Before creating an or even the product, you need to understand your audience, their problems, and their values. You need to know your product aligns with those values and solves one of those problems. After understanding this niche, you can make an ad to create a desire and an urgency for your solution.

To write a successful ad, you need to:

1. Know your audience
2. Know the problem they face
3. Know how your product solves that problem
4. Know how the audience will encounter you
5. Make a promise
6. Repeat that promise through to the conclusion
7. Prove the product’s value
8. Provide a guarantee
9. Create an urgency
10. Make calls to action easy

Here is what you need to know about these ten elements and how to use them effectively.

What You Need to Know Before Writing a Successful Ad

To write a successful ad, never mind an effective product or service, reflects an understanding of a target audience. You want to know its problem and how to solve it. Once you have that, you need to understand how the audience will come across that ad and what it will be receptive to.

1) Know Your Audience

You can’t market a product if there isn’t an audience with a need. In niche industries like hiking, gardening, nature photography, etc., you already have a passionate audience looking to get more out of their experiences.

And if they’re serious about their photography, amateur or professional, you know they are willing to buy a wide lens with helpful features. They’re mature adults with some form of a decent job to pay for photography gear.

So now you have some of their demographics.

2) Know Their Problem

I like to use nature photography as an example because it combines art and the outdoors. It’s a hobby and a profession. You can buy endless gear, organize trips, and use or sell a service.

If I work for a company that wants a full frame, wide angle lens perfect for serious landscape photographers, what do I really need to sell?

Landscape photographers may haul lots of gear to remote places, miles from the road early in the cold morning to get a sunrise. Wide angle lenses tend to be smaller and lighter, which is nice, but that’s hardly unique.

That’s their values and the problem they want to overcome.

3) Know How Your Product Solves the Problem

Perhaps your company recognizes cameras operate poorly in the cold. You want to market a lens that is easier to focus on and less likely to collect condensation. Even amateur photographers may like that idea out of fear that they won’t have the technical know-how to get a clear image in that situation. They will want the extra help.

Put the values, specific problems you can solve, and demographics, and you have a good persona for the audience.

4) Know How Your Audience Will Encounter Your Ad

Will the ad be for Facebook? Google? A print ad? A niche site banner?

These are the rhetorical situation if you want to be technical about it. It’s the context of where your argument, the ad that is supposed to convince someone to act, will be delivered. Depending on the stage, the ad needs to speak differently.

Readers interpret information depending on how and when you present them with that information:

• Print vs. Digital: We have more attention to reading print words than digital words.
• Niche Power: Niche keywords catch our eyes when the digital ad would otherwise be a nuisance.
• Mobile vs. Desktop: Social media is used more on mobile when we’re more distracted. But a niche site with helpful articles on a desktop will command attention.
• Formal vs. Casual: Some sites gear toward a more formal audience, while other sites attract a casual one.
• Media: Some messages work better as text, audio, or video.

It’s the communication art’s version of “location, location, location.”

What You Need to Write a Successful Ad

Whichever form you choose to work in or the length, to write a successful ad you will incorporate a promise throughout. Then to support that promise, you offer proof and guarantee of the product. And because ads are about getting the audience to respond, the text needs urgency and a call to action.

5) Make a Promise

An ad is about a promise that creates desire. The headline at least hints at a promise by addressing a specific problem or explicitly makes a promise. It’s also often related to your unique selling proposition (USP).

But a successful ad doesn’t clickbait, so it needs to maintain that initial promise throughout. The headline should state it. If the ad is long, the promise and its theme are the thread from the lead to the conclusion.

Acting on an ad is responding to the promise.

6) Repeat That Promise to the End

I mentioned how you should repeat the ad’s promise and its theme throughout the ad. Successful ads need cohesion to impress and hold attention. People can pick up on disjointedness and a lack of power, even if they don’t analyze an ad.

When we read a book, watch a movie, or view a painting, we KNOW when something leaves an impression.

Ads are no different. Having a theme makes an ad a cohesive entity capable of an impression. Usually, this theme is the promise or related to it.

You might even think about it as a plot line. After all, problem-solving is a protagonist facing a challenge and overcoming it. The audience is the protagonist, and you are a supporting character or plot device. How does the story end? How do you get them there? That’s your promise.

