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How to Rescue Your Readers from Purchase Paralysis

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Ever been so scared you can’t move? It’s a common reaction to a really scary situation. We know we’re in trouble. We know we need to move. But we can’t seem to convince ourselves, so we do nothing. Some people make a living helping others out of tight spots like this one. Firefighters, for example, are trained in how to get in there and persuade the immobilized person that moving is a really good idea. The firefighter quickly establishes trust, speaks firmly with authority, and gives extremely clear and specific instructions. These persuasion strategies are the same as those used in persuasive copy. Making a decision about whether or not to buy a product is far less scary than being trapped in a burning building, but there are surprising similarities. Your ideal customer might do what you want him to do, but not without some waffling. He hesitates before clicking the Buy button … paralyzed by fear. So break out the tools of persuasion to help him out. Information is not persuasive Imagine you’re trapped in a burning building. Now imagine I come over and simply tell you a few logical reasons you should move. Fire is dangerous. The human body has not evolved to withstand the ambient temperatures inside a burning building. The fumes being produced are highly unhealthy. The building’s structure is likely to become unsound, which creates additional dangers. Those are all very good reasons to move. This is valuable information. But it doesn’t help you get out of that fear-based paralysis. Information alone isn’t enough. Persuasion isn’t about information or the facts. Very often, we already know the facts. Persuasion is about recognizing that the prospect’s fears are valid, and then allaying those fears. It’s about saying, Yeah, I know you’re in trouble and so damned scared you don’t know what to do, but if you listen to me, I can help. It’s about getting rid of the fear. Why is your reader afraid? Figuring out what scares your prospect is the copywriter’s first job. It’s (probably) not burning-building fear, but your readers do have fears. Maybe they’re afraid this product won’t solve their problem Maybe they’re afraid they’re going to throw money away (again) Maybe they’re afraid they won’t ever use your solution So speak to those fears. In a burning building, you’re scared of moving because being burned hurts like crazy, you can’t breathe too well, and you might die. Those are your current fears. They are big and valid, and factual data about fires won’t help you move. But if the firefighter starts talking to you in a calm, authoritative voice that convinces you he actually has a way out of this, you’re going to listen up. You’re ready to hear him say something that makes the whole situation less scary. He’ll probably give you some very specific instructions. You’re going to take just two steps forward, and I’m going to take your hand. Then I’m going to guide you out of here. Don’t focus on what’s going on around you. Just take my hand. You can tell he’s a professional, that he’s done this before, and that if you just stick with him and follow the clear instructions, you’re going to be all right. Sound familiar? Help prospects move beyond purchase paralysis It should. This is the core message of almost every piece of persuasive copy you’ve ever read. Hey, I know you’re afraid of buying this product because of (specific reasons). But you know what? It’s going to be okay. I’ve been where you are now, and I know the way out of here. So just take my hand, click on the button that says Add to Cart , and in just a moment you’ll have the solution that makes it all okay. Click the button and let’s get you out of this mess, okay? “Let’s get you out of this mess,” is the simple and satisfying underlying message. Here are the steps: Acknowledge and empathize with the prospect’s fear. Demonstrate that you’re trustworthy. Social proof helps; so does pre-selling with exceptional content . Convey your authority . Let the prospect know you can handle this kind of mess with ease. Let the prospect see what the way out looks like. Show the benefits of your solution. Give clear and specific instructions for what to do next. Persuasion is about saying: Stick with me, kid. We’ll get you to the solution, safe and sound. Most people are just waiting to be persuaded that they have nothing to fear. Good copywriting is about helping them make a move. About the Author: If you’re afraid of writing your own web copy, all you have to do is make one small step. Contact Men with Pens , and James will hold your hand all the way to web copy freedom.

firefighters How to Rescue Your Readers from Purchase Paralysis

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How to Rescue Your Readers from Purchase Paralysis

