Tired of pointless, regurgitated viral debris? A convenient, painless way to expand your entrepreneurial mind in 2012 is to get a daily dose of TEDTalks, comprising more than 900 thought-provoking presentations on technology, entertainment, design, sciences, humanities, arts, NGOs, business and more. You’ll gain life-altering insight and inspiration from the globe’s leading thinkers and doers to better your life, your business and your world.

Here’s just a fragment of the wisdom you can gain from TED:

Schools Kill Creativity

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

The Thrilling Potential of SixthSense Technology

Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data, including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.”

Why Are We Happy?

Author Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.

How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership, all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” His cases include Apple, Martin Luther King and the Wright brothers.

Try Something New for 30 Days

Is there something you’ve always meant to do, wanted to do, but just haven’t? Matt Cutts suggests: Try it for 30 days. This short, lighthearted talk offers a clever way to think about setting and achieving goals.

Ideas Definitely Worth Sharing

Why not trade in the dancing pets and exercise your brain? While you’re at it, you can spread the good word to help make the world a better place.

Humans are hardwired for stories. Our earliest communities used storytelling to transmit beliefs and information from one generation to the next. Even today, we teach our children to respond to stories, whether it’s The Tales of Peter Rabbit or The Time Aunt Becky Got Smashed during Christmas Dinner.

Today, marketers use stories as a powerful way to connect with consumers. You can use storytelling to sell too, if you know when and where to use it.

The Power of Storytelling

Stories are powerful because they combine fact and emotion. In marketing, you can use facts alone to make an argument: Our dish detergent cleans 15% better than the competition. But stories emotionally engage the reader:

Before I tried this dish detergent, my dinner guests were appalled at the soap scum left on my dishes. Today, I can entertain without worry or embarrassment.

So what makes for a good story? There are some common elements, such as a hero you can identify with, an obstacle to overcome, a climax or turning point, and a resolution or transformation. These elements are common to most good stories, whether it’s at the movie theatre, in a book or on the back of a cereal box.

Chanel N°5 and the Run Away Movie Star

You may remember this TV ad featuring Nicole Kidman and Chanel N°5:

The ad is like a movie plot condensed into two minutes. You have a hero to identify with (unshaven male lover or perpetually surprised movie star, your pick), the obstacle (she needs to stop dodging taxi cabs), the turning point (stick-in-the-mud manager insists she gets off the roof and back on the red carpet), and resolution (they settle on loving each other via Skype with maybe the odd naughty email).

Tell a Story or Shut Up and Make the Sale?

Part of good storytelling is knowing when to tell the story, and when to shut up. In marketing, much of it depends on the purpose of the story and what stage of the purchase decision process people are in. Have your potential customers recognized a unmet need? Are they looking for information? Are they evaluating alternatives? If so, storytelling can be a great way to persuade.

For example, the Chanel ad would work well with people who have no immediate plans to buy perfume. Even if you haven’t been thinking about buying perfume, the ad might get you started. The romance! The adventure! The smell! If you’ve been thinking about buying perfume, the ad might convince you to include Chanel N°5 in your list of perfume choices.

Incidentally, the ad also provides reassurance to consumers who’ve already bought the perfume. Look at how glamourous she is! I knew I made the right decision to buy Chanel during those five minutes at YVR duty free.

However, if the consumer has already made the decision to buy your brand, storytelling can get in the way. If you’ve ever had a beloved uncle who responds to any question with long, detailed stories about the war, you’ll know how painfully unproductive this is.

For this reason, visitors to Chanel’s website aren’t treated to stories about run away movie stars. Instead, the site has straightforward listings of products and store locations. After all, if you’re checking out the Chanel website, you’ve probably already decided to buy Chanel.

The situation is different for websites optimized for search engines. People are much more likely to land on your site as a result of conducting online research, before they’ve made a specific buying decision. In this case, storytelling can be a great way to engage visitors and generate sales.

Storytelling on About Us Pages

When you find storytelling on websites, it tends to be on the about us page. These pages often tell the story of the company’s founders, how they grew from Mom and Pop potato farmers into an international potato chip conglomerate. It allows the company to show their humble roots and values, and show how they carry these through today. McDonald’s website, for example, tells the story of founder Ray Kroc and his emphasis on quality, service, cleanliness and value.

