Let’s say you’ve got a fantastic product or service, but you need help to get the word out. You’re not alone. Many businesses are in the same boat, trying to cut through the noise and grab their audience’s attention. That’s where killer ad copy comes in.

It’s not just about telling people what you offer. It’s also about crafting a message that resonates, persuades, and ultimately converts.

From understanding your audience to using “power words” that pack a punch, we’ll discuss all the tips and best practices for writing a winning ad copy.

1. Understand Your Audience:

The first step in creating your ad copy is to know who you’re targeting and what they’re looking for.

This helps you address your audience directly in the copy, tailor your message to their preferences, and create content that resonates with them.

Why is it so crucial?

Because people are more likely to respond to messages that resonate with their needs, desires, and pain points. It’s like telling a fisherman you’ve got the best worm when he’s looking for a lure. You need to know what bait to use.

Take Nike’s ads, for example.

They don’t just sell shoes—they sell a lifestyle. Their ads often tap into their audience’s aspirations and emotions, whether it’s the joy of running or the thrill of competition.

How do you go about understanding your target audience? Here are some tips:

• Start with demographics and psychographics. Dive into demographic data, but continue. Look into psychographics—what are their values, interests, and lifestyles? Tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and customer surveys can be your best friends here.

• Look at your current customers. Your existing customers can provide insights into your target audience. Analyze their purchase history, customer feedback, and engagement patterns to understand who they are and what they like about your products or services.

• Create customer personas. Compile your research into customer personas—detailed profiles of your ideal customers. Personas should include demographic and psychographic information and outline pain points, challenges, and how your product or service fits into their lives.

• Stay abreast of industry trends. Stay up to date with industry trends and research that might affect your audience’s preferences and behaviors. This can help you anticipate changes and adapt your messaging accordingly.

• Use A/B testing. Test different versions of your ad copy with segments of your audience to see what resonates best. Use the insights from these tests to refine your messaging.

Remember, empathize with Your Audience. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and understand their emotions, challenges, and desires. This empathy will help you create more authentic and relatable ad copy.

2. Craft a Strong Headline

Statistics suggest that while 8 out of 10 people read headline copy, only 2 out of 10 visitors will read the rest.

This shows how important it is to create a strong headline for your ad copy. Your headline should grab attention and make a promise or offer that compels the reader to keep reading.

A strong headline doesn’t mean getting carried away and making it two-sentence long. The headline should be long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep things interesting.

A good rule of thumb is to keep your headline to a maximum of 30 characters to ensure it’s easily digestible at a glance.

At the same time, make sure your headline makes a strong and decisive statement. For example, Dollar Shave Club’s famous headline, “Shave Time. Shave Money,” promises convenience and savings.

Using numbers or statistics can also help you add credibility to your ad copy. For example, a headline like “Join 1 Million Satisfied Customers” instantly adds credibility and appeal.

That’s not all. Here are some more quick tips to help you craft a strong headline for your ad copy:

• Ask a Question: Questions are the spark of curiosity. For example, headlines like “Tired of Overpaying for Your Phone Bill?” directly address a common pain point, encouraging readers to seek a solution.

• Incorporate Emotional Triggers: Emotions drive action. Use emotional triggers that align with your brand and audience. For example, a headline like “Transform Your Home into a Sanctuary of Comfort” appeals to the desire for a peaceful living space.

• Urgency: Creating a sense of urgency can prompt immediate action. For example, use phrases like “Limited Time Offer” or “Act Now” to encourage your target audience to take immediate action.

• Highlight what sets you apart: If your product is the first of its kind, mention that in the headline.

3. Highlight Benefits, Not Just Features

When writing ad copy, it’s easy to fall into the trap of listing all the cool features of your product or service.

Your audience doesn’t want a tech manual or to hear how great your product is—they want to know what’s in it for them.

Features are the characteristics of your product or service, like a 10-hour battery life in a laptop or organic ingredients in skincare.

However, benefits are the outcomes or advantages of those features, like uninterrupted work or healthier, glowing skin.

4. Use Clear and Concise Language

Avoiding jargon and keeping your copy straightforward will help you communicate your message more effectively. Your target audience will be able to understand your message more efficiently, reducing the likelihood of confusion or misinterpretation.

You can take inspiration from Apple’s ad copies—known for their minimalist, short, impactful sentences.

Check out how Apple’s headline is short and sweet. It still gets the main point across and grabs your attention with solid, snappy sentences.

Want to write a clear and concise ad copy that effectively communicates your message like Apple? Here are some tips:

• Focus on Key Benefits: Highlight the most important benefits of your product or service. For example, a skincare brand might emphasize “Instant Hydration” rather than listing all the ingredients.

• Use Simple Language: Avoid jargon or complex vocabulary. For instance, instead of saying, “Our product is an amalgamation of various nutrients,” you could say, “Our product is packed with essential nutrients.”

• Be Specific: Vague statements won’t resonate with your audience. Instead of saying, “Our software improves productivity,” specify, “Our software cuts your workload by 50%.”

5. Include a Clear Call to Action (CTA)

A Call to Action (CTA) is essential to your ad copy.

It’s the part of your message that tells your audience exactly what you want them to do next—whether clicking a link, signing up for a newsletter, or purchasing.

Again, you might want to emulate Apple’s approach to CTAs in their ad and website copy.

They use specific, visible, and customer-oriented CTAs that guide readers to learn more about the product with clear links and small arrows in a standout color.

Notice how Apple also uses action-oriented language that leaves no room for ambiguity. Instead of just saying, “Learn more, the CTA says, “Learn more about the design of iPhone 5.”

This tells your audience precisely what action you want them to take and what they can expect when they click on the CTA.

You can also create a sense of urgency using phrases like “Limited time offer” or “Act now.” They’ll help you encourage your audience to take immediate action.

Here are some more best practices for creating a winning CTA for your ad copy:

• Keep it Short and Sweet: Your CTA should be concise and easily understood. Avoid long phrases that might confuse your audience.

• Make it Stand Out: Use design elements like contrasting colors, bold text, or buttons to make your CTA pop. You want it to be the most noticeable part of your ad.

• Align with Your Goal: Ensure your CTA aligns with your ad’s goal. If you’re promoting a new product, your CTA might be “Buy now.” If you want to generate leads, it might be “Download our guide.”

• Test Different CTAs: Experiment with different CTAs to see what works best for your audience. A/B testing can help you determine which CTA leads to higher conversion rates.

6. Use Power Words

The choice of words can drastically affect how your audience will react to the ad copy.

Power words are specific words or phrases that trigger an emotional or psychological response, making them incredibly useful in advertising. They can create a sense of urgency, evoke curiosity, or offer exclusivity, prompting the reader to take action.

Here are some examples of “power words” in an ad copy:

• Urgency: “Hurry,” “Instant,” “Now,” “Limited-time offer”
• Curiosity: “Secret,” “Unveiled,” “Exclusive,” “Behind the scenes”
• Value: “Free,” “Save,” “Discount,” “Bonus”
• Trust: “Proven,” “Guaranteed,” “Endorsed,” “No-risk”
• Emotion: “Amazing,” “Discover,” “Unlock,” “Empower”

Aside from invoking urgency, action-oriented power words like “discover” or “unlock” can also prompt users to take the next step.

However, we suggest using power words sparingly—overuse might make your ad copy feel spammy or insincere.

And don’t just use them for no rhyme or reason. Your power words should align with your brand’s tone and personality. At the same time, they should be relevant to your product, service, or offer.

For example, consider this ad copy by Indeed, a popular job search platform.

In one of their Facebook ads targeting recent college graduates, they use words like “Opportunity,” “Presents,” and “Congratulates” to evoke a sense of excitement and achievement.

They don’t overdo the usage; the words also directly align with their platform and offerings.

7. Test and Optimize

Once you’ve crafted your ad copy, the work doesn’t stop there.

You must continually test and optimize your ad copy to ensure it performs as intended.

The most common testing, also called A/B testing, involves creating two versions of your ad (A and B) with one varying element, such as the headline or CTA.

By showing these ads to similar audiences, you can see which version performs better and use that insight to improve your copy.

For example, let’s say you’re running ads for a fitness app. You could test two different headlines:

• Version A: “Get Fit in Just 10 Minutes a Day”
• Version B: “Transform Your Body with Our Quick Workouts”

If Version B has a higher click-through rate, you’ll know that focusing on “transformation” and “quick workouts” resonates more with your audience.

The best part? You can use modern-day tools to make this process a breeze for you.

For example, you can use FigPii—a powerful conversion optimization tool to improve your ad copy and website experience.

FigPii offers features like heatmaps, session recordings, and A/B testing to understand how users engage with your ads and landing pages. Analyzing this data lets you make informed decisions to refine your ad copy and improve conversion rates.

Then, you have Google Analytics to see how users interact with your ads. Look at metrics like click-through, conversion, and bounce rates to determine how well your copy performs.

The trends and customer expectations are constantly evolving, so don’t just stop after one test. Regularly review and update your ad copy. Keep an eye on the latest trends and best practices, and experiment with new approaches.

Wrapping It Up with Winning Ad Copy!

Crafting a compelling ad copy involves striking a balance between being informative and persuasive. Following these tips can create ad copy that captures attention and drives action.

Remember, the key is to keep testing and refining your message. Stay in tune with your audience, keep an eye on the trends, and don’t be afraid to shake things up. So, give these strategies a shot, and watch your ads come to life!

The post Tips and Best Practices for Writing Better Ad Copy appeared first on Invesp.

Working for a CRO agency that helps a ton of eCommerce brands comes with a lot of lessons.

One of the many lessons I have learned so far is:

A website’s value proposition is an element that is too expensive to ignore.

In a world where 80% of DTC eCommerce brands fail, having a good product and a killer value proposition can, at least, give you a fighting chance.

A company value proposition is a versatile tool you can use on- and off-site.

On your website, you can use it to improve customer understanding, engagement, and even conversions.

Offsite, it can be part of your broader marketing strategy as you can use it – on ads and marketing campaigns – to drive potential buyers or qualified leads to your website.

So, you see how important a value proposition is to your business?

The only problem with solid value propositions is, they are not easy to craft – especially when you don’t know your customers’ Jobs-to-be-done. A lot of research and customer interviews are a good starting point if you want to create a value proposition that resonates with your target audience.

But since you’re here, I will show you examples of six DTC brands that you can learn from. Let’s get the ball rolling…

For the purpose of this article, we’ve defined a value proposition as a short summary of how your product benefits customers.

What Makes a Compelling Value Proposition

Alright, so this is a pretty huge subject to talk about. We have written a few articles on this blog unpacking what a value proposition is, and how to write one. We even have a Youtube video dedicated to this topic.

ALSO READ: Value proposition – What is it, how it works, and why you should pay attention to it

Your value proposition is one of the most important elements you’d want your visitors to see once they land on your homepage. You want that short summary to be clear and concise that it captures their attention and makes them want to do business with you.

In short, a good value proposition should let your customers know what you do and how you are different. It should clearly communicate the benefits that your customers will enjoy once they have purchased your product.

So when you are about to craft a compelling value proposition, make it a point that you answer the questions:

1. What problem does your product solve?
2. Who will benefit from using your product?
3. What is the value/benefit(s) that customers will enjoy after buying your product?
4. How is your product different from competitors?

One mistake that most DTC brands usually make is crafting value propositions using technical terms assuming that customers will understand it.

The other critical mistake that we often see is that brands love to talk about themselves, instead of focusing on their consumers.

Here are 10 DTC eCommerce brands that have insanely best value propositions.

6 Examples of eCommerce Value Propositions

Now that we’ve covered the basics, I will show you some best value proposition examples from DTC eCommerce brands. I’m sure you will find something that will inspire you to craft one for your own site.

Enough said, let’s get right into it…

ALSO READ: How to write value propositions for eCommerce websites

Recess: “We canned a feeling”

Staying calm and avoiding anxiety and worry comes with a ton of health benefits.

Recess, a beverages company, understands the importance of feeling calm. And this is why they have to position their beverages as an escape from any stressful situations.

Recess highlights the problem (stressful world) and shines the spotlight on their products as the right solution that will help you feel calm and focused despite what’s happening around you.

Here is the thing, Recess could have easily talked about how nice their beverages taste in their value. But, instead, they focus on the value (which is a feeling of calmness) that customers will get when they purchase their beverages.

If you scroll down a bit you will also see a statement that supports Recess’ value proposition by explaining why they exist:

With such a clear value, it’s easy to persuade potential customers to try their beverages.

Pela Case: “You care about the planet”

Some problems that can be solved by a product are not actual customer pain points, but they can also be for a good cause.

We all know that the planet is an essential part of our survival as human beings. And if anything affects the planet, it might not be an individual problem, but a problem that can impact each and every one of us.

So, if your product solves such a problem that every human being can relate to, then you have a good product and you can create a sustainable business.

Pela Case, an online shop that sells phone cases and other accessories made from biodegradable materials, created a brand that solves the problem of environmental pollution.

The brand tells you to play your part in creating a plastic-free ocean and a waste-free world by using products that do not pollute the environment.

Looking at how beautiful their phone cases are, this company could have easily focused on the appearance of their product. But instead, they focus on the value that comes with using their phone cases.

Using biodegradable materials that are environmentally friendly is also a way to differentiate Pela Case from its competitors. Unlike other “greedy companies,” Pela cases do not just protect your phones, they also help protect the planet:

This value proposition projects Pela Case as a caring and considerate company that you can rely on. The three icons under the “Why Pela” also support the value proposition by expressing – in numbers – how you can help the planet by using the Pela phone cases.

Joy + Glee: “We take care of your body hair situation.”

Sometimes the best value proposition doesn’t have to be clever. Sometimes you can create a unique value proposition by making it straight to the point – thus, directly telling your target audience how you make their lives easy.

Once you read the Joy + Glee value proposition, you know exactly what to expect in terms of value. Yes, it’s that straightforward.

Joy + Glee, an online store that offers shaving products, promises to “take care of your body hair situation.”

If you think about it, this brand’s value proposition is more than just a statement, it’s a direct promise they make to their target market:

If anything, they understand that you don’t want to spend much time worrying about your body hair. They offer you personalized shaving products and you don’t have to spend any of your valuable time looking for them.

As soon as you click that purple CTA, you are taken through a super quick questionnaire, so that the company understands the kind of products you like and they customize the bundle accordingly.

You are asked questions like the color of products you prefer, how often you shave and when you’d want to receive your refills. Once you have subscribed, they send you refills as often as you like and you don’t have to worry about looking for shaving products yourself.

Hush Blankets: “The best-weighted blanket to reduce stress and fall asleep fast”

We all know how incredibly important a good night’s sleep is for one’s health and well-being – in fact, sleeping is just as important as exercising and eating healthy.

No matter who you are, if you are sleeping less then that’s a problem you must address.

Fortunately, the team over at Hush Blankets – an online store that sells blankets – know how to solve this problem for you using their blankets.

And they also know how to write a strong value proposition that communicates their value to their target customer:

Looking at Hush Blanket’s value proposition, you can easily guess who they are serving.

Yes, you’re right…they targeting people who struggle with insomnia due to stress and anxiety or people who happen to fail to fall asleep fast.

We all know how crowded the bedding industry is, so how do Hush Blankets position themselves differently? Well, their blankets are not regular blankets, they were created with the help of sleep specialists:

Admit it…it’s not every day that you come across blankets that were created by sleep specialists and scientifically proven results.

Impact Dog Crates: “The only crate you will ever need guaranteed”

Like Joy + Glee, Impact Dog Crates does a great job in tailoring a value proposition that is straightforward.

