Author: techology

How To Create A USP Out Of Thin Air (and generate $9.1bn)

Searching for that elusive USP? It’s tough when your product doesn’t seem to hit the mark.

US brewer Anheuser Busch (and all brewers) are in the same boat. I mean, a beer is a beer right? WRONG.

Of course not. It’s a bird, it’s a horse, it’s a pinup girl…

Here’s some of the ways Anheuser overcame their ‘commodity’ problem:

1. Use your logo to tell a story. They added an Eagle to their logo implying it was the Eagle of beers (later one of their brands, Budweiser, was dubbed the King of Beers – there’s no limit to this).

2. Be first by creating a geographically unique market out of thin air: “First National Beer”. “Brewed Exclusively in Hell, Michigan” (I made that one up, but you get the idea).

3. Get sexist. The ‘Budweiser Girl’ poster campaign lasted 30 years.

4. Launch a campaign. Anheuser’s USP in 1914 was its year-long newspaper campaign against the threat to personal freedom from prohibition.

When prohibition began anyway, they created a new alcohol-free product called Bevo (first to market USP). Half the brewers went bust during prohibition.

5. In the 1930’s they used heavy horses to show their historical connection with brewing (“you may love your new car, but you can always rely on a traditional brew” – selling old as new).

6. In the 1950’s they used their 100th anniversary to differentiate. And they attached further differentiation using the association of famous historical characters with their “The Beer of Your Lifetime Too” campaign.

7. By 1960 they’d become number one by associating their brand with the mass market. The “people like us drink beer like this” concept, or as they put it “Where there’s life, there’s Bud” (“you’re alive, we’re alive, fancy a pint?”).

8. In 1965 they introduced ‘value’ as a USP with the simple slogan “It’s worth it” (can you see how easy it is to create USP’s? – just add a great copywriter).

They missed a trick though. They made it about the beer, not the drinker. L’Oreal stole the idea 7 years later and made it personal (“You’re worth it”).

9. Give it a nickname. Hey, why not use a nickname as your USP?

And let’s make it all warm and cozy “Fancy a Bud, bud?”.

10. You can even USP on sound, as in the famous fizzy “Buscssssshhhhh” sound of the cap popping off campaign in the 1970’s (also used by Schweppes in the UK).

Here’s a BONUS entry: “If Heineken created copywriters, they would probably be the best copywriters in the world”. But since they don’t, you can always join the ICA.

December 5, 2018
We’re All The Same Under The Hood

Never be afraid to contact people no matter how important or authoritative you think they are. I’ve made amazing contacts using this mindset.

For example, I’m now in direct contact with the CEO of a major £300m publishing business.

And all because I followed up on an invite put out on a podcast. As a result I’ve got a meeting with their international business director.

I didn’t say anything special, I just asked about something he’d mentioned and that I was doing a keynote in London next week.

You might say “Oh, you’re a keynote speaker. Well that’s not surprising then…” – but it is surprising. Keynote speakers are two a penny (never be afraid to contact keynote speakers).

The one thing I realised a decade ago was that under our clothes we’re all human. Strip away the glamour and trinkets and that’s all that’s left.

We’re all fearful of certain things. We all get excited about certain things. We all get sad.

We all get happy.

But above all, we all need others around us (the real recluse is an extremely rare beast).

I had “respect” for authority beaten into me at school (literally) and it took me 35 years to beat it back out again.

This is why compassion and empathy are the most important mental tools I know. You cannot fail in business if you adopt these things.

November 26, 2018
How To Turn A Commodity Into A Luxury And Make More Money – An Example From Science of Copywriting

Pricing has always been problematic for people. It’s the same whether we’re in business, at a car boot sale or selling to a friend.

We get stuck in our own mental model of the world. The trouble is, the world we’re stuck in is of our own making. It’s not the same world as the one we’re trying to sell into.

If that concept is new to you, then I’m delighted to be the one to introduce it. We truly are all different, and it’s why there’s no cookie cutter method for making money other than selling something for more than you paid for it (be it money or time).

When it comes to pricing, there’s only two models you need to be aware of:

1. Commodity and Luxury

2. Essential and non Essential

Commodities are essential. That’s why they’re commodities. Everyone knows what they are, and they also know their cost.