7) Prove The Product’s Value

While a promise is a mere possibility to visualize, proof makes it real. Successful ads use testimonials and provide examples like quality testing. When you pitch the price, you need to show why that price is worthwhile.

Value of quality and promise:

• How does this wide angle lens work better in the cold?
• How does it avoid condensation better than another brand?
• Does it take just as good photos as another wide angle lens without the specialized features that help with cold and condensation?

Value of economics:

• How has this product proven to be better than a competitor?
• If it’s marked down, why is that a good thing and not an sign that something is amiss?

8) Provide a Guarantee

Guarantees inspire confidence on an individual level. Sure, you have an ideal price and plenty of testimonials. But that doesn’t guarantee THIS one potential customer will appreciate what they buy.

What if the hiking boots don’t fit well enough to expect them to get “worn in” right? The consumer will be stuck with expensive boots they can’t wear. It doesn’t matter how well-received the brand is with other hikers if this set doesn’t work for this one hiker.

But if you offer a reasonable guarantee, that hiker will be willing to try the boots. Not only will they not be trapped with less money and an extra item they can’t use, but you will be showing your confidence.

You stand by the value of the product AND the customer. The customer can trust you because you offered customer service before receiving a cent.

9) Create Urgency

Short hunting seasons often help to control wildlife populations better than long seasons.

With the shorter, hunters can look at one weekend and think, “I have to make each weekend count.” But with longer seasons, hunters can think “…Maybe next weekend.”

Sales work the same way. Urgency helps someone who is indecisive become decisive.

To create urgency, you can:

• Limit the length of time the offer is available (e.g. next 72 hrs)
• Limit the number (e.g. 1500)
• End the offer by a specific date (e.g. August 17, 2022)
• Discount ending after one of the above reasons—urgency is getting the discount, not the product

Along with urgency, you can make the limitation an event. A content creator might have a merchandise store with the same items year-round but make more money on a premium item campaign.

10) Make the Call to Action Easy

Calls to action need to be easy to find and flow. The buttons often have an energizing, high-contrast color with an easy-to-read font face.

The text is relevant to the reading situation. This can be “Learn more” if they need to learn more about a product before you try to sell them something, or “Buy now” if they are already familiar with you.

A good sales page may have several buy buttons spread throughout a long letter.

After clicking an ad or a sales page CTA, the button should start a seamless path to the order form, final processing, and a thank-you page.

Conclusion: 10 Heavy-Lifting Elements on How to Write a Successful Ad

These ten elements break down the understanding of your audience and the context of taking advertising copy from promise to CTA. You can apply the successful ad writing framework to any of your marketing materials, from the punchy social media post to the exhaustive sales letter.

Are you applying these principles to your copy?

The post 10 Heavy-Lifting Elements on How to Write a Successful Ad appeared first on Leah Markum.

But then you get back to the computer for the first time since that trip. All your photos from deep in the forest are blurry. Your heart drops. You can’t go back and get those pictures done again. Even if you did, how would you get the photos right?

Getting sharp photos in forests means getting more light into your camera. You can achieve this with tips on five factors: shutter speed, aperture, ISO, post-processing, and lens choice.

1. Shutter Speed

If you’re used to taking photos in automatic mode, your shutter speed suffers in forests. Automatic mode, in a low-light environment, sacrifices your shutter speed.

You click your shutter, think you hear the action immediately, and move. Oops. Instead, the shutter took extra time to gather light. That time means recording movement.

Even if you hold still, your arms and breathing shift the camera enough. You’ll get that blurry photo you’re trying NOT to take.

For this reason, your best bet in the forest is to shoot in shutter-priority mode. Your camera will shift other settings to accommodate your shutter.

If you choose to bring a tripod to overcome this issue, you still risk objects in the forest shifting on you. So you’d still have a blurry photo when you don’t want it.

Thus, make a point to shoot in shutter priority mode. It leverages your situation the most. It also might be the only change you need.

2. Aperture

Sometimes you want to use a different setting other than shutter priority.

For instance, the background is a distraction if you want to take a close-up of fungi on the forest floor. Aperture will give you the depth of field you need to make the photo work.

