A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect

Solving Those Niggling Grammar Questions

The hard-core truth is that good grammar builds customer confidence in you.  Good grammar is not a love-it-or-leave-it proposition.

So, when you've got a copywriting usage question or can't remember the correct answer to something you dimly recall a teacher talking about in the only grammar class you ever took back in high school, where do you turn? 

You could turn to a style manual.  Ho-hum.  Or you could turn to The Grammar Girl.  She's dry, she's funny, she's sensible, and she's addictive.  In delectable sound bites that cut to the chase.

I'm receiving her cost-free, calorie-free grammar food for thought through her iTunes podcasts.  But you might prefer reading her podcast transcripts through the Quick & Dirty Tips Web site.

I'm glad I met her ... I think she's going to reduce the number of finger-wagging emails I get from folks who take their grammar seriously.  I'm sure you've got customers like that, too ... so introduce yourself to this delightful resource.

Creating A Customer Experience - The Online Advantage

I just ran across this article at USA Today.

Retailers know how you'll approach a store, where you'll hesitate, how to affect your mood, how to pique your desires, how to play to your aspirations. Everything in a store, from lighting to floor color to music to how goods are displayed, is meant in some way to get you to not just shop, but spend.

"It's like a Broadway musical," says Deborah Mitchell, a marketing expert at the University of Wisconsin. "Nothing was put into that musical that wasn't thought through. It's the same in a highly orchestrated retail environment." Read the entire article.

Here is a cold harsh reality: The most beautifully designed website, the most stunning 2D visual product photos or otherwise simply look weak compared to to a well orchestrated onslaught of your 5 senses at a brick and mortar retail outlet.  Online your visitors can't experience depth, texture, lighting, smells, noise ambience, and the list goes on.

Now don't take this as me telling you not to use images and pretty graphics, I am simply stating that focusing heavily on design may not deliver the conversions you hope for.

JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, even flash presentations are still only 2d, flat, and when compared with a broadway musical, they are boring.

So why do so many spend so much time debating, and hand wringing about their site's visuals and graphics?  Maybe they haven't heard.

Your biggest advantage online is your ability to create atom-splitting mental images.

How?  With WORDS.

How much time are you spending with design vs. relevant copy?

What mental images are you building about your products/services in the mind of your visitors?  Are you using a series of planned mental images to create an online customer experience not bound by a physical reality? 

Novelists do it everyday,and the methodology exsists to plan this online.

What are you waiting for?

Landing Page Guidelines - Provide relevant and substantial content

If users don't quickly see what they clicked on your ad to find, they'll leave your site frustrated and may never return to your site or click on ads in the future. Here are some pointers for making sure that doesn't happen:

Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.
Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text.
Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.
Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.
In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad.
You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site).

Starting with your ad, each interaction you have with your potential customers and customers should be geared towards building a trusting relationship. To avoid leading users astray:

Users should be able to easily find what your ad promises.
Openly share information about your business. Clearly define what your business is or does.
Honor the deals and offers you promote in your ad.
Deliver products, goods, and services as promised.

The above is not ground breaking advice from a Conversion Rate specialist. The above is taken directly from the Google Adwords help center.

Basic, common sense, and sound advice for any Adwords advertiser to increase their conversion rate, right?

All these guidelines sound simple, not impossible, and stir up a resounding "Duhhh, of course we should be doing that" thought in your head right?

But why are so few doing it?

Is it the Diet Coke diet phenomenon? Are some advertisers thinking that if they order a triple deck burger, super large fries and a DIET coke that they are actually on diet?

Is PROVIDING RELEVANT AND SUBSTANTIAL CONTENT really that hard?

Well improving conversion IS alot like dieting, easy in concept(eat less, burn more calories), but a little bit more difficult in practice. Planning relevant, persuasive scenarios from an Adwords ad(driving point) to the landing page(funnel point) on through to the final conversion process(conversion beacon) is tough, daunting, and often complex work. Anything worthwhile usually is.

Well if you just needed a little more incentive to improve your Google Adwords campaign, I've got good news for ya! Google is going to start charging you more for low quality landing pages.

Get relevant or get broke.

Websites reflect true face of an organization

One of the most popular tools we offer is the WeWe Monitor or Customer Focus Calculator. This week, our friend Gerry McGovern wrote an excellent column about customer focus and websites:

" Spend a few minutes on the websites of most large organizations and you will learn a lot. You will learn how they really are, how they really view you, the customer.

You will learn if they are self-centered or customer-centered. Is the website structured so as to solve your problems fast, or is it based on some internal organization structure? Is the language second person and focused on the benefits to you? Or do headings and sentences constantly start with the name of the organization?" ....read the rest

How to write better copy in 60 seconds or less...