Once you land on their home page, you obviously see that this company is targeting people who own dogs – even before you read their value proposition.

Even without directly mentioning it in their value proposition, notice how Impact talks about how good (in terms of quality) their products are and that doesn’t get damaged easily:

if you have a dog, three things are certain, (1) you want to make sure that your dog is safe, (2) you want to protect your house from your dog, and (3) you don’t want to keep on forking out money and buying a dog crate from time to time.

And this is exactly what Impact promises to sort out once you purchase their crates:

As an added bonus, the fact that their crates are engineered in the USA using strong aluminum material that is trusted by Police K9 handlers and dog trainers inspires confidence in potential customers and also makes the brand stand out.

Dropbottle: “Water, with benefits. Drink your vitamins.”

Some online retailers will help keep your furry friends safe, while others will help you have a good night’s sleep.

Others, like Dropbottle –an online store that sells fruit infused water bottles – will help you stay hydrated, healthy while saving the planet:

Dropbottle’s team could have easily talked about the number of various fruits you can add to their water bottles, the length of the twist-on infuser, and a leak-proof design. Or they could have talked about the filter that helps you ensure that you get the best flavor possible.

But, instead, their value proposition sheds more light on the benefits that come with using their products: which is drinking your vitamins.

As an added bonus, Dropbottle also cleverly points out that their water bottles are eco-friendly – which is another thing that makes them stand out from the competition.

Nice job, Drop bottle.

Conclusion: Understand your customers’ Jobs to be done first

Writing a killer value proposition for your online store starts with an understanding of your customers’ jobs to be done. And once you know why customers are buying/hiring your product, then you can go ahead and answer the following questions:

1. What problem does your product solve?
2. Who will benefit from using your product?
3. What is the value/benefit(s) that potential customers will enjoy after buying your product?
4. How is your product different from competitors?

The post 6 DTC eCommerce Websites with Killer Value Propositions appeared first on Invesp.

For an eCommerce site, the product page is the most important page, and the product description is the most important element within it.

This is where we convince and convert a new buyer.

For as long as I’ve been in the marketing trenches I’ve NEVER thought about testing a product page copy.

The reason?

Well, you know– there are too many product pages. It’s overwhelming.

But… a few weeks ago, I changed my mind.

A friend – Rishi Rawat from Frictionless Commerce – who specializes in fixing product pages for eCommerce sites convinced me into doing this.

So, we thought of doing a webinar.

But I brushed off the idea because I think most webinars are boring.

So, Rishi, myself, and a whole bunch of people met to answer a few questions:

“If we do this, how do we ensure attendees walk away with incredible insights? Are we being too ambitious?”

50-minute knowledge bomb session– no filler, no fluff.

After 2 hours of back and forth we had a consensus:

Full disclosure: the beloved product page format has been around 18+ years. Expect some hole poking. Expect some controversy. Expect to have your brain blown.

“Khalid, if the value is so high why a free webinar?”

Because we can. At Invesp sharing is a core value.

In this webinar, we share a radical product page idea. It’ll make you uncomfortable but also more money. None of your competitors are doing it.

If you’re looking for a competitive edge, this is a session to watch:

You might need to bring your notepad and take note of:

1. A radical product page idea, that will make you uncomfortable but also more money.
2. How to convince a new buyer using the power of words.
3. How to be concise, credible, and engaging in your product descriptions.

Make sure you run a test on every change you make to see just how much your performance is improving. Got any questions about the idea we’ve given here? Let me know in the comments section.

The post The Mighty Product Page: Rethinking Product Descriptions appeared first on Invesp.

Yes, the digital marketing space is jam-packed with content.

Relying on SEO for traffic might just be one way of shooting yourself in the foot.

Did you just ask, why?

Well, making your content rank is getting harder than ever before – and even if you do rank, Google can change the rules anytime and you’ll be back on square one.

The secret ingredient to a successful content marketing strategy is designing a CONTENT MARKETING ENGINE.

In this session, Ross Simmonds,  Founder of Foundation Marketing, describes content as the foundation of culture and the internet.

He goes on to define a Content Marketing Engine as the process of both the creation and distribution of any type of content –blog posts, webinars, podcasts, and more.

Here is a video recording of this whole session:

Session duration: 70 minutes

Key takeaways of this session:

In order to make great content you need to optimize your content portfolio using the four Rs: REMIX, REVISE, REMOVE, and REDIRECT.

• If the content generates x # of backlinks or traffic and needs work, revise it.
• If the content generates x # of backlinks or traffic and doesn’t need to be revised, redirect it.
• If the content doesn’t generate x # of backlinks or traffic but is still valuable, republish it.
• If the content doesn’t generate x # of backlinks or traffic but isn’t valuable, remove it.

Pieces of content that generate tons of backlinks are tools, definitions, stats, and research.

The first part of a Content Engine: Creation

As a brand, you shouldn’t limit your own content, its okay to get inspirations from what other industries and brands are doing.

If you already have existing content, don’t let it get buried by new pieces of content that you are creating. Reverse engineer early success from your existing pieces of content.

Google is changing the way we view and receive information– Google is becoming the destination. To combat this, create better content by taking a page out of Google’s playbook where you look at content that might exist on the Wikipedia website and remix it.

If you reverse engineer Wikipedia pages and create an amazing and appealing version of Wikipedia content, you can outrank it. Some brands have actually taken the entire Wikipedia page and turned it into a landing page:

Bring old content back with a modern touch (revise), you can update the date of a post even without making content updates if the topic is still relevant.

The 2nd part of a Content Engine: Distribution

The lifecycle of your content begins when you press publish.

The next thing that follows is distribution. The only way you will win in a crowded content marketing is to have an organic content distribution strategy.

With ad costs up, limited budget, and SERP features, content distribution is key.

A few easy ways to distribute your content is to:

• Reshare: followers change, don’t be afraid to reshare past posts
• Repost: content to new places and new niche audiences such as Facebook Groups and Subreddits

If the content isn’t resonating well with your site, republish it as a guest blog on other sites.

Don’t be afraid to remix content into assets and experiment.

Disney created a bunch of flops, but we always remember the hits!

So, If you would like to be notified about our free-training sessions like this one, please join our community. You need never miss an opportunity to ask us any marketing questions during live sessions.

The post Designing A Content Engine: How To Create & Distribute To Drive Results appeared first on Invesp.

I’m guessing, a few… 

Just like the product you sell, welcome emails have to satisfy the customer’s needs or wants. 

Your new subscribers have to see value in the first email you send them from the word go.

That’s how you get them hooked. 

Considering that 57.7% of marketers already send out welcome emails too, what can you do to make yours stand out from the noise?

That’s where Jobs to be Done (JTBD) comes in. 

Using the JTBD framework to write your welcome email is an exciting and rewarding process that can help you tailor the content and images in a way that fulfills the subscriber’s needs.

The basics?

A welcome email is the first impression a company makes with a new customer, blog subscriber, or newsletter subscriber via email. 

Welcome emails can deliver videos, special offers, a sign-up form, or just a friendly hello to establish a relationship with a new contact.

Don’t think welcome emails are important? 

Think again.

To show you how important welcome emails are, we conducted research and found out this: 

• The average open rate for a welcome email is 50%. That makes it 86% more effective than standard newsletters.
• 76% of people expect to receive a welcome email immediately after subscribing to your list.
• Users who receive a welcome email show 33% more engagement with the brand.
• Welcome emails on average generate up to 320% more revenue per email basis than other promotional emails
• The conversion rate is 0.94% for welcome emails (4.01% for real-time messages) compared to 0.10% for a typical email

The welcome email you send sets the foundation for the rest of your communications with a new customer.

But how can JTBD influence the contents or even down the road the strategy of welcome emails and beyond?

That’s a good question. 

By way of a brief introduction, the #JTBD framework came out of Harvard Business School, and it has helped many marketers understand:

• When customers prefer to buy or hire your products or services (ie what is happening in their lives when they decide to hire your product or service)
• What progress are they trying to make with your product or service
• Who or what they fired before settling for your product or service
• What habits or anxieties delayed the decision to hire your product or service

This level of detail is essential in understanding the social and emotional needs that drive customers to consider purchasing from any given site.

Attaining such a level of detail is not easy. Email marketers will have to interview customers in a particular way that uncovers customers’ struggling moments. 

It’s not all about asking why questions during the interviews. But it’s about taking it as if you are filming a documentary about your customer as they struggle with a situation that can be solved by your product. 

Once you have completed a series of JTBD interviews and figured out the underlying motivation that led customers to your store, you can begin to tailor your email content and images to fulfilling that job/desire. 

And, in the process, the end goal of your welcome emails should be about leading customers back to the site and bringing in more revenue to your eCommerce store.

How can JTBD help with customizing welcome emails?

Customers and prospects sign up to your eCommerce site because they are trying to make progress against their current situation. 

The first email you send to them should let them know WHY your site will help them make “progress” – and that happens through understanding what progress they need to make and why other solutions don’t offer that.

Having said that, I signed up for the email list of several eCommerce websites and I picked out eight welcome emails that I will explain the dos and don’ts from a JTBD perspective. 

Disclaimer: some examples I highlight in this section might work great for your business, and others might not. 

We recommend that you test to see which one will work best for you.

Do: Talk about your mission as it will resonate with your visitor

Welcome email example: ModCloth. 

Here’s what the Modcloth welcome email currently looks like: 

What could be the #JTBD statement for Modcloth’s welcome emails? 

When a prospect signs up for our mailing list, we want them to know (1) the benefit of signing up, (2) the targeted audience for our product, (3) and we want them to make a purchase immediately. 

The interesting thing about Modcloth’s email is the use of a specific language that indicates a specific targeted audience: “we celebrate women who defy convention. Those that beat to their own beat.”

From a #JTBD perspective, this is definitely a do. I mean, you can tell that they’re solving a problem for these women by offering them products that are statement pieces and help them stick out from the crowd embracing their individuality.

The value of subscribing to Modcloth’s email list is made clear: “You’ll now be the first to shop our newest styles and most exclusive deals.”

Like most welcome emails, as you will see below, Modcloth offers a percentage discount to lure customers into making a purchase immediately. 

Don’t: Create a cookie-cutter welcome email that doesn’t inspire prospects to make a purchase

Welcome email example: Allbirds

As mentioned earlier, great welcome emails are tailored to address customers’ struggling moments. 

But when you see Allbirds’ welcome email, you’ll agree with me that they have a terrible way of welcoming new potential customers. Take a look at their welcome email: 

This site sells shoes, yet even from their welcome email, you will need to look up what they do. 

Allbirds’ welcome email doesn’t help you make progress against your struggling moment and the email doesn’t even show you how their products would assist resolving your current struggling moment.

Looking at Allbirds’ welcome email, one would assume that there was no research done to understand what sparked the customers’ initial interest in Allbirds’ product. 

Don’t: Emphasize features over the emotional and social motivations

Welcome email example: Away

Unlike the Allbirds’ welcome emails, Away takes a different approach to their welcome email concept. This is how their welcome email currently looks like: 

Looking at Away’s above welcome email from the JTBD perspective, one would assume that their target audience’s struggling moment(s) is when traveling with luggage. 

What is the #JTBD statement for Away’s welcome emails? 

When prospects sign up for the mailing list, we want them to know what the Away brand is about, what they can benefit from using our product, and what makes our products different. 

Looking at the Away’s #JTBD statement, you can tell that there are three jobs that this welcome email (as a product) has to fulfill. 

Now, how does Away address the above jobs in their welcome emails?

Job # 1 – Tell new subscribers what the Away brand is about: “We believe in seeing more of the world –in making new connections, shifting your perspective, and changing the scenery at every opportunity.” 

Job # 2 – What will new subscribers benefit from using our product: “Our luggage makes travel more seamless...” 

Job # 3 – What makes our products different from alternatives: “It’s simple, thoughtfully designed, and never gets in the way.” To further reinforce this point, the email also includes the features of the product: “360º wheels, durable exterior, Interior compression pad, and hidden laundry bag.” 

What I’d consider as a downside of this email is that it is feature-focused. Three-quarters of it is focused on the characteristics of the product: its appearance, components, and capabilities.

By being feature-based, Away missed a chance of connecting with their new subscribers emotionally. This would have helped them increase sales because emotions are the main drivers in the entire decision-making process. 

To reflect the emotions in their welcome emails Away should have highlighted the feeling that customers want to have or avoid after having purchased their suitcases. 

Don’t: Drive your new subscribers away from your site

The welcome email I got from Lush is also a good example of an email that doesn’t talk about the job of the product, instead, the email comes with its jobs to be done. 

This is how their welcome email currently looks like:

The main task of a welcome email is to connect with new customers and encourage them to interact with your product or service in a way that increases customer retention. 

I like how Lush’s email design mirrors the style of their copy in terms of color and font sizes. But their email conversion strategy seems to be problematic. 

The email was supposed to introduce new customers to Lush’s brand products, not to have a CTA button (GET TO KNOW US) that redirects them somewhere else to learn about the brand’s products. I mean, isn’t that the whole purpose of a welcome email? 

Another mistake they make is to drive new subscribers away from their site. Notice how Lush’s welcome email drives the new customers to the company’s social media platforms instead of their website. 

Yes, you want new subscribers to follow your brand on social media but that’s not something you should give first preference to. Instead of inviting customers to your social media platforms, why not talk about your brand story –at least that is something that can help your customers buy your products. 

Don’t: Make it just about offers and incentives

Welcome email example: Starbucks

The reason why I had to add Starbucks’ welcome email in this list is that their email is missing one element we have seen from other welcome emails. 

Before I name it, can you guess what it is? 

If you take a closer look, you will notice that Starbucks’ welcome email has no clear CTAs: 

Could that be a mistake or it was done deliberately? 

Suppose it was a mistake, how can they implement the CTA? Where should the CTA take the potential customer to? Should it drive customers to the site or to the app?

But considering that Starbucks is a well-established brand, I guess that allows them more leeway in what they present on a welcome email. 

In this particular instance, their welcome email solely focuses on rewards as a way of trying to increase AOV and loyalty. 

This approach can be catastrophic if tried by small brands. I mean if your first impression of your customers are incentives, you might as well be training them to expect incentives from you all the time. 

Remember what we said earlier, your JTBD results inform your welcome emails. 

I’m assuming Starbucks’ prospects were struggling to get the perks and earn rewards –hence, their welcome email shows new subscribers how to attain those. 

Starbucks has brand recognition, it can afford a welcome email like this, and I suspect it would achieve their goals. A lesser-known brand needs to think more about their positioning, the value adds, and what they learned from the JTBD interviews they conducted. 

Do: Include a personal video in your welcome email. 

Example of a welcome email from Ugmonk

Right off the bat, the first thing to catch my attention in Ugmonk’s welcome email is its video:

As you have seen from the brands mentioned above, they don’t have a video in their welcome emails. 

Besides the video, UGmonk welcomes new subscribers with a short note from the founder, Jeff Sheldon –that also helped in adding the personality to the email.

The note pinpoints the specific target audience that will benefit from the UGMonk products: 

“I like to make products for people that are into music before it gets big and the art before it gets discovered, people who curate their lives and what they own, people who care about quality the ethics that drive a company.”

In the video, Jeff shares an inspiring narrative that dives deep into the details, values, and reasons for starting a design brand. Prospects who resonate with Jeff and the story behind UGmonk are more likely going to hire his services. 

Do: Allow visitors to personalize the content to meet their objectives

Example from Michaels’ welcome email. 