Does your company have a story to tell? Should you tell it? Take a look at where your marketing channels intersect with consumer purchase decisions. You probably have an opportunity to tell an engaging story, one that your audience might want to share.

Most marketing campaigns can be stripped down to one of two themes: build the dream or stop the pain. Marketers tend to favour stop the pain. After all, not everyone has a dream, but everyone has a problem.

Knowing this, marketers use a technique of sticking their finger in there to get people to feel pain and motivate them to action. Let’s look at a few examples of this technique.

Proactive Solutions – Problem Skin

Proactive Solutions markets their skin care product line through TV commercials and infomercials. Their ads invoke the pain of skin blemishes and promote their product as a solution.

Do you stress out about your skin?
Do you freak when you breakout over night?
Well, hope is on the way.
It’s called Proactive Solutions.

Now that’s sticking your finger in the pain! If you weren’t terribly worried about your acne before, you’re probably worried about it now. And if you’ve been freaking over breakouts, then this commercial grabs your attention.

Old El Paso – Falling Tacos

Pain doesn’t have to be personal or even all that painful. Sometimes the pain is slight, but it’s still enough to motivate. Check out this Old El Paso Taco commercial:

How to you stop tacos from falling over?
What if it had a flat bottom?

Are falling tacos a problem? Likely, you never thought about falling tacos until now. The problem would seem ridiculous if presented seriously, but the light humour makes the message more palatable.

Sticking your finger in the pain is a great way to get people to recognize problems as problems. You’ve never hammered nails into your table to stop your taco from falling over, but, hey, now that you mention it, a flat bottom taco is not such a bad idea.

1-800-Got-Junk? – Furniture, Appliances, Electronics and More

At Webcopyplus, we recently used stick your finger in the pain marketing for 1-800-Got-Junk, the garbage removal franchise. Here the pain is the hassle of getting rid of unwanted stuff.

Here’s a web copy excerpt:

Got old furniture, appliances, electronics, tires, construction debris, or yard waste you need to make disappear? 1-800-GOT-JUNK? can take away almost any material we can fit in our trucks, without you ever lifting a finger. We’ll remove junk from wherever it’s located, and we won’t leave a dent or speck of dirt behind.

The pain point is old furniture, appliances, electronics, tires, construction debris or yard waste…that you need to get rid of.

Trotting out this list of items makes potential customers think about what they have at home. If we merely asked, “Got any old stuff you need to get rid of?” people would tend to respond, “No.” By providing specific examples, we’re prompting people to scan their home environment to see if they have anything on our list.

Do I have old furniture, appliances, or electronics to get rid of? Well, I do have that old computer downstairs, and I haven’t used that old freezer in years. Maybe I should call 1-800-Got-Junk.

Of course not everyone has old furniture, appliances, electronics, etc. they need to get rid of. But if you do, the message will resonate.

As you can see, stick your finger in there and feel the pain can be a great way to motivate people to recognize a problem and take action.

Where do you see marketers using this approach? Have you tried it in your own marketing?

As a copywriter and creative type in general, I’m a big fan of the Apple brand and its many polished products. But it hasn’t always been easy to be a member of the Apple faithful. In fact, my loyalty has been tested by two elements: fire and water.

Apple Flambé: What Happened to Compatibility?

About three years ago, my office decided to convert our web copywriting company into a full-fledged Apple operation, complete with MacBook Pros, doc stations, Airport wireless, servers — the whole bit. We made the switch from PC in the hopes of better reliability and to get more in sync with our web designer clients. At the same time, I decided to go ‘all Apple’ at home. Everything was going great until I decided to charge my iPod Shuffle via my new MacBook Pro.

“Daddy, maybe Apple and Apple things shouldn’t go together,” observed my young daughter after watching the iPod Shuffle disintegrate into a bubbling mass of flaming plastic 10 minutes after plugging it in.

Luckily, we were present when the iPod decided to iCombust and were able to quickly extinguish the flames. We tried not to think about what might have happened had the Shuffle decided to meltdown the night before, positioned on the dresser next to photos, brochures and other kindling. (And, fortunately, it wasn’t in anyone’s pocket — check out Hot Pants, another crazy scenario.)

The MacBook Pro seemed completely un-phased by the event (kudos to its aluminum casing), but we hesitated to plug in any other components without having a fire extinguisher handy.