Ok, well maybe that's overstating it.  Formal training is definitely a wise idea, but in the downtime between sessions, start by reading better copy on a daily basis.  Take this gem, for instance:

Riding the 6 train is a lot like riding the sex train. Bodies press together. People grunt and moan. And no matter where you’re headed, you look forward to getting off.

And then there are the poles. If only hanging upside down by one foot were part of the daily bump and grind.

Guaranteed to make the commute more fun (and by commute we mean nightly romps at home), Sheila Kelley’s legendary striptease and pole dancing workout tones your tummy, bum, arms, and thighs while teaching you how to move sensually. A NYC branch of her famous West Coast studio, The S Factor, opens today.

Too intimidating you say? With no mirrors, tunes from the likes of Beck and 50 Cent, and lighting so low you can’t see your own ripples much less your neighbor’s hip rolls, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Unlike the humpty dance that is the subway.

Where did I find these evocative, impassioned words you ask?  From Daily Candy, of course...

Good Online Copywriters Are ...

"What makes for good online copywriting?"  Both marketers and copywriters have their reasons for asking this question.  And we've got answers like Carters proverbially had liver pills.  You can read them.  You can come listen to them.  (Answers, that is.  Not pills.)

"Can you recommend a good online copywriter?"  Ah.  Unfortunately we have considerably fewer answers to that one (although we wish we were busting at the seams with them).  So, as Holly Buchanan and I put the finishing touches to our upcoming Persuasive Online Copywriting Workshop, we enlisted our colleagues in brainstorming the answer to this related question:  "What qualities must a good onlne copywriter possess?"

Here's a Baker's Dozen listing what we would look for in someone we entrusted with the crafting of persuasive copy. 

Good online copywriters are:

1. creative.  You must be able to examine things from multiple and unusual perspectives.
2. intelligent.  You must be able to comprehend new subjects quickly and thoroughly.
3. empathizers.  You must be able to relate to and understand different audiences, especially if they are different from yourself.
4. well-read.  The more you read different styles and works, the more you will be able to learn from others and expand your own repetoir.
5. good listeners.  The best way to learn about a subject or an audience is to really listen.
6. organized.  You must be able to follow directions, manage multiple responsibilities, and be detail oriented.
7. deadline-oriented.  You must have discipline. You have to get it done on time. Period. No exceptions. Be consistently late and be out of work.
8. client managers.  That’s right.  It’s often your job to manage the client, not the other way around. You must manage their expectations and tell them when they’re wrong. They may not always listen, but if you don’t speak up – and the copy doesn’t work – they’re going to blame you.
9. simple communicators.  You must be able to write as simply as possible, taking complex and technical subject matter and explaining it in clear concise copy.
10. consistent.  You must be able to sustain a consistent voice and personality throughout the copy.
11. humble.  You need to be able to separate out your ego from your work. You can not fall in love with your own words. You must be able to edit and cut your copy without emotional connection.
12. web savvy.  The web is a different from any other medium. It is NOT the same as print or direct marketing. Just for starters, you must understand hyperlinks, persuasive momentum, and writing for search engines.

Yeah, I know.  A Baker's Dozen this is not (I always get caught overpromising in the numbers department).  But ever the one to come through in a pinch, Holly has posted the Baker's part of our dozen on her blog Marketing to Women Online.

Sport a Personality with That Online Suit

Corporate professionalism has its place (frivolity rarely persuades an account exec), but downright pro forma business-speak rarely gets noticed, even by the Dark Suit Crowd. 

Flickr won my online photo management business almost exclusively through their copyrighting.  Stuff like this:

At the very bottom of their "about" page:  The fact that you've read to the end of this entire document and are hanging out at the bottom of this page with nothing but this silly text to keep you company is proof of a deep and abiding interest on your part. What are you waiting for? [call to action appropriately placed here]

On their "create an account" page:  Our hatred for spam is difficult to articulate.

On their "press" page:  You suspected all along that our "Aw shucks" Canadian modesty was a big charade, and by George you were right!

From their company blog announcing acquisition by Yahoo!:   Woohoo! What does this mean? It means that we'll no longer have to draw straws to see who gets paid, schedule conjugal visits between trips to the colo....wait! That's not what you want to know. This is what you want to know ... 

And Flickr cultivates our relationship through personality-rich communications like this one:

The Flickr team has up and moved this week to Californ-i-a and has been singing Beach Boys songs non-stop since arrival. And you're moving too! ... every pixel, bit and byte ... Thank you, Flickreebies, for making Flickr such a wonderful place to share, connect, and befriend. We love you! (In an entirely non-creepyway.) - The Flickroobies

Remember, online you're talking to your audience one person at a time.  Of course Flickr's personality won't work for everyone.  The point isn't that you need Flickr's personality.  But a personality - something to distinguish you from the crowd - would be an idea.