlash, you are feeling the heat from small business owners and their friends this holiday season.
That’s not bad.
But it’s not good either.
See, we are hurtling towards a new age in commerce where businesses are no longer big or small.
All businesses have access to the most powerful tool of the day: the network. Some use it, some exploit it, some ignore it, some serve it… but all have access to it.
What made business BN (before-the-network) a boys’ club was that only certain boys had access to the most important tool of the day: money. Money meant machinery, human capital, real estate, technology, training, supplies. Controlling financial capital (or being able to turn other assets into financial capital) was the only way to enter the market and do business.
But with power concentrated among those with access to financial capital, things got real uneven, real fast. The more things got uneven, the more financial capitalists saw an opportunity to squeeze profit & productivity out of human capital, environmental capital, and organizational capital.
In other words, we got the shaft.
So we started to see big business – financial capitalists – as the enemy.
“Shop local!” “Support small business!” Cash mobs, the maker movement, food trucks, the modern farmer’s market movement–they all developed in response to a system that had enslaved us and our culture for so long. For many–though certainly not all, these developments were fueled by Us vs Them energy. Rage against the machine.
But we don’t live the in the industrial age anymore. We don’t even live in the information age anymore. We live in the connected age or, as Nilofer Merchant refers to it, the Social Era.
It’s not the steel-fisted financial capitalists that hold the power.
It’s each of us, network capitalists, that hold the power. It’s distributed influence and it’s based on your ability to cultivate connections between you and others around you.
The Us vs Them paradigm just isn’t accurate anymore. A microbusiness, with just 1 or 2 people, can produce a video that is seen by millions. They can grow a subscription base that makes newspaper corporations swoon. They can develop apps that sell for a billion dollars. Small is powerful.
Perhaps small is more powerful.
“In practical terms, here’s what all of this means: a person or team anywhere in the world can create scale without being big.”
— Nilofer Merchant, 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era
(emphasis mine)
The problem is that the Us vs Them paradigm is what we’re accustomed to. It’s what we’ve always lived. So we tend to put people/business/regions/organizations in groups that need to square off.
The “versus” paradigm I see so often taking shape now is Unsustainable vs Thriving.
We’re cheering on those who have created businesses that don’t work, don’t create viable connections, and don’t grow. I’m all for cheering them on — but what are we doing to turn them into Thriving businesses?
Here’s an example: I shared a recent post on how “Facebook is not an advertising charity.” The article makes the case for how Facebook’s fairly new “sponsored stories” option is a triple win. It’s good for Users because they get to see better content, more often, from the people & pages they actually care about. It’s good for Facebook because, well, they make money and seeing how they’re a business, that’s important. It’s good for Page Owners (read: many small business owners) because it challenges them to create better content that will be shared well beyond the initial ad buy.
Every day it seems I see a small business owner bemoaning and condemning a change on Facebook. Generally, it’s not about privacy–it’s about cost. “Facebook is evil” was a comment that graced my screen a day or two ago.
Besides the fact that if you think it’s evil, you should probably not be using the platform, Facebook is a business. Their job is to make money (not unlike yours). To do that, they’ve built the most powerful social connection platform the world has ever seen. As far as I know, it’s the business with the biggest, broadest user base the world has ever known.
Facebook–like it or not–performs a huge service through it’s software. It will learn how to make money. It can (and probably will regardless) make money selling data. But it can also provide immense value to small business owners (that’s a helluva big market) by providing inexpensive, scalable, targeted advertising.
The problem is not that Facebook is evil. It’s that it’s successful (by many measures, if not financially yet).
Facebook, for it’s valuation and reach, it’s very small company with around 3500 employees.
Unfortunately, I see the “Support Small Business” movement as all too often trying to prop up dying business models. Mom & pop shops (virtual or analog) are often run in entirely unsustainable ways. They rarely translate sweat equity into financial equity. They often rely on cheap or free labor instead of trained employees.
I’m convinced that more-faster-cheaper big box stores won out in the Eighties and Nineties because the mom & pops more often than not failed to convince us that they had something better to offer.