This experience didn’t seem to support Apple’s core values of good design and compatibility.

iPod Shuffle Goes for a Swim

Fast-forward three years. Returning home from the gym, I stuck my current iPod Shuffle in my pocket so I wouldn’t forget to charge it. I got home, tossed my clothes in the wash, started the ‘standard’ 59-minute warm/cold water cycle, and headed to the kitchen to blend a protein shake.

A couple hours later, I realized my iPod was missing. I looked in my gym bag, my car, my home office — and then it hit me. Sure enough, I found the music player in the wash with my freshly cleaned track pants.

I sighed, removed the earphones, placed the player on my desk, and let it sit for a few hours. That night, I tried to turn it on. No light, no response. I tentatively plugged it in its dock to charge. The power light came on. I waited a few more minutes, plugged in the earphones and violà — Foster the People’s Pumped Up Kicks came through loud and clear.

Today, thanks to the wash cycle, my faith in Apple has been restored. I wouldn’t recommend dumping your Apple devices in the laundry, but by all means plug them into your laptop (maybe keep an eye out, just in case). Long live Apple.

Words carry emotion. Words like hope, freedom, desire, sale and cheap inspire emotional reactions deep in the limbic system. Given the power of these emotion associations, it’s no surprise that copywriters use them to propel people to action. Yet, there are potential pitfalls. Let’s look at how different companies are using emotional language to see what’s working and what’s not.

Be Very Afraid

If you’re looking for fear-creating copy, look no further than The Club. You’re probably already familiar with The Club steering wheel lock that prevents would-be thieves from driving away with your vehicle. The Club also markets other theft-proof devices such as The Door Club (to stop thieves from breaking down your door) and The Bike Club (to stop thieves from stealing your bike). In almost all their copy, fear is the primary motivator.

Here’s some copy from their home page:

Each of us
Has a need…
to feel
Safe & Secure
Use The Club LIne of Quality Products

Every day
in the United States
people are victimized.
Nearly 3000 motor vehicles are reported stolen.
3000 vehicle thefts per day!
There are some simple safety and security precautions you can take.

These law and order haikus use emotional words like need, safe, secure, victimized, stolen, thefts, simple, safety and security. The message is clear — the world is not a safe place and bad things can happen at any time. The Club is the solution.

But where do you draw the line between reasonable fear and fear mongering? If you can’t back up your fear-based copy with facts, you’re crossing the line. The Club manages to stay on the side of reasonable fear by including car theft statistics, and information about law enforcement partnership programs. These supporting facts lend credibility to their emotional copy. It takes the copy from “Aliens are coming!” territory to “Crime exists, this is what you can do.”

I’m a Bad Person, But I Want to Be Good

Guilt is a great motivator, just ask any parent. Some copywriters have learned this lesson and use guilt to motivate potential clients. This is especially prevalent in copy for charitable institutions.

Some charities employ a dash of guilt, others a bucket. Cue the 1990s and this Sally Struthers classic:

Sally Struthers — Christian Children’s Fund

Did you catch that line?

Life for Sale  .75¢

The subtext is what kind of cheap, heartless person wouldn’t give .75¢ to save a child’s life?

Surely not you? The only way to prove you’re not heartless is to donate. Or change the channel.

And that is the problem with guilt marketing. Push the guilt button too hard for too long and you risk eliciting anger instead of guilt — people will ignore your copy or actively avoid it.

There’s Hope for Us Yet

Thankfully, there are other ways to motivate beyond fear and guilt, including positive emotions.

Political campaigns often use emotionally laden copy. They mix positive emotions (our candidate) and negative emotions (their candidate) to win financial support and votes.

During the 2008 US presidential race, Barack Obama’s campaign slogan employed powerful, positive language: Change We Can Believe In. Combined with the chant Yes We Can and Shepard Fairey’s posters of “Hope” and “Change,” Obama’s campaign copy was powerful, heady stuff.

Three years later, Obama’s campaign demonstrates the pitfalls of using over-the-top positive emotional language to motivate people. Today, his emotionally charged campaign stands in stark contrast to where he is now: a looming 2012 election and an approval rating of only 44%. If you use emotions to get people to act (e.g. vote for your candidate, buy your dishwashing liquid) you better make sure you deliver on expectations. Otherwise, people will be even more disillusioned than if you’d used logical arguments alone.

