Aaron Gerdes

Gary Bencivenga is one of the most successful copywriters in the business. While explaining that “a gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen” (see the article), Gary provides ten questions writers should begin their assignments with.

I think the list is also an excellent starting point for businesses to evaluate new products or services. Whether you’re doing-it-yourself or preparing to work with a consultant, understanding the answers to these questions can make for an efficient project takeoff and a good review of results. If you’re not finding the answers compelling from your customers’ standpoint, back to innovating!

1. Why is this product made the way it is?
2. What consumer problems, desires, and needs is it designed for?
3. What’s special about it — why does it fulfill a consumer’s needs better than the competition?
4. Who says so besides you?
5. What are your strongest proof elements to make your case believable?
6. What are all the product’s best features and how does each translate into a consumer benefit?
7. If you had unlimited funds, how would you improve this product?
8. Who are its heavy users—the 20 percent who generate 80 percent of sales?
9. What irresistible offers might trigger an explosion in sales?
10. What premiums can be tossed into the mix to press your prospects’ hot buttons?

Scoble says:

Why have Google and Apple done so well in the last three years? Cause the grassroots loves them. That’s the powerroot of the industry. Ideas here don’t come from the big influencers and move down. No, they start on the street and move up. Anyone miss how Google got big? Not by throwing a press conference.

Great quote. Temper with good advice from Olivier Blanchard at the Brand Builder Blog:

Don’t fall into the New Marketing vs. Old Marketing trap. You can’t afford to limit yourself to being a supporter of either one camp or the other. If you do, you’ll always be missing a big (and crucial) piece of the puzzle for yourself, and for your clients. Grass Roots, key influencers, advertising, blogs, product placement, PR, it all works… and works best when used in concert. Robert Scoble is right: Microsoft missed the boat when it failed to gain (and perhaps even seek) grassroots support. That being said, his dismissal of press conferences might be a little short-sighted. The combination of the two would most likely produce a much better result than either one on its own.

Maybe you’re in a Do-It-Yourself mood, or maybe you owe your copywriter a draft and want to kick things off right. Here are some basic practices, best applied after the “brain-dump” initial draft.

• Start with the prospect’s problem. Common-sense when writing your service explanations, but also applies to things like your company and process descriptions. Start each section from the problem your prospects are looking to overcome (that’s what they’re most concerned about, after all).

• Appeal to both the consequences of inaction and the benefits of solving the problem. Some people are motivated by negatives, some by positives. Make sure you don’t just focus on your own inclination.

• Talk about benefits, not just features. A feature is a line item on a technical spec sheet. It requires some level of technical expertise to determine its value (if not expertise, at least thought — assume we’re lazy!). A benefit is what the product does for me or saves me from. I’m more interested in benefits.

• Write as informally as suits your business. Think of a spectrum of obtuseness: Poetry – Prose – Persuasion.

• Stories tell it best. Provide real-life examples of results your services delivered. Name names. Link to your case-studies and pepper service descriptions with mini-stories.

• Include testimonials. Some people love ‘em, some people hate ‘em. The percentage of folks that love them may contain your biggest customer, so don’t write to yourself. Remember to tie them to a project and a person – anonymous testimonials have little impact for almost anyone.

• Be concise.

• Close with a call to action. If you’ve done a good job, people will be ready to know more. A good write up on your services will end with a call to learn more. Several of my team members are excellent copywriters. If you’re getting too busy to write or would like to reap the results of a high response rate, let’s discuss your project. Contact me!

This list isn’t exhaustive. Have more to add? Comments are welcome!

I’ve heard that a flock of geese always has one member with its head up, “standing guard”, while the others eat.

It’s “crunch time” at your organization. You’re a few days (read: two weeks) away from launching a new web app. Who’s got their head up?

Who’s prepping contacts to sign up on launch? Who sees that there’s a new beta opportunity? When your competitors blog that they’re launching early, or release that new killer new simplification, who alerts the group?

Brian Sooy has a great quote, via Guy Kawasaki:

Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what they want, until they see what you’ve done, then they know exactly what they want, but it’s not what you did.

The quote made me laugh, most designers have issued this complaint at one point. I’ll supplement this with my own statement about good design:

A good designer is one who accepts and integrates this reality into their process to produce a better result with less friction.

A designer can be many of things. I don’t claim to have a monopoly on what it is. The above isn’t an exhaustive definition, but the good ones definitely have this in common.