The Unwriting Story: Righting Your Website’s Wrong
Not long ago, I complained to my friend Alex about how so many website landing pages fail to position their business or brand to advantage.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.
“In most cases,” I replied, “the only way to fix the problem is with a total re-write.”
“To unwrite the wrong, right?” he said (trying his best to be clever).
“Yes, scrap what you have and start over.”
So what’s the problem? All too many businesses (large and small) miss the positioning point.
> They don’t reach out and grab customers, clients, students, donors, etc. by their minds.
> They don’t use the internet’s most productive real estate to showcase their benefits.
> They choose to write about the people and tools they use to create value instead of the value itself.
> They ignore their critical “Yes!” point and hide it deeper in the website.
The Cobbler’s Children.
Just over 20 years ago I was part of a two-year-old small business that interviewed three PR agencies about developing a new product launch campaign. Each firm recognized the potential of our product but only one stood out. They were the single source option for everything we needed. Surprisingly, however, they failed to communicate their unique selling proposition in their written materials while crushing it in person. Like so many “creatives”, the attractive brochure they left behind described the talented people who ran the company and showcased their tools vs. telling how all that talent and all those tools will make a difference for clients.
Here's a count of the words they used in the brochure, which was similar in content to their landing page:
> US words: we, us, our, their name (27)
> YOU words: you, your, client, customer (10)
There were almost three times as many us words as you words. They focused more on the firm's capabilities than solving client problems and meeting client needs. Why? I don’t know, although you may recall the story about the cobbler’s children having no shoes.
Learning the Hard Way.
When I was about twelve, my dad told me that I would always learn the hard way, and he was right. Ten years or so later, I was working as a reporter for a local radio station and wrote news stories about the usual political bruhaha and whatever traffic mayhem and criminal mischief happened that day in our city. I cut my writing teeth on these stories and tried to make them interesting and colorful without stepping outside the who-what-when-where-why of responsible reporting. I also wrote "human interest" stories about the culture, its people and their peculiarities that our listeners seemed to like. The station manager took note of this and figured I should also be able to write ad copy. But I couldn’t wrap my head around the assignment he gave me, which was to create a tagline for a small chain of department stores. So, I got sent back to the newsroom convinced I had failed.
This got me thinking, and eventually I learned that the strategic communication process I'd failed to grasp had a name: market positioning, often expressed as a tagline. So, I began paying closer attention to the ads (and taglines) I heard on the radio, read in the newspaper and saw on television.
Two examples come to mind from that time.
The first was a grocery store. Their slogan was “Low Prices Are Born Here and Raised Elsewhere,” which they had plastered on huge signs in front of their two stores. On the surface, such a claim seemed like overly cute nonsense, so I decided to see if I could come up with something better.
Just for fun.
In addition to being a pretty good grocer, their main store out in the country was filled with an extraordinary array of merchandise, everything a household or handyman would ever need. If you were a carpenter tasked with picking up bread and milk on the way home from that day’s job, you also could pick up whatever tools and materials you needed the next day. Their smaller suburban store seemed to have a little bit of everything, too, unlike most grocery stores today. It was a junior version of Lowes or Home Depot.
Differentiate or Die.
People who shopped there were familiar with all this, of course, but the people who didn’t shop there clearly needed to know about it. Given that, you’d think the owners would have chosen to differentiate themselves in a more meaningful way than shouting about price on their big signs.
Why did they decide on that silly slogan, “Low Prices are Born Here and Raised Elsewhere”?
Maybe they thought it was cute (although clever is never enough). Or maybe price was the easiest position to take. Eventually, the national grocery chains and emerging big box stores with their selection and price caught up with them and both stores disappeared.
Price, Price, Price!
After a while, I acquired an auto dealer advertising client and got to put my positioning ideas to work. However, during the ten years I served this family-owned business, I was unable to wean them from price advertising. I’d make some headway, then they’d slide back.
Why?
To begin with, price competition seemed so imbedded in their marketing experience that it became challenging to think of any other way to stand out, despite the dealership's several strong competitive factors, which included their unique location and a culture anchored in the bedrock of family values. Price advertising was their safe bet, however, and they were not alone. Three or four days a week all the big car dealers competed against one another with giant newspaper ads offering that moment’s “low-low price” or “low-low payment”. And second, my client had an upstart rival about five miles away that sold the same brand, and I don’t believe either dealer wanted to risk abandoning the price position for fear the other would steal a march on them.
I think they got tired of hearing me harp about moving away from selling on price, but finally, after years of good work and trust, they asked me to position their new wholesale parts business. The parts manager had discovered that if they stocked a selection of fast-moving GM parts and guaranteed to ship them before 4:30 each afternoon, other dealers would order the parts from them (at a small markup) instead of from the manufacturer, which took more time. Thanks to UPS and FedEx, the parts would arrive promptly the next morning, which allowed my client's dealer customers to finish repairs on their customer's cars more quickly--while still making a profit on the parts.
So, I suggested they weren’t just selling parts, they also were selling time, a competitive factor they could leverage to advantage. We then created a brand that promised timely delivery: Quik-Ship, which soon became ubiquitous and helped my client earn millions of incremental dollars over the years by selling GM parts to dealers outside their retail trade area.
During the next thirty years or so, I identified ten or so more of these competitive factors (in addition to time and price) while working as a communication consultant and writer for a variety of local businesses and multinational corporate clients. Whether our projects targeted internal or external client audiences, my work consistently focused on helping sell some kind of benefit--including, of course, the communication of competitive advantage.
The words you choose for your landing page should plant the unique benefits of your business, brand or product deep in visitors’ minds before inviting them to click further. Your words should make your best prospects want what you have and point them to the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow. -o-
During the next thirty years or so, I identified ten or so more of these competitive factors (in addition to time and price) while working as a communication consultant and writer for a variety of local businesses and multinational corporate clients. Whether our projects targeted internal or external client audiences, my work consistently focused on helping sell some kind of benefit--including, of course, the communication of competitive advantage.
The words you choose for your landing page should plant the unique benefits of your business, brand or product deep in visitors’ minds before inviting them to click further. Your words should make your best prospects want what you have and point them to the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow. -o-
"Your words should make your best prospects want what you have |
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Landing page example focused on "us":
We have been providing our Brand Widgets to the aviation market since 1993. Our team is 100% dedicated to quality; we use the most up-to-date design technology, and our selection of operational configurations is unsurpassed. Landing page focused on customer benefits: Eight of ten leading international airlines and seven out of ten business aircraft operators consistently report fewer operational interruptions per each installed aircraft when they use Brand Widgets. That means more aircraft availability between maintenance checks and more predictable revenue. CLICK HERE for operational configurations. The first example reads well, is short and to the point. But it’s the wrong point, because the first words prospects see are about "us", not them. The second example presents benefits that prospects can use to make their products more productive or their lives more enjoyable. |