If you like to take these photos, then aperture-priority mode is for you. Aperture priority lets in more light over a wider area instead of time like with shutter speed.

3. ISO

You might be thinking, “But high ISO adds graininess to photos. I don’t want that. That’s hardly better than blurriness.”

Yes and no. You want to adjust shutter speed and aperture to get the look you want. If those settings are not enough, you should have a tripod or a good flash rig.

You need a tripod and flash if you can’t conquer low-light with shutter speed and aperture. That extra equipment needs time to set up and weighs you down on a hike.

But the point of this discussion is to NOT overwhelm you with time and equipment. High ISO helps with this.

The average view may not notice graininess. And it even has an aesthetic that many photographers respect.

There are two ways to notice high ISO grain:

1. You zoom in on the photo in editing software on your computer, or
2. You compare the same photo shot twice with different ISOs

Most people aren’t going to study your photos that hard. So amp up the ISO. In a forest setting, the graininess won’t kick in until 3200, depending on how shaded the scene is.

4. Post-Processing

Armed with Adobe Photoshop or Windows Photos for editing, you can make up for issues in the forest. The principle here is that less is more.

Mild adjustments can help a lot. Major adjustments might look fine at first but can look awful when you see the image days later.

Better yet, keep original copies of all your photos. Then, make new copies that you edit. If those copies don’t work out, you still have the originals.

Also, the more times you save an image as a JPG, the more data gets lost. So if you keep coming back to edit that image, it’ll become grainy even if it was sharp.

Especially in the case of low-light photography, shoot your images in RAW if you can. JPGs condense—and thus lose—data. RAW retains all information. So when you go to your computer to edit, you can make more adjustments without overdoing them.

For instance, say I want to saturate the image more. I have one red flower. Subtle greens, grays, and browns surround the flower.

If I increase color saturation in JPG, that flower might lose information. It may become a single red mass instead of having its original texture or subtle variations of red. RAW would spare me that and pick up more data on darker areas.

5. Prime Lenses

Prime lenses have a secret talent. They make up for their locked focal length by being the best at letting in light. If we compare lenses at the same settings, prime lenses get more details, contrast, and color.

Prime lenses achieve this with streamlined machinery. You might like telephoto lenses like your 18-55 mm kit lens or your 55-200 mm standard zoom lens. But changing the focus means a lot of machinery has to move around.

Prime lenses locked at 50 mm, for example, lack those obstructions. That lack means more light, faster. If you don’t mind sacrificing zoom, prime lenses work best in low-light situations.

Conclusion: How to Beat the Shade: 5 Tips to Take Sharp Photos in Forests

You can achieve sharp photos in a forest with a few adjustments to your camera. Changing aperture, shutter speed, ISO, post-processing, and prime lenses will let in more light. That light helps the camera understand the shapes and colors in the scene.

If you want to learn more about forests and the products and art from them, subscribe to this blog. You’ll hear from me the next time I post.

The post How to Beat the Shade: 5 Tips to Take Sharp Photos in Forests appeared first on Leah Markum.

I wrote this originally on LinkedIn as a part of a business-building intensive. While I made the article’s main audience other copywriters, even marketers looking to hire copywriters can gain from this. After all, you want a confident professional, right? Glean the signs of such a writer from what experienced writers have learned.

And now…

You’ve studied business principles and your craft. Now you want to start your own successful writing business. Congratulations!

…Is the “congratulations” too soon? Does it seem like a slow-burning horror show rather than an adventure? Even if you’ve prepared your skills and platform, you might still feel like you’re fumbling in a dark hall.

That’s where the business principles from American Writers and Artists Institute’s 21-Day Challenge with Ilise Benun came into play for me.

Besides daily challenges, it included three live events with Ilise and a guest. She invited home school and ag-tech copywriter Beverly Matoney, travel copywriter Holly Morris, and speaker-copywriter Terri Trespicio.

It just so happens, these conversations endorsed twenty-one business principles—plus or minus two depending on how I chose to lump or split related points.

Ilise’s official business philosophy for her students covered the first three points, which Teri called “the discovery process.” The other tips came uniquely in the discussions.