Michaels is an online retail shop that specializes in arts and crafts, and home decor items.

This is the welcome email they send:

I like the creativity in Michaels’ welcome email presentation. As you can see from the image above, it is presented like an arts and crafts project as a way of mirroring what the brand is about.

Before anything else, the first section of this email is a promise from the brand to the new subscribers: “We’re going to send fun stuff like DIY tips and tricks, invites to in-store events, and exclusive deals and coupons.”

This keeps customers hooked as they will be expecting to receive goodies from this brand.

This email encourages new subscribers to take the next step in the customer journey by allowing them to customize their preferences. They use a CTA button to do so. 

But Michaels doesn’t stop there. They make the customer’s life easy, they offer a 20% sitewide discount.

Do: Guard your prospects all the way down the funnel

BirchBox is a New York City-based online monthly subscription service that sends its subscribers a box of four to five selected samples of makeup, or other beauty-related products.

Their welcome email looks like this: 

This one caught my attention because they’ve used a mix of casual checkups to drive the job of the email home. 

Looking at Birchbox’s welcome email, I was convinced that prospects must have hired it to be a guardian in the buyer’s journey. 

This is why Birchbox’s email lays out the three steps that help new subscribers to:

• Test or try products, 
• Learn about the latest grooming tips
• And how they can purchase items suited to them. 

In three simple steps, BirchBox mapped out their customer journey and they clearly state that the best way to make a quality purchase is first to try, then learn, and then make a purchase decision. And they provide the channels for both testing and research through deluxe samples and BirchBox magazine.

Do: Address the customers’ anxiety or habits of the present moment

Welcome email example from Grammarly. 

Here is how Grammarly’s welcome email looks like: 

As a writing assistant, it’s easy to tell that people hire Grammarly to help them write better. 

In the first paragraph of their welcome email, Grammarly persuades its new prospects to use this tool by pointing out the benefits of improving their writing skills. Which are: “you open yourself up to better conversations, remarkable accomplishments, and healthier relationships.” 

When a potential customer lands on your site or receives your welcome email, they have got two forces – anxieties or habits – that are pulling them away from the conversion path. These two forces make a customer think that your product might not help them get a job done. If not addressed in your welcome email, they will drive away first-time customers.

This brings me to what I like the most about Grammarly’s welcome email. It addresses the anxiety of its first-time customers by ensuring them that: ‘Grammarly works where you work.’ Prospects don’t have to be skeptical about whether the tool works in a certain field or not. 

This welcome email also goes on to show prospects a list of devices – Android & iOS, Windows, macOS – where they can use Grammarly. They also take the persuasion to another level by including the install button to get users started as soon as possible. 

Conclusion

You see, welcome emails are easy to set up, and really it shouldn’t be something difficult to do. With stellar copywriting and branding, you can get prospects hooked to your site by using a welcome email. Learn from the examples above, and don’t forget to use the #JTBD framework in your research because it informs the copy of your emails. 

Here is a summary of the welcome emails dos and don’ts based on the #JTBD framework: 

1. Do: talk about your mission as it will resonate with your visitor.
2. Don’t: Create a cookie-cutter welcome email that doesn’t inspire prospects to make a purchase.
3. Don’t: Emphasize features over the emotional and social motivations.
4. Don’t: Drive your new subscribers away from your site.
5. Don’t: Make it just about offers and incentives.
6. Do: Include a personal video in your welcome email.
7. Do: Allow visitors to personalize the content to meet their objectives.
8. Do: Guard your prospects all the way down the funnel.
9. Do: Address the customers’ anxiety or habits of the present moment.

The post Using Jobs To Be Done Framework to Write Welcome Emails appeared first on Invesp.

Creating a product that customers cherish is not an easy thing to do, especially if you don’t know what drives their buying behavior.

Before you come up with a product or service, it’s really helpful to tap into the world of consumer psychology and borrow insights from there. This is important because the difference between brands that offer good customer service and amazing customer service is understanding consumer psychology. 

So to help you attract, convince, and convert more people with your customer service, this article will walk you through 11 customer service psychology secrets. But before we get into that, let’s start by defining customer service psychology so that you get an in-depth understanding of what we talking about. 

So, what is customer service psychology? 

The idea behind customer service psychology is understanding not just the behaviors of the customers, but the emotions that drive them to behave in a certain way. 

Customer service psychology takes a deep dive into how customers’ thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and perceptions influence how we buy and relate to products and services. Customer service agents must have intelligence and insight into the actual and target customers. 

Without customer intelligence, it’s impossible for customer service agents to understand customers, communicate better with them, enhance marketing effort and strategy, and to personalize service. 

Understanding the emotions of customers isn’t a stroll in the park, this is why many businesses try to cover up their lack of understanding of customer emotions by either adding more features to their services or lowering their prices so as to convince customers to buy from their brands. 

But if I can be brutally honest, you really can’t cover up your lack of emotional understanding for a long time. 

Nowadays customers are smart and savvy and once you fail to connect with them emotionally…expect a higher churn rate. 

Whether your customers reach out to you via phone, email, or social media, they have to walk away with a positive experience regardless of how the conversation started. 

The eCommerce industry has grown to be so fierce over the years and if your customer service department can’t handle different customer emotions, then the sales will begin to plummet in no time. 

11 Psychology Secrets that turn window shoppers to buyers 

Great customer service is much more than a purchase and an exchange of pleasantries. What makes customer service pay more dividends are the following 11 psychology secrets:

1. Share your Brand Story 

Dr. Roger Schank, the author of Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence, once said: 

Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.

Yes, storytelling works… but why should you have to incorporate this flowery style into your customer service?

Stories are a powerful way to connect with your customers and they are a very integral part of being persuasive. They are easy to understand, relate to and they have an ability to elicit different types of emotions. 

Do stories really hold that much influence in customer service? 

Yes, especially when they address the customers’ pain points and legitimate frustrations. In his book, Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen, Donald Miller says: 

Your customer should be the hero of your story, not your brand – this is the secret every phenomenally successful business understands. 

The truth is your customers want to be satisfied, they want their own happy ending. Stories are able to transport our minds to another place, and in this place, we may embrace things we’d likely scoff at in the harsh, real world. 

For instance, Nike tells the stories of professional athletes who started out just like us and ended up becoming heroes after purchasing Nike sneakers and working so hard. This makes most people forget about the price; people buy their story and, consequently, the shoes that come with them. 

2. Personalize Customer Experience

Consumers today have more choices than ever when it comes to the brands they want to work with. Unfortunately, businesses do not have that luxury, so they have to always compete against each other in order to maintain their customer bases and overall sales.

It’s very important now, more than ever, to show your customers how much they matter to you and your business.  If you don’t make their value clear, you risk losing them to any one of your company’s online or real-world competitors!

There are various ways you can show your customers that you care about them. One important way of doing so is personalizing their experience. 94% of businesses say personalization is critical to their success. In his Decoding the New Consumer Mind: How and Why We Shop and Buy, Kit Yarrow says:

Today’s consumers are less interested in aspirational brands; rather than admiring brands, they’re more interested in brands that admire them, know them, and serve them.

Personalization goes beyond your communication with customers doesn’t start and end with adding a name to an email, as most marketers would think. In fact, 60% of marketers admit that they struggle to personalize the customer’s experience in real-time. 

When it comes to personalizing your customers’ experience, you don’t have to struggle. There are relatively simple, yet sophisticated, ways to use personalization in your customer service that goes beyond just using a name.

Here are 4 ready-to-implement ways personalization in your customer service strategy:

• Ask smart questions and listen to customer feedback
• Build buyer personas 
• Make use of your customers’ location and time 
• Set Up Automated Behavioral Trigger Emails

Personalization starts with knowing the customer – or even better, remembering the customer. The good news is that nowadays, it’s easy to track customer preferences and personalize customer experiences –thanks to Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

3. Aim to fulfill Customers’ Emotional Needs

Every company you see out there is in the business of fulfilling the needs of their targeted audience. If you fail to satisfy the needs of your customer, you run out of business. 

By the end of this year, 45% of consumers say they will switch brands if a company doesn’t actively anticipate their needs.

You are probably wondering what exactly are customer needs? 

Well, a customer need is a motive that prompts a customer to purchase a particular product or service. It drives the customer’s buying decision. Customer needs can either be physical or psychological. 

Physical customer needs are easy to notice because they have a direct, measurable, and sometimes tangible cause. For example, if you are feeling sick, you need to see a doctor. If your website is loading slow, you need to have it fixed. 

Physical needs are important, but sometimes customers can buy something without being driven by any physical need. A good example of this is when customers do impulse buying. 

But what really drives a customer to make a purchase is not really the physical needs, but the psychological needs. This is why you often hear marketers say “customers buy on emotion and justify with logic.”

If your product doesn’t quench customers’ psychological or emotional needs, it’s very difficult to compel customers to make a purchase. 

So how do you identify customers’ emotional or psychological needs?

Good question! At Invesp we unlock customers’ emotional needs using a framework known as the Jobs-to-be-done. 

"Knowing all the customer’s needs in a given market dramatically changes the way a company approaches the innovation process." – @Ulwick

So, how many people in your organization today know
all your customer’s needs?#jtbd #UserExperience #CustomerExperience #mondaythoughts

— Invesp (@invesp) October 28, 2019

The #JTBD framework is based on the idea that customers do not buy products or services, but they ‘hire’ them to get a wide array of jobs done or to make progress in their lives. Instead of looking at the customer through the product line, the JTBD framework helps you look at your product or service through the customer’s eyes.

According to the #JTBD framework, every customer has two important needs they want to quench. The first type of customer need is social. This is How we want other people to perceive us after using the product or service. The second type of customer need is emotional. This is the feeling that customers want to have or avoid after having purchased and used your product or service. 

If you are still not convinced of how you can actually connect with customers emotionally, click here for a much detailed explanation. 

4. Resolve all Issues During the First Interaction

No one enjoys being kept waiting for long. 

I mean, think about those times you sat in a restaurant watching other tables being served that were seated after you? Or think about that moment you walked into a shop and waited for a shop assistant to notice and assist you. 

It sucks, right? 

A key driver to customer satisfaction is being able to resolve all issues during the first interaction you have with the customer. Simply put, optimal first call resolution is an essential focus for all businesses that strive to deliver quality service to their customers. 

The higher your first-call resolution rate, the more satisfied your customers tend to be – and, as a result, the higher the customer retention rate and the lower your churn rate. 

If you want to find out more about how to measure the first contact resolution rate and other customer service metrics that matter, click here. 

5. Keep Promises and Fulfill Commitments

In one of his famous books, Voice-of-the-Customer Marketing: A Revolutionary 5-Step Process to Create Customers Who Care, Spend, and Stay, Ernan Roman writes:

In today’s competitive landscape, companies need to keep their promises to ensure they retain the trust of their customers.

Keeping promises to customers is a business necessity today unless you don’t want to achieve customer loyalty. But one thing that you should do when it comes to promises in the world of business: never over-promise or under-deliver. 

Customers are more likely to express their frustrations on social media when you fail to deliver on your promises. And this is something that you don’t want because 92% of customers trust peer recommendations over your ads. 

So, when you promise your customers something, stick to it. If for any reason, something changes, be respectful and inform the customer straight away.

Customers understand that there would be service lapses and problems. Customers are ready to forgive if they know that the company tried its best and that it would do anything to make amends. 

Creating a brand and building its image is all about showing your customers that you value them. How do you do that? Easy, you keep promises – both the ones in the service level agreements and those the brand may subtly imply. 

6. Show Empathy 

If there’s one skill that your customer service team members must have, it’s empathy. Even mega brands such as Apple have a guide to empathy in their Apple Genius Training Manual to help their customer service team members to practice empathy when dealing with customers. 

You can think of empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions and be able to imagine what someone else might be going through. 

In the context of customer service, empathy is the ability to affirm customers’ feelings and indicate that you can understand their pain or frustration, even if you cannot fix it yourself.

If you think about it, most of the customer service failures involve a damning lack of empathy. 

Of course, helping moody and grumpy customers is not an easy thing to do. But whatever emotional cornucopia customers come in, the duty of your customer service team members is to turn the frown upside-down to create delightful experiences. 

Thank you @Macy’s for acknowledging my frustration and making things right. Impressed w your customer service! https://t.co/RL22lJErJE

— Rita Clark (@Riduchelle) February 12, 2018

It reflects positively on the brand when customers feel like they are being listened to, their concerns matter, and that the company is doing everything it can to help them.

Outlined below are some key phrases you can use to help assure your customer that you feel whatever they’re feeling: 

• I would feel the same way too
• Thank you for bringing this to our attention. 
• I can understand how frustrating it is when…
• I realize how complicated it is…
• I imagine how upsetting it is to…
• You’re right…
• I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this…
• I’ve experienced this issue recently too…
• Thank you for getting in touch about this…
• I know how confusing it must be when…
• I’m so sorry to hear that…

By using any of the above empathy statements, you build trust in each customer and regardless of the reason that a customer reached out in the first place, they can walk away from it positively.

7. View Customer Complaints as Opportunities

Sometimes things happen and customers get frustrated and they end-up complaining. What matters in such situations is how you respond to negative customer feedback. If you are smart enough, you can use the feedback to your advantage. 

This reminds me of one of Bill Gates’ famous quotes: 

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Every customer’s complaint is an opportunity for you to see your business’ flaws through an outsider’s lens. You can actually think of customer complaints as the mismatch between your brand promise and what it delivers to the customers. 

When customers complain, they just want you to deliver on your brand promise. They want to restore their faith in your company. Mind you, not every customer is ready to switch a supplier in the snap of a finger. 

Turning customer complaints into constructive opportunities don’t only make customers feel satisfied, but it also helps stem customer churn, drive ROI, and build brand loyalty. In other words, your customer service team can help you take your business to the next level when they learn to value customer complaints. 

Still not convinced? Take a look at some of the key advantage of customer complaints: 

• Complaints highlight the exact areas where your products or services need improvement.
• Customer complaints open opportunities for your team to have honest discussions with your customers. These conversations will make customers feel cared for, and in return, they will start caring about you.
• Customer complaints provide valuable insights into how productive your customer service team is and how to improve them. They can be used as training models for new team members. 

When servicing customers, we need to shift our thinking about complaints by seeing the real value that comes with it. If I were you, I would actually encourage all sorts of customer feedback –whether it’s positive or negative. 

8. Show Gratitude 

What do you feel when someone thanks you for something? For a comment in a meeting, a task done at home, an extra step taken, an encouraging word.

You probably feel seen, valued, that you matter to that person. Maybe a little startled, maybe wondering if you really deserve it, but also glad. Personally, this is how it is for me.

Turning it around, when you say “thank you” to your customers, it’s a small moment that can build a long-lasting relationship. 

Showing gratitude to your customers extends past the great service you provide and aims to build loyalty and reinforce strong lasting relationships. Beyond making your customers happy, it reflects a positive image of your brands. 

I understand, sometimes you can’t possibly reach out to every individual – who has purchased from you, completed your survey, dropped a 5-star review – one by one, and show your gratitude. But you can use your company social media platforms like this: 

To everyone who has ever called, chatted, or submitted a survey: Thank you, thank you, AND thank you. Your feedback helps us #GrowBetter. Learn more at https://t.co/Up6mKFj240 pic.twitter.com/bNBcrCXQOR

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) September 25, 2019

Some businesses make the mistake of waiting for long to thank customers –they wait to show a token of appreciation until they have the budget or the time to start thinking about customer appreciation ideas. You don’t have to wait until you have built a bigger community and stronger company to thank the people who helped you climb that ladder of success. 

