Usable Words

The other day I idly typed “copywriter melbourne” into Google (as you do). Here’s what turned up:

Yep, that’s me, the third link on the page. Pretty good, huh? Here’s what’s even better: this took almost no effort on my part. I only have a stub of a website at the moment, this blog aside. (My real website is launching very soon, by the way, and just between you and me, it’s looking good.) I haven’t gone beyond the most rudimentary forms of search engine optimisation. And I’ve been in business for a shorter time than most of my competitors.

In fact, I feel a bit sheepish about placing higher on the page than experienced copywriters who’ve obviously put a great deal of effort into SEO. How did I do it?

To cut a long story short, I did two things:

1. I listed my business with Google Local.
2. I happened to have an office close to Melbourne CBD.

This listing, you see, isn’t a “normal” search result. In regular “organic” searches – the kind the SEO industry is built around – I’m pretty much where you expect me to be (nowhere, more or less).

But when searchers type in something that Google recognises as a location, Google thinks “aha, this person is looking for something in their local area”, and so the first thing it displays is a map showing businesses that have registered themselves as being located there. Those organic results that everyone works so hard for get relegated to second place.

It probably wasn’t Google’s intention, but this is particularly good for business like mine that are located close to a CBD. Even though people searching for “copywriter melbourne” are probably looking for copywriters in the greater Melbourne area, Google starts at the CBD and works outwards. Which is rotten luck for all the copywriters in Frankston.

Here’s the call to action.

If you have a business with any kind of address, even your house, you probably can’t do much to change your physical location (not at short notice, anyway!), but you can take care of getting listed right now. Go to Google Local, and list yourself. It’s easy, and free. Go on, do it now. I’ll still be here when you get back.

Done? Good. Because what I haven’t told you yet is that for some of you, it’s just become even more important to have an up-to-date Google Local listing. You see, Google has just started serving up these local results some of the time even when searchers don’t type in a location! (They do this by making a guess about where you are based on your IP address. Hope that doesn’t feel too creepy.)

Now, this change will mainly affect businesses that are genuinely local – florists, dentists, pizza shops, and so on. [Edit: for businesses that aren't clearly local, like copywriters, the situation is less clear - see the comment from Glenn Murray below.] If you’re one of those local businesses, having a Google Local listing is now more important that being listed in any other directory, online or off. It’s the easiest, cheapest SEO boost you can possibly imagine. Hopefully you don’t need any more encouragement, because you took my advice two paragraphs ago, but I’m just saying.

What’s going to be interesting over the next few months is seeing businesses start gaming the system. I can see businesses registering under fake addresses in popular locations. I can see “public-spirited” competitors reporting those fake addresses to Google. I can see new businesses springing up to provide “legitimate” virtual addresses. Isn’t it funny how, in our virtualised world, a simple change on Google’s part suddenly makes actual locations important again?

Emotional benefits? Business clients? If that combination sounds strange to you, keep reading.

If you’re nodding your head, on the other hand, you probably already know about using emotional benefits as a way of persuading potential customers they need you.

This idea has become pretty well-accepted in consumer product marketing circles (which doesn’t mean it’s always applied well of course!). But when it comes to business to business (B2B) marketing, there’s still an assumption out there that the only relevant benefit of any product or service is the “bottom line” or return on investment.

That’s a mistake. A big one. When you’re talking to a business, you’re talking to a person within that business. And business people are just as emotion-driven as anyone else.

Yes, business people need to justify their expenses. But the key word there is “justify”. By all means, follow through with some convincing-sounding numbers. Flatter business customers into thinking their buying decision is 100% rational. But start by appealing to their emotions, because emotion is what actually drives their behaviour.

