Why a secondary ‘call to action’ on web pages is often missing (and causes unnecessary reader departures)

 copywriting  No Responses »
Apr 182012
 

Which is your dominant hand? Left or right? We use the dominant hand for important things like writing, hammering and striking the ball with a racket or bat. It is called the dominant hand because its role is more important. Or so we think. But where would we be without the other, less used hand? Driving, typing and cooking, to name just a few activities, would be much harder without the second hand. It’s easy to overlook the importance of things that are secondary.

Or neglect them altogether.

On web pages, we know the importance of giving the reader the next step. That step, the primary ‘call to action’ is a key piece of kit in the copywriter’s toolbox. But what about the secondary call to action? It’s usually missing in action and there’s a reason for this. But first let’s make sure we’re clear what we’re talking about.

What is a call to action?

Let’s recap on the whole’ call to action’ thing. The primary call to action is towards the end of our copy. It tells the reader what to do next. Typically, it says, “email me for a quote”, “visit the e-shop” or something similar. A call to action should be clear with a simple instruction that readers can easily follow.

Before the internet, the only form of direct, written, personal sales communication was the sales letter. Known as direct mail marketing, successful examples stuck to a tried and tested formula that included the all important ‘call to action’ at the end.

According to industry sources, under 3% of readers respond to direct mail letters (that’s why those letters are sent to 1000s of households). We know that because the next step is something clear and measurable like, “Send back the reply paid envelope for your free sample”.

That decision to respond is most likely made on the first reading. This is not a letter you would file away for future reference. It’s goal is to get an immediate response. The secondary call to action is missing from offline sales letters, for good reason. It would be a distraction and worse, might reduce response rates.

What is a secondary call to action?

A secondary call to action offers the reader an alternative next step. So if the primary call to action is “Sign up for my e-news”. The secondary call to action might be “Or read more articles on copywriting”.

If it reduces response rates in offline sales letters, why use it on web pages?

These days customers visit websites to check out businesses. They go there to compare prices, suss out who’s behind the company and even make purchases. On web pages secondary calls to action play an important but often neglected role.

They look after your existing customers, subscribers and those in research mode. It encourages people to linger, who might otherwise leave. When they linger, they get a little more from you, learn a little more about you and make their connection with you a little stronger.

Not every click on your web page is from a first time visitor or prospective customer. Some are from your existing customers, your subscribers, your Twitter followers, your Facebook fans, your connections on LinkedIn or fellow members of business organisations and forums.

It’s easy to lavish fuss and attention on the new people who show up. They might become customers so you’re keen to impress. You want to get your call to action just right for those first timers. But the people who already know you to a greater or lesser degree are the people who are giving you business and referrals right now. Don’t neglect them.

The secondary call to action shows respect for them and your confidence in your material

You’re happy to let them linger and explore your website a little more, knowing wht they find will reinforce your credibility. When an existing subscriber lands on that page, it shows courtesy to them. It gives them a next step too. Let’s take some examples.

What can you use as a secondary call to action?

If your primary call to action is subscribe to your e-newsletter, your secondary call to action could be:

• Client testimonial
• Another article or series of articles
• A case study
• An interview
• A product review

There is one important step that can get overlooked. If you don’t include this step, then your secondary call to action can become a diversion like in the offline sales letter.

The biggest mistake with a secondary call to action?

If you use secondary call to action you must close the loop. What do I mean by that? When you’ve sent someone off to read another article or case study, make sure there is another primary and secondary call to action at the end of that page too. And so on. And so on. Like this,

Twice a month I send out an e-news, especially put together for my loyal subscribers. It contains practical advice on sales writing and marketing to help rural entrepreneurs make enough, from doing what they love. It’s free! Subscribe here.

Want to read more articles right now? Here’s a round up of articles on sales writing.

The best way to do this is a simple audit of your web pages. Decide on your primary and secondary calls to action (they may be different for different pages on the site). Make a check list and work your way through the pages on your website.