Here are the twenty-one principles.

The 21 Business Principles for Your Success

Principle 1: “Your business is a laboratory”

Firstly, like laying down the law, Ilise said, “Your business is a laboratory for your professional growth and your personal growth. You can use it to learn and to experiment and to try things and to grow.”

In other words, you are your business. If you grow, your business grows. So you need to give yourself the freedom to experiment and learn to find your way.

You may not have clients, or you may cling to clients that aren’t a good fit. Thus, Ilise contrasts this to show that you are the business, not the clients. Take care of yourself to help your business, and that helps us help clients.

Principle 2: “Listen to the market”

Ilise often said, “Listen to the market. The market will guide you…I want you to look out into the world and say, ‘What does the world need that I can offer.’”

But what does that mean? Ilise referred to “the tingle.” When you check business websites and content, details will stand out. You realize that those details are issues that you can improve upon.

Slow down, sift through copy, and you’ll discover those details.

Ilise said, “It’s magical. When you listen to the market, once you stop looking for something…once you start gearing outward, then [the market] starts to connect with what’s already inside of you.”

Principle 3: “Your business is your marketing”

“Your marketing work is more important than your client work,” Ilise said. “Your marketing is your future, and your clients are your present. And if you don’t have clients that doesn’t mean you don’t have a business.”

After all, if you focus on what you have done and not what you will do and are willing to do, how will you get anything new done?

Beverly applied this to LinkedIn. Keep your About section about now and the future. It’s perfect for when recently transitioned into a new niche or career.

Show what you have to offer. Don’t draw attention to what you can’t offer.

Principle 4: Slow down

Beverly pointed out that running your business isn’t about doing, but about understanding. Once you slow down to understand the hows and whys, then the doing comes together.

Ilise said being in business for yourself is running a marathon, not a sprint. And sometimes what might look like procrastination is a wise choice—a “sagacious delay” she called it.

Principle 5: Writing

As Beverly put it, writing means more than physically writing. Write and read good writing, sure. But also read everything related to your niche to trigger ideas and write ideas.

Writing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in the context of your audience and ideas. Remember, writing is a medium to convey ideas to readers. So write and keep an active mind.

Principle 6: Fearless

As a shy person, I appreciated Beverly saying, “I’m the biggest scaredy-cat, introvert that you’ll ever meet. I’m a wallflower.”

But how does someone shy become fearless?

In Beverly’s words, “I take what people teach me and use it. That’s why the 21-Day Challenge was so effective for me. I hung onto every word. I applied every technique. And it worked. The best thing to do is to listen to people who know and follow them.”

You, like everyone else, will make dumb mistakes. You’re human. But as long as you accept that and keep learning, you’ll grow.

Principle 7: “Over…under”

Every project is unique, and you don’t always know how long it’ll take. So take Ilise’s advice: over-estimate, under-promise, over-deliver.

Principle 8: “Be a thinker (not a writer)”

Businesses aren’t paying for a writer, they’re paying for a thinker. You’re an idea machine. You’re an authority because of your ideas and your ability to convey your ideas.

Ilise put this from the prospect’s point of view, “‘This person is more than a writer. This person can be a thinker, too. And maybe we should pay more because they’re using their brain.’”

Principle 9: “Marketing with generosity”

Sharing your ideas isn’t just about showing you can think. Ilise called it “marketing with generosity.”

You show your credibility, and the prospect gets free help. Then that free help predisposes them to hire you to do the work of writing those ideas. That’s a good investment.

Principle 10: Consult

Holly said she can say yes to jobs requiring unfamiliar writing skills. Why? Because all she needs to do is consult the AWAI Resource library. Premier members have access to this.

Therefore, Holly can tell her clients, “I have a great resource.” To me, that sounds like a fictional Mafia character saying, “I know a guy.”

Additionally, modern writers have the online means to figure out how to do most writing assignments they’re given. You just need to be willing, resourceful, and say yes.

Principle 11: People are normal

Holly said, “People are generally normal. Just meet and learn. Business follows.”

To me, that means, “People are normal. People are people.” It’s obvious, yet new experiences can cast the mind from normal thinking. Clients are people. So just have a normal conversation.