It might sound like a reasonable thing to do, but that’s not a winning strategy. Thanking your customers from the very beginning helps you increase the retention rate –and this is something that will need along the way. No matter the size of your business or customer base, there are simply creative and enjoyable ways to show your customers that you appreciate them.

9. Offer Instant gratification 

The phrase “good things come to those who wait” is not applicable to the world of customer service. Keep your customers waiting…and you’ll watch them knock on your competitor’s door. This is why Jérémy Gallemard, CEO and Co-Founder of Smart Tribune says:

Consumers today are more inclined to share their experiences, both good and bad, desire greater control over the entire purchase journey, and demand near-instant gratification whenever they need support.

We’re now living in a world where instant gratification is the accepted standard –this is why 43% of customers expect a response within a day of sending an email. 

Source

Most of your customers have very little patience when browsing. They easily get frustrated. They want and expect instant gratification and when they don’t get it, they are gone forever.

How can you provide instant gratification for the customer? There are many ways:

When we talk of instant gratification, more often than not, people think that it should happen at the end of the transaction. But every touchpoint of the customer journey there should be an element of instant gratification.

Before committing to making a purchase, customers wish to view results prior to making a purchase decision. This can be termed as a manifestation of the desire for instant gratification in consumer behavior. 

For example, women shopping for beauty products and cosmetics may want to test these products, such as lipsticks, perfumes, and skincare creams before they buy.

Just after doing business with you, customers want to feel gratified. Our mid-brains lights up when we think about receiving something that right away (and you should always aim to fire it up).  

Your website has to be without any usability issues – when loading pages it should be as fast as a hot knife slicing through butter. This is to say that your web pages should not take more than 3 seconds to load. 

Instant gratification on eCommerce websites can also be delivered by making sure that they are open 24/7 for shopping. This means that your customer service also has to be available 24/7. The idea behind a 24/7 customer service is so that you respond to customer queries as quickly as possible. If your customer service agents can’t be available 24/7, chatbots can fill that gap. 

Rewind to a few years back, same-day or next-day delivery was something which was unthinkable. Many eCommerce businesses thought of it as too expensive and complicated to fulfill. 

But today, 80% of customers want same-day delivery to be an option at checkout and 23% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for same-day delivery. To find out more about the importance of same-day delivery (statistics and trends), check this infographic. Same-day or next-day delivery has become a benchmark for customer services and businesses are using it to lure customers. 

The other thing that sparks immediate gratification is self-service. This is why 51% of customers prefer to have self-service options available on a brand, and 76% of customers prefer self-service to interact with a customer service representative via the phone or email. But before you think of having a self-service feature, it’s critical to make sure that the information is correct. 

In addition, every turn of your copy should preach the gospel of instant gratification. There are certain words that have proven to be good at switching on the mid-brain activity that makes a customer want to buy. According to Copyblogger, some of the most persuasive words that instantly help you sell more are instant, immediately, fast, new, now, quick, etc.  

What makes these words spell out instant gratification is they allow customers to envision their pain points or problems being solved right away soon after making a purchase. 

10. Understand the 3 Types of Buyers

Successful customer service teams understand their customers –they do this by going beyond knowing their names, demographics, and geographic locations. Knowing the type of customer you are dealing with is key for any business endeavor, no matter the industry you operate in. 

Your customer service team needs to understand that there are three types of buyers: the average spender, the spendthrifts, and the tightwads. These three types of buyers are simply characterized by the “pain” they experience when buying something. 

Source

The majority of people are average spenders –they are more likely to respond to persuasion and make an informed decision. 

Spendthrifts are the most fun to provide service to because they are always ready to spend with no hesitation. 

On the other end of the buyer spectrum, are the tightwads. This group of buyers does not enjoy spending money because they perceive it as a non-renewable resource. 

It is challenging if not impossible, to try to figure out which types of buyers are spendthrifts, which are average, and which are tightwads. As different as the customer types are, so are the persuasion techniques you need to use. 

Appealing to average spenders is not that challenging because they are most likely to respond to your persuasion techniques. You can use different tactics such as increasing your traffic to pull in a high number of visitors, do conversion optimization services, and make your website copy more persuasive. 

Spendthrifts will buy with or without you persuading them to. When appealing to them just focus on the pleasure and provide them with instant gratification.

To impress tightwads you first have to do some research before you put an offer on the table. Instead of focusing on pleasure, the offer should be all about combating pain or customer problems. The more compelling the solution, the more quickly the tightwad will pay. 

11. Use the Scarcity Principle 

Depending on how you look at it, this point may be a bleed-off of the previous section. But I think it deserves it’s own section because, at its core, customer service is all about a sense of urgency.

One of the oldest and smartest tricks in both customer service and marketing books is to create a sense of urgency by using the scarcity principle.  

As a Media and Society Studies graduate, I still remember the Principles of Economics class that I took in college, one of the key lessons I vividly remember was about the law of supply and demand –which states high demand is a result of low supply of a product or service. 

Changes in the supply and demand of products will result in Dr. Robert Cialdini’s psychological principle of persuasion –which implies that the more difficult it is to obtain a product or service, the more valuable it becomes. 

We are all more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value. People are more likely to buy a product when they think that it will soon be unavailable. 

Your customer service team can use the scarcity principle to persuade people to purchase a product. One good example of a brand that often uses the scarcity principle to promote and sell its products is Starbucks. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw4Pbtpn_0e/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

In the above Instagram post, Starbucks indicates that the #S’ mores Frappuccino drink is back, but it would only be available for a short period of time. 

Yes, the scarcity principle works…it really drives sales. But you have to use it correctly. By this, I mean that you have to phrase the product scarcity as if there used to be a large supply, but due to increased demand, only a few products were left. This way consumers will be more receptive.

Conclusion: Understanding customer psychology leads to customer satisfaction

Even if you are providing a fantastic product or service, if your customer service doesn’t follow any of the above tips, be prepared to lose customers over it. Understanding consumer psychology is the gateway to achieving customer satisfaction. Every customer that interacts with every touchpoint of your brand, must leave feeling positive about the service they receive. I understand that great customer service doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s harder to achieve than you may think –but it’s attainable when you really know how consumers behave.

The post 11 Customer Service Psychology Secrets that go Down the Funnel, Not Down the Drain appeared first on Invesp.

• 65% of business comes from existing customers 
• Repeat customers spend 33% more. 
• The cost of getting new customers is five times higher than retaining old ones. 

It’s a great thing to have your customers come back for more. 

Unfortunately, gaining their loyalty isn’t easy.

Nowadays, choices are overflowing, and customers are getting pickier.  77% of brands could disappear, and customers wouldn’t bat an eyelash.  One-third of millennials won’t hesitate to drop a brand like a hot potato if it doesn’t meet their expectations. 

To gain customer loyalty, you need to connect with them emotionally. You have to transform the “brand – customers” relation from a transactional one to an emotional one. 

How do you ask? 

Well, in this article, I will cover how to get your audience emotionally attached. 

Let’s dive in.  

Decision making and power of emotions

We all have been led to believe that our decisions are rational. Everything we decided based on the pros and cons. Even early economists formulated their theories based on such assumptions. 

That’s how it should be in a perfect economic world. But we don’t live in an ideal world.

Often our emotions override our logic and reasoning. And it has to do with our brain. Thanks to thousands of years of evolution, our brain now has three parts: 1.) Reptilian brain. 2.) Limbic brain 3.) Neocortex. 

The reptilian brain is responsible for survival reflexes. 

The limbic brain oversees our emotional responses. 

The neocortex is the latest development. It controls all the logical reasoning. 

From an evolutionary standpoint, the limbic brain is more mature than the neocortex. As a result, when these two conflicts, the limbic brain gains the upper hand. 

Why do you think people smoke even after knowing how dangerous it is for health?

Even when we purchase, the same thing happens. We make buying decisions based on our emotions. And our attachment to any particular product or brand is also emotional. 

Therefore, your marketing messages should take account of users’ emotional makeup. 

There are many ways to identify the emotional driving factors of the audience. However, I would like to do a small discussion on a specific marketing tool, the Limbic model. 

Limbic Model

What sets the Limbic model apart from the rest is, it directly addresses human motives and emotions. The limbic model reveals different emotional systems inside customers’ heads, how those systems interact, and how they shape behaviors. 

We have three broad emotional systems inside our heads. One of these three dominates the other two. However, dormant ones also shape an individual’s personality and preference.  

• The Balance: The balance system is responsible for our tendency to conform and to seek security. Simply put, a person with an overpowering balance system tend to avoid risk and less likely to challenge the status quo. 
• The Dominance: If you consider the balance system as “defensive,” then the Dominance system is “assertive.” Power, status, pride, and competitiveness— individuals with proponent dominance system love to exert their will and win all the time.  
• The Stimulant: The stimulant system is all about adventure and novelty seeking. People with this system might have a keen interest in learning and applying new things. Some of the common behaviors associated with stimulant systems are curiosity, knowledge-seeking, and creativity.  

Now, though we all are dominated by one system, the other two do leave a mark to a varying degree. For example, two individuals with the dominance system might have different personalities. One of them might prefer status and ambition, thanks to the influence of the Stimulant system. While the other might value qualities like justice and loyalty if the Balance system has a significant effect. 

By taking into account the interactions between emotional systems on personality, scientists came up with seven Limbic types: 

• Hedonists: Curious, loves novelty, fun, creative, impulsive, extroverted. 
• Adventurer: Rebellious, thrill-seeker, self-reliant, risk-takers. 
• Performer: Loves challenges, go-getter, focuses on success, ambitious, assertive. 
• Disciplined: Logical, disciplined, dutiful, prefer clear structure. 
• Traditionalist: Sticks to tradition, protective, has a strong sense of justice, frugal, loyal. 
• Harmonizer: Authentic, family/community-oriented, caring, craves a sense of security, conformist. 
• Open-minded: Openness to new ideas and experience, sensual, flexible, dreamer, tolerant, has a sense of humor. 

Understanding your customers’ limbic type helps to design marketing experiences according to their emotional profiles. 

How to connect users by appealing to their emotions

But why do only a small number of companies inspire such loyalty while others can’t? 

Because humans don’t get attached to some entity, instead, we get attached to personality. Whenever we describe a person, right after their visual description, we talk about their personality.

Branding experts behind the wheels of successful brands understand this. Thus they offer a brand experience that feels like the brand itself has a specific “personality.” And when a brand hints of a brand personality, customers feel a connection.

Take, for example, Impact Dog Crate. They are not the biggest brand, but they are not some faceless organization either. They are passionate about dogs and American culture. Their blog and video library are full of useful content. They offer unique benefits to veterans and support charitable events. Their website copy and design reflect their values. 

When it comes to building connections, they would be ahead of their competition.  

In the following sections, we would talk about how you can connect with your audience and join the ranks of a few brands that are doing it right.

2.1 Emotional Design

According to researchers, a strong first impression boosts the overall impact of the product.  

And when it comes to making your views say, “wow! That’s cool,”, the visual appeal is unmatched. It even beats usability.   Tests after tests prove people assume attractive products function better.  And after repeated purchases, they even backward rationalize that they like to those products. In other words, the right design can contribute to customer loyalty. 

Now, what impresses an individual depends on his/her emotional profile. Something impressive to a hedonist might not be appealing to a traditionalist. 

That’s why you want to choose an emotional design considering your audience’s preference.

 The term “Emotional design” is self-explanatory. These are the design patterns engineered to evoke certain emotions. You start with a message in your mind and arouse emotions like joy, excitement through design to amplify that message. 

According to Don Norman, any successful emotional design hook the viewer in three different levels: 

1. The Visceral level- This is the first impression based on the look and feel. Designs based on viewers’ Limbic types leaves a positive impact on the viewer.
2. The Behavioral level- Once viewers have the first impression, their logical brain kicks in. The logic brain analyzes both the usability and ease of navigation. On this level, a great design triggers specific desirable user behavior.    
3. The Reflective level- This level is a conscious one. Based on their impression of the first two levels, viewers choose their actions logically. 

To hook your users in all three levels, your design should check off these three boxes: 

1. Color

Colors are crucial in design because of these evoke emotions. Brighter colors stimulate our emotions centers inside of our head, which leads to an evaluative reaction- either we like it, or we don’t. And this evaluative reaction leads to prompt action like impulsive buying. 

Cooler colors, on the other hand, take awake the arousal and encourage relaxation. Cool colors also shorten our perception of time. That’s why checkout feels shorter if cooler and softer colors are used in design elements. 

While designing, keep in mind, the emotional association of color could vary, depending on hue and tint. For example, Crimson, a variant of red, is often linked to aggression, power, and blood. Pink, another option of red, stands for romance and kindness. 

Here is an example of a smart choice of color. The whole design is based on fresh colored design elements with ample white space in between.   

The first impression of this design is calm, cool, and relaxing. Chances are good viewers who would spend more on this site and request appointments. Here is another example. 

Soft Surroundings is a female clothing brand with a mission of celebrating feminity. As they put it on their website,” Softsurroundings gives women a way to take a moment in their busy lives and be good to themselves.”

Their website design fits well with the brand image and radiates a soft, relaxed, and feminine vibe.

Header, images, banner—-Pastel colors like salmon, light purple, and cream are everywhere on this design. Pastel colors are associated with feminity and have a soothing effect. Therefore designers used those colors to create a design that feels warm and relaxing. 

Also, there is plenty of blank space ( which reduces visual clutter), which is light aquamarine, instead of white. Aquamarine has a relaxing effect on our psyche. So such colored blank space further enhances rejuvenating feel. 

2. Images and visuals

Images are not just for only looking pretty. The impact of an image on design is indeed profound. However, I won’t go deep into that because you can find many great articles on the internet. 

Instead, let’s talk about how images help you to use two powerful  tools straight from a psychology book:

1.) Priming

2.) Emotional contagion. 

1. Priming

Priming is the act of introducing a stimulus that gives cues to the existence of another stimulus and influences human behavior. For example, if you hear the word “ride,” you would immediately think of words, bike, or car. In the case of emotional design, images allow you to use priming. A right image could trigger behaviors like spending more time on the website or clicking on the signup button.

Sometimes this connection between stimulus and action could be very obvious. For better understanding again take a look at the above example. That image of a flower, oil, and smooth black stone makes you think about a relaxing spa environment. That image serves as the first stimulus that priming your thoughts about spa sessions. 

However, in some cases, things are not that straight forward. You might need to use images to evoke a feeling instead of triggering just some mental images. Let me show you an example: 

Now here is a word of caution. Priming is very powerful but uses it responsibly. Otherwise, you would run into the issue of negative priming where the stimulus triggers a behavior that defeats your purpose. 

And keep in mind that there is always a chance of gradual decline in the degree of triggered response. You don’t check your Facebook notification every time your phone beeps, do you? Someone new to social media would be far more excited. 

Long story short, priming isn’t magic, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t grab what it has to offer. 

2. Emotional Contagion

Emotional contagion is the phenomenon of having one’s emotions transferred to another.  Ever wondered why positive and happy people are a blast to hang with? Because of emotional contagion, their positivity gets siphoned into others. 

With the right images, it’s possible to evoke virtually any emotion and subtly spread the same emotion into the viewers. According to research, people witness emotional contagion when they watch advertisements.  When test subjects are shown ads with images of happy faces, they felt delighted too. This phenomenon doesn’t hold for positive emotions only.   