People visit your website at various stages of their relationship with you. Just as in real life we start to take for granted the people we know best, so the primary call to action can neglect your loyal subscribers and business friends. Add in a secondary call to action and make the extra effort to take care of the not so new visitors to your site.

 Posted by Juliet Fay at 4:33 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

How the Grocer’s Apostrophe led to generations of confused writers

 Marketing, Style  No Responses »
Apr 052012
 

When you have a baby, everyone has an opinion about the best way to look after it.

Your mother will tell you how she did it in her day. Your mother-in-law will tell you something else. The midwife will give you the current thinking (which contradicts everything else you’ve heard) and your friends will do something never advised in the baby books.

And all this leaves you, the new parents, totally confused. What do you do? How do you decide what’s right and what’s not?

Whenever there’s conflicting information we get confused. That’s why the Grocer’s Apostrophe has caused confusion for writers down the generations. It’s very common but never appears in English Usage books.

 What is the Grocer’s Apostrophe?

The Grocer's Apostrophe

The Grocer’s Apostrophe is the little, suspended comma that mysteriously appears on signs, typically in green grocers’ shops. It shows up when vegetables go plural. One apple; many apple’s.

It was named for the greengrocers who brought it into common usage. You’ll find plenty of examples of the Grocer’s Apostrophe along the racks of beautiful fruit and vegetables. Look out for: potato’s, tomatoe’s, cauli’s, carrot’s, banana’s and more.

So what’s wrong with it?

Why is it incorrect (what is an apostrophe anyway)?

Technically it is the wrong use of an apostrophe. Strictly speaking, an apostrophe has only 2 uses:

1) To show missing letters

2) To show possession

Let’s take a look at those two examples:

 1) To show missing letters

In spoken and written English we often run two words together. So did not becomes didn’t, he will becomes, he’ll. The apostrophe tells us there is one or more missing letters.

Didn’t (the apostrophe marks the missing ‘o’)

He’ll (the apostrophe marks the missing ‘wi’)

That brings us to the second use of the apostrophe.

 2) To show possession

You can use an apostrophe as shorthand for ‘belong to’. Instead of, The coat belongs to Jack, we can say, [i]Jack’s coat.

You never need an apostrophe just to show the word is a plural.

So by adding apostrophes to plurals, grocers are accidentally making their vegetables possessive. And possessive vegetables are something we don’t need!

Grocer’s Apostrophes pop up in all sorts of writing, not just on signboards. How did this catch on so widely?

How has it confused generations?

It is a universal truth that when unsure, we tend to look over our shoulder. What is our neighbour doing? We learnt this in school. If in doubt, copy your neighbour. Yes it was frowned on, sometimes got us in trouble, but it beat handing in a blank page.

Seeing the Grocer’s Apostrophe scattered liberally around sign boards up and down the high street, is it any wonder that it has crept into annual reports, sales copy and articles?

The question is, does it matter?

Who cares about apostrophes these days?

Grammarians get very upset about the Grocer’s Apostrophe. They cry foul and lament the decline of language and standards in public life.

But language is about communication.

I’ve grown up with the Grocer’s Apostrophe. It hasn’t impeded my vegetable buying efforts. In fact I feel quite nostalgic about it. So I say let it stand……but only in the green grocers’.

I don’t recommend using the Grocer’s Apostrophe in your sales copy or article writing. Iit gives conflicting messages. They confuse people. Confusion is best avoided when talking to customers (as it is when looking after babies!).

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 Posted by Juliet Fay at 11:01 am  Tagged with: ,

When to use capitals in headlines and subheads

 Marketing, Style  No Responses »
Mar 292012
 

Once upon a time in olde England we used to say thou and shalt. We don’t anymore. Language and style evolve. Yesterday I had a discussion with associates in Canada, about capital letters in headlines.

In my article writing, I use sentence case. That means I only use a capital at the beginning of the heading or subheading. And for proper nouns like names of people and places. It’s the same way I use capitals in an ordinary sentence.