I believe we’re not hardwired to prefer paying less, we’re hardwired to pay to get what we want.
Big box stores figured out how to present a package that appealed to us. Small business has the same burden.
When mom & pops provide a package that appeals to us more than the big guys, we pay more, shop shorter hours, and jump through more hoops. But so often, they do not.
Small business abdicated power to big business not so much because the big business muscled their way into the domain of small and more often because small business had failed to deliver a compelling reason for customers to jump through the hoops.
Maybe you’ve heard how a new Starbucks can actually increase business for popular independent coffee shops?
The Us vs Them paradigm we use to celebrate small business glorifies failing business models and practices. It glamorizes the refusal to evolve.
This isn’t Us vs Them anymore. It’s not Small vs Big anymore. It’s us and them. It’s small is big. Small is mighty. Small is powerful.
But not if being small means relying on the generosity of others to prop up what is broken.
So my question is, how do we encourage small business in an era when small is mighty?
How do we celebrate small business in a way that acknowledges its immense opportunity today?
Here are three of my ideas. I would love to hear your own in the comments.
Education is encouragement. Know a small business owner that doesn’t take credit cards? Introduce him to Square instead of cash mobbing him. Know a small business owner that is exploiting free labor? Let her know how much you value well-trained, engaged, attentive service.
Change public policy. Public policy in the United States was built for a different era of employment. With small businesses & freelancers, often unincorporated, becoming a larger & larger part of the workforce (estimates as high as 50%), we need regulations, policies, and laws that make the social safety net (including health insurance, worker’s compensation, unemployment, and bonus retirement savings) the norm for everyone.
Buy what you value. Don’t support a small business or friendly freelancer because they’re small. Support them because they create a quality product. Support them because they add value to your life through their work. Support them because they believe in the same things you do, whether they’re family, faith, the beauty of finely crafted single origin coffee, or the importance of a dozen different mac and cheese recipes.
So yes, shop local and shop small this holiday season. But don’t do it out of sympathy. Shop where your values and value-desired align. Shop where you can get exactly what you want, the way you want it.
Celebrate the opportunities that await small businesses today–not their shortcomings.
When you want to say “I get it!” to your customers: the art of merchandising your ideas to make an impact
One of my responsibilities in managing my old Borders store was overseeing merchandising. Each month or so, we’d receive a giant binder full of displays and sign changes to execute. Each display would come with a list of titles we could pull from our store inventory to create the arrangement.
Pulling titles and arranging them was a boring and never-ending process. Luckily, much of the store was merchandised according to the store’s preferences. We could create displays based on local events, timely trends, or staff interests. Those were displays I took real pleasure in dreaming up and managing.
I encouraged my staff to pay attention to the questions people asked and patterns in interest. We took those ideas and applied them to inventory requests and then fresh, store-driven displays. Our goal was to turn the pulse of our customer base into relevant and useful store displays.
It seems needless to say but those displays consistently outsold the merchandising suggestions of our corporate merchandising team. They also reduced our workload by countless hours since they preemptively answered common customer questions.
Merchandising was a key factor in both sales and operations.
So what is merchandising? Despite my experience, I’m no expert. But this is what it means to me:
- Making products visually appealing to the customer.
- Putting like objects together to relate a bigger story or to tie into a trend.
- Creating experiences that naturally lead you towards buying the products involved.
Merchandising is, sadly, a lost art in digital business. What’s truly sad about the lack of merchandising in digital business is that it reflects a lack of true understanding of the customers businesses are serving.
You see, merchandising is all about perspective.
It’s being able to see how other see, feel how others feel, take interest in what others take an interest in.
Merchandising is how you say to your customers, “See, we get it!” It creates a context that connects the customer to her desire.
Merchandising doesn’t just apply to physical products. Merchandising your ideas–especially bold or innovative ideas–can help you gain buy-in (and lead to “buy now!”) much faster than would otherwise be possible.
Faster buy-in means more subscribers, more sales, and less time answering email.