Interestingly, another study found emotional contagion doesn’t always need to directly related to the product. You can use an unrelated image, and viewers can still anchor their feelings. For example, if the viewers feel excited after spotting a picture of their favorite celebrity, that same emotion gets carry forward to the product associated with that image. 

Another example of indirect emotional contagion is the usage of food images on restaurant websites. 

These images play on viewers craving for food and indirectly anchor that idea inside their heads that specific restaurant equals to yummy food. 

3. Reduce cognitive load

Users hate when they have to pay extra attention just to find basic information. Instead, they prefer to move on to the next website or business.  

In his book “Don’t Make Me Think,” Steve Krug wrote: 

As a rule, people don’t like to puzzle over how to do things. The fact that people who built the site didn’t care enough to make things obvious– and easy–can erode our confidence in the site and its publishers. 

According to psychologists, a high cognitive load is a reason behind such behavior.

The cognitive load is a fancy term to describe the amount of brainpower required to complete a task. Driving, strolling in the park, listening to a song—- every activity put some cognitive load on our memory. It goes wrong only when that load crosses a certain threshold. Researchers found high cognitive load disrupts performance in tasks requiring at least some degree of attention. 

If your design, no matter how pretty it is, makes the viewers work hard, you are drifting away from the goal– the emotional connection.  

So stick to an intuitive and straightforward design. An intuitive design leads to higher user satisfaction. And user satisfaction is positively related to brand loyalty.   

Any intuitive design stands to two principles: 1. Simplicity 2. Familiarity. 

1. Simplicity

Our working memory holds seven, plus or minus two, pieces of new information at any given time, for 20 sec. Anything more than that and our memory has to stretch itself. 

Keeping this limitation in mind, you want to limit the information required to be processed, both in number and complexity. There are a few ways to do it. You can break down any task in multiple steps, remove visual clutter, put on a clear CTA per task, and so on.

2. Familiarity

It’s tempting to be different and cool. However, being creative doesn’t always mean better. When Bucknell university tried a better-looking design in 2014, it performed worse. 

Our brain learns a new thing by processing the data in real-time. However, after enough repetition, you no longer have to think about it. Our working memory just refers to the process of our long term memory and be done with it. In other words, familiar things are less cognitively taxing. 

The same goes for your design. So at least stick to fundamental conventions. Don’t put your menu on the right side instead of the top. Or use unfamiliar icons. Or use poetic lines or metaphors which are hard to relate. 

3. Using the right words in copy

Many marketers make a fundamental mistake. They feel the only way to make sales is to convince users that their product is the best, even when there are identical products available.

It doesn’t work. 

People buy experiences, not just products. Emotions influence every buying decision. It could be positive, like fascination, joy, or negative like fear or anxiety.

When you address that underlying emotion or arouse it, it starts a cycle. Emotions initiate the purchase, positive post-purchase experience leads to repeat purchases, and repeated purchases build an emotional connection.  

Words, when used correctly, are unmatched at piquing emotions.

Emotional copywriting starts by stating the benefits instead of features. Next comes speaking the readers’ languages. Once you nailed the basics, you include incorporating psychological persuasion principles in your copy. 

For example, Problogger subtly uses “authority” to attract more readers. 

Now emotional copywriting is a vast subject, and discussing every nitty-gritty of it is beyond the scope of this article.  Many extensive guides are already available on the internet. 

However, I would like to discuss how to use words to match your readers’ limbic profile and emotional state. 

As discussed above, the same stimulant can evoke completely different emotions based on a user’s limbic profile. What feels amazing to a hedonist might turn off a traditionalist. That’s why it’s essential to sprinkle words that match your readers’ limbic profile. 

Allow me to explain it with an example. 

Patek Philippe is a luxury watch brand. They usually target incredibly wealthy people with refined taste. If you look at the limbic map, many customers of Patek watches are “traditionalist.” They value justice, tradition, quality, and reliability. 

In their web copy, you see words and phrases like “carefully selected,” “honor,” “value… coming generations”. These words are used intentionally to connect their target audience emotionally. It’s a very effective way to subtle appeal to the emotional side of your readers’ brains. 

But writing your copies based on limbic profiles also has limitations. Think about this: When your business appeals to a larger, mixed-bag audience, how many versions of the same marketing copy are you going to create? 

In such situations, amplifying individual emotional states does a stellar job. But what do I mean by “emotional state”?

Consumers or visitors associate different sets of emotions with different businesses. These emotions influence their purchase behaviors. For example, people are more likely to try a spicy and exotic food when they feel a little “adventurous.”   

Your job is to amplify whichever positive emotions people associate with your business by using the right words. What you are doing here is getting readers attached to your brand by being the source of positive emotions.    

Athlean X web copy is an excellent example of how to do it right. 

People associate emotions like feeling stronger, achievement, and a sense of growth with fitness. Look at the usage of words here. “Growth mode,” “Intensity-driven,” “old PR’s go up in smoke”—- these are chosen to amplify the emotions people want to feel. 

Let’s see another example: Basecamp. 

Basecamp is a web-based project management tool. 

Their audience is business people who are looking for a reliable way to keep their projects and teams on the same page, which often is not the most straightforward task.  

What basecamp does is they offer a solution to their audience’s problem. Basecamp web copy does a great job of reassuring the reader. 

 First, the headline. It’s in emboldened font and directly addresses visitor’s pain points. The paragraph below the headline further emphasized how much difference the tool can make. The whole web copy sticks to this theme and removes customer objections one by one. 

Without a doubt, this is another excellent example of how to amplify the desired emotional reaction through the words.  

4. Powerful storytelling

Evolution has wired our brains for bonding with others through stories. Back in the cave days, the knowledge was passed down through generations in the form of stories. 

Stories remain as powerful. People still get captivated by a great storyteller.  

No wonder, a great brand story get the audience out of autopilot and makes them emotionally invested. 

But what makes a brand story a good one? Well, a good brand story does a couple of things: 

• It shows the audience that the brand is not a faceless entity. It has certain values, moral standards, and a mission. 
• It makes the audience a part of the story itself. They start projecting themselves on the hero as the struggles and experiences shown are so relatable that it’s hard not to. 

Interestingly, when storytelling is done right the brand never gets the spotlight. It’s always the audience who takes the role of the hero. In a good story, a brand is like a loyal sidekick who helps the hero to win. 

 Muscleblaze “Tum nahi samjhoge” ( You won’t understand) campaign is an excellent example of successful brand storytelling.  

Muscleblaze is an India based sports nutrition brand that targets fitness enthusiasts and athletes. 

In a country like India, where academic excellence is held in highest regards,  athletes don’t get the encouragement they deserve. Those who try to pursue a career in sports or fitness have to endure a lot of criticism and doubt, coming even from their friends and families. 

Muscleblaze started off its campaign with a hard-hitting youtube video depicting silent discipline and sacrifices of fitness enthusiasts, which rest of the world just can’t understand or relate to. 

That 2:20 min video so far managed to get 7.6 M videos on YouTube. It’s a great achievement considering this was Muscleblaze’s first fully fleshed-out campaign.   

Along with that film, MuscleBlaze also kickstarted a social media contest #tumnehisamjhoge. The brand asked fitness enthusiasts to share images of their best physique. Fifteen winners were offered free supplements, and the grand prize was a professional photo shoot with a reputed photographer. Muscle Blaze team promoted the campaign on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  

Here comes the juicy part. 

The campaign received 9000 images and 4000 videos in three weeks. The visitors spent 7X more time on Muscleblaze site, and the percentage of repeat customers went as high as 23%. Brand searches on Google went up 2.5X times. 

Last but not least, the total number of views across all the channels crossed the 20M mark. 

All of these happened because MuscleBlaze weaved a perfect brand story in which the audience was the hero.  

Muscle Blaze hired some of the best agencies of the country, but what if your pockets aren’t very deep? Is it possible to still harness the power of storytelling at a limited budget? 

Yes. 

If you mold your style of storytelling to suit your audience and platform you are using, you are all set. 

Josh Braun, is an outreach expert and Sales leader. He uses LinkedIn to build his audience. Since small written posts, ( some call them Broem-s ) do exceptionally well on LI, he creates those posts regularly. 

Josh’s posts are relatable and entertaining at the same time, provide immense educational value. He checks off every box of great storytelling. 

Result? Josh quickly built up a sizeable following, which, I would say, is far more engaging compared to many other influencers around his size. 

5. Personalization: 

Personalization is an umbrella term for ways of tailoring customer experience based on each customers’ unique habits, preferences, and backgrounds. 

Personalization has a profound effect on marketing success. For example, after great personalized experiences, first-time buyers 44% more likely to become repeat buyers.  If done right, personalization can forge emotional bonds between the brand and customers. 

There are many ways to tailor the marketing experience, depending on the customers and goals: web, email, product, and whatnot.  We have an extensive guide on how to plan, execute, and measure personalization efforts. 

However, when an emotional connection is a goal,  some ways might work better than others. Usually, personalized experiences with human touch build strong attachments. That’s the reason, personalized customer service, for example, is more effective than abandoned cart emails in this situation. 

Here are two ways of examples of connection building personalization: 

1.  Sometimes great retail personalization may not require any tech at all. A simple well-thought, handwritten note is enough to make the customer feel special.  

Source

Here is one from Channel. The shopping associate, Courtney, thanked Francesa for shopping with Channel. Courtney closed the letter by saying she is available over text. 

This is an excellent example of personalized customer service. As 33% of customers consider customer service quality as a significant determining factor of loyalty, such gestures are priceless.   

2. Celebrating “customer relationship milestones” with existing customers is a great non-invasive way of getting into their minds. With the right visual presentation, such an effort immediately sets your brand apart from others. 

Take inspiration from the DavidsTea newsletter. 

They summarize customers’ entire purchase history and present it in a story form. And they include cute chipmunks too.  

Emotional Branding 

Have you noticed some brands just have a cult-like following? Their fans refuse to buy from any other brands. Their customers wait in line for days just to get their hands on the newly launched products. Their loyal users spit fire on internet forums just to prove their favorite brand is the best. 

That’s what I call a whole new level of branding – customer relationship. Your customers become your supporters.  

Powerful emotional branding is the only way to achieve that. 

Now, marketers often use “emotional branding” and “emotional advertising” interchangeably.  However, there is a difference between these two. 

Emotional advertising is a one-time thing. You can create an advertisement, make users feel in a certain way. But after sometime when the novelty wears off, everybody slips back to autopilot. 

Emotional branding is much bigger than that. You start by understanding who your audience is and what you want them to feel about your brand. After that, every campaign you start, every content you publish, or every post that goes live—  should be aligned in such a way that those contribute to the brand image in your audience’s mind. You set your brand as a trigger for certain feelings. 

But how do you start doing emotional branding in the first place? 

By researching your audience and being polarizing. Emotional branding by nature is polarizing. Within a limit, more polarized your brand is, more powerful emotional response it inspires. For example, Harley Davidson has a certain image, and their bikes are the go-to choice for rebels, toughs, and free spirits. Harley has a cult-like following. 

Any brand that takes a mass approach can’t create that such strong emotional response. 

You want your brand to attract your target audience hard and repel others. When you go niche, it’s easier to be polarizing in the right way. 

Once you determine who your audience is and be ready to stand out, you start designing, writing, and crafting stories to get them hooked. 

Understanding the target users’ limbic profile comes handy here. You can pick one or two emotional triggers they value and stick to those. 

Rolls-Royce is a perfect example of emotional branding done right. 

They target wealthy, powerful, top 1% of society. If you consider the limbic profile of Rolls-Royce’s audience, they are mostly “Performers”– go-getters, sophisticated, elite, assertive, and powerful. 

Everything about Rolls-Royce screams power and sophistication. 

Take a look at the copy. “No Rival,” “Powerful and beautiful,” “Master of its domain”— these words convey a sense of dominance and superiority. It’s something that Rolls Royces’ audience values. 

Let’s talk about design and visuals. The primary colors are black and purple— both are associated with power and royalty. Here is an image of a young-ish man who looks sophisticated and assertive. Again, the design is catered to the target audience. 

Another example to learn from is Shinola, a Detroit based luxury product brand. What makes Shinola unique is they try to be a genuine American luxury brand in every sense. From picking slogans like “where America is made” to hiring a local workforce, everything Shinola does fits well with their image. If you go through their site, you would see how this sentiment is reinforced in their copy and design. 

Here is a product description from Shinola. 

They pointed out that their material and manufacturing unit is from America. 

Even their blog topics are on American culture and people. 

Another interesting thing is how Shinola maintains its image as a luxury brand. They use a vintage looking design: a lot of white space, black and white photos, traditional font style. Usually, such design is common among posh luxurious brands as they tend to be classy and subtle. 

Interestingly, Shinola is a new company compared to other luxury brands. Still, it managed to pull this vintage American luxury brand image well. 

And whom they attract? Wealthy Americans who took pride in their country and even US Presidents. The former president Bill Clinton bought 14 Shinola watches and called the company an American success story. Another former President Obama also gifted a custom made Shinola watch to UK prime minister David Cameron. 

Needless to say, when presidents are a fan of Shinola, they are doing it right.  

Conclusion 

Customer loyalty is all about getting your customers emotionally attached. And to do so, you need to appeal to their emotional sides. Now, everyone might not have the same triggers. You need to identify their “buttons” with the help of tools like the “Limbic model” and address their underlying motivations. 

The post How To Connect With Users Emotionally appeared first on Invesp.

The copy is essential to getting your point across and persuading the online visitor. Your copywriting skills become extremely important to be a successful CRO. According to Nick Kolenda;

“Writing copy is tough. Writing persuasive copy is even tougher.”

From the days before the web, copies that addressed the target customer sold better. Of course, the web applied similar, although not entirely the same, copywriting tactics to persuade visitors. However, with the rise of mobile and online marketing enhancement, the rules have changed once again.

Copywriting about copy that sells your product or service, thus convincing your customers to take action. It’s part art and part science.

However, one must understand the medium in which they are presenting the copy and the visitor they are persuading to take action. Online copywriting just ten years ago is not the same today. Much has changed since then and requires a fresh new perspective to enhance your skills and better persuade visitors. According to Sheena White;

“The fact is, if your online copywriting is poor, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of your marketing is – you’ll get no traffic or sales without a great copy.”

We work with many e-commerce companies, and sadly, copywriting is often not a priority, especially on product descriptions. Too often, these product descriptions are generic and taken directly from the manufacturer. The reality is that there is a pivotal point in the visitor’s experience on the website, and the closer they get to conversion, the more critical it is to up your persuasive tactics.

Of course, greater persuasion is necessary when the stakes are higher. If the product or service you offer is a large investment of time and resources, is expensive, and has great value, then copywriting becomes even more critical. Cognitive progression: anticipating the visitor’s actions, needs, and wants because of the value, investment, and price of your product or service. But we will delve into this later in this e-book.

This guide is not for just e-commerce; however, it is for anyone who has anything they would like to persuade online traffic to do: take action, sign up, subscribe, purchase, donate, etc. Much like many marketing skills, copywriting is a learned trait. There are, however, some very talented people that have an eye and knack for writing. But it is indeed something you can build upon to improve your abilities. And this is where this e-book comes in handy.

Before Invesp, I worked on many conversion optimization projects, such as SEO writing and copywriting. At one point, a client hired me to rewrite their existing web copy on standardization. They wanted simple language and a friendlier tone to appeal to the variety of visitors arriving at their site. “Standardization?” I thought. “How hard can that be?” I opened the ‘About’ page and started reading.

