excess voice: nick usborne's blog

What is an urgent pain point?

One of my coaching clients asked me that question this afternoon.

Here's how I replied:

If you haven’t been to the dentist in two years, it’s important that you make an appointment and go. But it’s not urgent.

If you get a blinding toothache, it becomes urgent.

If you weigh too much it’s important that you shed a few pounds. But that’s not urgent. When your doctor tells you your blood pressure is way too high, then it becomes urgent.

When a company knows that its home page isn’t expressing its core value proposition very well, it’s important that they fix it. But not urgent.

When their top salesman calls in and says he lost a major prospect because the prospect read the site, but misunderstood the company’s value proposition...it becomes urgent.

In life and business, nothing becomes urgent until we actually feel the pain or fear.

The dangers of testing copy.

I have a love/hate relationship with testing.

I love being able to do an A/B split test on a headline, block of copy or call to action.

It's great to be able to judge the writing according to actual conversions and sales.

In other words, I'm a big fan of what testing actually delivers.

What I don't like is when test results are poor interpreted.

Let's say I wrote two versions of a headline for a client. And we then tested them.

#1: Sign up NOW and save 37% on the regular subscription rate.

#2: Save 37% on the regular subscription rate when you sign up NOW.

Let's say that #2 outperforms #1 by 15%.

That's a great discovery. And by conducting the test the client make a lot more money from that page.

But here comes the bad part...

A few months later I write some more copy, but for a different product, with a totally different sales page.

But when I submit the headline and copy, the client says, "No, no! Testing PROVES that if you put the savings at the beginning the headline you'll make more sales."

Not true!!!!!

That test didn't prove any such thing. The result was valid only for THAT sales page, when viewed at THAT TIME, with THAT page layout, THAT supporting copy and THAT call to action.

At best, it provides a clue at to what MIGHT work best for similar products under similar circumstances.

It drives me crazy when people take the results from a single test and then extrapolate them across all their future marketing efforts.

That's bad science and bad marketing.

When clients want your skills, but not your brain.

Companies generally hire me because of my experience and skills as an online copywriter and optimizer

Let's say they want me to rewrite a home page.

Before I start writing the page, I'll spend a lot of time thinking about it. I'll think about the people arriving at that page. I'll think about what those visitors are looking for. I'll think about what their first impressions might be as the page loads for the first time. I'll think about how the page connects with every other page.

Then I'll think of the business owner's goals for the site. I'll think about what he or she wants new and returning visitors to do.

Finally, I'll look for the point at which both the visitor's and the site owner's interests intersect.

I'm in good shape now to start writing and making a few design recommendations.

I might even be quite pleased by what I have done.

Then the client takes a quick look at it and says something along the lines of, "This isn't what I had in mind. I'll need you to make some changes."

I'll explain my thinking, but to no avail.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the client is always wrong. But I have had numerous experiences where I realize, too late, that my real job - for which I'm being paid - is not to find that intersection point where visitor and business interests intersect.

I'm being paid to give the client what he or she wants.

I really hate it when that happens. I try to sniff out these kinds of jobs before they start, and back away. But I still get caught sometimes.

Write to an audience of individuals you don't know.

This isn't my insight. It's something Joe Vitale said during a radio interview.

He was talking about writing e-books, but the advice could just as well apply to copywriting or content writing.

Here's what it's all about...

Whatever you are writing, you should picture an individual reader as you are writing. That way, you write to just one person...and that person, the reader, will appreciate being written to as an individual, and not as part of a huge, anonymous "audience".

This is pretty standard advice for commercial writers.

Joe Vitale suggests that when you picture that individual, make sure it is someone you don't know, who is outside your circle of expertise.

When we imagine that our audience comprises people "like us", there is big danger that we will make assumptions about their level of knowledge. We will assume that they know what we know and have shared the same experiences that we have had.

As with all assumptions, this is a bad one.

It's much better to view your reader as someone you don't know, and as someone who doesn't know any of the stuff that you know.

We can still tap into some shared experiences, so long as they are common experiences.

But beyond that, always picture your reader as someone who needs as much information and advice as you can offer.

"If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me "A faster horse.""

That quote is, of course, from Henry Ford.

Which makes me wonder about the world of Web 2.0...where the customer's voice may one day dominate the "conversation".

Most companies are not very good at listening to their customers, which makes Web 2.0 a wonderful thing. For now. But what about the future?

What happens when more and more companies place greater and greater emphasis on meeting the demands of their customers?

Will the opinions of web users...aka customers...help us create something as remarkable as the automobile?

Or will they simply persuade us to create faster horses?

Or, to put it another way, is over-dependence on customer opinion going to take us down the road of mediocrity?

You've got to be able to see things no one else sees.

Last week I was watching some video clips taken from a high-ticket conference on how to make money online.

There were some very smart marketers featured, most of them making millions of dollars from selling products and services which promise to help regular people make money online.