7 Quick-Start Techniques for Fighting the Fear to Write

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Congratulations, you have a hot writing assignment! Maybe it’s a proposal that could make your company’s fortune. Maybe it’s your first professional writing gig. It could even be a guest post for Copyblogger. The stakes are high . . . and you know it. In fact, it’s all you can think about . . . the F.E.A.R. trying to sabotage your aspirations for success. Your fingers are shaking too hard to type anything , and your stomach has sunk down to the bottom of an ocean so deep that all the fish have weird lights on their heads. Well that’s not helping any, now is it? Instead, let’s get those pixels flowing with these 7 not-too-scary steps. 1. Write down your goal What does success look like? Get imaginative , specific and visceral . Imagine yourself being awarded with the Employee of the Month trophy while your boss announces: Without Catherine’s vital work on the proposal, we would never have won this contract. Now we will be giving bonuses to all our staff and hiring three new ones, and we couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks, Catherine. Everyone is clapping and there’s cake. This goal serves two purposes: It encourages you to get writing. It gives you a way to measure whether your writing is effective . If it increases the chance of the successful proposal/trophy/cake then it’s effective. If it does not , then you need to make changes. An objective yardstick is critical when your emotions are getting the better of you. 2. Plan your content Grab your favorite brainstorming tool. Could be mind-mapping software, a bunch of index cards, parchment and quill pen . . . whatever suits you. Start with the high-level ideas. If you’re writing a sales page, you need to describe the benefits , so that’s an entry. The call to action is another. What content do you need to provide to support the high-level ideas? In the last example, each specific benefit would have a separate entry. Go down as many levels as you need to until every entry makes only one point . Evaluate the entries. Does each one move you toward your goal? Can some be removed? What order makes the most sense? Shuffle and remove entries until you have a working plan of what to write. Notice you now have a nice, clear idea of what the finished document should look like. Awesome. It’s time to take a deep breath and start on the actual writing. 3. Ten minutes of gibberish If you’re looking at the blank screen with mounting horror ( Have I forgotten the English language entirely? ), open a new document and pound out anything . A history of cheese The lyrics of your favorite song A stream-of-consciousness piece that starts with “Daffodil Philomena carousel elf-wine fodder marmalade” A cake recipe An imaginary shopping list Endless lines of All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy Don’t force it to make sense! Just let it flow out with no judgment or expectations. When there’s no pressure to get anything Right, for many people the mental vapor-lock vanishes. They can go back and start writing the important stuff. 4. Divide your ideas into sections Remember back in school when we were taught, “One idea per paragraph”? Still a good idea, although you may need more than a paragraph. But each section of your document should convey one idea, and only one. Introduce each section with a good subhead to make the document more readable and keep your ideas organized. You can go back and adjust your content plan to include extra ideas, but give each idea its own section and subhead. 5. Explain it to the potted plant If you’re trying to make a point and you’re . . . umm . . . you know, how do I say it . . . it’s on the tip of my tongue . . . stuck on how to explain it? Talk it out with another person. It doesn’t actually need to be a real person. It can be to the potted plant on the windowsill. You’ll start out stumbling and inarticulate, but quickly the thoughts will come together and you’ll have it all sorted in your head. Or you may realize that this was one of those ideas that seemed good at first blush but doesn’t really make any sense. That’s fine too. Delete it and move on. 6. Editing, your deadly new friend After you’ve written what you need to write, the dreaded post-writing stage kicks in. This is where you edit your work to make it the best it can possibly be. Revising, polishing, reordering and spell-checking are all wonderful tools. They help you make your point more clearly and concisely. BUT. Perfectionism, the copywriter’s curse , loves editing. If you’re not careful, deadlines will fly by while you make infinitesimal improvements. Never try to write and edit at the same time. Write first, edit later. Focus on removing words when editing. This doesn’t mean you can’t tell a relevant story or insert an interesting adjective, but every word must contribute to that goal you set out in Step 1. Set an upper limit on revisions. For truly critical documents, you might go as high as ten revisions. But pick a number and stick to it , no matter how much you think, “Oh but I just have this one tweak . . .” 7. Still overwhelmed? Today I’m releasing a new resource called Awesome Fear-Wrangling: Manage your Website Fears, Grow an Awesome Website . If you want some industrial-strength help, come check it out! (There’s a special bonus today too. It’s my birthday. There’s cake.) What are your techniques to get you writing when you’re facing a bunch of fear? Tell us in the comments! About the Author: Catherine is wicked passionate about helping people to start and grow an awesome website. When she’s not adding five-minute missions to BeAwesomeOnline.com , she can invariably be found on Twitter .