Chris Brogan & Julien Smith write about the importance of using emotion to create connections between your customers and your big ideas in The Impact Equation. Being able to hone in on the emotion your idea generates allows you to use that emotion to create a context around your idea that contrasts your idea from competitive ideas. That’s how you make a bigger impact.
“The goal is to build a bridge between the emotion you want them to experience and how your idea serves that emotion.”
— Chris Brogan & Julien Smith, The Impact Equation
What does merchandising an idea look like?
First, for the sake of this post, we’re going to talk about ideas in a very broad sense. It could be an innovative product that challenges the status quo, it could be a movement you’re leading, it could be a new discovery in your niche, it could be a brand-new formula for success.
1.) Identify the emotional context behind your idea. How do you want people to feel when the encounter your idea (i.e. project, product, movement, discovery, formula)? What other ideas or stories foster that emotion? What’s the “before” emotion, in other words, how do people feel without your idea?
2.) Focus on the visual element of your idea. Do particular colors or images portray the emotion or story around your idea? What environment (home, the great outdoors, fancy restaurant, crunchy coffee shop, etc…) would your customer associate with that emotion or story? Who are the other characters in the story?
3.) Gather related ideas. What ideas inspired you in this new idea? Are you playing with a trend or cultural zeitgeist? What well-known ideas or projects will help people connect with your new idea?
Once you understand the emotional context, visual elements, and related concepts of your idea, you have a loose story that you can create an experience from. That experience could be a well-styled photograph. It could be a reimagining of your brand or personal image. It could be a free event. It might just be the story of your idea told in its full context.
When Seth Godin created The Domino Project, the name he chose was part of the way he merchandised this brave new idea. He wanted to create & publish books that were inherently shareable. He wanted to spread tough questions and fresh ideas the way well-placed dominos cause each other fall in a neat line: effortlessly. The Domino Project was a well-merchandised idea.
When Lululemon created it’s Right as Rain jacket, it chose to harness the story of its Vancouver origins to create a cultural buy in. They identified with the Pacific Northwest dweller who just wanted to stay dry on a daily basis because they lived it. So they used that story to merchandise the idea of the perfect raincoat.
When I created Kick Start Labs, I chose to hone in on the thrill and childlike anticipation of experimenting with a chemistry set and tied it to the traditionally less thrilling idea of experimenting in your business. My goal was to reframe business learning by merchandising in relation to seeing what happens when you combine some volatile chemicals. Safety first, of course.
No doubt, you’re already working at merchandising your ideas. But bringing attention to the full process might mean that your idea goes from being spread at a snail’s pace to setting the world on fire.
Leave a comment to tell me one thing you could do today to improve how your ideas are merchandised.
–PS–
Want more on seeing the world through your customer’s perspective? I’ve got a whole process for that. But first, check out these other posts.
Knowing your customer goes beyond “now”
Last week, I did an Insight Intensive with Nancy Sherr–a gorgeous and dynamic coach guiding women through transitions and towards a zestful life. I read the copy on her site, I watched her introductory video. I could tell she knew her customer. And suddenly, I did too.
I could imagine all the women who had put so much energy into being the perfect wives to their influential and powerful husbands only to have their 20 year marriages end in divorce. I could see all the women who had put their whole hearts into being perfect mothers only to wonder what to do with their whole hearts when the kids left the nest empty. I could picture all the women who had set aside every shred of their femininity to compete in a masculine world only to feel cold & distant upon retirement or layoff.
Nancy’s work naturally picks up where these transitions leave off. It’s the clearest opportunity and the one that most easily lends itself to an offer. But that’s only one opportunity for her to serve her best clients. She could imagine only serving them at this juncture in time. She could see her clients as static.
Or she could choose to imagine the lives ahead of them. She could choose to hold a vision for her clients as they pursue their zestful lives. And she could choose to create products that serve that growing & evolving vision.
Much of the problem with the way most businesses have chosen to see their ideal client is that it stops at “now.”
You can have one distinct ideal client profile. But that profile doesn’t have to only exist at the point of pain, frustration, or need. No, that profile–that person–has a history. She has unique experiences that have shaped who she is at this moment. She also has a future. She has hopes, dreams, and the day-by-day reality of moving through time.
