Yellow Pages
Mal Emery has published an outstanding article about the right way to use Yellow Pages, in his latest Rebellious Rant.
I’m not just saying that because Mal has recommended his clients and subscribers contact me for a “done for you” Yellow Pages service!
It’s because Mal is sharing great advice about maximising the impact of your Yellow Pages ad and making it up to 750% more profitable.
Like Mal says, 60% of those who consult a category in the Yellow Pages, have NO company in mind — and of the other 40%, around one third (13%) are will to be swayed … that’s a chance at persuading more than 7 in 10 readers with an effective ad.
The regular Rebellious Rants are a great free resource for any entrepreneur or business owner, well worth a free subscription!
Persuasion is still persuasion
I noticed a new report online tonight to download about 19 “new” rules of “social media” copywriting.
With “web 2.0″ all the buzz, this list promised a lot about being engaging and memorable … and persuasive … using social media.
To get the report, I had to sign up to a mailing list first. That was not part of the original “promise” — I was expecting to download a report, not have to add myself a mailing list to do so. Anyway, I downloaded the report and unsubscribed from the list. That’s a thought stream for another day.
I’ve got to say the report wasn’t what I was expecting.
Of the 19 “new” rules — only five of them were “new” and were directly related to social media (”Make your message viral”, “Start the conversation”, “Create discussion topics”, “Generate buzz” and “Include your keywords”). Even some of those are just online adaptions of ways to generate publicity — the method suits the vehicle, but the objective really hasn’t changed.
The other 14 “new” rules are not new at all — they’ve been around long before they were applied in a social media environment.
Sure, social media has changed how you connect, engage and persuade your market — but the way the message is crafted is still based on long-proven copywriting principles.
Some aspects of the process have changed, but the underlying techniques of copy are still as relevant in the social media sphere as elsewhere.
Persuasion is still persuasion.
Believability in your copy
After reviewing a couple of lots of copy in recent days — one aspect which I noticed needed beefing up is the price “believability” factor.
For example, in one web-based sales pitch, a suite of 10 products were claimed to be worth over $34,000 (a specific amount was used, which was good to include) and being sold for just $47.
With such a discrepancy between the price offered and the value claimed, questions will immediately pop in to a prospective buyers head. Questions like …
Yeah right! Are you exaggerating? How do you justify $34,000? How do you justify making the cost only $47? Why are you selling it so cheap? Or is $47 actually more than it’s really worth? Is the whole package really worth $34,000? If you’re making this up, what else are you making up?
They’re legitimate questions you must address in your copy to persuade the buyer that your offer is genuine and trustworthy.
In the example above (the figures I’ve used are close to the actual figures in what I was reading) there’s also other benefits granted to the buyer, including Private Label Rights (to re-brand the products as your own), resale rights, the ability to give away the product. This creates more questions to answer to address a buyer’s fear about how many copies of the product will be sold (that will be competing against the buyer)… how quickly will they recoup their $47 investment?
Illustrating how this might happen — describing various ways they can make money (even by giving away your product) — can change the focus for a buyer from skepticism to seeing the income earning opportunities offered by this package.
In this case, no “reason why” justification was offered, nor were these questions addressed. If they were, I would predict the overall results would be better than they are now.
Whether you use a “reassuringly expensive” price or a highly discounted price, you need to use convincing copy about the value of the product or service to add believability.
Attention-grabbing graphics tool
It’s back!
Over a decade ago, my computer at the time (a Mac clone) sported a very useful, but underused, peripheral: a Wacom graphics tablet. While I used the tablet some of the time, it really ended up not getting the use it deserved (and I donated it to a very excited student several years later).
To help create Direct Response projects, I’ve just purchased a new Wacom… which will help me with adding “graphic grabbers” to help draw attention to particular elements in my copy. So instead of using my mouse and hand-editing paths in Illustrator, the tablet and pen will give me a more natural platform to create the elements I need.
Things like asterisks, lines, boxes, comments, punctuation, bullets, numbers… elements to help guide the reader through a project such as a sales letter (both through grabbing attention and highlighted the personalised nature of the communication).
In terms of creating realistic hand-written elements, the tablet is an easier and better solution than having to rely on hand-drawing and scanning, or using a mouse as input.
Of course, I’ll combine the output I create from the tablet with hand-written style fonts, scanned elements and some mouse-drawn graphics — taking advantage of all four options to give me the ideal combination of attention-grabbing graphics to retain attention.
Now — as you can see from my first attempt after installing the tablet again — I’ve just got to get used to the stylus and feel of it all! It looks hand-created… because it is hand-created!
Headline that captures attention
There’s a story in The Age today about a fire that has damaged an adult cinema in Melbourne’s CBD.
And the crafty headline for this brief story? It’s hilarious:
Premature evacuation as Club X burns
It certainly got my attention in the list of the newspaper’s Top 10 articles for the day. Most amusing.