“Standardization is the development and application of standards – publications that establish accepted practices, technical requirements, and terminologies for products, services, and systems.”

I shook my head and gulped slowly. I’d zoned out after the first few words. After reading the page, I knew nothing about standards. I recognized that rewriting this to be more engaging while maintaining the topic’s integrity would be a challenge.

Words matter. Ensuring your value is evident through the design and copy on your site is vital. You have a few seconds to connect with site visitors. Every failed connection and lack of engagement is a lost potential customer. Unfortunately, chances are, they will never come back.

Persuasive copywriting engages visitors and keeps them interested, yearning for more.

What is persuasive copywriting?

Copywriting is essentially writing content to sell or promote a product or service. It is the unique ability to deliver work that gets people to take some form of action.

According to Shayla Price;

“Your website is an opportunity to establish your brand in the market. When people arrive to your site, they want to know what you do and what you stand for.”

Copywriting is a science and, as mentioned before, can be learned. This e-book contains lots of information and tips. However, the purpose of all the elements we discuss is for the copy to be read. If you have great copy that nobody reads, then you have a problem. The first consideration is the hook, but that hook needs to be engaging enough to keep the visitor reading until, bam, your pitch.

The Copywriting Headspace

When it comes to copywriting, asking yourself a few questions will help you get into the copywriting headspace and critically question the copy throughout your site:

• Does the copy grab your visitors’ attention? A few years ago, much of the literature about copying discussed the 8-10 second rule, which means grabbing a visitor’s attention with the copy within 8 – 10 seconds. However, at this time, you have 2 – 5 seconds max to grab a visitor’s attention. Ask yourself: can visitors perceive the relevance of your page copy to solving their problem and meeting their needs in that short timeframe?
• Does the page copy stimulate their interest and reinforce that they’re in the right place? Does it suggest that your solution is among the most relevant and useful?
• Does the page copy “inspire the desire to click deeper toward a purchase? Does it explicitly engage the imagination of your visitors and make them feel they will get value from your solution?”

“Is it obvious and easy for your visitors to take that action? Do you ask your visitors to take action? Do you give them relevant information at the point of action so they feel more confident in taking that action?”

After they’ve clicked, does the next page copy satisfy your visitors by providing exactly what they want and how they want it?

Copywriting vs. Content writing

Copywriting sells, while content informs. The purpose of the two lies in the reason for writing each of them. One is created for promotion or advertising, while the other is to entertain, inform, and entice the reader. Both are useful for your online marketing strategy, but to succeed online, one must first understand the ins and outs of each to better create a plan around them.

Content writing

When SEO was still a tamable creature, content writing was critical for getting more eyeballs on your website. Making sure to hit certain keywords and writing style was heavily influenced by the purpose of better ranking. Search engines have evolved since then and have penalized many companies that wrote content with the “old rules.”

New rule: Don’t put all your eggs in the SEO basket because rules continually change. One thing holds: If you write for your audience, engage them, and build a tribe around your work, they will keep coming. Not only will they keep coming; but they will be raving and sharing your work, thus, not only being loyal to your content but becoming ambassadors that push your content.

It’s essential to become the authority and resource for whatever you write. Content writing can include anything from blogs to articles to even press releases. The most important two aspects, however, are that you engage and enrich your audience.

Content is the tool to market your business more successfully, whatever business that may be. But if you want to succeed with your content, remember these essential tips:

1. Audience

Who are you targeting? Know your readers to write with them in mind

2. Value

Whatever content you put out there, make sure it is worth the reader’s time: i.e., they will learn something from reading what you have to say.

3. Clarity

Don’t make vague, broad statements that nobody can understand. Sometimes too much technical jargon can take away from experience, so make it real. Of course, if your readers yearn for that technical jargon, definitely include it.

According to Shayla Price;

“To keep your target audience interested, you must speak their language. Instead of using unfamiliar terms, stick to words your audience knows.”

4. Research

Don’t assume by making a statement, people will take your word for it. Show them you took the time to look into it and give them evidence of your findings. Research helps your work become more informative.

5. Authenticity and genuineness

Nothing makes a reader trust you more than the genuineness of your content.

6. Remember Your Brand

Connect readers to your brand by creating clear statements and making them feel they can relate. If your content doesn’t relate to your business, you have a problem. Relevancy is what will help you build loyalty to your brand.

7. Keywords

Remember, no more keyword stuffing! But don’t forget to mention the topic, so follow a balanced approach.

8. Word count

The reality is that longer content does better. Google has released that anything below 500 words is considered thin content (source). Neil Patel has done some research on this matter and found that 2000 words or more articles consistently outperform shorter-length articles. Now you don’t want to write aimlessly! If you don’t have content that is enriching and worth sharing, it can be detrimental rather than beneficial.

9. Engaging

If your work isn’t compelling and engaging, then you aren’t going to get many people sharing and raving about your content. However, to get people to share your things, you also need to be an active member of the social community online. If you want people to share your articles, you must do the same for them, and when you form a following, you can become choosier. Don’t go on social media only to promote your stuff – that gets very old very fast, and nobody will push your content.

10. Frequency

If you’re wondering why your once-a-month posts aren’t gaining much traction, it simply comes down to frequency. It would help if you kept writing because it helps your rankings, plus it helps keep the buzz going on your brand.

Copywriting for the web vs. Traditional print

Print copywriting still exists. It’s becoming less common as the years go by. However, there are many similarities between writing print copy and web copy. What’s important to note as well is that just as web copy has evolved over the years, the print copy has adjusted as well.

But let’s delve into some of the similarities and differences between copywriting for the web and traditional print:

• Too many times you go to the site, and the copy isn’t telling the visitor “what’s in it for them?”.

Benefits from the visitor’s perspective echo the value proposition and gauge what the customer would be looking for in the product. Everything revolves around the site visitor.

Khalid Saleh states,

“The conversion funnel is not linear and is highly driven by the customer.”

• Coming up with the value proposition and deriving benefits from it will help you create laser-focused copy that site visitors will devour.
• Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Someone writing copy with nobody in mind should find another line of work. In order to create great, persuasive copy, you need to know who you are writing for, what they want, and how they think.
• Lose the technical jargon and write copy that is meaningful to the reader. You aren’t just writing information; you are writing to convince someone that this is the product or service for them. Shirley Polykoff states; 

“Copy is a direct conversation with the consumer.”

• Think about email marketing. What’s the hook that reels readers in? It’s that subject line, of course. And to get someone to read the next line, you’d better make sure that the first line, the headline, is something big. David Ogilvy states;

“On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as reading the body copy.”

Online visitors tend to skim and scan copies. Traditional copy always requires some formatting to allow for readers to scan and skim it effectively. So, make it easy for them by including some bullets and numbering, but don’t overdo it!

Also, list items so it’s easy for the reader to find what they’re looking for.

Since internet users all over the world may stumble on your site or land there in search of information, writing for the web requires writing at a literacy level that appeals to a variety of users.

Because anyone can publish on the web, trust plays a significant role in writing online content. Websites need to be clear and credible.

Writing for the masses?

Creating powerful, persuasive copywriting starts and ends with focusing on the reader. According to Demian Farnworth,

“Copywriting begins with empathy for your customer. You need to know your customer’s hopes and fears, her principles and problems — and then figure out how to help her achieve her goals and ease her pains.”

Ultimately, the reader will consume the copy, be persuaded by it, and act or decide that it stinks and leaves. At the helm of conversion optimization is understanding your site visitor. Too often, however, design and copy are created at the whims of those in the design, marketing, and programming departments. Sometimes, companies will have to make assumptions about the site visitor and, for that reason, create copy to appeal to them, but that’s still not good enough.

Who is coming to your site? Why? What are they looking for? Answering these questions will get you on the road to creating a better, more persuasive copy.

There are many methods to tap into who your customers are and to gauge what they want and what they are looking for:

1. Zip Code Analysis

Understanding your site visitor’s lifestyle, demographics, income, age, and population density can give you much insight into them. This information can help you better anticipate their needs and wants. There are tools online that provide this service.

The way we conduct zip code analysis is as follows:

1. Pull the top 50 performing zip codes on your website
2. Enter the zip codes into the zip code analysis tool
3. Segment the zip code analysis data (i.e., the percentages of varying lifestyles, ages, and income) across all the zip codes and place the information in an Excel file.
4. Formulate 5-7 market segments based on the data provided.
5. Based on the data collected, formulate assumptions about that market segment based on cognitive progression: i.e., anticipate the user actions and triggers on the site based on their economic, lifestyle, gender, and age. Ask yourself: What would trigger words would impact the different segments? What are the needs or wants of these market segments

2. Surveys

Many tools can be used to conduct a simple 5 – 10 question survey to understand more about your customers and their motivations. What’s important is to have a plan and reason for actually surveying so the results can feed into your market segmentation. With any survey, especially email, it’s important to consider that offering some reward can be helpful to get a better sampling. Getting a 2 – 5% response rate would be a decent enough sampling.

1. Email survey: This survey can be designed to learn more about visitor motivations. You can send it to all customers (general) for either satisfaction or demographic data collection.
2. Post-purchase email survey: targeted questions about the customer’s experience. These questions are but not limited to: What could be improved on the site? Why did they make the decision to move forward? What was most important to you when you made the decision? How would you describe the item to a friend or colleague?
3. Segmented by experience surveys: By segmenting your email list, you can determine the 1st time, repeat multiple, and no-purchase customers. That way, you can modify your email survey accordingly for each segment. Some of the questions can include:

Why did you come to the site? What was the motivation behind your visit? Did you quickly find what you were looking for? Did something catch your eye? Would you come back and purchase? What is the least appealing thing about the site and experience, and what is the most appealing thing about the site and the experience?

3. Polls

Many sites use tools like Hotjar and have a poll pop-up on the bottom left or right corner of the site. These pop-ups are limited to a few questions with three or four possible responses. The questions could be about the reason for the visit, motivators, hooks, etc.

4. Exit pop-ups

If the visitor is going to click out of the site right before they leave, an exit pop-up appears, asking them why they are leaving.

Once you have collected the survey data, you must match it to the segments you have already created. How can some of this information enhance that particular segment, giving you insights into their purchasing behavior, wants, and needs?

5. Focus group studies

A recent partner client of ours uses focus group studies regularly. Focus groups are helpful because they give you real live feedback from potential site visitors. By using focus groups, you can:

1. Gather opinions, beliefs, and attitudes about your company and value proposition.
2. Test your assumptions about the market.
3. Test different motivational and persuasive wordings.
4. Utilize participants comments for insights and copy.
5. Have a more visualized idea of who and what the visitors that come to your site look talk, and act.
6. Usability studies

Another efficient way of getting information is related to the actual usability of the website.

How do visitors navigate? How easy is it to locate products? Are the visitors seeing a particular element? How are they interacting with the widget?

These are some of the questions that will be addressed after conducting the usability study (if done correctly). The key to usability study is having specific tasks that you would like users to complete (the end goal), and seeing if and how they can achieve them. You can find users at sites like usertesting.com to conduct usability studies for your website.

7. Interviews

Your customer representatives are constantly on the phone with site visitors. That information, if segmented and studied, is what we call Voice of Customer, or VOC. The VOC is critical in giving you insights on what is and is not working on the website, where the bottlenecks are on the site, and how to add “copy” or other elements to enhance this. The VOC can also play a significant role in adding data to your market segmentation. Additionally, you can conduct customer interviews in person for further knowledge (and ask specific questions).

Once you’ve collected marketing data, it is time to create personas. Personas will help you appeal the copy to specific individuals rather than a generic segment of people. If I’ve identified six segments, I can either create a persona for each or combine data for those that are close to each other, thus reducing the number of personas I create.

Each persona will have a face, a name, a description, motivations, needs, wants, how they conduct themselves at each buying stage, trigger words, traits, etc. Having this information, I can tailor my copy to appeal to this specific persona and how to persuade him or her. I can add specific copy elements for all the personas to ensure I address my entire market.

Other tips to consider when writing for personas:

• Understand what information each persona is looking for
• Capture the attention of each of the persona types
• Connect and appeal to the personas emotions
• Understand the persona’s cognitive progression
• Present the information to the persona in a clear and concise manner
• Support information with facts
• Present copy in a way that understands how visitors read the copy online
• Gently persuade the visitors to convert

Engagement (relevance):

How relevant is your copy to the visitor? Once you’ve understood who the visitor is, now it is up to you to construct a copy that is relevant to the needs and wants of the visitor. If the copy lacks relevance and scent, it will, in turn, reduce buyer momentum. Visitors who lose buyer momentum are likely to click to another page (if you’re lucky) or completely exit the site because they’ve lost interest and you’ve done little to engage them. According to Bryan Eisenberg,

“Even mediocre writing that captures the essence of what matters to the visitor will out-perform stellar writing that completely misses the mark.” –

When writing for more engagement, consider the following:

Reel them in with a killer sales pitch

Visitors who come to your site need to see a compelling offer and will question: what’s in it for them? To ensure you have an engaging sales pitch:

“Don’t leave any rock unturned.” Ensure that all of your offer’s features are on the page. Now, prioritizing this information is key because the most relevant and compelling information needs to be placed strategically before and close to the call to action. However, for the logical visitor who’s going to be comparing reading and researching the offer, make sure that all the information is accessible in the copy and is tailored with persuasive language. ”

Product features are bland and usually doused with technical jargon. Take those features and create attractive benefits out of them to nurture visitors’ interest in your offer further. Again, remember, your visitor is always thinking:

“What’s in it for me?”

“What problem does this offer solve for your visitor?” Make sure to highlight that clearly through your copy. That’s where knowing your value proposition becomes critical.

Well, you’ve created personas so you can anticipate the objections some of your visitors may have. Make sure to address those objections in the copy as well.

The copy is everywhere on the page, even sometimes below the image in the form of a caption. Don’t underestimate any copy on your page. All of it must be optimized and engaging. So ensure that even the little caption copy is engaging and related to the image presented.

Compelling headlines are critical to engagement and the page’s initial hook. Although headlines are scattered throughout the page, each one should lead the visitor to read what’s next or take action.

Think about who your visitors are and what their motivations are. That’ll help you create a pathway for each visitor, ensuring that they know what to do next and why. According to  Eddie Shleyner;

“Most purchases aren’t logical decisions. People buy things based on how they make them feel. So, your copy should evoke emotion.”

Cognitive progression

Cognitive progression anticipates visitor behavior based on the value, price, and investment of the offer. So, if I offer a relatively low-cost service that requires substantial time and resource allocation and time investment, I know that the copy needs to address those concerns and preempt any objections. Using cognitive progression when writing will help you create optimized copy that is highly persuasive. Combining cognitive progression with personas will pave the way for even better results.

The first step for incorporating cognitive progression is to assess your offer:

1.    Price

Is the offer something that is considered expensive? How would the visitor feel about spending that much money on this offer?

Price is an important consideration when using cognitive progression for optimization. Consider someone selling jewelry or furniture online. The visitor will often consider These high price items before proceeding. What are some of the objections you can anticipate regarding price?

• Is this a high quality?
• Can this vendor be trusted?
• What if the item comes damaged?
• Isn’t it better if I see this offline?

Your job as a persuasive copywriter is to convince the visitor that, no, it isn’t better if they see it offline. Your job is to keep them on the site and to convince them that they are making the right decision by choosing you. You must assure them of your return policy if it exists.

What type of guarantees do you offer? These types of assurances are important for trust and to relieve some fears, uncertainties, or doubts they may have (FUDs). Adding testimonials and other types of social proof for high-price offers is critical. They need to know that someone else who spent the money was satisfied with the purchase. Finally, the quality of the offer needs to be well-stated in the copy more than once.