Principle 12: “Friendly, prompt, and reliable”

Your ideas set you as an authority. Your writing produces the products you get paid for. However, none of that matters if you’re a pain to work with.

That’s why Holly said, “I put on my LinkedIn ‘friendly, prompt, and reliable.’ They care about that more than anything.”

We all know people with flaky streaks, and we prefer to not be around them during those streaks. Let your prospects know you aren’t that person if you genuinely aren’t.

Principle 13: Planning

Terri contrasted Ilise’s first three business principles to planning.

Terri said, “We love the discovery process more than we love the planning. For us, what we discover in the moment of doing the work, doing the research, listening to people is so much more valuable than anything we planned six weeks ago.”

Plan as much as you need, but leave the rest so you have room to adapt to the culture of your surroundings.

Principle 14: Be yourself

Some people need to plan down to every detail.

Terri, however, said she finds that blocks her from what she calls valuable discoveries.

The lesson? Know yourself. Planners may not get as much out of Terri’s approach as their own, just like how Terri needs to do things her way.

Principle 15: Ride

Much like the business principles “listening to the market” and “slowing down”, writers need to ride their experiences.

Terri said, “You have to slow down to listen to the market, find value, THEN speed up in that experience. Not ‘Hurry up! Everyone’s ahead!’”

Sagacious delay, then hop onto the market.

Principle 16: Elevator pitches

We’ve all been told to create an elevator pitch.

But Terri had something else to say about them. She said, “It doesn’t have to be perfect because conversations aren’t.”

An over-rehearsed pitch, no matter how perfect, will feel awkward. It’s like pulling a punch mid-conversation. Instead of scripting word for word, keep the language loose enough to invite a proper conversation.

Principle 17: Writer’s purpose

Terri took a shot at defining the writer’s purpose. She said it is to “help people gain clarity and share what they do” because “most people don’t want to do it.” Our little secret. Hush, hush.

Regardless of the medium, you’re writing so ideas become tangible. In marketing talk, your written word is a feature, but you as a writer provide the benefit of clarity and motivation. The writer is critical in any area.

Principle 18: Content management

Terri gave surprising advice on the overwhelming world of content management. After all, how can we provide content for clients AND ourselves?

Hence, she said, “I think about what I want to write to my community. I turn it into a blog post. I copy it over to LinkedIn. I’m 1000 characters too long. I cut way down. Now, I have a tiny version. And then I link to wherever I’m going or what I’m doing. It amplifies what you’re trying to say…I like to continue to have stuff up there for people to respond to.”

Principle 19: “Who cares?”

You can’t afford to worry about details like if a reader notices the same content from you on different platforms.

Terri said, “Someone on your list might see it on LinkedIn, but probably not. And who cares. No one remembers anything. So, I like to continue to have stuff up there for people to respond to.”

So relax. It’s a big world, most people keep rolling along, and your job is to keep putting out quality content.

Principle 20: Client communication

How do you talk to clients? AWAI always brings up, “What is your pain point? What is your headache? What keeps you awake at 2 am.”

Instead, in Terri’s words, which I think would flow better in a conversation, “What, copy-wise, you wish you could hand off and it would get done? What can I take off your hands.”

Principle 21: Craft

Writers are about their craft. Subsequently, they can show their approach in their marketing.

Terri role-played this, saying, “I’ve done [copywriting] for all different companies. But the same thing I’ve found in all of it is every one of them is trying to educate a customer and help them make a better decision. The writing I do is geared toward just that: helping a prospect make a smart, informed decision. And all good writing should do that.”

This quote shows prospects how you think. They’ll trust what you can do because you’re showing wisdom from experience and careful thought.

Are these spot on?

In sum, those are the twenty-one business principles I took from AWAI’s 21-Day Challenge with Ilise Benun. These points drew just from the three live discussions with guests Beverly Matoney, Holly Morris, and Terri Trespicio.

And so, if you feel like starting your business has left you fumbling in a dark hall, these principles should cast good light. That and a great network like I’ve experienced with AWAI and its programs, that hall should become easy to navigate.

The post 21 Business Principles Endorsed for Your Writing Success appeared first on Leah Markum.

