Turn everyday quotes into your best testimonials ever:

“Wow! Ken’s just giving away valuable tips I can use to grow my business…

“Happy customers are easy to find, but getting a strong testimonial can be challenging. Ken sent me his free ‘Tip Sheet for Powerful Testimonials.’ Now I am very excited to start applying the principles he shares.

“I know I can grow my word of mouth advertising with this information. Ken is giving away years of experience for free, but…

“I’d call this Tip Sheet priceless!”

–Cathy Harris, Denver CO
Business Development Consultant (Allegra Network) and Denver Marketing Examiner

 

 

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Write your own headline for my 5/07 post to
get a FREE email copy of my personal
“Quick Guide to Powerful Testimonials.”

 

Cool Tip: This stuff is NOT only for you veteran, PRO copywriters. If you just host a popular blog, or run a small business, or want to help a pal who does… this is for you, too.

 

Don’t expect your happy customers to be great writers.

That’s not their job. It’s YOUR job.

I used to stress over not having powerful quotes from my customers. I had tons of “decent” ones (from absolutely thrilled buyers), but not the real gold nuggets I wished for… then I woke up and realized I can apply my copywriting skills to a solution: My private little two-page Testimonials Power Guide was born.

This may be the most effectively valuable two pages of information I ever put down on a sheet of paper.

Mind you, I’m no genius. This is not rocket science. Just basic “marketing content” fundamentals in action. It took me several years to learn every step I put in the guide. I learned, for instance, that:

A strong testimonial must be replicable, emotional and credible. Page one of my personal “cheat sheet” explains how to select and solicit raw quotes that hold these and other strengths, though maybe hidden under some rough exterior.

Writers can (and should) work our “magic” on the best quotes we can find, to take them to the next level. Page two of this compact guide notes how I trim the fat, re-arrange some furniture, tidy up the rough edges, maybe (with the customer’s review and permission) make more critical changes… it all ends with a cautionary tip on legal issues we should all keep as a reminder.

When I compiled everything from random little yellow notes all over my desk, and saw it fit nicely in such a small space… I almost didn’t do anything with it.

But I knew, from experience and testing, what value I could get from keeping such a hard-won bunch of self-training close at hand. After all, I have to deal with new marketing campaigns every day–and no ad space ever existed that a quote can’t help. Quality customer testimonials are the solid stamp-of-approval you can get nowhere else.

So I printed the two pages on opposite sides of a single heavy-stock sheet. Laminated that sucker. And hung it on the wall where I’d see it while I worked. It’s been there ever since. That’s how valuable this information is to me.

That’s the information I will give you. Free.

I repeat on this blog often: there’s no mailing list. You don’t end up getting constant emails from me, pitching you some new spin-off crash course or “Inner Circle” hot-seat training program. No. Ick.

I just want to share.

All I ask in return is that you take a moment to be part of the conversation here on this blog. Specifically, I invite you to take a shot at the little writing challenge you’ll find on the post linked below…

Can YOU write a better headline than me?

 

You’ll want to read through the post first, of course, to have a good sense of the challenge goal. That part will take you four or five minutes, but if you’ve come this far I bet you’ll find it useful information. For ANY contribution at all to the “contest” I will give you a free copy of my Testimonials Power Guide. Even better than that–

I’ve got a “money” prize for the best entry:

On May 18th I will review all the comments and entries for this challenge, and replace the headline I wrote for that post with the one I choose as the winner–the best re-write from a reader. If that headline is one that you sumitted, then I will also email you a $10 gift code from iTunes. I hope you’ll consider having a go.

Like I said, my personal guide to crafting good customer quotes into great testimonials is a small, simple document. Nothing fancy, so you ought not get disappointed at the somewhat plain look of it. No, it’s the practice you’ll get over weeks, months and years spent using the principles inside that will prove the value for you.

If you’d like a copy, please visit the link above and share one headline idea.

Thanks!

 

Unlock the million-dollar headline in your brain:

Original title: Can you write a better headline than me?

 

I shouldn't have told him I was doing this challenge...

 

 

Challenge Winner: David “Doc” Polczynski

Dave just took down his long-standing website, or I’d link you to him. He’s slammed busy right now with copy work anyway, so if you reached him–you’d only get to chat him up for the fun of it… and I can tell you, it’s fun.

For the record, no one used the topic of the post to unravel the secret to the challenge, and so (I’m about to sound smug) no one actually beat my original.