Lets take an example. When you use sentence case in a headline, it looks like this:

Why black cabs in London are iconic

The first word has a captial letter and the place name London does too. Yesterday, during our discussion, I realised others take a different view!

Jack uses capitals all through his headlines and subheads, but not for every word. So he would write the same headline like this:

Why Black Cabs in London Are Iconic

This is known as title case. All the main words in the title have a capital letter.

Notice the in doesn’t have a capital letter. Words of less than 3 letters generally don’t start with a capital letter, even when you use title case.

So who’s right?

Both of us! A quick check online reveals that there is only one rule. And that is, be consistent! Neither style is right. Fashions change. It used to be, book titles used title case. Articles in journals and magazines generally did not.

Today some newspapers like The New Yorker use title case, others don’t. If you glance across the titles of the books on your bookshelves, you’ll see a wide variety of styles including no capitals at all, ALL UPPERCASE, and a MIX of UPPERCASE and lowercase.

I took the decision to drop title case because I found it hard to be consistent. Words like and made me trip. To capitalise or not? And always looks funny with a capital letter, even at the beginning of a sentence!

There was good reason to use title case in headlings before it was easy to change formatting. Capital letters made a headline or subhead stand out from the body of the text.

Now we can easily embolden, colour and enlarge our headline or subhead. It stands out. The capital letters on top, just make it look cluttered. Sentence case looks cleaner.

So the decision is yours. Use title case or don’t. Just stick to one golden rule, thou shalt be consistent!

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 Posted by Juliet Fay at 11:07 am  Tagged with: ,

Why you need an Emotivator to engage farm customers and provoke action

 copywriting, Marketing  No Responses »
Dec 122011
 

Plato, a classical Greek philosopher,  believed the mind was a chariot pulled by 2 horses. The charioteer represents reason with the two horses representing good and bad instinct or emotions. It is the driver who must drive the horses forward but also rein them in and prevent them from overturning the chariot.

Modern neuroscience suggests that the relationship between reason (or logic) and emotion, (or feelings), is much more dynamic than that, and that in fact rather than logic trying to over rule emotion, they are inter- dependent. Emotions plat a vital role, propelling us to act after digesting all the available data.

The word emotion and the word motivation come from the same Latin root, movere, which means to move.

To encourage readers to act you need to create an enticement, a catalyst. I call this an Emotivator. I'll tell you what this is and how to create one, but first, let's talk about emotions.

What are emotions?
Emotions in this context are instinctive feelings as opposed to reason. We think of instinctive feelings as based on intuition that comes from our sub- conscious, working at a level we cannot analyze.

In simpler terms, have you ever made a business decision based on your gut feeling? Sometimes, even after weighing all the evidence between two courses of action, you know your choice is based on something more than logic. A positive feeling that engaging company A’ services is the right choice, even though there is nothing to suggest that company B can’t do the job.

You feel more positive about Company A.

We use emotion to form opinions and these enable us to act.

If you were to make decisions simply based on weighing up the pros and cons, decision making becomes almost impossible. With unlimited variations you would never reach a conclusion, never have an absolute winner.

Emotion kicks in to help us form opinions based on the data we’ve collected.

How do you use this information in copywriting for your farm business?
You need to stimulate an emotional response.

When you are writing copy for your farm customers or potential customers, you can present all the benefits, have glowing testimonials, and a strong call to action but if you don’t engage the reader and stimulate an emotional response, then they won’t take the action you suggest.

Engaging readers and customers is a popular mantra in the marketing and communications world, but what does it actually mean?

It means provoking that positive emotion around your farm products or services.

The easiest way to do this, is to show that you understand the customer and her dilemmas and that you have the perfect solution. You can do this by creating a Emotivator .

What is an Emotivator?
An Emotivator is a sentence or phrase that you can use on your leaflets, business cards and in your email signature. It is a crucial line in your sales letter or web sales page.

It is not a tag line, as its focus is not to sum up your brand or premise of your business. It is more like a musical hook, designed to catch the ear of the listener and encourage them to read on.

