When It's Okay to Hype Your Customers
The need for integrity is one of the biggest roadblocks to marketing your business. Of course you don’t want to manipulate people to buy through fear or other hype-tactics. So you soft-peddle your offers. Or avoid offering at all. Need integrity? Check. Need customers to purchase? Check. What to do? What is ‘Hype’? One definition […]
"Do You Have to Be a Great Writer…" At Dmiracle.com
Scribble, scribble, scribble. There’s been a conversation going on over at Dawud Miracle’s blog about scribbling, and whether you need to be a great writer in order to be a great blogger: I’m in a discussion with Lyle Lachmuth about how much writing skill does it take to be a great blogger. His perspective is […]
"What Do You Use a Newsletter For?"
Colleen Wainright over at the very successful Marketing Mix blog was talking about her resistance to starting a newsletter. This sparked me, because I’m in the exact oppostive place. I’ve been very successful with my newsletter for some years now, publishing every Wednesday for the last two, with great response and impact for the articles, […]
From Grok dot Com: The Web's Old Wives Tale: People Don't Read Online
Bryan Eisenberg wrote this post on the Grok.com blog: The Web’s Old Wives Tale: People Don’t Read Online
The post is particularly interesting, because he mentioned an eyetrack study from the Poynter Institute, (you know, eyetrack is when they use infrared, I believe, to track where someone is actually looking on the screen.)
And they saw that people do read online, many quite thoroughly.
Of particular note is that because some people don’t read thoroughly, they scan, design becomes even more important.
Sean D’Souza have both helped me to learn a lot about website design and readability.
If you are wanting to put content up on the web, I have some tips on how to make it readable. Please note, I’m well aware that this blog is NOT a good example… yet! Dawud is hard at work redesigning it this week.
Tips on how to make your online content more readable:
1. Margins-
Make sure that there is white space -around- your text- that columns and other design elements aren’t crunched together.
The white space gives room for the reader’s eye to actually “enter” the space. If the space is full of stuff, it’s hard for someone to look at and enter it.
2. Use Subheads-
Subheads are really helpful. Make the font size slight larger, and use them every 3-6 paragraphs or so.
Subheads help the reader to know where they are going, so they can settle in. Sometimes people scan the subheads quickly, and then go back and read. Or if they hit a part of your writing that they find boring, instead of clicking away, they may just jump to the next subhead and re-engage.
3. Short paragraphs.
Here I’ll just reproduce what I wrote in Creating Heart-Centered Websites
The BIGGEST Reason People Aren’t Reading What You Write
The answer is two words: paragraph length.
You want to use short paragraphs in your emails.
Really short.
You also want to use short paragraphs on your blogs. And on your website. And in your articles. And in your book. And in your email replies to interested people.
I’m not kidding. Because when you write really, really long paragraphs by email and they go on and on without stopping about every last thing you want to say, then it becomes this block of text that’s hard to read and follow. Your readers become frightened to start the paragraph, and, if they do actually start the paragraph, they get lost in the middle and never reach the end. And if they never reach the end, then they never see the next paragraph and basically the gig is up, because they’ve missed the point of what you were writing about, and you may as well never have written in the first place. And, because you lose them as readers you never hear back from them, you’ve gotten no response and so you can start to feel frustrated. Then angry. Then sad. Then you begin to fill with despair and wonder if anyone cares about you at all, and whether you should even be in business, or even in the world. Maybe you should just give it all up and go get a job in a cafe. When, it’s really not that bad, it?s just because your paragraphs were too long. Make sense? Short paragraphs. No more than three or four lines.
‘Nuff said.
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Those are my tips. There are others, such as not putting patterns behind your text, not putting too many elements on the page, etc, etc.
But these three are the biggies, and will help a lot.
Hey! Why Such Long Sales Pages?
So, you get one of those emails from someone whose business you kinda like. And it’s got some enticing little message in it- so you click to take a look at the offer.
And suddenly you find yourself in highlighter land. Broad streaks of yellow, lots of exclamation points, and pages and pages of words making all kinds of claims and promises. And when you scroll allllllll the way down to the bottom, there isn’t even a price. You need to click on an ‘order now’ button before they even tell you the price.
Steaming, you swear by all that is holy that you will never, ever subject your customers to that kind of nonsense.
So when you go to sell your own offer, say for instance a seminar, you write up a simple, clear paragraph or two about it, add few bullet points, and an understated offer. And hardly anyone responds. Oy!
Do you have to be hyper-hypey to get customers?
Listen to the podcast- around five minutes.
Share- how do you feel about those long sales pages?
For the Sake of Visibility…
I just wanted to use my blog to add to the visibility around death threats made to blogger Kathy Sierra
I posted this comment on her blog:
“I echo many of the already spoken sentiments, and I completely support whatever choices you need to make for your own health and sanity.
I also want to say, as someone who worked as a paramedic for years, as well as in various activist causes, that one of the things that I’m feeling inspired about this situation is the incredible support, visibility and response.
In the past, without the internet, without an interconnected community of readers that can easily respond, something like this would ordinarily be invisible, and instead it becomes VERY visible- and the trail is readily traced back to folks responsibile, or to folks who know who is responsible.
That is an incredible amount of transparency. I know it may do very little for your own feeling safety and sanity, but I rejoice, thinking of folks I saw who had been assaulted silently, hidden in their rooms, with no one except paramedics and police to see what happened, and no way to get publicity, because what- the newspaper is going to publish it in any way that creates compassion and connection? No, they aren’t.
So, my prayers and thoughts for you and a graceful resolution to this entire situation. And my appreciation for everyone who is helping to make this situation visible. The more visibility, the better.”
I also want to add my prayer that the person or people making death threats to her, that they find their own deeper needs, and get them fulfilled in ways that are healthy to everyone involved.
LA Times: "Don't Email Me"
Today I read at the Grok.com blog about a column by Joel Stein of the LA Times (read it here.)
There were a lot of comments about whether Joel was being arrogant, stupid, publicity-seeking, or using reverse psychology.
But there was interesting comment near the end of Joel’s column- I’ll just reproduce what I wrote on Grok.com’s blog here:
Why Your Best Clients Give Blah Testimonials
Your client loved you. Luurrrved you! Working with you, the results they got. Oh happy day.
Then why is it so darn hard to get a testimonial from them? And, if you do get a testimonial, it’s of the blah-blah ‘John Smith is great. Recommend him highly.’ bariety.
How can you get those great testimonials? Read this article.
Listen to the podcast- around four minutes.
Ready to go get’em, Barbara?
If You Resist Marketing, Then You Can Be Great At It
“I’ve tried to market myself for years. I’ve worked with coaches, counselors and healers of all stripes. They all tell me I need to work through my resistance to marketing, and yet I still hate it.” My heart was breaking. I was speaking with someone who had the seeds of an amazing business, one that […]
Why Your Customers Lie to You
Why do you customers lie to you?
In 1985 the Coca Cola Corporation spent gobs on the best marketing research money could buy, and asked thousands of people their opinion. Armed with overwhelming statistics, and clear answers from a huge number of people, they launched New Coke.
The result? $4,000,000 down the drain.
$20 a person spent on 200,000 people in focus groups, testing, market surveys, and the blind taste test. And the results that came back were totally wrong.
The same thing will happen if you go asking your customers ‘what do you want?’
So how do you keep your customers from lying to you?