Not even close.

I’m busy for a few days writing a white paper on “mobile app development platforms” for a very cool Denver web lab, so you’ll have to be patient, but I promise… by week’s end, I will post a follow-up. I plan to share in detail what makes for the perfect headline/title for this post. I’ve had a long list of alternates myself, used in various places on the web–I will review those, plus all the challenge entries, and play coach as best I can.

Thanks to all who visited, especially you folks who played the game. Congrats again to Dave! I’m going to leave this post unaltered from here down. Please note…

This challenge is expired.

 

 

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FREE Tip Sheet: Discover, Perfect and Unleash Your Best-Ever Customer Testimonials

Can you craft a seriously (ie, scientifically) great headline?

I’ve got a freebie for you that says, “we’ll see about that.” Submit your own alternate headline for this post (as a comment) by Sunday, May 17 2009 at midnight Mountain Time. In your comment, briefly defend your headline based on points we cover in this post. When you also supply an email address I can use to deliver your “Best Testimonials” Tip Sheet, you will receive that within 48 hours of your “live” approved post.

If I replace my headline with yours on May 18, you win a $10 iTunes gift code by email.

NEW Grand Prize! Update: I’m raising the stakes… once this challenge expires, I will pick a “best of” from the entries and replace my own headline above with the winner. If that’s YOUR headline, you will also win a $10 iTunes Gift Code by email. So, don’t forget to include a valid email address (FYI, I do NOT have a mailing list of any kind, and I do not sell, rent, trade or give away your addy).

 

 

 

 

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• Reading time: about 4-5 minutes

Your copywriting power lesson for today is #5 in a series: I’m re-reading one of the most widely venerated and applied short texts on the subject. If you don’t have a copy, click the title below to read my review and get a link to order yours from Amazon (for what it’s worth–no, I’m not an affiliate):

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

Pick your hot lead out of the crowd in 7 seconds, or go home.

Nobody reads the whole newspaper. Well, maybe my dad does. Yeah, I think he does. But those folks are rare, and when it comes to reading ads in some content media the rule is:

Your ad response rate (and ad cost per response) begins when you catch the attention of the right audience. Yes, you could use “blind/mass” message headlines like you see everywhere in brand awareness marketing. If your product or service can legitimately appeal to the masses then there may even be some value in doing that. But in general, when you rely willy-nilly on this approach, you are wasting most of your ad budget.

It’s like saying, “Hey, you.” And then pitching your ad copy at the random whoever that turns his head. When you could instead be saying, “Hey, Mike.” Or getting ever more and more specific in your targeted headline…

“Hey, Young Single Working Mom!”

“Hey, Busy Homeowner Guy Who Wants to
Spend Less on Having the Best Yard on the Block…”

However you need to word it, your headline should more-or-less say that sort of thing. Craft a well-targeted headline, or haphazardly toss the marketing equivalent of “Hey, you” into today’s crowded-beyond-belief message stream. What’s the difference? In cold, hard numbers:

You could boost response to ANY ad by a whopping 500-1,000 percent.

In the book, Hopkins admits to a practice I started doing years ago, as a copy cub. I scored a lot of ridicule for it at first, until I tracked an ad I was testing and showed my team the results. My headline was the test’s only variable. First, I shared my list of headlines; it was long, a couple dozen versions–some very different, others quite subtle variations by only one or two words. After they snickered at me for having already culled that list from a longer set of close to fifty headlines, I asked them to vote for their favorites. Then I dropped the bomb that silenced the infidels:

My test data came to life on the big screen in our conference room…

The winning headline was a simple, dull-ish version no one had voted for.

Not even me. In my early testing, I’d mixed it up just to be fair. And of all the talking points we could identify for the product in question, what finally attracted more of our target customers than any other was a feature we had initially thought was “nice, but not really a show-stopper.”

What was Claude’s headline habit? Writing a ton of ’em. In this chapter, he says (note: I’ve slightly revised the text into first person for a bit of punch; apologies, C.H.)–

 

“I spend far more time on headlines than on writing. I often spend hours on a single headline. Often, I discard scores of headlines before I select the right one. For the entire return from an ad depends on attracting the right sort of readers.”

 

 

He goes on to share that he once tested (over time) a single ad with nearly two thousand headlines.