Innovative businesses hold a vision for their customers. Innovative businesses use their unique insight into their customers’ day-to-day lives to see what tomorrow will look like and create the solutions that meet them at tomorrow and beyond.
“What business a company is in depends, in large part, not on existing customers but who tomorrow’s customers will—and should—be.”
— Michael Schrage, Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become?
That is not to say that who your customer is changes. But it is to say that your customers are changing. You have the opportunity to continue to serve them as they progress.
Or you can take a myopic perspective and only sell to them “now.”
Consider the newspapers. Newspaper companies think they’re in the “newspaper” business. So it’s difficult for them to innovate outside the product that people have always wanted from them. They think their customers buy newspapers.
But that’s not at all what their customers buy. Their customers buy “news.” That’s a fundamentally different way to look at the value provided.
So their customers have become people who seldom read things on recycled wood pulp anymore. News customers engage smartphones, tablets, laptops, social media platforms, and countless other sources of news.
The “newspaper” business might be dying but the “news” business–at least the market and demand for news–has never been greater. If newspaper companies forgot the paper part, what innovative solutions could they come up with to not only meet their customers with the reality of today but to lead them to the promise of tomorrow?
What about your industry? Do people actually buy “coaching?” What do they buy instead? Are people actually buying “website design?” What solution are they really seeking? Do your customers care that you’re a wellness coach? What personal change are they willing to put money on?
Knowing the business that you’re really in helps you to see how your customers grow and change beyond the 1-point product or service you’re selling now.
Your customers’ needs change. Their desires evolve. The way they want to interact with you and your community transforms. The way they want to be communicated with shifts.
This can be scary. But it’s really an opportunity.
As your understanding of your customer-through-time evolves, you will see that there are truly countless opportunities for you to meet their changing needs. There are desires & needs that naturally rise to the surface as the people you serve grow. Those desires & needs translate to offers & opportunities, each with its own set of constraints and objectives.
Each time you identify one of these needs, you have the opportunity to layer the messaging, community, and revenue for that new offer on top of your existing offers. And that can lead to big returns in each department.
Seeing your ideal customer as a living, breathing, growing human being means you can see your business as a living, growing, thriving organism instead of a one-trick pony.
***
Ready to chart the course for your customer’s journey and a path of growth for your business?
Understanding how your customers grow & change, as well as the ups & downs they’ll have along the way, is a big part of The Customer Perspective Process. You’ll learn to apply your customer’s journey to your business model development, content strategy, and strategic partnership strategy.
Click here to learn about The Customer Perspective Process virtual boot camp from Kick Start Labs.
Tired of dreaming small?
On Friday, friend and client of 2.5 years, Rebecca Bass-Ching said to me, “I’m tired of dreaming small.”
Now, Rebecca doesn’t suffer from small dreams. She is an accomplished marriage & family therapist with an integrative, evidence-based practice in San Diego. Her practice includes other therapists, a dietician, massage therapist, and a yoga therapist/instructor. She’s on the hunt for more practitioners, as well.
Potentia Therapy is a big dream.
So her statement took me aback at first. I thought about it a little more.
What I think Rebecca was really talking about was the quest for something not yet envisioned — innovation.
She wants to innovate in the way she builds her practice, in the way she serves her clients, and in the way she grows her influence. She is tired of following a formula for success. She’s ready to forge her own path.
Most of us start by dreaming small. It’s the small dreams that encourage us & guide us. This regularly happens in the blogosphere. One person’s success leads to a litany of others who try to replicate it. But it also happens in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and main street. But, at some point, most of realize that dreaming small isn’t going to cut it. We wake up to the fact that things aren’t as they seem and either quit or look towards our own paths.
Of course, the difficulty in forging your own path is that you have to clear all the mental brush that stands in the way of moving in the direction of something that is not yet known.
In business, that means that you aren’t following the map of someone else’s success from tactic to tactic, but instead you are measuring every next step against the needs & desires of your customers.