Your track record—proof given over time—is just as important. People tend to value things that “stand the test of time”.

What also adds to credibility is the antithesis. This can be a money-back guarantee or a freemium that pads the customer from feeling they’re risking too much. Customers may be borderline interested in a product or timid at the price. So they will appreciate that you let them sample the product or get their money back. You are showing them you understand their mental state.

Nine types of proof provide the best experience in your copy that builds trust and increases sales.

Testimonials: your customers promise your credibility

A good testimonial is like a short story or even flash fiction. You have a character with a problem which the hero—you—has the power to save them from. A good story is an experience that’s easy to remember. Good testimonials can do this.

Testimonials include surveys, letters from customers, case studies, and conversations on social media.

You don’t even have to use someone’s testimonial verbatim. Whether it’s journalism or copywriting, you’re allowed to prune the grammar or use only certain parts.

Some people leave poorly-written testimonials that have lots of filler that will lose potential customers. Edit the filler out. You want to keep their voice, their story, and their choice of words. But like an editor at a publishing company, sometimes you have to help the writer refine how they tell the story.

Personal profiles: you trust who you meet

You can create personal profiles of relevant experts and product creators. It gives the customer a view behind the scenes. They get a chance to “meet” the people behind the product or expertise they’re interested in. It’s like getting VIP tickets to a concert. Only instead, both social and reserved personalities can partake in the experience.

Third-party validation: safety in numbers

Much like the previous examples, third-party validation is a form of social credibility. Fitting names, faces, and backgrounds with opinions make customers feel like they met real people. And real people, at the very least, can be someone else’s guinea pig. At most, people might think highly of the people who endorse you. Then the customers transfer the credibility of those people to you.

Third-party validation includes studies, academic opinions, well-known industry expert opinions, reports from media sources that your audience would respect, and even anecdotes.

Graphs: make proof easy to understand

People grasp and retain some information from graphs better than just words. Graphs can even be fun. Infographics often have several sets of graphs. Readers slow down to study each bit of information. Good visuals have the effect of getting people to take time to think without feeling bored or forced to think hard.

Good feelings make for good experiences.

Photos: you believe what you can see

Brochures are popular for a reason. So are photo-based social media posts. Photos, in many respects, are the easiest way to sell an idea. Perhaps “a picture is worth a thousand words” carries significance even in marketing?

For example, you can use photos to show before-and-after scenes, working experts, product manufacturing, or how the products are unique. All of these examples tell stories for customers to imagine all that goes into the offer they’re considering.

Non-rounded numbers and specific details: even description adds credibility

In school, we got used to rounding numbers. After school, we continued to use them for simplicity.

But for copy, non-rounded numbers sound and look more real. This is because they’re the opposite of rounding numbers for conversation’s sake. It shows you’re not generalizing and you got the number from a technical source.

Of note, there’s always someone using honest approaches to game the system, and some customers will be wary. However, details create an honest image. So as long as you are honest, then that image is honest. And in time, the wary customer will learn you’re one of the good guys.

Using specific details has the same effect. Details make you sound like you know your stuff and you want your audience to have the best possible information. Use real names and numbers and show your documentation if you can.

Additionally, clarify nuances to avoid confusion to people less familiar with the topic. Besides feeling frustrated, someone confused might accuse you of misleading them.

Specifics feel real and make the mind visualize more. A good story, fiction or otherwise, uses specifics to make the experience more vivid and tangible.

Creative use of relevant jargon: be the wise figure

Generally, you don’t want to use jargon. Jargon confuses people or makes their minds work harder than they’re are willing to work on your behalf. It also makes your writing sound formal and stiff.

But sometimes jargon works in your favor. Sometimes it shows you have the right background to know what you’re talking about. Depending on your audience, if you don’t use jargon, you sound like an outsider.

Always keep in mind who your audience is. Imagine how informed they are to know when it’s good to use jargon and how much.

Guarantee: freedom of choice

While not usually considered proof for copy, guarantees prove a similar quality of character that some of the previous points had.

We often add guarantees and warranties to offers. This is because they give the customer a way out, which removes some inhibitions to parting with money. But no one is required to add these benefits. If you do it out of routine or because you were taught that’s how to do it, it works. Even if the customer thinks it’s a gimmick, it works.