To get you started, here are some emotional benefits you might think about offering potential customers if you’re in a B2B industry:

1. Be less busy.
2. Stop spending time on routine tasks.
3. Spend more time doing what you like.
4. Spend less time doing what you hate.
5. Make your workplace fun.
6. Make your workplace healthy.
7. Make your workplace relaxing.
8. Make your workplace green.
9. Look more professional.
10. Look less boring.
11. Look bigger than you are.
12. Find out what your customers think about you.
13. Understand what drives your customers.
14. Help your customers understand what drives you.
15. Make your customers love you.
16. Make your customers want to spend more time with you.
17. Make your customers want to tell their friends about you.
18. Get wonderful staff.
19. Keep the wonderful staff you’ve got.
20. Cope with change.
21. Cope with stasis.
22. Learn to recognise opportunity.
23. Don’t be left behind.
24. Beat the recession.
25. Get talked about.
26. Get talked about in better terms.
27. Impress strangers.
28. Learn stuff you don’t know about your staff.
29. Learn stuff you don’t know about yourself.
30. Help people learn about the great things you’ve done.
31. Persuade people to forgive your mistakes.
32. Get on better with other departments/branches.
33. Look like a hero in front of your boss/board/shareholders.
34. Convince your boss/board/shareholders you’ve earnt your salary (or your bonus!).
35. Get a promotion.
36. Be more powerful
37. Become the boss.
38. Help your community.
39. Make history.
40. Change the world.

What do you think? Which ones have I missed?

(I know a popular one is “Work on your business, not in your business”, but I kind of hate that one. Remind me to talk about why some time.)

Photo: Diabolic Preacher

My credit union (which, by the way, is a terrific organisation that employs excellent customer service staff) has recently launched a fancy new website that’s mostly very pleasant to use. But there’s one thing I think they’re doing very wrong: using modal windows to advertise their products.

It’s been a much-discussed trend in web interface design lately, littering sites with these windows that require users to take some action before they can get on with what they came to do. They do look pretty nifty and have their uses – they can work really well for quickly displaying full-sized versions of thumbnail images, for instance. In fact, I’m planning to have a (user-initiated) modal on my website, so I’m certainly not against them in principle.

But when they’re used for advertising, they really do suck – it’s the ultimate form of “interruption marketing” because users can’t get on with anything else until they’ve interacted with the ad in some way. On a banking site, which existing customers use on a daily basis to accomplish specific tasks, that’s an even bigger sin.

When my credit union started using modals to advertise credit cards a couple of months ago, I wrote to them with a polite objection. They sent me a prompt reply, which was great, but they didn’t really seem to be taking in what I was saying. They pointed out that there was a cookie preventing anyone seeing the ad more than once (fair enough, but some people disable cookies, and maybe once is one too many). And they went on to tell me again how wonderful the credit card was. So I guess they think it’s OK to interrupt people if the product you’re selling is good.

This week I see the modal ads are back, this time advertising mortgages. What do you think – am I being a drama queen, or do you agree that this is really not on for a financial institution?

Photo credit: House of Sims

This is the final post in my series on dealing with objections in web content. The first two are here and here.

The story so far: We’ve established that, for any objection that might potentially get in the way of a person’s decision to buy your product and service, there are three broad types of objector: explicit objectors (those who have the objection and will voice it), latent objectors (those who have the objection, at least at some level, but won’t voice it), and non-objectors (those who don’t have the objection at all).

We then went further and divided each of these three categories of objector into a further three subcategories. And we finished the last post by saying that the way to deal with all these different types of objector is not to try to write something that will please everybody. So what do you do instead?

How to deal with multiple types of objector

I could deal with this topic at very great length (well, OK, I could deal with most topics at very great length) but I’m going to boil it down to five steps:

1. Think about the audience for this specific piece of writing.
2. Try to work out approximately what proportion of this audience will fit into each category of objector.
3. Work out how much impact answering the objection will have for each category.
4. Write your copy for the category of objector that looks most important taking both Steps 2 and 3 into account.
5. If you get the chance to address other categories implicitly, go for it.

So let’s take each of these in turn. read more >