The Emotivator must do three things:

  1. Who: It must attract people that you can genuinely help with your products or services.
  2. Before: It must identify these peoples’ current situation, their problems or aspirations.
  3. After: It must hint at how life will be after you use the product or service. The hint must intrigue the reader and entice her to read on.

The purpose of this is very simple. You want these people to realise this message is for them and only them, then to feel that the writer understands precisely where they are and where they want to be in terms of your product or service. Finally the Emotivator must offer an enticing picture of a better future situation as a result of using your product or service.

The response to a good Emotivator is almost subconscious and crucially if someone reads your message and that person isn’t in your target audience, then there may be no reaction at all. That’s fine. You don’t need the people who are never going to buy to be moved by your copy.

Examples of Emotivators

Food copywriter

Who – food businesses
Before – copy not working
After – copy attracting paying customers

Turning stale content into fresh sales

CCTV and alarm systems for farmers
Who – farmers
Before – unprotected farm, afraid of losing valuable stock or equipment
After – sleep easy

Keeping watch all over your farm so you can sleep easy

How to create your Emotivator

  • Define who you want to attract.
  • Think about your business from the cusotmers point of view
  • Where are they at now. The Before. Think about their issues. Isolate the problem: them most pressing problem.
  • What feeling does the problem produce – e.g. Irritation, fear, rage, longing, disappointment etc.
  • How does that manifest? e.g. Jumping at noises, disturbed sleep
  • How can you solve that problem/change this? e.g. an alarm gives someone else the task of being the night watchmen.
  • What feeling will the solution bring? Relief, joy, peace of mind, gratitude etc. Sleep easy

Practise developing an Emotivator for your farm service or product and then test it out. You’ll know if it’s working because people will say, ‘how do you do that?’.

© Juliet Fay 2011.
If you run a farm based or rural enterprise, you can get more articles like this on farm marketing and copywriting direct to your inbox twice a month, by subscribing here.
You'll also get updates on workshops and e-books that will help you understand more about your customers and how to connect with them.
If you like this article, feel free to share it with your own list, post it on your site, on your blog, or add it to your autoresponder. As long as you leave it intact and do not alter it in anyway. All links must remain in the article. No textual amendments permitted. Only exception is Twitter.

Where to now?
Read articles on copywriting
Read articles on marketing
Any questions or comments? Please add your thoughts below.

Workshops and Training
New! for 2012 – Business writing for an interactive audience
Currently I am developing a new course for business owners who want to improve their understanding of business writing techniques and get practical help to make writing easier. The course will combine workshops, home study and online support. I am looking for your input to decide on the focus for this first intensive course.
What are the 3 most things you find most difficult in your business writing?
Please add your thoughts to the blog post on my site.

 Posted by Juliet Fay at 3:03 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Why clarity is essential for good copywriting

 copywriting, Style  No Responses »
Nov 302011
 
Sharp focus brings clarity

Blurred hawthorn berries by Juliet Fay

Ugh, this image is blurred. Your brain scrambles because  it can’t make out the hawthorn berries. You want to get away from this image.

Lack of clarity in your writing can also have undesired consequences.

It can send people away. Bringing clarity to your business writing means making it clear and distinct. A clear web page is easy to read, easily understood and engaging. Clear writing shouldn’t be confused with simplistic thinking or childlike writing.

Clear writing can communicate complex ideas effortlessly. Bringing clarity to your writing does not mean avoiding long words, on the contrary finding just the right word helps make your meaning  unambiguous.

Why does clarity matter?

Being clear and distinct is not just a courtesy to your reader it can have a big impact on how people respond to your writing. When writing sales copy or a business presentation your aim is to persuade the reader to take a specific action. Clarity gives you a much better chance of success.

Consider the builders’ merchant who wants to attract the general public yet speaks only of the Trade Counter and Trade discounts when calling the reader to action. The intention may be hidden in there, but the invitation is not clear, so the public go elsewhere.