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Why You Shouldn’t Write for Other Writers

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There’s a scene in “Mad Men”, the TV drama about a 1960s advertising agency. One of the junior copywriters is showing the Creative Director an ad he’s just written. The ad is clever, flowery, and poetic. The Creative Director cuts the copywriter down in five short, stern words: “Don’t write for other writers.” Bingo. It’s not the copywriter’s literary chums who are buying the product. It’s housewives in Indiana. Clever copy might get the copywriter clapped on the back by his colleagues, but it won’t get the product sold. I’ve seen this happen a lot in the blogosphere. I’ve done it. You’ve probably done it, too. We’ve written blog posts that other bloggers like (especially high-traffic, “A-Lister” bloggers who link to us). And we squealed like happy children when we saw our traffic stats spike up massively. But there’s a downside Traffic spikes can be quite addictive. The type of blog post that might get you a lot of “bloggerly love” may not be (and probably isn’t) the kind of blog post that gets people to buy whatever it is you’re selling. Traffic and influence are great. It’s lovely having all these people kissing your hiney at social media conferences. But at the end of the day, it’s not the A-Listers or the pajama-clad, Web 2.0 basement-dwellers who are paying your mortgage. It’s the regular shmoes with a regular problem who are willing to pull out their credit cards to get it solved. Back in 2005, I was working with Thomas Mahon to create the blog EnglishCut.com so Tom could sell his $4,000 hand-made tailored English suits. When I first started talking about the idea, a lot of people said, This will never work. Bloggers don’t wear suits. They’re geeks. They like dressing down. Those people were making the same mistake as the copywriter on Mad Men. That guy thought that just because he was writing, he was trying to impress other writers. These people thought that just because we were blogging, we were trying to impress other bloggers with our product. They were wrong We knew the people who liked $4,000 suits were out there. We knew our content was better than anybody else’s out there. We knew our product was world-class, up there with the best of the best. We knew if we just kept at it, the right people would find us. We weren’t trying to sell the suits to bloggers. We weren’t “writing for other writers”. We weren’t “blogging for other bloggers”. We were writing and blogging about suits for people who loved suits. And it worked. Spectacularly well. These days, for every suit order Tom accepts, he has to turn down four or five offers. He’s just too busy now. Five years later, I’m applying what I learned with Tom to my own art business. I never think about traffic any more. I think about my friends and people who can and want to support my business. “Bloggerly Love” might be good PR, but it’s a hugely unproductive time-sink if you spend too much time worrying about it — which many people do. Sure, if you’re writing for Copyblogger, writing for other writers is what you do. But most of you don’t, so writing for other writers isn’t something to worry about. Worry about the people who really matter to you. Create killer content that really matters to them . Create a killer product people actually want to buy . Do that, and you’ll find very little reason to worry what writers think. Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist who blogs over at gapingvoid.com . He makes his living by selling fine art prints , doing “Cube Grenade” commissioned art work and sending out daily cartoons on “Hugh’s Daily Frickin’ Newsletter.”