2.    Investment

What type of investment does your visitor need to make your offer? Do they need to allocate resources and time for the offer? Investment is often quite overlooked in the services space. If I sign up with a company such as Basecamp, the price will be quite low.

However, the investment will make someone often consider the program. The investment relates to the resources I will need to allocate, the amount of time and effort it will take the team to collaborate with such a tool, and the headache and difficulty of moving to a different platform. This is a key consideration for products or services that require investment.

An example is an internet radio show (or podcast). Signing up to create one is a relatively low cost. However, on the backend, the investment required from the person to produce and market the show is enormous. Preparing the materials, inviting the guests, the actual production, and driving listeners to the program make the small upfront investment one that requires a lot of consideration. If you offer such a significant investment type service or product, the copy needs to speak to the visitors, easing their concerns and walking them through the process. For example, a one-step checkout with minimal information would not be conducive to such a service.

3.    Value

The value your product or service relates directly to what the visitor perceives as the value. For example, perfumes with brand names, or names of celebrities on them, are in the eyes of consumers more valuable than the no-name product, although, they are made up with the same types of ingredients and probably in the same factories.

These types of products or services may be low in overall production cost; however, to the consumer, they are highly valuable (think memorabilia or collector items). To enhance the perceived value in the minds of the visitors`, you will need to create copy that appeals to those emotions that the visitor; associating sentiment with this product or service.

Copywriting for your website personas

As mentioned above, you must gather as much information as possible about each market segment to know your customers. You have to gather demographic data (age, sex, household income, family size, number of credit cards, media preferences, and so on) and psychographic data (value system, triggers, behavioral style, response mechanisms, fears, passions, motivations, and so on).

Demographical data can give you a good view of customers (if you haven’t had any customers yet, aim at targeting a narrow market). You can probably determine their age and health from their appearance, family and marital situation from their conversations, economic level from how they dress and their behavior, and so on.

Psychographic data is a little more difficult. Small businesses rarely have resources to purchase data, but you can gather some from observation and extrapolate more. For example, as mentioned above, zip code analysis and surveys, as well as interviews and polls, can give you a lens into economic, social status, types of vehicles they own, income, etc. According to Derrick English Jr.;

“If you want to make content stick in your consumer’s head, then tell a great story. We are drawn to stories that allow us to use our imagination, have characters and situations that we can relate to, and think about the possibilities of what may come.”

This information will help you to create personas for each market segment, thus making it easier for you to sell.

Personas

Imagine you have two customers:

First visitor: John, male, 33, successful business executive, enjoys sports and tropical vacations, is extremely competitive

Second visitor: Kevin, male 30, still lives at home with his parents, currently unemployed, enjoys playing Xbox and hanging with his friends, is passive

Ask yourself

• Would you sell to these two men in the same way?
• They’re similar enough in age, but what about the other aspects of their lives?
• Is anything comparable?

Other than the fact that both are male and in their 30s, they have little in common, so this would suggest, their concerns about purchasing my product or service may be different as well. You would need to counter these concerns utilizing different persuasive techniques. The copy would need to be catered to each one, individually. If you know the market in detail, as described above, selling to them through copy will be a lot easier.

What are personas?

Personas are models, examples, and archetypes that humanize and individualize a specific target market. They are hypothetical individuals who represent target consumers. There are four main temperaments, each persona you create will hold more than one depending on the buying stage. Personas are works in progress. We make assumptions about the market, create personas to match our assumptions, test and continue to evolve them.

So, if we take the previous example of John and Kevin, as mentioned, they will approach buying my product or service, very differently. For instance, Kevin will be very cost conscious, and it will likely overwhelm most of his decisions as he is currently unemployed.

John, on the other hand, cares about price, but is competitive and wants the best. So, his overwhelming concern will be “is this the best option?” The copy must be curated to address both of these personas. When creating the persona, and considering all the concerns that each visitor will have, you can list some trigger words like lowest price guaranteed, price match, highest in quality, top rated. These words can be used or adjusted in the copy and can help you better address the persona.

The visitor buying cycle

It’s great, we’ve considered the personas, but have you given any thought to the buying stage? Buying stages will also change the way the copy is displayed. So John can come to my site at any one of the AIDA buying stages: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. Each stage requires curated copy.

Image Source: Smartinsights

The attention test:

Awareness

When it comes to the awareness stage, your copy must:

•               Communicate trust to visitors

•               Intrigue visitors and arouse their interest within the first few seconds.

•               Include titles and headlines that capture the visitor’s attention.

If there’s initial interest, your copy will change because you’ve captured the visitor interest, but now you need to persuade them to want or need the product or service you offer: Utilizing cognitive progression, display the most important information your visitor needs to see.

a)    Make sure the information is easy to locate on the page.

b)    Make sure the information is displayed.

c)    Make sure all copy on the page is relevant to the visitor.

Interest

So you’ve piqued the visitor’s interest in your company and what you have to offer, but how can you engage them further to look at the various product or service offerings? At this point your copy must:

•               Convince the visitors to stay.

•               Persuade them to convert.

•               Persuade your visitor to refer your website to family and friends.

•               Utilize special offers to increase desire.

•               Use urgency and scarcity incentives to push visitors to act.

Desire & Action

Your pages need to have one primary goal to make the “action stage” possible.

According to Susan Gunelius;

“Before you write copy for your promotional piece, you need to understand your goals for that piece. What do you want to get in return? The copy you use in each ad or marketing piece will vary based on your goals for that promotion.”

Your goal is to have visitors convert (place an order, fill out a contact form, subscribe to our website), but getting to that macro conversion requires the visitor to go through a series of micro conversions (reading a piece of copy, clicking on a link, navigating to a page). Getting to the big “Yes” requires you to go through a series of small “yesses.” The ways to get your visitors to that big “Yes”:

Guide your visitors to take action.

• One important action should be highlighted on the page, and it is called the primary action.
• Highlight the primary action on every page of our website using these two methods:

1. Creating powerful headlines

Headlines are a key component to hook your visitor. The right headlines on the page will not only help clarify your objective and persuade them but will guide them through the page to help them find what they are looking for. Remember, you aren’t writing for one person but for multiple personas with different motivations and concerns and at different buying stages. Your headlines will act as a guide to help all visitors easily find what they are looking for. When creating headlines, keep in mind the following:

Clarity is Crucial – Your headline must give a reason or trigger to read on.

Relevance – By understanding your visitor and using a cognitive progression, you can ensure that the headlines bring the relevance they need to keep your pages sticky (i.e., keep visitors engaged and on the page for a lengthier period).

Credibility—Your readers are inundated by hundreds of marketing messages every day. The most credible, engaging, and informative messages have the highest chance of interrupting their filtering processes and moving to the forefront of their minds.

The process

To create great headlines on your pages, you need to follow an iron-clad process that will help you achieve your goals of more visitors and more conversions:

1. Write ten headlines after you finish writing your body copy.
2. Get feedback, tweak, and pare those down to three.
3. Show the three to trusted customers, suppliers, coworkers or anyone else you can think of and pick the top two.
4. AB tests those two to determine the best option.

Techniques

But what are the best methods? There are some essential tips to consider when creating headlines:

The Trigger & Benefit

A “trigger” in your headline gives readers a reason to continue reading your landing page. Pure residuals explain;

“Using emotional triggers in a marketing sense means using certain words that will evoke a reaction out of people.”

”Simple trigger words include “Learn,” “Get,” “Save,” or just about anything else that lets them know they are going to get something. The “benefit” outlines exactly what’s in it for them. For example:

Save on Fashions (trigger) and Look Fabulous Too (benefit)

Power Words

Try powerful, compelling words. Something like this:

• Write Killer Headlines
• Headlines that Boost Your Sales

Continuity with keywords

One undervalued surefire way to amazing gains is using keywords. It’s a fast, powerful way to get brilliant results. Keywords are the internet’s great gift to marketers. They let you zero in on the language your customer uses. Search queries and the keywords used that drive visitors to your site, as well as search queries used once they arrive, are critical. According to Matt Press;

“For starters, remember that every sentence has just one purpose: to get the next one read. Be ruthless with your words.”

One of the first questions that one asks when they arrive at a website is: “did I arrive at the right place.” Using the keywords, they used will help ease that first concern upon arrival.

Keywords in the headline engage customers immediately, but of course, assist with SEO as well. Try different words and different combinations with the other options in this list.

Search queries used on the website can give you a clue into what brought visitors to your site and how to cater to their needs, motivations, and wants through copy and even design.

Length

Research this aspect on many sources, and you will find excellent advice supporting short, long and about every length of a headline. Short headlines tend to be punchier and may help your landing page stand out better on a SERP. Longer headlines can help you better qualify the visitors to your page. The former can get you more traffic, and the latter can get you traffic that is more likely to convert.

Sub-headlines

You can make good use of subheadlines to complete an idea, message, or value that you couldn’t fully communicate in the H1. Combining headlines with subheadlines gets more information across and improves the chances that your visitors will stay.

Questions, Commands & Other Headline Techniques

Here are some samples to illustrate these options:

• Want to Have More Effective Headlines? (When you pose a question your readers want answered, they are compelled to read on.)
• Start Writing Better Headlines Today (Your readers sometimes need to be told what to do.)
• 5 Tips for Writing Irresistible Headlines (Tell your readers exactly what they will get from your landing page.)
• How to Write Headlines That Hook Your Readers (Another trigger-benefit formula: “How to _____ (trigger) that will ______ (benefit).)
• Just Released: The 5 Most Effective Ways to Write Better Headlines (This headline makes your landing page sound newsworthy like it’s an event.)

Use data and numbers in the headline.

The human brain is attracted to numbers because it organizes that data logically. They make it easy to scan and understand the information you will be provided in your copy.

Offer interesting gains

If the headline offers visitors information on how the product or service will directly help them, you can bet that it is a hook that will keep visitors reading.

2. Benefits versus Features

All businesses face the benefits vs. features dilemma at some point. Interestingly, however critical and straightforward this concept may be, many businesses struggle to identify the real difference.

Website copy says a lot about a business; most companies display what they think potential customers want. But is it correct to assume that prospects will understand why they should buy the product or service just because they’ve been told about it? Thus, business owners only communicate the features of their product or service to prospective customers and neglect to mention the benefits. So let’s break it down:

a) Features

The first level of attracting customers is using features, which are factual statements about the product or service being promoted.

Features of an outdoor grill might include:

• Electric
• Grease tray
• Non-stick cooking surface
• Attached working surface

But it’s important to remember that features do not sell a product. Features do not give the “what is in this for me?” answers that visitors want to hear. Features give useful information and are not exciting enough to sell a product alone. All businesses face the dilemma of benefits vs. features at one point in time. Interestingly, however critical and simple as this concept may be, many businesses struggle to identify the real difference.

b) Benefits

On the other hand, benefits are where you can start putting your persuasive copywriting skills to work. It is where you start on the road to closing a sale. The benefits of the above outdoor grill include:

Convenience:

• Electric
• Non-stick cooking surface
• Attached working surface
• Money Saver
• Electric
• Temperature control.

Easy to Use:

• Electric
• Non-stick cooking surface
• Attached working surface

But is that enough to close the sale?

Probably not.

Why? As mentioned in the personas section, these benefits are much too generic. They still do not address your specific persona’s needs. You are giving them generalities instead of concrete results they will enjoy when using your product.

Now, to simplify, one variation of superficial benefits is restating the features as benefits using slightly different wording. For example, an iPhone feature is Face recognition security. You might list this as a benefit because it makes anyone unable to access your phone.

However, this benefit isn’t much more than the feature statement. A better advantage would list the results of having this feature:

Add another layer of protection for your most important asset

Answering the “what’s in it for me.”

Benefits that sell my grill must be catered to what my visitors are looking for:

• Tasty, Healthy Food Everytime
• Safe around children with special temperature control
• Perfect for Easy Entertaining
• 300 square inches of cooking space, no mess
• The attached working area makes it easy to clean
• Environmentally friendly and keeping more money in your pocket!
• Do not have to buy charcoal for the life of the grill

Of course, you can’t know what your customers want until you do your research, as stated in the previous chapters. By this time, you should be reviewing your sales pitch and marketing message you’ve been using with great trepidation, and rightly so if you look carefully. What you find might shock you, but you’ll most likely and honestly you’ll most likely see that your benefits are more features.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Ok, let’s take a little break here.

We have a lot more to say about persuasive online copywriting, so don’t think the article ends here. If you want to get your hands on the rest of the great details we’ve written on persuasive copywriting, download the full-length article in PDF format below!

The post The Ultimate Guide to Persuasive Online Copywriting appeared first on Invesp.

On the other hand, demand generation focused-marketers believe content such as webinars, white papers, case studies, analyst reports or information that isn’t available anywhere else for FREE – should be GATED.

Now:

Whether you gate your content or not, it usually depends on:

1. The quality of leads you need
2. How widely you want your content to be shared or consumed

In this post, we’re going to dive deep into the pros and cons of each approach, share insights for improving your process regardless of whichever route you decide to take.

But before we delve in – there are a couple of important points we should cover:

• Content and the buyer’s journey
• The content’s purpose, promotion, and value

Content and the buyer’s journey

Modern marketers have learned that consumers advance through a three step process called ‘the buyer’s journey.’

1. The awareness stage

At this stage, prospects know they have a problem.

But they don’t know much about your business. Useful content for this stage includes blogs, infographics, podcasts, videos, case studies, white papers.

2. The consideration stage

During this stage, prospects are beginning to see your brand as an industry authority and a potential solution to their problem.

Content for this stage include webinars, e-books, free courses, software downloads.

3. The decision stage

At this stage, prospects make the purchase decision.

Content offers for this stage include free consultations, product demos/offers, free trials.

Here’s the kicker:

It doesn’t matter what stage you are in, some readers will still think content gating is annoying.

As Thrive themes co-founder – Shane melaugh puts it:

“Some prospects will think any kind of lock or any kind of barrier (such as an opt-in) is annoying. But from my testing, a shared lock will annoy about 2% of visitors and it will increase social shares by about 40x. Decent trade-off.”

Moreover:

How does the buyer’s journey impact the content on your website?

During the early stages of the buying cycle…

Prospects have a lower commitment and a higher tendency to abandon forms than prospects in the later stages.

One way to stand out is to immediately appear transparent and courteous.

In other words:

At this stage, giving away your content for FREE can improve your brand’s visibility, enhance your credibility and more.

———————————————-

The content’s purpose, promotion, and value

Purpose:

What is the content’s goal or purpose?

For example, if the goal is to encourage inbound links, then hiding that content behind forms will potentially hinder you since the gate presents a barrier to consumption.

Promotion:

Along with the goal, consider how you’ll be promoting the content.

For example, if the goal of the content is to encourage sharing via social networks, infographics or in-depth blog posts/articles work nicely since you’ll give it away for FREE.

However, if the goal of the content is to generate leads and grow your email list, then gated ebooks, cheat sheets would be a better fit.

Value:

When visitors see an offer, they consider the value of that content. How much currency is it worth? Is it worth an email address and name? Phone number? Is the content worth filling out a form and sharing information?”

Now that we agree on some of the essential concepts, let’s jump into different considerations around hiding content behind forms or giving content for free…

When, Why And Whether To Hide Content Behind Forms

For starters:

Let’s agree on a common definition on what it means when we say, GATED content

To gate means you are requiring specific information from the user, usually via a form, in exchange for getting access to a specific piece of content.

