Copywriting – Page 2 – Velocity Media

3 November 2014

How to make more impact in less words and time

With limited time and shortened attention spans, it is becoming increasingly important to get to your point across quickly and concisely to make an impact with your audience.

From the home page on your website and the first email you send to a lead, to the tweet you post, the infomercial you recite or the quote you give a journalist, you need to be able to get your message across quickly, powerfully and succinctly.

So to help you make more impact in less words and time, here are three steps to follow when creating your message.

Step 1 – Think it through

Whether you are preparing for a media interview, planning your website copy or writing a social media post, think about the most impactful message you have to share.

Do you have compelling statistics, interesting information, key industry insight, knowledge of upcoming trends, impressive results, powerful testimonials, or a great emotional pull?

When you have identified your message, write it down without worrying about how long it is or how many characters you are using. It is more important to get the message right before making it concise.

Step 2 – Revise and Refine

Once you have brainstormed your message, take a break. Come back with a fresh perspective and evaluate as objectively as possible.

Is this really the best message to us? Does it address a problem or frustration? Does it give value? Does it solve or start to solve a problem? Does it make your audience smile, laugh or become engaged? Does it appeal to emotions making your audience scared, uncomfortable or motivated? Does it intrigue your audience? Does it leave them wanting more?

While your message objectives will depend on the channel you are using, it should have some purpose and lead towards the goal you want to achieve by undertaking this specific marketing activity.

Step 3 – Sharpen and shorten

Only once you have refined your message should you be concerned with sharpening and shortening it. This time when you read over your message look to eliminate words that over emphasise your point or don’t need to be there like ‘very’ or ‘actually’. Even words like ‘that’ can be used when not needed.

Also look for different words that can simplify or shorten your message. Let’s use “it is becoming increasingly important”, part of my opening statement as an example. Before I chose the word ‘increasingly’ I had the words ‘even more’, while it says the same thing increasingly was more concise and one less word.

If my focus was on the amount of characters though, and I had the choice of these words I would use ‘even more’, which has one less character despite being two words.

However, if I was really concerned with word count, amount of characters or time I could shorten it further to “it’s crucial” turning five words into two.

Give it a go next time you need to create an infomercial, post or marketing message. You will find by following these three steps you will cut the waffle and create more strategic, sharper and shorter messages that will carry more impact with your audience.

Amanda

20 October 2014

Four tips to increase newsletter opens and clicks

With over 100 billion emails sent last year alone, and many of us receiving tens if not hundreds of emails a day, it can be easy for your newsletter to become lost in a sea of your readers emails.

But before you start waving the white flag, regular newsletters and emails are still a great way to create another touch point with your customers and build your profile and sales. But how do you stand out in a crowded inbox and keep readers opening? Here are four tips to increase your newsletter opens and clicks.

1. Never underestimate the power of your subject line

Your subject line is the headline of your newsletter and in many cases the only opportunity to capture your readers’ attention.

For best results don’t just go for a generic ‘[Month] Newsletter’ subject line, include an incentive or information teaser. It could be to address a challenge or need, or include a desired benefit, a sneak peek of the tips contained within, an emotional pull or special offer.

2. Personalise your newsletter

General statements like ‘Hello Business Owner’ immediately rid your newsletter of the personal touch and people are less likely to read on. Readers want to feel like you are talking directly to them so where possible personalise your newsletter by using their first name.

If you don’t have the names of the people you are emailing, or a program that will insert their names for you, consider using a pain or benefit driven headline that will appeal to most if not all readers. A targeted headline like this, despite not being personalised is often more effective then a group greeting.

3. Value your reader’s time

People are busy and inboxes are crowded. Value your reader’s time by keeping your newsletter brief and relevant. It is not the place to waffle about everything you’ve done for the month; it is another touch point to connect with your readers, so think about what they will want and need.

If you do have long articles and detailed information you want to share, publish them as a blog post on your website so you can provide a short sentence or two with a link to “read more” this not only saves space and time, it also increases your website traffic.