Worse, as Oliver Strunk quips in The Elements of Style, ‘tragedies are rooted in ambiguity’. Think of the hours of frustration that result when instructions fail to give clear directions for assembling a chest of drawers or lovers part unnecessarily because one or other could not make their feelings clear.

Who falls into this trap?

Experienced and inexperienced writers can end up mired in muddiness and ambiguity. If you are prone to writing long sentences, you have to be careful that your meaning doesn’t get lost half way through.

When does confusion and misunderstanding commonly affect writing?
Muddy thinking leads to confused writing. Ideas can be unruly. That’s why planning your writing is essential. An outline helps marshal those ideas into a logical flow.

Sometimes the research has not been completed and so vague claims, incomplete theories and missing facts can lead to an incomplete, murky piece that only hints at the benefits of your product or service but doesn’t quite deliver the whole picture.

Young or inexperienced business writers want to assert their seriousness, intelligence and grasp of the subject. This can lead to a particular type writing which is designed to cloud the clear, simple, incisive thinking the writer wants to display. Thanks to concerted efforts by The Plain English campaign, this type of writing is disappearing from the web pages of public sector organisations. The main culprits now are consultants who love gobledygook, like this:

At base level, this just comes down to facilitating administrative projections.

Jargon. Banish jargon

Jargon is insider speak, used confidently by those in the know but like a foreign language for anyone outside your industry. Jargon alienates, confuses and does nothing to help convey your message. Ban it or if you must use it, explain it.

SEO – search engine optimisation. Giving your web site the best chance of being found by the visitors you want to attract. 

Bring clarity to your sales copywriting and articles everywhere, but especially on your:

  • website
  • sales letters
  • brochures
  • press releases
  • emails
  • catalogues
  • blog

How can you avoid confusion and misunderstanding and bring clarity to your writing?

  • Outline – plan your writing
  • Say one thing at a time
  • Break up unwieldy sentences
  • Use connecting words and phrases to link thoughts

To improve clarity in your writing

Read more. Look out for clear writing. Analyse how it is done. Imitate the styles you like and the tools used by the writer.

Ruthless editing. Plan your writing to allow time for ruthless editing. Read the piece out loud. Cumbersome sentences will jump out. Lost sentences that have meandered into the bog will be exposed. Disconnects, when one point does not logically follow another will have no where to hide.

Practice writing. Take time to learn more about it. Take pleasure in improving and achieving good writing.

Sharp focus brings clarity

Keeping your writing sharp and clear makes it easier to understand

Clarity is a courtesy to your reader and essential if you want good results from your sales copywriting. Go now and check your latest piece of writing for clarity.

How did you do?

© Juliet Fay 2011.
If you run a farm based or rural enterprise, you can get more articles like this on marketing and copywriting direct to your inbox twice a month, by subscribing here.
You’ll also get updates on workshops and e-books that will help you understand more about your customers and how to connect with them.
If you like this article, feel free to share it with your own list, post it on your site, on your blog, or add it to your autoresponder. As long as you leave it intact and do not alter it in anyway. All links must remain in the article. No textual amendments permitted. Only exception is Twitter.

Where to now?
Read articles on copywriting
Read articles on marketing
Any questions or comments? Please add your thoughts below.

Workshops and training
New! for 2012 – Business writing for an interactive audience
Currently I am developing a new course for business owners who want to improve their understanding of business writing techniques and get practical help to make writing easier. The course will combine workshops, home study and online support. I am looking for your input to decide on the focus for this first intensive course.
What are the 3 most things you find most difficult in your business writing?
Please add your thoughts to the blog post on my site.

 

 Posted by Juliet Fay at 1:51 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

15 ideas for fresh new content for your farm enterprise or rural business website

 copywriting, Writing for the web  No Responses »
Nov 242011
 

Capture your audience's attention with fresh contentYou're walking along the fruit and vegetable display in your local store and you notice the salad leaves are turning yellow at the edges, looking a bit tired and the whole selection is rather limited. In fact some of the trays are empty and you realise there's been nothing new or different here for the last few months.

You walk on by……..

