Kids and great copywriters have something in common: they both understand the power of clear and simple communication. Getting their point across loud and clear is a definite skill that kids possess when they want something “right now!” For a more effective message, apply some of these same principles to your next marketing campaign.

I recall a family vacation in Florida where I listened as my two eldest children were bickering. My oldest child, Morgan, kept telling my second oldest, Mason, “Stop copying everything I say!” (You know how kids play this “game” to annoy each other.)

Mason chimed back, “Stop mimicking everything I say.”

Morgan responded back, “Huh, mimicking is not the same as copying.”

I interrupted, “Yes, in this case it is.”

Upon which Mason said, “See Morgan, it IS the same. ‘Mimicking’ is just an adult word that they say instead of ‘copying.’”

Selecting Just the Right Words
Which brings me to the subject at hand, the power of words, specifically, the right words and how they can profoundly impact your marketing success.

For instance, there is a big difference in the following phrases:

Learn how to become wealthy beyond your dreams.

Or…

Discover how to become wealthy beyond your dreams.

Learning implies work and a degree of difficulty. To discover is to come upon something by accident, to be lucky, and implies ease and no work at all.

And that’s just a single word. Great communicators understand and know that even changing one word can strengthen your prose dramatically, and have a positive impact on results. They understand the power of compelling, benefit driven headlines and how to craft copy that stops you and gets you to read on and—more importantly—respond and act quickly. This is especially critical with e-communications where attention spans are short at best.

A great writer understands that today, more than ever, you sell the offer, not the product or service while simultaneously building credibility and asking for the order. They understand that their job is to sell and understand the psychology of human behavior.

Consider the following headlines:

Protect your family for $25 yearly.
(This is not a mistake, read on to find out how.)

Or…

Protect your family for $25 yearly.

While both are compelling, the first headline addresses the question in our prospects mind “This sounds too good to be true,” eliminating doubt and reinforcing that it is indeed true, establishing credibility and subconsciously getting the reader to read on further for more information.

More readers will want to know “how can I protect my family for such a small amount of money.” In this case, adding a simple phrase makes a big difference. A logolept (word maniac) knows the power of clear and simple communication.

They do not tire of words like “free”, “new”, “now” or “you.” They wield this clout in each piece of mail they write to grab new leads…every site they help build to get hits on the Web…each ad they send to pull in new sales. Read these words over, and you should know what we mean when we say that they like to put their skill to the test.

In fact, the paragraph you just read is created from single syllable words. (Is that cool or what?). Clear communication should not be complex.

They know and understand that we need to tell the prospects/customers what to do:

Respond by June 13th
by completing the enclosed reply card
or dialing, toll-free, 1-800-YOU-RULE
to receive your 10% discount.

Professional communicators also know the power of testing and analyzing results. Make no mistake, you can be a great writer, but that does not make you a great direct response writer. And today, those who can get results are in even higher demand. By combining the right offer, with the right words, adding some psychological principles, and understanding selling and the sales process, you can help your clients and companies succeed.

So, the next time you’re out and about town, listen to the kids as they talk to each other.

We’d be wise to copy – that is, mimic the way they interact from time to time.

You can read the full article by clicking here.

Bad copy is bad copy; great copy is great copy. What’s the secret? Relevance. Regardless of old or new media, if the copy, offer and messaging resonate with the intended segment(s), success will be yours.

What’s the key to relevancy? Usually it’s the offers/messaging you make/use.

My experience in not either/or, it’s using the right channel with the right message and usually involves adjusting such to each segment based on THEIR channel preference, not mine as a marketer.

Both old and new media need to apply correct testing — sadly that’s still done infrequently.

Grant A. Johnson

Sagging sales and weak response rates amid economic gloom means the time to deploy tests is now. Here are the new rules to live by. During rough economic times, it’s easy for those who control the budget to say that if response rates are down, they don’t want to invest in testing-”You can’t spend money if you’re not making money.” To certain executives, this actually makes sense. But others, the wise ones, know that the time to spend more marketing dollars is when sales are down.

FIND OUT WHAT TO TEST. 

CHIEF MARKETER Feature Story: October/November 2009 (DMA 09 Issue)
Author: Grant A. Johnson, Johnson Direct

We’re a good half-decade into the age of advertising accountability and most marketers are still struggling to quantify their spends.

The ever-evolving media landscape, from billboard and brand advertising to trade shows and web/podcast events, social media and even traditional media like direct mail, ads and mass media have made both media buys and accurate measurement about as easy as running a 4-minute mile.

Marketer’s increased workload, combined with tighter budget constraints, a plethora of media options and generally shrinking marketing departments, makes “accountability” a seemingly impossible feat. Especially since marketing credibility has become an issue among many upper executives, the task of making your advertising/marketing more ROI-centric has become even more difficult.