4. Prioritise your content

Keep in mind that the majority of your readers will be scanners looking to see ‘what’s in it for me’? They will scan until they find something relevant or of value to them – and if they don’t your headed for deleted items.

To appeal to scanners outline the key selling points of your newsletter early and link to each area where possible. Also make sure that the most interesting, relevant or hard-hitting information is at the start of your newsletter.

How do you keep readers opening your newsletter?

Amanda

13 October 2014

Seven tips for writing content quickly

Sometimes in business we are presented with opportunities that require us to produce a lot of content quickly. It could be for an editorial, a guest contribution to a blog or e-book, an awards submission, a presentation or pitch or even our own book or e-course.

While you can know your topic inside out, putting it down on paper can trigger all sorts of procrastinating behaviour and overwhelm, slowing down or stopping the writing process altogether resulting in lost opportunity or revenue.

To help you overcome distractions and package up your knowledge easily here are seven tips for writing a lot of content quickly.

1. Decide on your topic and audience

The first step in producing content quickly is to work out the audience you are writing for and the topic you will be writing about. In order for your writing to be successful, from a sales and public relations perspective, you want to have the two well aligned and write about a relevant issue that is of interest to your target audience and the media.

2. Map out chapters, pages or sub-headlines

Depending on what you are writing, do up a quick mind map of your chapters, pages or sub-headlines and then break it down further again to include the main points under each. Structuring your writing like this will give you more clarity around your topic, ensure you stay on target to achieve the outcome you want and help you avoid overwhelm.

3. Start anywhere

Once you have your content mapped out you can make a start in the area you feel most inspired. You don’t need to start at the beginning and work through in order. In fact as a copywriter I can tell you that 99% of the time I start in the middle. I prefer to do the introduction last so I can make sure the beginning sums up and leads into the rest of the writing project.

4. Use anecdotes

Stories, examples and case studies not only create an emotional connection with your readers, they also make your points more memorable, easy to understand and your content more inspired and fun to write.

5. Use a voice recorder

While sitting down and writing can work for some of us, for others it can stifle creativity. If you recognise that you are more creative standing up, walking around, speaking or being in front of the white board jot down brief notes and speak into a voice recorder. Leverage your creativity by finding the process that works best for you.

6. Record all ideas

Once you start the writing process you can find yourself being inspired at all different times throughout the day and night when you least expect or want it. For this reason make sure you have a way to record your ideas keeping a notepad and pen or your phone near you at all times.

7. Edit upon completion

The biggest productivity killer in writing isn’t procrastination it’s perfectionism. Give yourself the freedom to write the entire first draft before you start editing and critiquing. Editing as you go can slow the process down (or bring it to a halt) and waste periods of inspiration.

Have you had to produce a lot of content quickly? How did you go about it?

Amanda

22 September 2014

Three sales writing mistakes that will lose you business

Sales letters can be an extremely effective way to generate new business. Whether it is sent via email, social media or good old-fashioned snail mail, when you get the right message, to the right people with the right call to action you can generate a great marketing response. When it’s wrong however, it can be uncomfortably quiet.

The good news is that the common mistakes people when writing sales letters are easily avoided – when you know what they are. So here are the three most common sales writing mistakes to avoid so you stop losing business and start winning sales.

Mistake #1 – Appealing to the wrong ego

Ego is an important part of sales writing, but not your ego. Too many people make the mistake of thinking sales writing is all about them, they build their ego through the text, when really they should be appealing to their reader’s ego.

How you appeal will obviously depend on who you are targeting and what you are selling, but comments like “as you would know” or “from your experience” can be a great start. You don’t want to be blatant with your ego stroking as people will become highly suspicious of what you’re doing or selling, being subtle is crucial.

Mistake #2 – Selling first instead of relating

The fastest way to turn people off is to go straight into a sales pitch. Think about it in terms of a networking event, you’ve just walked in the door and someone comes straight up to you, shoves a business card in your face and starts selling to you. What are you thinking? Chances are you want to get away from them as quickly as possible. It’s no different in writing.