Luxuries are non essential. Everyone knows what they are, but they don’t know their cost.

The trick in pricing is to turn a commodity into a luxury, and then turn that into an essential. And the way to do that, which has never changed in the history of marketing, is to add value to the commodity you’re selling.

This is how Ford were able to turn Mondeos into Jaguars and double the price for less than the cost in the early 2000s.

If we take a recent example in the Science of Copywriting Facebook group, Lee Dickinson asked about proofreading fees. Now there’s a commodity in the writing world if ever there was one.

It’s a commodity because we can all read. But it still has a certain amount of value because we cannot all spell. And that value increases further because not all of us are good at grammar (though both these values are being commoditized through apps).

This moves the proofreader closer towards the professional end of the market, but no one’s going to get rich.

So how can you add more value?

First you need to do the obvious – position yourself as different from the average proofreader.

One way to do that is show evidence you always deliver 100% error free work (even the most popular books contain typos – you can use that as a differentiator once you have a few jobs under your belt).

Another way is to treat each job as a project rather than at an hourly or wordcount rate. That is, you talk with the publisher about expected sales (they’ll know how large the first print run will be – so they’ll have some idea about this).

This adds a higher degree of responsibility to the task, and so increases the value.

For example, J K Rowling’s publishers would have paid a considerably higher price for getting her last book proofread than her first book (and no doubt at J K Rowling’s insistence too).

When you explain that you treat every project with the same 100% degree of accuracy, people who care will be happy to pay a premium for it (who wants badly proofread books?).

Another way is to become a specialist proofreader. Pick an industry you know a lot about, and only pitch to publishers who sell to that sector. This will give you far higher status and allow you to become the player in that sector.

November 23, 2018
Copywriters: Choosing The Right Voice

You can manufacture a writing voice or use your own. It’s the same for actors. Some use their own voice throughout their career (Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson), the rest choose method acting and pick the appropriate accent, style etc.

(Meryl Streep, Christian Waltz).

The dilemma for all new copywriters is which to choose. My recommendation would be to develop your own voice (which takes time – so be patient). Your voice becomes your USP (you want people to say “no one writes copy as good as [insert your name]”).

However, if you develop the ability to write in many voices, then you can use that to divide and conquer markets (getting copywriting jobs is the same as any marketing exercise – it’s all about positioning you as Unique, Necessary and Irresistible).

If you do choose a multi-voice approach, please please please never use the “corporate voice” unless you’re offered a lot of money (this is just a plea to save the rest of us from more boring and useless copy – thank you 🙂

November 17, 2018
Copywriters: How To Get Attention, Delight Your Clients, And Win More Business

The next most valuable thing after time is attention. No attention = no sale. No attention means every word you wrote fails (not necessarily because of the words, just that no one read them).

So it has nothing to do with the copy, and everything to do with the wrong audience. They weren’t ready to buy. They were quite happy with what they’d already got.

They weren’t interested in what you had. They failed to notice you have anything anyway.

It’s the biggest mistake any copywriter (or person hiring a copywriter can make) – audience identification.

So you can make the most outlandish claim on the planet and it will still fail because no one who saw it was bothered.

Which brings us to the problem of marketing vs copywriting. If you’ve been hired by a firm with a marketing department, their brief should be stacked full of demographic audience stats.

But unfortunately, it happens all the time. And you’re going to get the blame for it when your sales copy fails.

So you owe it to yourself (and your clients) to spell out the expectations of any copy. And that in a nutshell is to let them know that ALL copy is an experiment. That until you get data back from trials, no is going to be any the wiser.

That if it fails the first time, that’s good, because it rules out at least one set of things that were wrong before you came on the scene.

And it also means that you’re going to need an agreement in place that it’s going to take time to get the pitch right for the audience, and then to tweak it into making a decent return on their investment.

And finally, that if they don’t agree to that, then there’s no way you’ll be working for them.

Do that, and I guarantee you’ll be taken seriously (or thrown out, which, if that happens, will be a good thing).

This is part of what positioning means. Unless you’re willing to position yourself as the Master and Expert you know you are, you will be taken advantage of, blamed, and dumped (and who can blame them?).

November 13, 2018
Here’s How To Open A Loop…

What’s the simplest way to force a reader to read on? Open a loop.

