Are you on first-name terms with your buyer personas?
Do your marketing strategy meetings discuss ‘Jason’s’ likely reaction to the new launch, and why ‘Sharon’ is the target for the upcoming campaign?
Experienced buyer persona users understand a buyer persona’s power to generate great insight and high confidence in marketing and business decisions; transforming a marketer’s ability to impact buyer attitudes on solutions and brands.
Buyer personas can break down barriers between sales and marketing by enabling both groups to share a good understanding of what action is required to address buyer needs.
And, insight into the buying process helps each team visualize their revenue contribution at each stage in the purchase process.
As companies learn to appreciate personas’ ability to predict buyer behaviour with uncanny accuracy, marketers can find themselves awarded a place at the strategy table thanks to their insight on key issues…
Do magic words exist or are they a copywriting myth?
I recently received a copywriting advice email from Yale University describing the ‘the most powerful words in the English Language’. Here they are:
1. You
2. Results
3. Health
4. Guarantee
5. Discover
6. Love
7. Proven
8. Safety
9. Save
10. New
Although I agree that these are powerful words, I doubt Yale really conducted any rigorous research – and if they did, it’s certainly not something that the University chooses to share on its official website.
What is interesting is how long these types of list have been "doing the rounds". It taps into the insatiable demand for instant solutions. Human nature finds the notion very appealing that all you need do is sprinkle a few magic words into your writing like fairy dust and, Hey Presto, an instant increase in sales pops out of the hat.
Using magic words in the right place in your copy and in the right order…
Today I'm speaking at the Fusion Marketing Experience in Belgium today and looking forward to talks by Bryan Eisenberg (@TheGrok), Joost de Valk (@yoast) and Jeff Molander (@JeffreyMolander). I'll be liveblogging, first up is @GerryMcGovern...
Gerry McGovern on Top Tasks and the Long Neck
I enjoyed talking with Gerry last night, listening to the methods he uses on studies for companies with huge sites like the BBC, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft.
He starts with a theme for today - don’t trust the design of your sites, your customer experiences, to “gut instinct or suits around a table with lattes”.
The essence of the method is to identify around 100 main tasks on a site from researching site visitor behaviour by analysing search, analytics and interviews. Usually there’s around 100 and a single page survey is used to get a rating of these.
Amazingly, just 4-6 top tasks get 25%…
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October 17, 2011
Review your persuasion approaches to increase conversion
Websites that are effective in conversion often share common approaches to persuasion.
I'm often on the look out for simple, practical persuasive ideas so I can include them in workshop or conference talks. This post summarises 10 tried and tested approaches I've seen grouped under key areas of persuasion for websites. I hope you find them useful!
Page headlines
1. Ask a question
Are you writing statement-based headlines? If so, try turning some of them into questions. Question-based headlines are more attention grabbing.
Questions entice us to find out more. In a world where text scanning, rather than reading, is the norm, questions force us to sit up and pay attention:
“Do you want to engage your audience?” rather than “Engage your audience”.
2. Create a problem
Once you’ve identified your audience, give them a familiar problem to…
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September 13, 2011
Practical customer engagement examples #2
Last time I talked about the use of QR codes for engagement. My customer engagement example this time shows how to use gamification to make an app (or website) more involving and shareable.
Dropbox is one of those utilities I now find I can’t live without and I noticed this use of game mechanics (gamification) on their ‘Get Started’ page.
The goals for building this feature fit nicely with what I see as the essence of engagement in this definition of customer engagement:
“Repeated interactions that strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment a customer has in a brand”.
To encourage you to learn more about the product, use it and share with friends Dropbox have set a ‘quest’ to complete seven tasks. Your reward should you become a ‘Dropbox Guru’ is extra storage space. Motivating, fun and rewarding!
Other nice elements on the…
How changing one word can help you win more sales
The other day I was speaking at a workshop organized by Royal Mail. After my talk, the chairperson asked ‘What is the one thing that you will do differently when you go back to the office’.
When the people in the room gave their answers, almost every third person said the same thing. They all intended to change one single word in their copy because they were convinced that doing so would improve sales instantly.
I was pleased they had picked up this tip from my talk since the correct use of this particular word is very powerful. It’s also extremely simple, so anyone can do it to their own copy, right now.
I described it as ‘changing’ one word, but in fact, it’s even easier than that, because all you do is delete it.
And the word is….
But what is the word?…
What is an average bounce rate
Question: I wondered whether you might be able to point me in the direction of some info on web behaviour?
We've recently been looking at “drop off” rates for some of our online content and seeing if we can compare it with external sites to help gauge whether the behaviours we are seeing could be considered as 'typical'.
The metrics we've been looking at include time spent on a page (0-10, 10-20 seconds etc) and would like to compare to external websites such as BBC, YouTube, etc.
Do you know how it is possible to obtain this data, or any external websites who may have it?
We measure it, but have no external reference as to whether it is good, bad or indifferent.
Nicola
July 2011 update
Google Analytics has just published a compilation of Average bounce rates - see the caveats later in my article about the dangers of comparing…
How to create original Google-friendly copy for product pages
It’s been a few weeks now since Google shook the SEO world with what has come to be known as the ‘Panda/Farmer’ update .
This massive change to the algorithms saw some websites plummeting in their natural search rankings overnight.
Although most of the commentary was about how it affected content sites, retailers also lost out. Why? Because they were using manufacturer’s copy rather than writing large amounts from scratch. In Google’s eyes it makes for a better visitor experience if all the copy is original, unique and well-written.
Most retail sites that have been hit prefer to keep quiet about it, for obvious reasons. One leading SEO expert said, “I can tell you there were some retail sites that lost out but I can’t quote any as I have signed Non-Disclosure Agreements.”
The most well-publicised retail site to suffer was Play.com. Another retailer prepared…
I met Mel Henson at last year's ECMOD conference where we discussed the pleasure and pain of book writing. She was hard at work on a new book on copywriting: [amazon-product text="Flicks & Clicks: How to Create Websites and Catalogues that Sell More" type="text"]1907722041[/amazon-product]. There are relatively few new books on online copywriting and if you want to review your approaches, I highly recommend it. It's full of practical tips and examples blending on and offline copywriting.
So, we arranged to have a chat about what works and what doesn't in online copywriting.I hope you find Mel's ideas helpful? What are your pet hates or peeves with online copy?
1. What inspired you to write "Flicks and Clicks?"
When I first specialised in copy for home shopping, I discovered that there is real ‘science of…
We all know that web copywriting needs to be brief to be effective (although AB testing will sometimes prove otherwise...). But if you are a marketer experienced in writing copy for print or direct mail, in which other ways should you change your style? In this interview, Anne Caborn of digital consultancy CDA takes us through the main issues experienced print copywriters need to consider.
Anne Caborn is co-founder and director of Content Delivery & Analysis, a strategic digital consultancy.
Q1. 1. What are the main differences in successfully writing for web compared with print
[Answer: Anne Caborn, Co-Founder Content Delivery & Analysis]
There are a number of key differences but there are two critical ones when you"€™re talking about web (as opposed to email). The first is you are having a conversation online. It"€™s auditory both…