You still need to build rapport and find common ground as you are writing. Get people nodding in agreement. Be relatable and friendly. Then once you have done that while telling the story, go in with the pitch in a way that adds value.

Mistake #3 – Calling your reader to act without incentive

While you need to call your reader to act, there is a difference between a passive “call us today on [number]” and a more active incentive like “call us today on [number] and receive/save [x]”.

An incentive doesn’t always need to be a discount, special offer or free checklist, e-book or report. It could be an emotional pull, creating urgency through a time sensitive promotion or appealing to our sense of competition by “not missing out”.

Just keep in mind that the less you know the person you are targeting, the stronger your incentive needs to be.

Do you use sales letters as part of your marketing strategy? What has or hasn’t worked for you?

Amanda

12 August 2014

Five sneaky call to action tips to boost conversions

Your call to action is one of the most important parts of any copy you write. While your words may be clever and compelling, and your images eye catching and engaging, if you aren’t calling people to act, you won’t get the results you want.

So how do you make sure you are calling your potential customers to act effectively? Here are five sneaky call to action tips to help boost your conversions.

1. Map out your sales process

The key to an effective call to action is to know what actions you need your potential customer to take. While it would be nice for a potential customer to go from not knowing you to spending thousands with you instantly, and yes it does happen, in most cases though trust and rapport need to be established first.

This is where your sales process comes in, working out each step that needs to be taken to build trust and turn your potential customer into your ideal customer.

For each marketing piece you write, whether it is a sales letter, brochure or website think about the very next step they need to take. Is it to call you? Answer your phone call? Sign up to your mailing list? Go to a landing page? Download a free resource? Make a small ‘teaser’ purchase that will lead them to a bigger purchase?

Break each step down, giving clear instructions as to what needs to happen next.

2. Create urgency

The whole point of a call to action is to get your potential customers acting now, not saying, “I’ll do that later”. But to do this you need to communicate the urgency.

You can do this by using scarcity and competition to hint at what they could miss out on if they don’t act quickly, and/or using urgent language like “try it now”, “immediate access” or “call today”.

3. Use triggers

Sometimes you need to give potential customers a little extra help to get over the line, that is where sales triggers, little messages that motivate, come into play.

It could be a testimonial with results you know they will want, a risk minimising message like a guarantee or even some bullet points that overcome common objections and establish your value all put near your call to action to ‘seal the deal’.

4. Make your ‘buy buttons’ green or bright coloured

We have been programed in society that green = go and red = stop or a hazard, are your buy buttons giving off the right signal?

While green is a good idea for your buy button, bright colours, particularly against duller colours (if you were wanting to highlight a particular package, membership or option for instance) can also draw the eye and send the right signal.

5. Get rhyming

While it may sound funny or corny, research has shown that rhyming phrases are perceived to be more truthful and accurate. Get a little creative and give rhyming a go for one of your calls to actions and test your results.

Hopefully this has helped you a fraction, what tips will you use in your next call to action?

Amanda

25 May 2014

Five ways to make your marketing more strategic

Too often businesses take an unplanned approach to their marketing, either following the crowd or acting on a hunch they decide to “try it and see”. But it’s the fastest way to blow your marketing budget.

True marketing magic happens when the right product or service, with the right message meets the right people, at the right time, on the right marketing platform. Though, to do that you need a strategy, and you need to test and measure your results.

So stop doing what you think you should be doing, what the company down the road is doing or what you heard would be good to try and start strategising the best way to create the marketing magic for your business. Here are five tips to get you started.

1. Qualify your marketing efforts

In order to make the most of your marketing campaign and investment you need to:

Check there is a need for your products or services
Craft messages that are relevant and emotionally engaging with the audience that have the need
Ensure the platform or strategy you use will reach a large amount of the audience you are targeting

When you start to evaluate your marketing efforts, strategies and opportunities even on this simple criteria, by asking is it relevant and targeted to your audience and reaching a high percentage of those you are targeting, you can quickly protect your budget from marketing strategies that “everyone is doing” and start to see what to say yes to and try, and what to say no to or stop.