Helping people make money online is a huge industry, and it is becoming increasingly sophisticated. The lure of being able to create a second stream of income is irresistible to millions of people who could use the extra cash.

Among the speakers featured was Jay Abrahams. Jay is not your usual "online guru". He is an elder-statesman marketing consultant with deep roots in the offline world, as well as online.

And he said something which I imagine some of the other speakers were surprised to hear.

He said, "You've got to be able to see things no one else sees."

While the other speakers we telling people they simply had to learn their "secrets" or follow their "systems", Jay let slip a profoundly useful and very basic nugget of business advice.

All great entrepreneurs "see things no one else sees."

It's what makes their businesses unique, remarkable and worth talking about.

The trouble is, 99% of us don't see things no one else sees.

Which is why 99% of people who invest in online money-making products and services don't see much of a return.

Procrastination-induced Stress

I came across the phrase "Procrastination-induced Stress" in some feedback I received on my Writing Rituals guide.

Here's the full text:

"I just wanted to drop you a line and say "thanks" for the Rituals. Although I have been very blessed in my writing practice, and I love what I do... I find myself constantly struggling with distraction.

I've never missed a deadline... but I have probably shaved a few years off my life because of procrastination-induced stress.

Now, thanks to your book, I have an understanding of why I behave this way. Even better, I now know how to overcome this problem once and for all. I really appreciate this book -- so again, thank you!"

Ray Edwards

The concept of procrastination-induced stress is an interesting one. And it's real too. So many writers end up feeling stressed out by looming deadlines simply because they have put off getting the project written.

If we all managed our time better and maintained a consistent level of productivity, we would significantly reduce the amount of stress in our work lives.

I should have added a section on this in the guide!

Great observation, Ray. Thanks.

More on Writing Rituals here...

Writing Rituals – How to increase your productivity as a writer.

Wow. It has been a very long time since my last post. In my defence, I have been very busy.

I have been working on a huge online copywriting course, which will be published later this month. As soon as it is available, I'll be sure to let you know.

During the period between finishing the course and waiting for its publication I got busy catching up with client work, and also started work on a guide to help marketing writers and copywriters with their productivity.

The guide was inspired by a couple of things.

First, working on the copywriting course forced me to really maximize my daily writing output. I had to get serious about my own productivity, or I would never have finished the course on time.

Also, looking back through the feedback I have received from other writers and copywriters over the years, I realized I wasn't alone in my occasional struggles with productivity.

It seems that a very significant proportion of writers live with a very variable level of output. Some days are good. Others, not so good.

So I did some research, asked a lot of questions and studied my own writing habits very carefully.

The result is a guide I have named Writing Rituals.

I have broken down the process of writing into five separate stages, and created a "ritual" around each stage.

The outcome, I hope, is that writers and copywriters will be able to read the guide, apply the rituals and then maintain a much higher and more consistent level of productivity.

You can learn more about Writing Rituals here.

If you do buy a copy, I would be very interested to hear what you think of it.

The new MarketingSherpa Landing Page Handbook

First thing this morning MarketingSherpa published a fully revised edition of their Landing Page Handbook.

You may be one of the many people who purchased the first edition, which was published way back in the fall of 2004.

The original Landing Page Handbook arguably transformed our understanding of how landing pages work, and how they can and should be optimized.

In fact, that report probably gave birth to hundreds of new businesses. It certainly established the term "landing page" firmly in the minds of every online marketer out there.

And now, with the second edition of the Landing Page Handbook, MarketingSherpa delivers an up-to-the-minute understanding of what's new, what's changed and what really works.

It's a monster report, with over 270 pages of charts, text and data.

Compared to the first edition, there are over twice as many charts and landing page examples.

In addition, every element has been updated and all the changes that have taken place in our industry over the last three years have been accounted for.

I'll be writing a full review for the next issue of the Excess Voice newsletter. (I received my review copy of the handbook a few days ago, but haven't had time to study it in detail yet.)

In the meantime, here's the place to go if you would like to know more, and get a copy of the Landing Page Handbook for your office.

Desktop Marketing – a course for freelancers who want to increase their income by offering writing AND design services.

I just finished reading through all 500 pages of this course, and I like it a lot.

The purpose of the course is to broaden the services freelancers can offer their clients.

In particular, it’s perfect for copywriters who want to offer design services. And goodness knows, there are a zillion small companies out there who would love it if their favourite copywriters could also offer a design service.

I was a little cautious as I started reading the course, as I have quite a strong aversion to “amateur” design.

And then I found the real gem at the heart of this course. Whoever wrote all the information on how to design a attractive page that communicates well seems to share my own views and feelings on the topic.

That is to say, the course promotes a classic style of commercial design. The kind of design that communicates quality as strongly today as it did twenty years ago and fifty years ago.

There is even a whole section on typography. From what I see, typography is a dying art. So it’s great to see it being taught and promoted in this course.

I have plenty more to say on the topic and you can read my review of Desktop Marketing here...