For example. Which of these sentences opens a loop?

1. “Officers save man from burning car”

2. “Officers battled to save man from burning car”

In the first sentence, the action is all over (man saved). In the second, we want to know if the officers won the battle. It’s written in the past tense, so we know there’s more to come (and there’s also a strong implication the man didn’t survive – but we don’t know, and that’s the point of a loop, it leaves us hanging on).

We might have written:

3. “Officers battle to save man from burning car”.

But that fails too. It’s a statement. It’s written in the present tense.

We already know we’re not going to get an answer – at least not right now. Game over.

Here’s another: “Freddie Smith, a homeless man from Oxford who lost his entire family in a tragic car accident, hit the jackpot yesterday.”. Now we’re rocking. What jackpot did he hit?

Was it the lottery? And what happened in that car accident?

Or we could have written: “Freddie Smith, a homeless man from Oxford who lost his entire family in a tragic car accident, won the lottery yesterday.”. Great. He won the lottery.

Game over. And because we ended on the lottery, we might well have forgotten all about the car accident.

Words are subtle. Slight changes will keep us hanging on, or leaving in droves.

This is very different from A/B split-testing. With loops we know if we’ve opened one. With split-testing we haven’t got a clue until the readers vote with their wallets.

And just to hammer that home, changing the colour of a button on a shopping cart may affect the conversion rate. But changing the tense of a sentence with intent WILL change the conversion rate.

November 10, 2018
When An Audience is Bored…

I don’t know why, but the vast majority of people hate to ask questions, yet we all love to answer them. It’s the reason quiz shows work so well – someone else does the asking.

So next time you’re at a seminar and bored out of your mind despite the promises, you’ll know it’s a Message to Market Mismatch. Here’s why:

1. When someone has a product nobody wants, they fail.

2. When someone has a red-hot product nobody wants, they fail.

3. When someone has a red-hot product that a group of people would die for, but they market to a group of people who wouldn’t, they fail.

Because the value of any product or service, howsoever delivered, is entirely created and held in the minds of its audience.

And if the message someone is giving does not match the message in someone else’s head, it fails every time.

This is why the most important thing anyone can ever do before writing a single word of copy is ask the audience.

November 9, 2018
Want To Get It Done? Here’s How…

Growth comes from forming good habits (or to put it another way, it certainly doesn’t come from bad ones).

The first good habit I learned took some effort – cleaning my teeth twice a day. As a kid I tried to avoid it and ended up with a mouth full of fillings from a very entrepreneurial dentist.

Once I’d replaced the terror of the drill with the pleasure of toothpaste, the habit was formed.

The next bad habit was smoking (I crushed it by recalling all the bad things it did to my body every time I craved one). The third was drinking (triggered by a massive health problem).

So why did it take me so long to realise that real change only happens when you change your habits? Education.

I’ve read a few books on habits, but by far and away the best is James Clear’s new book: Atomic Habits.

You can repeat affirmations all day long, but we’re told that unless we say them with emotion, they don’t do very much (which makes it our fault if they fail – we weren’t emotional enough – think and grow rich anyone?).

OR…

You can say out loud to yourself “I will [action] at [time] at [place]” (eg. “I will write 1000 words at 6am every day in the study”).

But you can take it a step further (which is where Atomic Habits kicks in) by doing what James calls ‘Habit Stacking’. “I will [new habit] after [existing habit] in the [location]”. For example: “I will write 1000 words after breakfast in the study”.

Now the habit is ‘stuck’ to another habit instead of time. And slowly your day will be built on automatic habits that get done. Nice one Mr Clear.

November 8, 2018

Ever Wondered Why Some Writing Sucks?

Why Some Writing Works, And Some Just Sucks

Good writing follows a system. Mediocre writing does not.

When you understand the system, your words land and your message sticks. When you do not, you are left wondering why your writing falls flat.

The Simple System Behind Clear Writing

At the core sits a fundamental pattern, Noun followed by Verb. Think, He said. Jim raged. Jane shone.

These examples may sound a little Janet and John Kindergarten, yet they work in any context and for any audience. Start simple, then build complexity on purpose.

Only when you master good writing, can you confidently master great writing.