2. Know the purpose

Whatever marketing or advertising you do, there needs to be a clear purpose for it. You need to know what you want someone to do after reading or hearing the specific message you have created, as this will impact the call to action you use.

Is it to call you? Go to your website? Sign up to the mailing list? Buy immediately? Once you know what you need them to do, you can then make sure your copy, call to action and incentive all work together to make it happen.

3. Ensure there are real benefits or an opportunity to get a return

It sounds obvious, but many marketing campaigns have been done under the guise of “increasing brand awareness” (sponsorship can be an ideal example of this) which is fine if you have brand awareness to start with, have a large marketing budget to play with or if it’s a highly relevant and targeted opportunity, but it’s impact is very hard to measure.

Whatever you look to invest your marketing dollars in, there needs to be real benefits and return. So, to use the sponsorship example, find a way to proactively reach your audience in a measurable way like sponsoring a prize and getting the business cards of those who enter.

4. Test your message on a smaller campaign

Before you embark on a larger marketing or advertising campaign test your headline and message on a smaller one.

It could be through a focus group, survey, Facebook advertising campaign, a Google Adwords advertisement or a smaller mail out to test and measure the results. Better to find out a message doesn’t work on a small scale with a small investment rather than a large one.

5. Don’t confuse persistence with foolishness

While you need to allocate a set amount of time to tell if a product, message, platform or strategy is working, you don’t want to keep wasting time, money and effort on something that isn’t.

To prevent this from happening, set a cap or measurement on your efforts. It could be a time limit, or a set amount of mail outs you do to in order to test the product or service, message or platform to see if it is getting a response.

As entrepreneurs we need to be mindful that sometimes business ideas, products or services and marketing campaigns don’t work the way we think, want or hoped they would.

When this is the case, it is important for your business and your bottom line to stop instead of persisting, put it down to education and move on to the next project, idea or strategy.

How do you ensure your marketing is strategic?

Amanda

7 April 2014

Six tips for quick, easy and effective content marketing

While we know how important content marketing is when it comes to generating interest and sales and have the best intentions of keeping our blogs and social media updated, the time investment can often cause these tasks to sneak further and further down our list of priorities.

Thankfully though there are ways you can minimise the amount of time you spend while still gaining all of benefits, like these six tips for quick, easy and effective content marketing.

1. Know your purpose

Most businesses get on social media and start blogging because they have heard they should be doing it. While this is true for the most part, when you don’t know why you are doing it, what you want to achieve by it or who you are targeting, you can end up using the wrong platforms, share information that isn’t relevant or engaging to readers and ultimately waste valuable time.

By working out the purpose of your content you uncover what information you should share and write about, provide a level of consistency with your writing and are more likely to increase both your readership and sales through targeted, relevant content and calls to action.

2. Theme your content

If you find you are wasting time wondering what you should write about or share, look at theming your content around a certain topic or area of specialty.

For example you could theme it by the day on social media like I do with “Marketing Monday” where I only share marketing tips that day, or you could have an extended theme over a week, fortnight or month that also carries through on your blog depending on what your readers are interested in.

3. Write status updates and blogs in advance

A lot of time can be wasted in researching, brainstorming and writing daily status updates and last minute blogs. While some days you might know exactly what to write, other days you can hit a creative block and struggle to come up with something informative or entertaining to share, causing undue stress and wasting precious time stuck in writers block.

To make your life easier, set aside a day or half day to write up a month’s worth of blogs and social media updates so you are always at least one month ahead. This way you have the ability to be spontaneous if there is a blog or update you want to share that strikes during a moment of inspiration, and have the benefit of high quality information going up on a consistent basis.

4. Take advantage of inspiration

When a moment of inspiration does strike, briefly jot down your idea and an outline of the post and keep thinking of more topics. Often we get stuck writing the post from start to finish, which can lead to missing more content ideas. Instead use your moment of creativity to think of more topics and tips to share.