Compare that with another display in another store, where vibrant Little Gem lettuce leaves look crunchy and fresh, plump, red tomatoes are still on the vine and every week there is a 'new season' special: Cornish new potatoes, Welsh leeks or Tydeman's Early Worcester apples.

Which one will you go back to, again and again?

Just like a fruit and vegetable display, your website can either offer fresh new content or quietly fade and become stale and dull.

Fresh new website content is good for your visitors and good for search engine rankings

Any good web developer will tell you that fresh new content is loved by search engines which is good for your site rankings. That makes your site more visible.

Okay so new content is good. What can you add?

15 ideas for new content

Content doesn't have to be created by you. Variety is the key. Here's some ideas to get you started.

  1. FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions page.
  2. Client testimonials (add a photo and always attribute comments), sprinkle liberally throughout your site.
  3. Add your Twitter feed to your website (ask your web developer).
  4. Add your Facebook feed to your website (ask your web developer).
  5. Add a news feed to your website, e.g. if you're near a beach it could be the local surf report, if you offer farming support services, get the Farmers' Weekly news feed on your website (ask your web developer).
  6. News commentary – provide a commentary or layman's explanation of industry news e.g. Financial news, environment news or food or farming news.
  7. Articles – create a library of articles for your target audience. This also helps establish your expertise. Topics for articles can often be found in email questions you get from customers or clients e.g. Which fonts work well on posters?, How do you choose a web developer?
  8. Guest articles – ask other business people to contribute 'how to' or 'top tips' articles especially where their services compliment yours e.g. A door drop business and a PR consultant, a leather hand bag maker and wool clothing designer.
  9. Add links to other good content such as blogs, Facebook groups, non-competing websites that will interest your audience.
  10. Reviews – review books, equipment or services that would be helpful to your target market.
  11. Events – add a calendar and show events of interest to your audience e.g. Food festivals, country shows.
  12. Case studies – particularly good for service providers, a case study talks about the experience of an individual client and gives the before and after comparison. Ideal also for e.g. image consultants, hairdressers, business advisers etc. Use plenty of images or even do a photo story for e.g. A wedding cake maker.
  13. Behind the scenes: record what you do e.g. Making cheese, designing leaflets, advising businesses. Do that with words, images, quotes and/or video.
  14. Surveys – everyone loves a poll. Ask your website developer about polls that can be run on your website. Once you have results, write about how you will use that information to maybe develop your products or launch a new range.
  15. Short e-guides to download from your site (add value by helping people make a buying decision e.g. Tourism sites can add 'Dog friendly beaches in Pembrokeshire', garages, 'Top tips for getting more miles from your tank' etc). A quick search online can usually find e-guides already written for you. Contact the author and ask permission to promote the guide e.g. My e-report, The 8 worst website writing mistakes and how to avoid them, is available for web developers, photographers, graphic designers and busines advisers to use as a giveaway.

Remember content is king, but only if it is fresh and new!

What other new content ideas do you use for your farm enterprise or rural business?

© Juliet Fay 2011.

If you run a farm based or rural enterprise, you can get more articles on marketing and copywriting like this direct to your inbox twice a month, by subscribing here.
You'll also get updates on workshops and e-books that will help you understand more about your customers and how to connect with them.
If you like this article, feel free to share it with your own list, post it on your site, on your blog, or add it to your autoresponder. As long as you leave it intact and do not alter it in anyway. All links must remain in the article. No textual amendments permitted. Only exception is Twitter.

Where to now?
Read articles on copywriting
Read articles on marketing
Any questions or comments? Please add your thoughts below.
 

Workshops and Training
New! for 2012 – Business writing for an interactive audience
Currently I am developing a new course for business owners who want to improve their understanding of business writing techniques and get practical help to make writing easier. The course will combine workshops, home study and online support. I am looking for your input to decide on the focus for this first intensive course.
What are the 3 most things you find most difficult in your business writing?
Please add your thoughts to the blog post on my site.

 Posted by Juliet Fay at 10:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
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