Who’s in Charge? I Am

Marketers also use words with emotional qualities of confidence and control to give power to copy.

One of the best examples is the web marketing copy for Viagra. You might expect Pfizer (which developed and markets Viagra) to take a “you’re suffering, we can help” approach, but Pfizer knows their target market better than that.

This is the age of taking action. And getting the answers you want. So you can get on your way.

Phrases like taking action, getting answers and get on your way paints Viagra clients as not men to be pitied, but men who are determined and ready to take charge. Pfizer takes a potentially emasculating affliction like ED and associates their product with positive emotional attributes like confidence and control. If you had symptoms of ED and were feeling disempowered, then the Pfizer copy would appeal.

As a business owner, you can employ many different emotions by using the right words in your marketing copy. There are potential pitfalls in using emotional language, but you can avoid these by understanding your objectives and your audience.

Has your company used emotional language to connect and motivate customers? What has worked? What hasn’t?

We all know that B2B marketing differs from B2C. B2B’s longer and more complex buying process has implications for marketing — and your web copy. Here are some tips to get your B2B web copy right.

1. Businesses Might Not “Buy Now” — But You Still Need a Call to Action

The B2B purchasing process is more complex than B2C — it can take weeks, months, even years to negotiate. Consequently, you won’t find too many B2B websites with “buy now” calls-to-action and accompanying shopping carts.

This doesn’t mean, however, that you should put up a purely informational site. You still want your readers to take action, whether it’s to pick up the phone, send an email, or request a quote.

Take Cisco, for example. Cisco is a multinational corporation that designs and sells electronics, networking, voice and communications technology and services, and B2B is a big part of their business. Their site contains tons of information about their products and services, but there’s no shopping cart. Instead, when listing their C3945 Integrated Services Router on their website, they use the following calls-to-action:

• Chat now
• Email | Request a price
• Find a local reseller
• Call 1-866-428-9596
• Download software

The reader (and potential customer) is not left to browse around and drift off to the next site. They are guided to take action.

2. Trust and Relationship Building Are Even More Important

The relationship between B2B businesses and their customers is even more important than B2C relationships. B2B customers tend to engage for multiple sales over a longer period of time, and ongoing support is frequently part of the package. Consequently, choosing the wrong B2B partner can be dire, potentially leading to years of problems and headaches.

Naturally, B2B customers want to get it right the first time, and the seller needs to reassure them they’re making the right choice. One powerful way to gain the trust of your B2B customers is to use your web copy to showcase successful customer relationships.

For example, Xerox’s website makes it clear they’ve successfully implemented their business process and document management services with other customers. On its US home page, Xerox has the following copy:

• Xerox and Michelin: We manage Michelin’s finance processing so they can focus on keeping the world moving.
• Xerox and Virgin America: We manage Virgin America’s call centers so they have time to run America’s coolest airline.

By putting these relationships up front, Xerox’s potential customers are more likely to trust Xerox to have the capacity, expertise and desire to help them succeed.

3. Share Your Research and Forecasting

Unlike demand for B2C consumer products and services (which comes directly from consumers), demand for B2B is indirectly derived. Derived demand is based on future consumer demand, so B2B businesses need to do a lot of research and forecasting. By sharing this insight on your B2B website, you may drive more business.

Airplane manufacturer Boeing does this beautifully. Their website has loads of data and future projections for the travel industry. This data can help airlines determine if they need to order more planes now, before consumer demand for air travel increases.

4. B2B Customers Aren’t Emotionless Automatons

You often hear that B2B purchases are an emotionless decision. But we must remind ourselves that despite piles of internal policies and processes, humans ultimately make B2B buying decisions. And where there are humans, there are emotions.

So you may not be able to motivate with “limited time offer, just three days left, buy now,” but you can motivate by alleviating fears and developing trust. Employees still fear making the wrong buying decision and looking bad in front of their peers or the big, bad boss.

Microprocessor manufacturer Intel uses its web copy to reassure, support and persuade its B2B customers. On their US home page, Intel’s copy states:

• Take Amazing for a Spin. Test drive the 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor that’s right for you
• 10 Million Teachers Trained. Countless Classrooms Reinvented. Join the Celebration.
• Get the processor that’s right for you (and your business) and you’ll be amazing too.