Should there be a post that comes before the one you just thought of? Should there be one after? Have their been any questions about your industry or area of expertise that would make a good post? Could one tip be turned into several?

Often starting is the hardest part so when your ideas do start flowing give yourself permission to keep brainstorming.

5. Allocate set times for social media monitoring

Social media when left open can be one of our biggest productivity killers. To avoid the temptation and make your social media time more effective and targeted, allocate set times throughout the day to update your status, participate in the conversation and monitor your engagement.

If you find you keep slipping down the rabbit hole of social media memes, updates and information set an alarm so you can keep yourself in check.

6. Schedule updates

With consistency being so important, scheduling your content can be a great way to ensure you have regular content being published regardless of how busy your schedule is, or whether you are in the office or away.

Scheduling can also help you minimise the time you spend on content marketing platforms being able to upload in one hit and avoid the distraction of constant social media checking.

Do you have any tips for effective and efficient content marketing?

Amanda

24 March 2014

The four-step formula for more powerful marketing and advertising

Every day your customers are bombarded with hundreds of marketing messages and advertisements. They are there when they turn on the television, listen to the radio, drive past a billboard, wait at a bus stop, go to a public bathroom, search online, open an email, read a magazine or newspaper and even check their letterbox.

As a result the customers you are targeting are smarter, more informed and value driven, they research their purchases and tend to see through the marketing hype and the manipulative, pushy sales tactics. They are time-poor, have shorter attention spans, scan more than read and want to know what you can do for them before they give you any more of their time or money.

To reach them, your marketing approach needs to be different, strategic, targeted, customer-focused, value packed and concise. Not always the easiest feat, but here’s a little helping hand, a four-step formula you can follow to help you create more powerful marketing campaigns, advertisements and copy.

Step One – Know who you are marketing to and why

High conversions and great results come from strategic and targeted marketing campaigns where you truly “get” your customers and what they need or want.

To do this effectively you need to be revisiting and redefining your target market regularly. Your customers needs, problems and priorities can change, and who you want to target can change based on your experience, price increases, product changes, the campaigns you are running and your customers’ willingness and ability to spend.

Drill down as specifically as possible so you can find the commonalities in the group of people you are targeting. This will help you uncover which pain point, solution and incentive will be the most effective. I can’t stress enough how important this is to establishing a personal message, the kind that makes your customer feel that you are talking directly to them, even though you may be targeting thousands.

Step Two – Identify what you are really selling

In order to market your business effectively you need to know what you are selling. This doesn’t just mean being an expert in your products and services, it means becoming very clear on what benefits you are offering your customers.

To give you an example, let’s use an accountant. Service wise an accountant may offer customers tax returns, bookkeeping, BAS lodgment and structuring, but what they are really selling is peace of mind and security. Their customers can feel at ease knowing that their financial obligations are taken care of and their assets are protected if worse ever came to worse.

In the same way, a mattress store is selling comfort and a good night sleep. A fencing company is selling safety and security for your family. When you find what you are really selling, you can find the emotional pull, motivator or persuader that will most appeal to your target market.

Step Three – Work out how you do it differently

When you know what you are selling and the benefit it supplies, you need to work out how you do it differently to everyone else. This will allow you to shape a more powerful outcome or result that people will receive simply by choosing to work with you.

Look at what your customers want and need, and then look at what your competitors are doing and not doing compared to you. What is different? What makes your product, service, business or you as a provider different and of more value to your potential customer?

Do you have more experience or expertise? Do you have better processes or follow up? Do you have a guarantee? Do you have consistent or unrivaled results? Do you use higher quality products? Do you have a wider range of colours shapes or styles? Do you have a more personalised service or a quicker turn around?

Step Four – Stop marketing your product, start marketing your value

Good marketing is not about you, what you do or even what you want to market; it is about your customer, what they need and what is going to most appeal to them in order for them to hand over their money to you. You need to get out of your ego, and into theirs.