The shift in marketing dollars to social media adds fuel to the firestorm, as social media outlets are very hard, sometimes nearly impossible, to quantify and measure. Yes, they are often inexpensive, but money spent without a ROMI payback model is money wasted.

Read Make the C-Suite BELIEVE. Written by Grant A. Johnson; published by Chief Marketer.

Your friends at Johnson Direct

Inside Direct Mail asked me to write a feature article on what to test in direct mail during a down economy. Here is the piece.

I hope you find it helpful to your bottom-line.

Grant A. Johnson

Recently both Twitter and Facebook suffered Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, shutting down both very popular sites. I use both sites periodically and them not being accessible didn’t really bother me, but the issue made me contemplate social media and its role in both marketing communications and as a communication channel as a whole.

Here’s what PC World wrote after the DoS attacks: “Twitter will need to try and find the root cause of the denial-of-service attack, or more importantly build a more robust infrastructure with controls in place to withstand future DoS attacks. Companies will have to both determine how to manage social networking for end-users, and how to effectively leverage social networking for business purposes. Users need to figure out what to do with themselves when Twitter is down. A cursory glance suggests that many users rediscovered Facebook to fill their Twitter withdrawal.”

Here are some interesting statistics courtesy of Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics:

• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females

Mr. Qualman also asserts that people would rather give up e-mail than their social network. Note: Twitter does not seem to be mentioned.

These stats are in line with a recent Morgan Stanley report on social media usage that was penned by a 15-year old intern there. That report also says that teenagers do not use Twitter. Log on to Twitter and this will be confirmed.

With social media here to stay, I put on my measurable marketing hat and began to think about segments and sub-segments and how they apply and are used in social media circles these days. I had a hard time finding segments within the sites so I did a little web research and here’s some of what I found:

Daniel Lyons in Forbes wrote this about Facebook: “It’s as if two very different tribes were trying to inhabit the same space. I sometimes get the creepy feeling that we oldsters are barging into some college party where we don’t belong and trying a little too hard to look like we’re having fun, like the sad middle-age guys in the movie Old School who attempt, pathetically, to recapture their college days.”

Blogger Gadi Shamia said this: Connecting all the dots I finally got it. It is all about segmentation, or lack of it… Facebook was created by college students for other college students, and only on September 2006 did it become open to all Internet users: kids, students, young adults and adults. This was a major move for the site but it did not change the way the site was designed, the type of services it offered and the metaphors it used (we adults don’t super poke each other…)

And for Twitter:

Blogger Tony Thomas came up with these Twitter groups:
1. The Replacements

Those twitterers who have replaced a more traditional form of communication called talking with 140 characters or less of every thought, comment or announcement that enters their mind. These twitterers tend to skew towards the @reply functionality.

2. The Giver’s

Those that are so fast to tweet a link to the latest piece of industry information published, that they can practically claim it as their own. Lots of tinyurl’s are seen in their tweets. Those that just miss being first to announce often use the RT function.

3. The Takers

Those that selfishly take more than they give from Twitter. These people (me included in this group!) like to follow the random thoughts of random people and send minimal & uninteresting tweets (usually after a few drinks!)

4. The Profilers

Twitter has become both a replacement and a nightmare for publicists amongst those that have a public profile. And we all now feel closer to the ones we look up to and know more about what’s going on in their heads. And if their tweets are missed online, you can usually catch them in the glossies or Sunday gossip sections.

5. The robots

The segment we all hate, but in the end they don’t care because they are machines! I also put the fakes in this segment as they tend to be disliked as well

6. The WTF’s

This segment skews to those who have no followers and only 1 update. They are not sure what the hell twitter is and why people think it’s great. And they are proud to publicly announce it.

If you have someone you are following who has Tweeted a lot, Twitter Analyzer tools can provide data centric insight into which segment of the Twitter audience their messaging most likely resonates.”

It seems like both Facebook and Twitter are turning into the new Mass Media, with Twitter doing a better job of segmenting.

Today, content must be relevant in order to be successful. Relevancy is achieved through great segmentation. Social media needs to do a better job of helping define segments. That’s a key reason why most social media marketing is so hard to quantify from an ROMI vantage point: It’s too broad and lacks focus.

Great segmentation leads to better marketing and that leads to a business model that makes a profit and therefore sustainable.

How many friends or followers one has is more about ego than about the real number of people who are interested in you, what you have to say or what you’re doing. LinkedIn, granted more of a true social media business application, does a much better job at segmenting.

Oh, remember MySpace? Yes, it’s still around. It was created for artistic types and, like Facebook is doing, grew out of its roots and lost relevancy.

The whole exercise really makes me wonder, overall, how effective social media is — and how big it will become. Yes, it’s growing, but…you fill in the rest.

Grant A. Johnson