A big mistake that many business owners make when writing their marketing is that they are trying to sell their product.
Here’s the thing, you aren’t selling your product in every piece of marketing you do – you’re just selling the next click.
Let me elaborate…
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When you’re writing content, Sell The Next Click.
In this video, I’m talking about a really important concept to keep in mind whenever you’re writing any content on any medium about how what it is you’re actually selling in that piece of content.
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When Writing Content People Start with Features
When you’re writing a piece of content, often start with the product, they start with the features and then they realise, ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t be selling the features. I should be selling the benefits and the pains, the problem that I’m solving.’ The problem, promise, proof that I’ve talked about in a previous video.
That makes sense, yes, you’re already halfway there. You’re talking about the problem, you’re talking about the benefits to the customer. You’re understanding the target customer and stuff. There’s another step you can take here and the best example is in Email Marketing.
Email Marketing Provides the Best Example
I’ve chosen email marketing as an example because everyone knows email marketing. They know how it works, they know the structure of it. You’ve received emails before. If you haven’t received emails, I’m really impressed and I want to know what kind of life you live…contact me? I want to know about these people who don’t have emails…
But as most people have experienced emails, they know there is a subject line, there is the content of the email and then they click on it and they go to a page. The key point here is that you’re selling the next click. So, when you write the subject line, you’re not trying to go with the problems and the benefits of the product and blah blah blah. What you’re trying to get them to do is open the email.
And when they open the email and they read the email, that email needs to sell the click to go to the landing page. You don’t need to talk about everything in the email. You don’t need to go through all of your problem, promise, proof. You probably will go through a problem, promise, proof cycle, but a very short one, a very sharp one that leaves them wanting more.
Therefore they click on the link, get to the landing page and when they get to the landing page you’re then selling them to fill out a form, to request whatever you want them to request, to buy whatever you want them to buy. So that’s where you’re really talking about the benefits and the pains and really driving it home.
Everything Has To Be Congruent
The key thing to remember here is that all of that has to be congruent. You cannot sell the click of the subject line with some clickbait-y subject line and then not give them payoff in the email. And equally, you cannot write the email and then go to the landing page and it be for something completely different, or not satisfying the curiosity that you’ve created in that email. The entire chain needs to be one thing, one piece of content, but you need to consider each piece as selling to get to the next stage.
This Can Also Be Expressed as “The Small Yes”
Another way to frame this is “the small yes”. You’re trying to get them to say the “small yes”. And this has implications beyond things like email marketing in that when you’re trying to get people to buy your product, get them to make a smaller decision first that gets them in the habit of saying yes to you.
The example that I’ve seen of this – and I apologise, I would reference where I heard this, but I can’t remember, it’s something that’s just stuck in my head, and I can’t remember where I heard it, it was probably in some training – but the example of the small yes is like a place that’s selling cars and the system on the website gets you to make some small decisions about the car first. You know, what colour is it, what tyres do you want, what kind of seats do you want, and so on.
So you make lots of little decisions. And as you make each little decision, you’re more and more likely to click the big yes when it comes to the price.
Don’t Make the Process Too Long or Decisions Too Difficult
There are good ways and bad ways of doing this. You can obviously make a process way too long and people will get fed up of it. Or you can make those decisions really difficult so then they give up because the decisions are too difficult. It’s a really fine art of getting the small yes, and understanding what degree it is that you can ask for.
It All Comes Back to Understanding Your Target Person
And what this all comes back to is step 1, which is why I constantly tell people to spend a lot of time in step 1, in understanding your target person. Really get inside their head, really understand them emotionally. Understand when they get impatient. Understand at what point you can push them to buy, at which point do you need to give them a bit more information, and at which point you can get them to give you a small yes.
I hope that helps you a little bit in understanding how you can amp up your marketing, improve your marketing in those small increments to give it a little more effectiveness in any channel on any medium you’re working in.
If you need some clarification, if you didn’t understand what I said, if you want me to maybe look over your writing, or your whole marketing strategy, your processes you’re trying to get those small yeses, please get in touch. dj@rainbowdragon.digital is the best way to get in touch with me and I look forward to hearing from you.