Be the solution. Look for ways your products or services and what you are really selling can help your customers solve what they need to solve or achieve what they want to achieve. When it comes to sales and marketing “nice guys” who have a genuine interest in their customers and a desire to help them, finish first.

Amanda

18 March 2014

Four headlines that engage and convert customers

Whether you need to capture the attention of a potential customer on your website, convince a journalist to publish your story, increase your mailing list with your website opt-in, generate leads from an advertisement or boost your hits with a blog post, learning to write good headlines is perhaps one of the greatest time investments you can make in your business.

To help you make a start, and get more results from your marketing and advertising here are four types of headlines that can help you connect with potential customers and convert more sales.

1. The threat

One of the most powerful buying motivators is fear and pain. Generally speaking we move faster away from pain and potential threat than we do towards pleasure, so if you can pinpoint something your target market is afraid of losing or afraid of happening, you can really get inside their head and create a headline that is impossible to ignore.

Examples of a threat headline are “The shocking truth about what your child is really eating”, “the [x] lies your [person/brand] is telling you”, “The information/advice your [trusted person] should give you, but won’t”, “If worse came to worse and [specific scenario], would you/your family/your business be protected? Or “Did you know you could be personally liable/held accountable/at risk of/ for [threat], even if you [protective measure]?”

To craft a powerful threat headline ask yourself:

What are my target markets frustrations?
What problems do they have that my product or service solves?
What are their pain points and worries?
What is keeping them up at night?
What do they fear most?
What are the greatest threats to them, their family and their livelihood?

2. The benefit

The benefit headline, as its name suggests is driven by a benefit. The benefit can be positive, drawing your target market towards pleasure like “How you can generate more leads for your business without spending more time, money or effort”, or a negative benefit, drawing them away from pain, frustration or consequence like “Stop paying too much tax”.

Whichever way you go, when mastered, the benefit headline can be incredibly powerful. The key to its success though, depends on how well you know your target market and what they need or desire, in order to appeal to their buy buttons. It can’t just be any benefit that your product or service provides though, it has to be a benefit your target market can’t ignore or must-have in order to incite action.

When crafting a benefit headline ask yourself:

What does my target market want most?
What are their dreams and aspirations?
What do they value?
Who do they look up to or want to be like?
What are their frustrations?
What do they want to avoid most?
What can my products or services give them, save them, help them become or achieve that will help them get what they want or avoid what they want to avoid?

3. The promise

The promise headline is like the benefit headline only more powerful because it comes with a promise of results. It could be that you can provide the desired results within a desired timeframe, or the desired result with a guarantee. Of course you MUST deliver what you have promised, so handle this headline with care.

When crafting a promise headline ask yourself:

What results have I generated for past customers?
What results will motivate potential customers?
Can I deliver results in an assured timeframe?
Can I offer a money back guarantee?
How can I eliminate the perceived risk people have when buying from me?

4. The testimonial

The testimonial headline is one of the most powerful headlines because it uses a customer success story and their own words to sell your products and services. It gives you credibility and proves your value long before you’ve tried to establish it.

The testimonial could be outstanding results you’ve delivered, a relatable situation you helped a customer through, a common problem you solved, a testimonial that addresses common objections people have or even a celebrity or notable person who uses your products or services.

The key to a good testimonial headline is that it needs to be specific, have high impact, connect with or be relatable to your potential customer and prove your value. To do this you may need to give the customer who is endorsing you specific boundaries and prompts of what you are looking for from their testimonial.

Have you found a particular type of headline has worked well for you?

Amanda

23 February 2014

Marketing words that boost engagement and conversions

Words are powerful. They can move us, engage our emotions in ways we don’t even realise and persuade us to take a course of action we may not have ordinarily taken.

That is why the words you use to help you tell the story of your products and services are so important. They can be the difference between telling and selling, and someone browsing or buying.

Fortunately, there are some words and phrases that have been tried and tested to help boost engagement and conversions regardless of your industry. So to help you, here are seven words I’ve found as a copywriter to be extremely effective, regardless of who or what I’m writing about.