As a direct result of my self-nurtured obsession with powerful headlines, I’ve learned some more really valuable copywriting tricks. Here, let me freely share:

1. Match body copy to test results: Your product/service offers many benefits to the end user. Once you’ve tested many headlines for each key benefit, and analyzed the data (testing ain’t testing until you do something with the info)… create a ranked order of those benefits by test response, and adjust the ad’s body copy to match this ranking–in the order those benefits appear, in the overall weight of each in terms of repetition, space, size, etc.
2. From benefits, move to offers: Your marketing budget funds many possible offers you can also test with headlines. Price point, coupons, bundles, premiums, continuity packaging… don’t get me started! Use every prospect audience segment you can to work out as much knowledge as you can about the way your target customer responds.

Depending on the size of your database or ad circulation, your message could be in front of millions of potential buyers today. Our first take-away point here is this: most of those folks don’t need what you’ve got, so don’t waste your time and money trying to convince them they do. Your second FREE headline bullet tip ($500,000 value, figured somewhat conservatively for most professional marketers) is right here:

Those millions of people won’t read your body copy to see if what you offer is for them–they already decided in the first 7 seconds it took them to skim your headline. So build maximum targeted aim into that one moment.

Next time, in Chapter 6, Claude explores the science of psychology. Oooh, deep.

Until then… Write what’s Right,

KG

P.S. For the record: In my headline for this post, I did NOT write up dozens of headlines (because I’m not running a test). But I did make some effort to “flag” my target audience. You are more likely to click through to read my opening copy if you  a) fancy yourself a headline writer or  b) think you’d like to become one; also, the wording as a competitive dare raises the issue of proof and teases the challenge I posed at the beginning. Here it is again…

P.P.S Have you got a great headline for this post? Share it with us here, and I will GIVE you my personal “tip sheet” for crafting great testimonials (bonus: I don’t copyright the tip sheet, so you can turn around and share it with your audience!). I use this two-page “quick guide” almost constantly–six tips to help you select (or solicit) the best quotes from your customers, and six more to help you turn those quotes into power-packed sales copy in your customer’s voice. Include a valid email address along with your headline and defense, and I will send you the tip sheet within 48 hours of approving your comment (see top of post for a big update–I’ve added a “money” prize!). This offer expires at midnight on Sunday, May 17 2009.

How much do you pay for ads that fail?

• Reading time: about four minutes

 

Is your copy “swing” as on-target as an MLB batter? You wish…

 

“The severest test of an advertising man is in selling goods by mail. But that is a school from which he must graduate before he can hope for success.”

–Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising

 

Do you follow baseball? I’m new at MLB fan-hood, myself. Wow, those guys are all ABOUT the statistics!

There is one stat they give us more than perhaps any other, from Spring Training all the way to the post-season (if your boys are still in it, or you’re such a fan that you watch October games even though the home team is tucked in for the winter). In general, rounded terms, the figure goes like this:

A 70% failure rate is… really quite good.

On average, batters in the Major Leagues–best players we’ve got–fail to get a hit seven times in ten attempts. And yet we call them great hitters, when they’ve got averages of .300 or better! We pay ’em a ton of money.

The failure rate comes from one fact we can’t avoid. The batter may know a lot about the pitcher and the situation but, ultimately, he must have an idea in his head (a guess) about what pitch he will get next. The only way he can hope to improve his odds and make the right guess? More scouting information on the pitcher.

Do you scout your target customer before every “game” you play (every new ad you offer up to a reader)?

Marketing data is worth cold, hard dollars. Theory is not.

If you’re buying space for copy you THINK will work… you’re fired.

Eventually, anyway. Because you’re spending hard cash on soft theory, at best. At worst, you’re wasting the bottom line chasing a hunch. Please, you’re not actually doing such a thing, are you?

Finally, I get around to Hopkins: This is my brain hashing out chapter 4 in Scientific Advertising. If you mail an ad piece filled with copy you wrote “from the hip,” with no data to supprt its end goal (at least a hypothesis, if you’re testing a new idea against a proven control piece), then Hopkins says you’ve got about a 10% chance of success.

Good luck holding on to your team jersey, copy cub.

This hails back to chapter one, where Claude preached that the “laws” of advertising are worth nothing to you if you don’t apply them to your own work. Now, he narrows our focus to direct mail, the advertising profession’s “clean room,” a shiny lab where we can test our days away. Call it batting practice!

He also brings up again one of his key data indicators: ad cost per response (sale)…

“The only response data that matters has a dollar sign in front of it.”

That’s the way my last Marketing Director said it. Phil, are you reading? You rock.