Examples of content to gate include [but not limited to] ebooks, webinars, checklists, cheatsheets, email series, demos.

Unsurprisingly, most people are willing to give or share their personal information when they perceive your content as valuable and unique.

When done well, gating content can benefit both prospects and business owners.

For example, it’s appropriate to gate high-value content such as research papers, webinars, training or workshops…

Similarly, it’s important to keep some of your best content open and discoverable.

Now, the customer experience is paramount to everything else in today’s business.

Oddly enough…

One of the most compelling arguments against content gating is that it creates a sub-optimal experience.

As Mike Weir puts it [Vertical director – LinkedIn]

“You may get the lead, but maybe the prospect isn’t ready to buy, get emails, calls or sales pitches. We as marketers, have to be more scientific about distinguishing between the people who are ready for emails and calls and the people we might be alienating with it.”

So get this:

Before hiding your content behind forms…

Begin with the ‘END’ in mind:

By asking yourself these four questions…

Every piece of content should be created with a specific stage of the sales funnel in mind.

For example, content such as articles and blog posts should not be gated if establishing stronger thought leadership, increasing site traffic, and improving SEO are one of your main goals.

However, as you move towards the bottom of the funnel, it becomes more appropriate to gate content like webinars, cheatsheets and more…

Second, before gating content – ask yourself:

Is this content available anywhere else for free?

Get to know your competitors to make sure they aren’t giving away the same content without a form…

Or worse – gating content on one of your channels while making it available without a form on another channel you own.

Third, before hiding any piece of content – ask yourself:

Is this content valuable enough?

Since it’s hard to quantify value based solely on the length of a document or by how much time was put into its creation.

The mistake most businesses make is gating content that is simply not significant enough to make prospects fill in the form.

Fourth, how do you plan to use the information you receive?

Since hiding your content behind long drawn-out forms is a sure way to scare people away.

You want to avoid them at all costs unless capturing your audience information is one of your main goals…

As we can all agree that shorter forms have higher conversions compared to longer forms.

Lastly, before hiding any piece of content behind forms…

You should have a robust lead nurturing program in place in order to take advantage of that lead data.

The benefits of hiding your content behind forms

By now you’ll have realized that creating effective gated content is essential for building your email list and growing your community.

It allows you to receive valuable information about your prospects…

And hopefully, a line of communication from which you can build a meaningful relationship with in the future.

Hiding your content behind forms helps you:

1. Capture more leads

The overall objective of content marketing is to attract more prospective visitors to your website.

However, it will be fruitless if you do not convert your visitors into potential buyers.

Now, gating your content will help you capture valuable lead information which enables you to nurture them into a sale with onboarding strategies such as email, remarketing etc

2. Get information about who specifically accessed the content

Granted, some of this information could be fake.

Nonetheless, you will still get enough information from people who found your ungated content valuable or useful.

3. Boost perceived value

Psychologically, we value things we’ve had to work harder to get, and for that reason, people who spent their energy to get the content may view the report itself as more valuable and useful.

4. Sales outreach to those who accessed the content may be easier and more effective

Since you collected a lot of information of those people who accessed the content, it is easier and more effective to offer your products or services later on in the sales funnel.

Unfortunately:

Every sweet has it’s sour…

Hiding your content behind forms does come with some drawbacks you should be aware of…

The drawbacks of hiding your content behind forms

1. Smaller audience potential

It’s hard to get your landing page [where your content is gated] in front of people, let alone – make them fill out form fields.  

Therefore, when your content is gated behind a form – it is not going to be consumed by tons people.

2. Harder to earn links/amplification

One of the most hard-to-swallow drawbacks of gated content is this, it’s harder to earn links and amplification of your content since people generally do not link to a page like this:

3. May leave negative brand perceptions

For some people, gated content leaves a very bad taste in their mouth.

It could be around whether the content was worth it after they filled the form.

It could be about the outreach that happens to them after they filled the form or simply, their interest was in getting the information, not starting a sales conversation, duh!

4. Loss of SEO benefits

Gated content does not get links or engagement.

As a result – it loses a bunch of SEO benefits such as site traffic, more indexed content, lower bounce rates, establishing a thought leadership position and more.

When, Why And Whether To Give Content Away

Let’s face it.

Most business owners struggle knowing whether or not they’re giving away too much free content to their audience.

There’s no doubt when you provide your audience with valuable free content – there’s always a higher level of content they’ll be willing to pay for.

As Nathalie Lussier [Ambitionally co-founder] puts it:

“The more high-value stuff you can give away, the more people will see your generosity and want to buy from you. This happens through the built-in human need to reciprocate. When someone is nice to us, we want to be nice to them.”

Examples of content to give away for FREE include [but not limited to]

• Articles/Blog posts
• Case studies
• FAQs
• Infographics
• Product videos/descriptions
• Podcasts

The benefits of giving your content away for FREE

1. Ability to drive traffic from all social channels

Free content is inherently more shareable than content that’s hidden behind forms. Creating high-quality content and encouraging people to share it freely can significantly up the chances of connecting with a sizable pool of potential customers.

Social, search, word of mouth, email, whatever it is. You can drive a lot more people here.

2. Ability to retarget and remarket to a larger future audience

Giving away content for free is detrimental only when the content marketing strategy isn’t integrated with the business overall sales strategy.

In general, free content should effortlessly be tied into paid content or products later on in the buyer’s journey.

3. Boost your search engine visibility

Giving away your content for free may get you links, engagement, and a bunch of SEO benefits such as site traffic, more indexed content, establishing a thought leadership status and more.

Again, every good has it’s evil… Giving away your best content for free does have some drawbacks…

And here they go:

The drawbacks of giving your content away for FREE

1. Prospects might become used to getting everything for free

If your audience is comprised solely of people who expect you to give them everything for free, when you try using that list to generate some actual revenue, you’re going to get a very poor response.

2. Giving your best stuff for free attracts people looking for handouts

Sometimes it’s smart to hold a little something back in your marketing…

…to tease and fascinate the reader, to seduce them with a bit of mystery, rather than giving everything away.

3. Hard to convert most visits that come to open access content into leads

It might be hard or even totally impossible to convert many or most of the visits that come to open access content into leads.

As Rand Fishkin [Moz] had this say:

“It’s just the case that people who are going to consume that content may never give you information that will allow you to follow up or reach out to them.”

Final Thoughts

Finding the right moment to gate content is important.

Determine where users are in the funnel and tailor your communication to the buyer’s state and commitment level.

Provide stellar content behind gates to demonstrate the value of your offering and prove your worth before asking for something in return.

Furthermore – customers today can quickly discern the difference between promotional content that’s all about pushing your products and services — to the very late stages of the buying cycle.

Therefore, once they trust you with their contact information, use it respectfully. Continue to nurture the relationship, provide incredible value and make it worthwhile.  

The question remains: To gate, or not to gate?

Back to you – What’s your content gating strategy? How often do you gate your content?

Let us know in the comment section below…

We’d love to hear your thoughts!

The post Demand Generation: When to Hide Content Behind Forms and When to Give Content Away appeared first on Invesp.

The state of advertising and marketing products online underwent a drastic change from the scenario of the 60s and 70s. Now companies online want to present quick information, make the sale, and increase revenue.

So, can e-commerce stores nowadays benefit from “more information” to close more sales? Should they not limit themselves only to dry product description?

The fast-paced, impatient world we now live in has pushed most companies to display only the most relevant information on a given page:

• a manufacturer’s description;
• a highlighted call to action button;
• discounts

But sometimes, we need to take a breath and look at what the state of selling online has become.

The reality is that companies continuing to grow and expand online have a brand recognition that gives them an edge; brand is what makes your company stand out among your competitors.

To survive this fast-paced world, smaller companies need to go beyond just selling, and aim at building their own brand and a loyal base of brand ambassadors. This specific loyalty is one of the most challenging stages of the buying process to establish.

You want customers that will share and chat about your product and service. Providing your customers with meaningful experiences, i.e. such experiences that they have never undergone before, created by your brand can help you find and nurture your brand evangelists.

Connecting to a base of clients in personalized and emotional ways, is not an easy task. But it is as doable as it is inspiring for both brand and customers. Multiple forms of communication, both verbal and non-verbal, can take up the challenge of summarizing and delivering memorable branded experiences in on the product page.

Of course, in an online environment, verbal forms stand out.

Words are powerful. Copy is one of the three main components to optimize on a page, along with the placement and the design of elements. Mistakenly, many e-commerce conversion optimization projects focus on design and placement, leaving copy as the last thing on the list (if it even makes the list).

From customers’ first impressions to becoming brand evangelists, they go through a five-staged journey of experiences at motivational, physical, intellectual, emotional and transformational levels, as this recent research and survey highlighted. Check below how copy on product pages can convey each one of these levels:

1. Motivational level

At this pre-experience stage, future customers meet your brand for the first time. The ones who will become ambassadors leave with emotions of belonging, always recalled in a positive way.

This first encounter might happen offline, when people see one of your products or hear someone praising your services. If the first contact happens online, on a product page, not only images or other visuals, but also your copy should convey individuality and contrast, something that the customer will not find anywhere else.

Imagine, you are looking for vintage-style dresses online and search suggests you ModCloth as one of the options.

You browse the size and see that at ModCloth, the title of their categories already indicates individuality. One of the sections is called “Unique Dresses”:

You browse further and see that each unique dress receives an aura of exclusivity, by being detailed named. For instance, the one below is called “Ineffable Elegance A-Line Dress.” Well, the customer can find regular dresses anywhere, while this exact pompous dress can only be found at Modcloth. These titles alone motivate the customer to connect to the brand.

To motivate the customer further, the description of the dress compliments the good taste of the client viewing the item:

“Your sense of style is indescribably lovely, so we’re not surprised that you’ve added this chic navy dress to your wardrobe! Part of our ModCloth namesake label, this striking A-line features a chrysanthemum-printed faille fabric with a sheen that almost glows in the light, plus princess seams, pockets, and full skirt, leaving everyone positively speechless with its grace!”

2. Physical level

On the stage of experiencing your brand, ambassadors cherish multi-sensory perceptions they go through in different contexts.

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, as well as an online store, the opportunists to create consistent, enjoyable multisensory perceptions are far superior. Take Starbucks for example, the smell, the music, the sound of coffee machines, cozy sofas, the right colors. They know how to translate all the ambiance to their product pages, with descriptions as “our holiday coffees are bursting with notes of the season”, that strengthen their brand as well as the sensory perceptions of customers.

If your store is only online, you can rely on copy, images and videos to convey multisensory perceptions related to your products and brand.

With the purpose of reinventing men’s sportswear, so women feel beautiful as they adopt a powerful, active lifestyle, Sweaty Betty displays products with videos, so customers can better visualize the piece of clothing in an activity. The videos are accompanied by descriptions that show customers the sensations and perceptions of wearing the product, geared for fitness activities.

The description relies on adjectives and adverbs to relate the product to multisensory perceptions, as “in and out of the studio,” “super soft,” “high stretch,” “comfortable,” “flattering,” “sweat-wicking”:

“In a new cropped length, the Chandrasana 7/8 Leggings look amazing in and out of the studio. Fully opaque both Scandi style print and black side out, the super soft interlock knit fabric is high stretch and comfortable, while flattering stylelines sculpt the silhouette.

• High-stretch, sweat-wicking fabric feels soft and comfortable
• Fully opaque for safe downward dogs
• Power mesh panels and Scandinavian style print transcend the studio
• Model wears size S and is 178cm/5’10” tall”

3. Intellectual level

You offer intellectual experiences to your customer when you provide them opportunities for learning, thinking, applying knowledge and forming opinions.

Excellent copy is a pillar of the intellectual level in a diversity of materials that may explain the process of production, the origin of the brand, or unique information related to products.

If this all sounds too much to add to product pages, you can apply the component of authenticity to endow your brand around perceptions of heritage, nostalgia, cultural symbolism, sincerity, craftsmanship, quality commitment, and design consistency.

At Levi’s, as they are a renowned brand, who can claim “We invented the blue jean.

And we’re reinventing what it means to wear them”,their product descriptions take advantage of the cultural symbolism of their jeans, associated with quality and consistency in design:

Levi’s first describes the brand is“everywhere” and points out this piece is an innovation the customer should try because: 1) they know what they are talking about; 2) other women everywhere approved it. They reinforce the authenticity of the brand:

Women everywhere have fallen in love. Now it’s your turn. These innovative styles flatter, hold your shape, and make you feel amazing. Our 711 Skinny sits just below the curve of your waist for a universally comfortable fit, and the skinny leg adapts to any style you choose. This one is speckled with faint spots of paint.

4.Emotional level

To reach the emotional level with your brand evangelists, tell them stories. Loads of stories.

Stories convey strong emotions and meaning, adding significance and content to the brand.

Peugeot’s website brought storytelling up a notch.

Help your customer develop their stories with your brand. This is enriching for both of you. Social media can help you out with that. Or you can integrate these stories to your products and website, as Hiut Denim does.

With the motto “Do one thing well” at their homepage, Hiut Denim already conveys the idea that the customer can create a story with their brand. Their product pages tell stories as well:

Their product description shapes a story of effort, persistence, and dedication to the product. This enriches both the product and the brand:

“Phew. These have taken 18 months to develop. Finding a stretch denim that still looks like an authentic denim has taken us all around the world in search of that. Worth it. But not easy.”

5. Transformational level

At this last stage, your brand might be able to provide a personal transformation for your customers, either in a physical state, a state of mind or a lifestyle. This change comes from positive, compelling experiences.

Interaction stands out in your plan of connecting to customers at this level. Interaction is a successful,continuing, and consistent communication between your brand and your clients, that provides elements of individuality, multisensory perceptions, authenticity, and stories.

In product pages, your copy might bring this interaction to the surface, reinforcing both a lifestyle and a state of mind, as The Handmade Home does:

The Handmade Home turned into a studio, producing and selling clothing and home décor, after becoming a successful lifestyle and decoration blog. They first build interaction with readers, and then became a brand for an online store. This way, their followers already know the authors’ interest for fonts, which is evidenced by a link to the posts about fonts in the product description. They paired the description with a picture of one of the authors wearing the t-shirt, in her kitchen (which is part of their home DIY blog posts as well). The whole product page recalls customers about previous interactions:

“If Comic Sans has always made you cry, you totally relate to our font humor here, and you think Helvetica is just about the most perfect font ever created… this shirt is most definitely for you.

 Love the design? You’ll love sporting the look!

 A versatile, adorable, soft and comfy tee in a classic style.

 Check back often, as we’re constantly adding new products and options!”

Next steps

When working on your product pages, remember that brand evangelists feel the experiences with their brands were made just for them, as individually tailored to strengthen bonds.

The components of individuality, multisensory perception, authenticity, story, and interaction in brands’ messages create the preconditions for customers’ meaningful experiences. All five elements can take part in all five levels of the journey to becoming ambassadors.

When working on your product pages, remember that brand evangelists feel the experiences with their brands were made just for them, as individually tailored to strengthen bonds.

 If you would like to set a plan for the next steps on fine-tuning your product pages, check our article on How to Write Web Copy that Sells.

If you are looking for straightforward ways to improving copy, check NN/g’s 3 Tips for Better Product Descriptions on Websites.

If you prefer to dig deeper to refining your e-commerce product page effectiveness check our webinar on Getting 2x More Conversions from Product Pages, at our YouTube channel.

The post A Guide To Writing Product Page Copy That Creates A Memorable Brand Experience appeared first on Invesp.