5. Just Because It’s B2B Doesn’t Mean You Can Fill Your Copy With Jargon

Some marketers believe because their business is B2B, they can use jargon and super technical language. Keep in mind B2B purchases are made by cross-functional teams of people. These teams include some technical users, but also representatives from non-technical departments, such as purchasing or finance. So some members of the group may understand your techno-jargon copy, but some won’t.

The challenge for copywriters is to write copy that persuades all members of the purchasing team throughout the buying cycle. You can include technical specifications on drill-down pages, but you also need to include product/service benefits in clear, simple language.

Industrial equipment manufacturer Caterpillar doesn’t need jargon or technical language to explain the benefits of its new Cat 789D large mining truck. Even heavy equipment novices can understand the scrolling copy on their home page:

• “Lowest cost per ton in class”
• “Increased payload capacity”
• “Engine, tire and dump body options”

B2B sales and marketing impacts your web copy. By understanding the B2B buying process — and tailoring your web copy to it — you’ll have more business customers banging on your door.

Humour is a great way to sell. It catches people’s attention, engages them, and injects an element of humanity into otherwise static information. People love to be entertained, and if you can keep them amused while promoting your products or services, then all the better (nice job, Old Spice). What’s more, humour can be a great way to distinguish yourself from the competition (take a bow, Groupon).

But selling through humour isn’t easy. Even if your target market finds you funny, it might not translate into sales. Every time you put that arrow through your head and play the banjo, you risk ignoring or alienating part of the market. Humour is culturally, socially, even gender specific, so you need to get it right.

Four Tips for Using Humour to Sell

1. Know your target market. True for most things in marketing, but especially critical when using humour to sell: you need to know your target market. What do they find funny? What not? What special knowledge or experiences do they share?

If you know your target market very well (and have a good read on who is not your target market) you can risk ignoring and maybe even offending everyone else. The marketers of Axe hair, body and shower products have run with this approach. Judging from their advertising, their target market is males age 16-25. With this narrow niche, they don’t concern themselves with others not getting (or liking) the joke.

2. Don’t let humour get in the way. It’s one thing to be funny but another to have it benefit your business. Remember those funny ads with the sensitive cavemen? Remember what company it was for? Neither did we. (We looked it up: it was GEICO.)

How can you make sure humour doesn’t get in the way of the product? Either keep the humour subtle or make sure your product is front and centre.

For example, we recently wrote web copy for UrbanBound, a relocation service serving the Chicago area. We added little shots of humour throughout the copy — just enough to keep it light, engaging and fun to read. Humour is a subtle side note.

When humour is more upfront, you need to keep your product or service in focus. Toyota did this brilliantly in promotional videos for the Sienna wagon. Here, humour doesn’t get in the way of the product because the product is central to the story.

3. Make sure humour is appropriate for your product or service. Humour doesn’t suit all products or services. Should City Funeral Service play for laughs? (They’re not, unless “welcome veterans” is supposed to be funny.)

For some companies, humour is a natural fit. Naked Pizza, one of the fastest growing franchises in the U.S., has nice splashes of irreverent humour throughout its web copy. And with a name like Naked Pizza, humour is a great fit. In fact, without humour the name would seem pretty creepy.

Also, if you’re seeking world domination, be especially careful when considering humour as a marketing ingredient. What might be hilarious to a New Yorker might upset people in different states or countries.

4. When humour is over-the-top, limit where you use it. When your humour is controversial or over-the-top, you might not want to apply it everywhere. Domain name and web hosting service Go Daddy gets a lot of attention for their TV and print ads, featuring underdressed, over-bosomy babes. But their web copy is straight-ahead — all business. Injecting the same humour into their web copy wouldn’t inspire confidence in their services. The no-jokes copy might also help those not enamoured with Go Daddy’s approach to hold their noses and sign up anyway.

By doing a little bit of research and carefully considering your approach, humour may bring new life to your marketing and help you stand out from stodgy competitors. Now all you have to do is make us laugh.

What tips do you have for using humour to sell? Who’s doing it well? Who’s not?

Good marketers and copywriters alike know the more you understand your target audience, the better job you can do writing and delivering your message. Sure demographics help — age, location, marital status, ethnicity and religion. But you’ll have a much richer understanding of your ideal customer if you get to know their psychographics — their lifestyles, behaviors and attitudes.