Where before there was this-is-how-it’s-done imitation of others’ success, there can now be all manner of products, business models, and solutions that allow you to achieve your big dreams.
Your big dreams may take the form of an app, foundation, event, licensing, facilitation… or an as of yet unimagined kind of product.
When you’re tired of dreaming small, you’re really saying that you’re tired of dreaming others’ dreams.
You are ready to imagine all that is available to you, including that which might even have been imagined yet.
Innovation – dreaming big dreams for yourself and the people you are leading – requires unwavering confidence in your ability to deliver. It also requires the confidence to tell your customers where you want to take them. As Michael Schrage wrote, “They’re not stupid; they’re skeptical. They want to make sure they’re going in the right direction.” Offer a vision of where you wan to take your customers – through a message, an idea, a product, or a service – and they’ll gladly try something new.
The success of your business doesn’t rely on a formula — and it sure doesn’t rely on predictability.
You have the tools – a bright & clear vision and the ability to deliver – to imagine new areas to explore in your business that are anything but small.
The best thing you can do is get outside the comfort of the small dream you’ve been living up until now. Instead of seeking out the experts of the dream you’ve been dreaming, seek out the leaders of other dreams. Talk to business owners in other industries, other business models. Discover new ways of doing old things.
Allow yourself to connect the dots in different ways and you’ll find that you’ve got the schematics for a much bigger dream.
The 3 Kinds of Work (including 2 you should be doing less of)
There are three kinds of work you do a regular basis.
First, there’s work that gets immediate results. It might be actually delivering the service you provide or creating the product you sell. It could be writing on your blog or updating product descriptions. It could be ordering supplies or promoting your work.
Second, there’s work that should be done by someone else. This varies depending on your business and your strengths within that business. It could be fiddling with your website, sending out emails, or scheduling clients. It could be writing copy or creating advertisements. It could be shipping packages or bookkeeping.
Third, there’s the work that contributes to long-term growth. Often this is work that requires your expertise but that isn’t the hands-on work that you sell. It’s systems work. It’s process work. It’s relationship building. It’s working on the vision (and the byproducts of it).
You probably do a lot of the first and second kind of work. You are constantly after immediate results (they feel good, right?) because immediate results are better than no results. And you do a lot of work that you really have no business doing because you have chosen not to invest the time or money in having someone else do it.
That means that the work that contributes to long-term growth gets the short shrift. When you don’t work towards the future, you leave yourself in the hamster wheel of constant hustling. Sound familiar?
…while you’re doing it, doing it, doing it, there’s something much more important that isn’t getting done. And it’s the work you’re not doing, the strategic work, the entrepreneurial work, that will lead your business forward, that will give you the life you’ve not yet known.
— Michael E Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited
If you’re beginning to lose faith in the dream of having a business that takes care of you (instead of you taking care of it), then it’s probably because you find yourself doing so much of the first two categories of work. When that type of work is disproportionate to the results you see, frustration is the natural byproduct.
When you exercise your responsibility to long-term growth work, even if you’re not seeing immediate results, you can better weather the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. If a particular idea doesn’t work out, you have the systems or relationships in place to get you through. Or you have the comfort of knowing your next idea or opportunity is already in the works.
If you’re ready to do more long-term growth work and less of the rest, you need to schedule it. Put it on the calendar. Honor it like it was a client appointment or a project deadline. This is the work that will keep your business in business – respect it.
Once you’ve got that kind of work on the calendar, make sure that you’re creating systems that reduce the amount of other work you’re doing. Use your scheduled time to create a training or on-boarding process for an assistant or business manager. Also use that time to plan for new products or services that require less effort or active time from you. Plan to shift your business model to one that leverages your time & talents.
Bottom line: how would you spend your time if doing work that contributed to long-term business growth was your primary responsibility?
‘Cause it is.
— PS —
Kick Start Labs designed a brand-new Lab to help you get out of this rut and into strategic product development. It’s call Product Development 101. It’s available for a limited time on its own or as part of a Kick Start Labs membership. Click here for more info.