You are willing to give them that escape route so they don’t feel cornered. You can make them feel relief instead of anxiety, just like that.

Sometimes, trust is just an exchange of good feelings.

Freemium: gifts sweeten the deal and soften the attitude

Similar to guarantees, premiums—or freemiums—have a habit of altering a customer’s emotions. Say you wanted to invest in a marketing course to learn modern strategies and which approaches to take. You want to know if you should do it yourself, hire someone in-house, or get a freelancer.

Great! Oh, but there’s…more.

Remember those lines in commercials using 1-800 numbers and products worth $19.99? Do they still do that on TV?

The premise works beyond those commercials. You make the offer and state what it’s worth. But then you add another product and the amount it’s worth to the original offer. Despite that, the final tally is less than the first number mentioned.

It makes customers feel like they are getting all the more value for the price they eventually pay. The purchase doesn’t feel bad because, hey, they got a couple of free things with it, right?

And you let them have those free things and the reduced price of the main offer that hooked them in the first place. They’ll remember that with good feelings. Emotionally-powered memories last. So better make sure they’re good memories with good sentiments!

Credibility is in the copy

Injecting proof into your writing shows your credibility and track record. They make your audience experience what you have to offer. Proof helps people to visualize how your offer can help them. Proof helps people justify their choices. Other people have tested the offer before them, and have done so for some time. It’s old-school social security.

Proof also has this ability to be entirely logical, yet foster positive emotions. Positive emotions make powerful memories to associate with you.

These nine types of proof will give the best experience your customer can have through a marketing medium. With such proof, your customers will have a good experience that builds trust and leads to sales.

The post How to Prove Your Credibility in Your Copy appeared first on Leah Markum.

Credibility makes a successful business.

But what is credibility at its core? Let’s do the math of the winning formula:

(Good product or service) + (Good people as providers) = Credibility.

We buy what we trust. We also buy from who we trust. As a business, you sell products and services that are greater sums of their parts. Those parts are the products and services plus the people behind them. Greater than that, you sell a package of credibility.

Firstly, a lot goes into a good product. Much of it is your expertise and not mine. And sometimes all you need is the best product in all your industry.

However, much of what makes your business unique is your company’s family of quality workers. People trust you. That trust is persuasive.

But what builds that trust? What consciously or unconsciously draws customers to you? Why are you a “safe” choice for their money?

Exposure

We all struggle to trust people we have never heard or seen. This includes the multiple faces of your business: you, your website, and your store. If you have a physical location in a high-traffic area, great. But generally, you need more visibility for new customers.

Here are a few ways to increase your exposure:

• Market your online “storefront”. Interact on social media to reach that audience. Describe your business’s story and products on your website to reach people using search engines.

• Build your professional network. If your name is well-known in your industry, then your name will trickle elsewhere. Strong trust comes from hearing about a new product from a friend or existing business relationship–trust transfers trust.

• Have an informative website with a blog. This helps customers accomplish what they want…sometimes with the aid of a product or paid service you provide. They will still get a lot done without you, feel thankful, and thus tempted to pay you for something even better.

Track Record

Time builds trust. Have you been in the area for a while? Sometimes people just need to know what you have to offer, and how long you’ve done a good job. So much assurance comes from a good track record alone.

• Advertise your track record. But don’t brag. For instance, a sign with flashy colors and big letters focused on “I” or “we” may turn people away. Instead, make it a discussion with the customer in focus. Say “you” and address the issue that concerns your customer. “Here, you get 35 years of Arabian breeding and training experience that will find the best approach. We make sure you will share safe experiences with a confident horse.” Much like a unique selling proposition or elevator pitch.

• Have testimonials. These show rather than tell your track record. They have the socially-proven element we trust. What did a friend recommend? What does another professional recommend? Your audience may not have a friend bringing them to you. However, a social consensus via testimonials has “safety in numbers” assure them you are what you say you are.

• Consistency is reliability. A good track record conveys, “You can trust I’ll do as well for you like many others in the past.” So share your case studies on social media, your website, or as flyers at your store. Have an old-fashioned face-to-face conversation. Hear their needs and share a time your recommended solution made someone with a similar situation happy.