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Sean D’Souza

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Sean D’Souza – an emerging name in the Copywriting industry. Sean, along with being a Copywriter, is a graphic designer, cartoon & web designer and also a speaker. Plus, he is also a business consultant. One man, multiple roles, but he is yet to reach a point wherein people can start recognizing him; having said

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Three Lively Blogging Debates to Explore in 2010

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Sometimes it seems like we’re running out of juicy debates in the blogosphere. We used to have endless back and forth conversations about a few pet topics. Long posts versus short. How-to posts versus introspection. Professionalism versus authenticity. Ginger versus Mary Ann . We never had a debate about bullet points , mind you. Everyone knows bullet points are good. As those debates quiet down, some truths are coming to light. We know that content is still (yes, even after it’s been said so often it’s become a cliché) king. We know that there isn’t a single “right” way to blog. We know that no matter how sick you are of list posts , they are going to keep working forever. That doesn’t mean the debates are over, of course. We’ve just moved on to more subtle topics. People will always like to take sides on what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong. We like to think about what’s ethical, what’s proper, what’s good, what’s professional. So here are some interesting up-and-coming debates I see rising up around blogging: 1. Should blogs remain free? When a blog is born, it makes sense that it’s free. No one knows if the content is any good yet. It’s a bit like giving away free consultations if you’re just starting out as a consultant. You get experience, your subject gets a free consult, and gradually you develop enough expertise to command a reasonable price for your services. So far, we haven’t seen that evolution happen with blogs. They get stuck on “free,” no matter how elite or expert their content. The debate is whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe blogs are best used the way they mostly are today, as one of the best marketing strategies out there. After all, they cost practically nothing, and they can generate a huge audience for whatever you’re selling. Or maybe bloggers are getting hosed. Or maybe it depends on what kind of blog you have. That’s all part of the debate. 2. Is it okay to hire a ghostwriter for a non-corporate blog? Many companies hire out blogging to professionals. They see blogging as a way to generate credibility, rather than a way to create personal relationships with their readers. They’re hoping for search engine traffic and impressed potential buyers, not pals. (There’s a sub-debate in there for you — would companies be better served by becoming pals with their customers?) This means that companies don’t think twice about outsourcing their blog content. They treat their blog as just more web copy. I’ve talked to a few individual bloggers, though, who find the practice of ghostwriting abhorrent. To them, blogging is all about creating a personal relationship. If the name at the top of the post is the CEO of the company, they become very upset when they find out the post was really written by a copywriter. This is an interesting debate, and it’s one that’s only just starting to make its presence heard. Should bloggers be like newspaper columnists, with a byline at the top of each post? In that scenario, companies could get a big credibility boost from being able to hire and keep a prestigious name. Or is writing a blog just another kind of copywriting? One that doesn’t need a byline any more than a brochure or sales letter does? 3. Should your identity remain private? Everyone has had to suffer the troll . The guy who shows up, leaves a nasty anonymous comment, and then goes scampering away again. We all know these guys are cowards. Most of them would never say such a thing if they actually had to face you on the street. So should we make sure they have to show their faces? There’s some talk about creating online identities so that you’ll always be able to tell who’s commenting. We’re probably not talking about giving out their home address, but at least their name, maybe their website. Now this might seem like a pretty good idea, especially if you’ve recently been flamed by some anonymous yahoo. But it may not be so simple. Would you want every comment you make on a political website to be traced back to you? Every comment about a sensitive topic? Every pointed remark about your mother-in-law? Even if each of those comments is polite and reasonable, you may not want everyone in your neighborhood knowing you made them. These aren’t the only debates out there. But I think they’re more interesting than whether or not we should use action words in our headlines. (We should. That debate’s over. Next subject.) What are the debates you’ve noticed happening around blogging? And what are your opinions on the ones I’ve mentioned here? About the Author: James Chartrand is the copywriter who’s not afraid to embrace a good debate. Check out Men with Pens for more tips, tricks and techniques on how to write better blog posts, or better yet, sign up for the Men with Pens RSS feed right here .

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Three Lively Blogging Debates to Explore in 2010