1. “You”

No word in marketing is, or ever will be, as powerful as the word “you”. The more you can make your marketing about your target audience, and their needs, their problems, their desires and their frustrations the more effective it will be.

Remember your potential customer doesn’t care about you – at first anyway, they want to know what is in it for them and how you can solve their challenges and meet their needs like no-one else can.

With this in mind, one of your main objectives when writing your marketing material should be to use the word “you” as many times as possible. Customer focused words like “you” should appear at least twice as many times as self-focused words like your business name, “we”, “us”, “ours”, “me” or “I”.

2. “Guarantee”

When you are willing to back your own product or service with a guarantee, particularly a 100% money back guarantee, you minimise the risk for your customer and give them a sense of safety and security at the time of purchase.

Offering a guarantee can also help you persuade your potential customer into feeling like they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by buying from you.

3. “Free”

While some marketers over the years have questioned whether the word “free” is still effective in marketing, the fact remains that we all love freebies. The impact of the word, however, depends greatly on what it is linked to.

“A free quote” for instance, isn’t a good “free” incentive. Let’s be honest, would you pay someone to come and give you a quote for a job if a quote was all they were giving? I know I wouldn’t, it’s just something we do in order to generate business.

The key is to offer something that is relevant and of value to your audience. So if you were looking at offering the ever popular “free consultation”, instead of leaving it at that, articulate what value they will receive in a consultation with you (and FYI a sales presentation or the opportunity to come and “find out how we can help you” isn’t value). What will you give them, or talk about in the consultation? What will they have or be able to do by the end of it?

When you start approaching your free offers like this, you will start to see just how powerful the word “free” can be in your marketing.

4. “Instant”

Let’s face it; given our lifestyle, most people you market to will have a short attention span, little patience and a growing desire for instant gratification. You only need to look at the growing credit card debt to see this is true. We don’t want to wait, we want it now and, while some of us may meet it with some scepticism, we are, generally speaking, intrigued by anything and anyone who can deliver us the instant results or changes we are looking for.

If you can build an instant element into your offering and marketing, whether it is instant access, download, delivery, implementation, value or results, it can be incredibly rewarding.

A word of warning though, when you build up a customer’s expectations like this you need to be 100% confident that you can deliver on it. If there is one shadow of a doubt – or you have to rely on someone else to fulfil your “instant” promise (like a third party or supplier) think about what else you could do instead.

5. “Easy”, “Quick” or “Shortcut”

We all want to know the easiest option or the quickest way, it forms part of our desire for instant gratification. We’re willing to look at whatever will speed up the process of being, doing or having what we want, or make the process that much easier.

Perhaps your product or service is easy to buy, easy to use or implement or has the potential to make your customer’s life easier (be specific with how). Or maybe it’s the shortcut they’re looking for that will deliver what they want in record time. The easier and quicker something is, the more desirable it becomes in the mind of your customer.

6. “Never”

The word “never” can be incredibly powerful when you are pointing out the negative benefits of your product or service. If you’re wondering what a negative benefit is, it’s something your customer will avoid (and want to avoid) by buying and using your product or service. Essentially it demonstrates how you can help them avoid pain.

Obviously how you use it depends on your business and what you sell, though some examples are “never miss a payment again”, “never worry about a deadline again” or “never pay too much in tax again”. The key is to make the negative benefit realistic, of high importance to your customers and for ultimate impact something that is weighing heavy on their mind or keeping them up at night.

7. “Proven”

By having a proven system, formula, methodology or product, or a strong track record of generating results, you take the risk and fear out of buying from you. It’s one thing to say that you are great, it’s quite another to be able to back your claims up. The effectiveness and credibility of your message amplifies when you prove you can do what you say you can.

Don’t just make “proven results” or a “proven formula” another claim though, say how and why it is proven or draw on testimonials and case studies to show that it is proven.

So there you have it, seven words that when used right can generate great results in marketing. The next challenge is to find which words will work best for you and your business.

Have you found certain words work wonders in your marketing?

Amanda

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