It’s that time of year again. Almost every week, I find a leaflet on the doormat from a local estate agent who wants me to sell my house.
That’s not what makes me angry.
What makes me angry is that all the leaflets are so badly written.
Here are some examples.
It can be easy to let your ‘to do’ list get on top of you.
When times were quiet, I used to admire and even envy people who had a two-page list of things to do. They never reached the end of it. They just kept working on the most important items at the top and didn’t stress about the items at the bottom. Now, my ‘to do’ list is like that. I know what it feels like to be overloaded, and I don’t envy them any more!
Here are some techniques to keep on top of things instead of letting them get on top of you.
Have a look at this noticeboard (as seen in my local supermarket). Which ad jumps out at you most?
You might be interested to find out whether your answer is the same as other people. Here are the results from when I asked this question on Facebook:
This article explores what’s going on here.
Good copy will reflect the unique tone of voice of your brand, while standing out from the competition and triggering your target customers to respond.
Good copy should win you business.
Bad copy will almost certainly help you lose it.
But copywriters are not magicians.
The quality of work you get from your copywriter will depend on the quality of the brief you give them.
The more work you put into preparing a good brief, the sooner you’ll get a result you’re happy with.
Some websites try to tell everybody everything. However, there is no point in doing this, because your website is a step in a process.
Site visitors have done something before they landed there – maybe they clicked on an ad, perhaps they typed your web address from your business card, or they found your site on a Google search.
And you want them to do something after visiting your site, whether that is clicking a ’buy now’ button, phoning to make an appointment, or giving you their email address so you can keep in touch with them.
[As an aside, lead generation is increasingly difficult because all our inboxes are full to overflowing, and so are theirs. So you have to offer a really tempting incentive for someone to relinquish their precious contact details. And make sure it’s GDPR-compliant.]
Your website therefore needs to acknowledge where they are at, and then make their next step really obvious and simple.
You don’t need to tell them every single thing that will happen next. You only need to tell them the one thing they need to know at each point.
Think about it like this.
This is a diagram I often draw in training courses (the photo is me speaking at a Success Matters event in St Albans earlier this month).
The stick figure at the top of my drawing is you.
The stick figure at the bottom is your reader.
You have a message you want to get into the brain of your audience.
The problem is that they already have something in their brain. They are thinking: “What’s In It For Me?”
Chances are that your message includes the words ‘I’, ‘Us,’ We’ or ‘Our’.
But the only words that answer the question in the mind of your reader are the words ‘You’ and ‘Your’.
You’ve probably heard of the butterfly effect also known as chaos theory? It posits that a small trigger can have a large impact, such as a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a tornado a few weeks later.
In behavioural science, there’s a theory known as nudge. Rather than forcing people to take the action you want them to take, it suggests that the best way to influence people is to nudge them in the direction you want them to go.
In an advertising book by Max Sutherland from, I think, the 1980s, he describes the secret of effective marketing as being like a feather on a seesaw. It’s another similar idea.
I don’t know about you, but these days, I struggle to open a bottle of milk.
Under the screwtop lid, today’s plastic milk bottles have a plastic/foil seal. You need immense strength in your fingertips to peel it, pinch it, and pull it away. Ideally, without spilling the milk (and crying).
I have no idea how old people manage it.
I’m not *that* old. Well, OK, I’m a *bit* old. After decades of typing, I admit my fingers probably don’t have the power they used to.
Also, I can’t open a yoghurt pot or soup carton without it splashing all over my hands and the kitchen worktop. Can you? If yes, please share the technique, because I simply don’t have it.
What’s more, I need scissors to cut open a bag of peanuts (I can’t tear the corner easily, even when it’s supposedly perforated). I also need scissors to get a new toothbrush or lip salve out of its packaging. And – as we all know – when you buy a new pair of scissors, you need a pair of scissors to cut open the plastic case they are encased in.
In this environmentally conscious age, single-use plastic has become a scourge. I look forward to the day when products are once again wrapped in, say, old newspaper. And when dairy products are served in refillable glass containers.
Oh dear, I sound like an old person.
Anyway, this leads into a topic I was asked to write about recently… what’s become known as ‘wackaging’. That is, wacky packaging.
As you know, I’m a writer not an artist. Nevertheless, I drew a picture to illustrate this article.
Your mission (should you choose to accept it), is to see how quickly you can identify what it is supposed to be.
Here’s the first image:
Any ideas?
Have a think before you scroll down.
In a crackly old recording, the grandfather of advertising praises direct response copywriting. (BTW, that’s the kind of copywriting I do.)