Why Noun + Verb Works Every Time

Clarity – readers instantly know who did what.
Momentum – verbs drive action, which keeps attention.
Confidence – simple sentences sound sure of themselves.
Versatility – the pattern works in fiction, marketing, and technical docs.

What Bad Writing Often Looks Like

Passive voice: The report was written by the team.
Noun stacks: The customer experience optimization framework process.
Weasel words: some, various, several, robust, world class.
Overlong sentences: Three ideas stuffed into one breathless line.

Quick Fixes You Can Apply Today

Start with a clear subject (name who acts).
Use strong specific verbs (and avoid is, are, has, does when possible).
Prefer active voice: The server processed the data (not ‘the data was processed by the server’).
Limit one main idea per sentence (keep clauses under control).
Read aloud (if you find yourself gasping for air, the sentence is probably too long).

Before And After, See The Difference

Flabby Sentence	Simple Noun + Verb Rewrite	Why It Works
There was a feeling of anger in Jim.	Jim raged.	Noun and verb, no filler, emotion shown, not told.
The data is being processed by the server.	The server processes the data.	Active voice, faster and clearer.
Our solution facilitates the optimization of workflows.	Our tool cuts your workload by 30 percent.	Concrete verb and number, benefit first.
There are several considerations that must be taken into account.	Consider three things.	Direct subject and verb, fewer empty words.
An announcement will be made regarding the price change.	We will announce the price change.	Names the actor, short and honest.

How This Scales Across Genres

Marketing

Weak: Our platform enables synergy across stakeholders.
Strong: Our platform connects your team in one place.

Technical Writing

Weak: Errors are thrown by the API when limits are exceeded.
Strong: The API returns an error when you exceed the limit.

Fiction

Weak: There was a sense that the night was cold.
Strong: The night bit hard.

When You Can Bend Or Break The Rule

Passive for emphasis: The patient was misdiagnosed, the focus is on the victim.
Rhythm and variety, mix short and medium sentences for flow.
Dialog and voice, let characters speak as they would, clarity still matters.

Break the rule, but do it on purpose. Know what you lose and what you gain.

Mini Case Studies

1. Landing Page Headline

Before: A comprehensive solution for the management of invoices.
After: Save five hours a week on invoices.
Result: Higher click through, clearer promise, stronger verb.

2. Support Email

Before: Your request has been received and will be processed within 48 hours.
After: We got your request, we will reply within 48 hours.
Result: Warmer tone, named actor, fewer words.

3. Story Opening

Before: It was a day that seemed to contain a quality of foreboding.
After: Clouds gathered. Birds hid.
Result: Scene moves, images act, tension rises.

More Simple Rules That Lift Your Writing

Cut throat clearing – Delete phrases like In my opinion and It is important to note.
Prefer concrete words – Use rain, not precipitation event, use buy, not procure.
Use numbers – Replace ‘many’ with 12, specific beats fuzzy.
Front load meaning – Put the point in the first clause, support it after.
Keep paragraphs short – Three to four sentences help readers keep pace.

A 5 Minute Daily Drill

Pick a paragraph you wrote yesterday.
Underline every verb, circle every subject.
Change passive to active where it serves the reader.
Swap weak verbs, like is or has, for stronger ones.
Cut 20 percent of the words, read aloud, and call it done.

Recap

Good writing follows a system, start with Noun and Verb.
Use active voice and concrete words.
Break rules only when you know why.

Keep Learning

You can find more rules in the Science of Copywriting Facebook group.

November 6, 2018

From Not Interested to Interested – The Science of Copywriting

The easiest part of selling is turning someone from interested to bought. The hard part is turning someone from uninterested to interested. When your copy achieves that (and you know why) you’ve arrived.

It’s a change of direction on the part of the reader, and marketers have been trying to bottle it for years, but it has to be elusive by its very nature (what value does it have if everyone has it?). And yet some people do. This whole thing has been my pursuit.

And as a copywriter, it has to be your pursuit too. To know what turns people on (from not interested to interested) is your USP. It’s an exceedingly rare skill.

But just imagine if you had it? Every conversation you had would be different. You’d know very quickly the value of it.

Ethics (ie. hard decisions) would become simple because you’d no longer be desperate. There’d be no more surprises.

November 5, 2018