In today’s insanely diverse and competitive climate, it’s good to know everything about the person you’re trying to engage:

• What turns them on
• What turns them off
• Which words catch their attention
• What keeps their attention
• What makes them tune things out

Ways to capture groups’ subjective preferences include in-person interviews, focus groups and surveys. Also, snooping around sites like Twitter and Facebook offers a quick, easy and inexpensive route to uncover streams of priceless insight.

As you gain greater awareness about your audience’s lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, values and personalities, you’ll also better understand their buying motives and product usage. For instance, would they purchase the beautification product to look younger, attract a mate, or for general health, and would they use the beautification product at home, on trips, or only at a salon?

What Types of Psychographic Groups Are There?

There are common psychographic profiles that people fit into:

The Belonger — Family-orientated, and likes the feeling of belonging to a community. Much of their time is spent with friends and family. The way to tap into this group is to build rapport within their communities.

The Achiever — Mostly businesspeople (such as bankers and managers), who work long hours, but are always looking for more success. They are independent and respond well to individuality, power, money and profit.

The Wannabe — They strive to be an Achiever, but have yet to fit this profile. Most of the products they buy are knock-offs of those owned by the Achiever (think counterfeit sunglasses or watches). Wannabes can be insecure with a small amount of disposable income.

The Socially Conscious — They are concerned about the environment and the effect their spending has on it. This group recycles frequently, walks and cycles, and, not surprisingly, buys environmentally friendly products.

The Balanced — A combination of the Achiever and the Socially Conscious, the Balanced want to use their money and power to do something positive for the environment. They avoid purchasing products and services that exploit workers in poor countries.

The Needs Driven — They tend to be impulse buyers. You can often reach this group by appealing to their fear of being inadequate (consider late night shopping channels: “Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”).

Use Psychographics to Build the Right Message

The more you know about your target audiences, the more you’ll understand how they spend their money — and the better equipped you’ll be to fine-tune your marketing.

For additional information, check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychographic
http://www.northcrossing.com/PsychographicMarketing.html

Marketing is a critical lifeline for any business. It helps identify, attract, satisfy and keep customers. So we asked creative professionals in the marketing realm: What’s a key marketing element most businesses neglect?

Geoff Wilson
President/CEO, 352 Media Group

“Most businesses forget to share their ‘why’ — the reason why they exist, what they believe in, what they stand for and where they are going. Tell your story, share your personality, let your customers get to know what you are all about. If you’re fuzzy on your own company’s ‘why,’ then you need to fix that and reconnect with the reason why the company was started to begin with. Learn the story and tell it to the world. It gives your brand a personality and people who believe what you believe will love your company as a result.

“I highly recommend reading Simon Sinek’s book ‘Start With Why.’ He does an excellent job of explaining how some companies, like Apple and Harley Davidson, have had tremendous marketing success because their entire brand embodies what they believe in.”

Follow Geoff @Geoff352

Tim Wall
Director of Marketing, LightCMS

“Goal tracking. While many business engage in online advertising and track things like click-through rates and website visits, few take the time to establish measurable goals and evaluate their marketing efforts based on cost per conversion. Cost per conversion is much more important than cost per impression or cost per click. Cost per conversion accounts for all marketing variables and tells you exactly how effective your marketing efforts are.

“To measure cost-per-conversion, you have to have a trackable goal on your website. There has to be something measurable that you clearly want your website visitor to do and that action must represent real value to your business. The trick is setting up the right goals, but once that’s accomplished, measuring cost per conversion is easy and will help ensure your marketing dollars are spent in the most efficient means possible.”

Follow Tim @lightcms

Mark Hobbs
Partner, Denote

“I think a key element that people neglect when marketing is to think like your customer. It is extremely important to consider the impact of each marketing effort and when and where the customer will be when it impacts them.

“Many businesses neglect to start marketing, especially with things like search engine optimization, thinking that it can be started later. By the time they realize they should have started last month, so it could take effect by now, they already expect results. Set clear consistent marketing goals and walk through your own experience as if you were a customer.”

Follow Mark @denotecom

Mustafa Demir
Founder & Creative Director, Freshmark Design & Branding

“Most companies are aware of the importance of brand positioning, having fresh market research data and knowing their target audience. In terms of online marketing, however, usability testing and conversion optimization usually don’t get the recognition they deserve.