For years I duly noted this gold nugget, filed it under “What Entrepreneurial Bosses Say,” and went back to my desk to write whatever the heck I felt like writing. And since I write okay, and had the basic understanding of F.A.B. (feature, advantage, benefit) down pat, my sales were “good enough” to get me NOT fired.

Then I crossed over into the light. I tested an ad with several variations, and saw (written in brilliant, shining money) what my customer wanted me to know about their personal interest in my offer.

I should touch on a couple bullet points that Hopkins takes trouble to note, regarding the “design component” of mail advertising that most of us find… ugly. Too bad, he says. If “ugly sells,” then let’s do it:

• Small type: set your ad in readable type, of course, but no bigger. Why? That way, you’ve got room for more copy. Duh. “To make an immediate sale,” says Hopkins, “advertising must tell a complete story.”

• Coupon: And by “coupon,” Claude means any Action Device your reader needs/wants to clip, tear or otherwise save to remind him later that for a moment, he felt sold enough to act on what you asked him to do.

• Images: Not a given. And certainly not just ANY old visual. Every image takes up space you could fill with your story, and so you must give a picture only as much space as it earns. Oh, and a freebie from me that Hopkins would validate, I’ve no doubt–never a picture without a caption. Never.

Will a larger ad bring more sales? Not if you don’t add content to match.

The real issue here is not back-end potential profit but front-end ad cost per response. More space costs more money, so of course you HOPE that simply being bigger in my field of view might do the trick. No, Hopkins argues that any value increase is proven only when you use more space the same way you use less. That is, fill it with more of your story. More pictures. More testimonials. More urgency and desire. More call to action.

I want you to hear me on one thing: I do believe that all this good, solid science can work for a very snappy, modern ad design like graphic artists hunger to deliver these days. But before you dig in your heels onelements of style, listen to Claude one more time…

“Every departure from principle adds to selling cost. It is a question of what you are willing to pay for frivolity. Most of us can afford to do something for pride and opinion. But let us know the cost of our pride.”

As always, thanks for reading.

Can your blog reach EVERY reader on the web?

You will not see THIS blog “go big.” Get used to it.

I just launched this blog, about a month ago. I’m having fun. I’m in no rush to fatten up my mailing list–don’t even have one, for that matter. I don’t plan to crowd the page with readership “fishing lures” and a Hollywood Squares ruckus of monetizer ads and affiliate linkage. Can I hear a Hallelujah?

Down the road, maybe a little of that. Not for a good, long while.

All I want for us here-and-now is quality conversation, on the art and science of marketing and copy that makes humans want to invest in our clients. Who are also human.

Aren’t they?

Tell you why I feel such a big relief tonight over that plan:

“Forced growth” is forced average-ness. My customer and I both suffer.

Ah! I almost hate that I dig Seth Godin. But I do. God help me, I do.

Dig him like your kids dig… whoever they dig. Today. Why?

He’s a practical, cut-the-crap guy. And a business relationship visionary. All scrunched up together in a hip, effortless dress-down outfit I’d have to hire someone to make me look cool in. Hmn, maybe I also hate him.

He more or less banks a zillion feeding us all regular bites of the same, common-sense wisdom we could already be using if we’d taken it from our parents’ hard-working hands when they offered it (for free). Oh, wait–

Bunny trail. Just a quick one:

Do we need the President of the United States to remind us, in his big prime-time 100th-Day-in-Office TV press conference, to wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough?!

Yes, I guess we do.

‘Cause we’re kinda dumb, and we forget. Or kinda reckless, and we don’t care. Whatever. My point (and so it really isn’t a bunny trail!) is this: I was about to blow a gasket trying to hatch a world-eater of a blog monster when, really…

That is not what MY “customer” wants.

Seriously!  I was working up a frazzled nerve trying to think big, and plan for how this blog would reach out and spider-web its way into the ‘sphere, sucking up followers and converts everywhere it touched down. Then, as I’m slowly tugging my click-happy fingers off the keys to call it a night, I got the alert:

A new post on Seth Godin’s blog.

Maybe it’s just that “God in His heaven” intervened to send me off to snooze-fest with a big load off my mind. Hey, it’s not every single time he opens his mouth that Godin transforms my world, okay?

Today’s transformation was subtle. And immensely gratifying.

Here, read it for yourself:

Infinity–They keep making more of it
new post today (4/29) on Seth Godin’s Blog