“As important as having an outstanding design, a unique value proposition, a relevant-to-source product/service offering with clear call-to-action items, testing efficiency and making adjustments based on findings usually brings far greater value than the initial investment.

“Looking at how intricate they can get might be exciting, however, collecting stats alone doesn’t help improving the bottom line. At the end, if you don’t perform tests and measure the results comparatively it’s impossible to know if you’re realizing the true potential of your brand.”

Follow Mustafa @freshmark

Bryan Stuart
Principal & Creative Director, Sprout Creative

“I think a key marketing element that is often overlooked is the ability of your employees to really nail down the elevator pitch. It’s important that the people who live and breath as a representation of your company can fully understand who you are and what it is that you do. Then be able to concisely and effectively deliver that message in a very short conversation. You never know where your next job can come from!

“We do a lot of online work and we often see a huge neglect in web content management. We’re approached by excited clients wanting a website that is a robust CMS with latest news updates and social media marketing opportunities, etc. They want it all but don’t have the resources to manage it. A year later, the site is stagnant and basically exactly how we left it. It’s important to have a long-term strategic plan for the management of this content in place to really capitalize on what you can do with it.”

Follow Bryan @bryanstuart

Jeromy Stallings
Internet Marketing Director, Ninthlink

“Marketing on the internet is a little bit like a game of cat and mouse. You are always chasing after new traffic sources and figuring out innovative ways of converting that traffic into a sale or lead. Yet, this is not where many businesses fail! They fail because they do not put in the proper tracking and reporting tools to give insight to what is working and not working.

“So many times I walk into a clients office and ask them for a breakdown website traffic sources and conversion rates by source. And many times I walk away empty handed. Don’t get me wrong here — setting up proper tracking and reporting for all your traffic and conversion points is not the easiest job in the world! But, once setup, the real fun begins!

Follow Jeromy @jeromystallings

Agree? Disagree? What do you feel are the key marketing elements most businesses neglect?

Does your website content confuse visitors or inspire them to take action?

The single most crucial function of any business website is to get people to act, whether it involves calling you, emailing you, buying your product online, or getting off their butts and into your store. Writing in the passive voice is often awkward and confusing, and does not induce desired action.

Good writers of any kind (fiction, articles, blog posts, or web copy) know that writing in the active voice is more engaging, concise and clear than writing in the passive voice. But how can a business owner without a writing background tell the difference between the two?

The Passive Voice

What does the passive voice look like? In passive writing, the subject and object trade places, meaning the object falls at the end of the sentence. It also usually includes some form of ‘to be’ (is, are, am, was, were, has been, have been, had been, will be, will have been, being), followed by a past participle (a verb that typically ends in –ed).

Example:

“Colourful, snug and breathable superhero underpants are sold by our superhero clothing company.” In this sentence, the company is the object, and the underpants are the subject.

Technically, the passive voice is grammatically correct, but experienced writers avoid it because it often reads awkwardly and interrupts the flow of a composition. In many cases, it’s also less concise, which, as we’ve discussed before, is not ideal for web writing.

The Active Voice

Writing in the active voice puts the object in a clearer position in your sentence, and uses active verbs.

For example, the passive sentence above becomes:

“Our superhero clothing company sells colourful, snug and breathable superhero underpants.” This version sounds a lot smoother and more direct, doesn’t it?

Calls to Action

Writing in the active voice is especially important when you compose your calls to action.

What is a call to action? A call to action is a sentence (or two) that persuades the reader to act. It usually falls at the end of a page, or in a prominent area such as a bright button in the top corner or side column. After you’ve explained why your business is the best choice (using the active voice wherever possible), the call to action encourages your website visitor to act on the information received, and hopefully give you his or her business.

An example of a call to action written in the passive voice:

“Want our colourful, snug and breathable superhero underpants to be enjoyed by your nether regions? Order today!”

A much more concise and active version:

“Your nether regions will enjoy our colourful, snug and breathable superhero underpants. Order today!”

Still Unclear?

Here are more examples of the passive voice transformed into the active voice.

Passive:

The meat dress was worn by Lady Gaga.

Active:

Lady Gaga wore the meat dress.

Passive:

The milkshake was regurgitated by the toddler.

Active:

The toddler regurgitated the milkshake.

Passive:

This article was written by a Webcopyplus copywriter.

Active:

A Webcopyplus copywriter wrote this article.