Insight

On the topic of sharing stories, I find the most persuasive salesmanship entails stories of fascinating wisdom.

• Tell something light and fun. Engagement is key to building rapport. It shows baseline respect for the other person. Without it, many uncertain customers won’t open up.

• Share your life lessons. Besides the fun side of a story, the educational side is the most engaging. It also takes the next step and shows your track record. Maybe I want soil testing, and you have a story from earlier in your career as a soil scientist.

• Make it topically related, but it doesn’t even have to explicitly include the product or service sought.

Stories show you’re invested on a human level. I’ll feel easier when talking about your services for my soil samples.

Credibility in the Rhetorical Triangle

According to the rhetorical triangle, persuasion hinges on three points: logic, values such as ethics and emotions, and credibility. These are also known as logos, pathos, and ethos, respectively.

My argument here is that these points, usually represented as a triangle, support each other. To expand on that, logic and ethical values support credibility.

Good marketing and good people skills rely on logic and values. No one wants to deal with someone who is irrational, insensitive, or unethical. So display empathy, common sense, and know-how to help clients.

For instance, if you are a veterinarian:

• Show gentleness and firmness to animals. If they’re as calm they can get, so are the owners. You also look like you know what you’re doing, and something as basic to you means a lot to them.

• Explain what you’re looking for and show it if you can. Knowledge comforts. Sharing that knowledge proves you to them and builds the relationship.

• Have a good attitude, even if the situation is serious. You are on your customer’s team. Your customer feels good about you, learns something important, and therefore builds trust in you.

What NOT To Do For Credibility

This list could be incredibly long. From dismissing concerns to lashing out because you’re affected at work by a personal issue, there’s no shortage of traits to offend people.

But I picked a few traits that encompass common problems that can get even the best of us:

• Lack of composure. No one wants to parent a stranger. We all have emotional moments that draw us to cater to ourselves. Meanwhile, a customer is wondering what’s wrong and if it’s worth their time and their own emotional energy to deal with. They could go to someone else. That stability attracts. That stability is trustworthy.

• Lack of organization. This is an infuriating, yet common flaw that requires a different kind of patience. Customers may go elsewhere, so business owners should minimize inconvenience to the customer.

• Keep promises. People may trust you, but once you start missing promised deadlines, people feel burned and abandoned. So they move on. You had them and you lost them.

Conclusion

In essence, a successful business stands on the credibility born from good products and good people. If you think you’re having trouble conveying credibility, these five approaches should help customers trust you and your product by extension:

Get exposure, have a good track record, use insight, think about the duality of empathy and logic to support credibility.

At the same time, avoid failing at composure, organization, and keeping promises.

It all comes together to communicate credibility as a professional to customers.

The post 5 Assuring Ways to Convey Credibility to Your Prospects appeared first on Leah Markum.

You can find horseback riding almost anywhere that’s not an inner-city. And it’s easy to walk away from yet another similar option for a common service or product.

Say you’re a non-horsey parent.

“I want riding lessons!” Your kid tells you. So you look online for riding lessons and horse stables in your area. Twenty places show up. How do you pick a place for your kid to socialize and mount a 1500 pound animal?

Maybe it’s best to forego the lessons. Maybe your kid will ride out the horse-crazy phase in their imagination.

Perhaps they’ll hold it against you all their lives.

This is a good example of the true value of marketing, which is to remove uncertainty–fear–from prospective customers and create something positive.

You, a caring parent, have to be fearful. There shouldn’t be so little information readily available that you don’t know where to start.

Thankfully, riding instructors and stable owners hold the reins to correcting this problem.

Unique Selling Proposition for Horseback Riding Lessons

Now, you as a business owner, what makes your horseback riding services unique from your competition? What can you promise to your clients that’s worth their investment?

That’s your unique selling proposition or position, or USP.

Does a parent of a horse-crazy child need to research as much as a Ph.D. student to narrow their search? Sure, a few might make the effort to thoroughly check all their options, but most won’t.

Many will take their chances at the closest facility. The riding instructor might have a temper, and the undisciplined horses may be too much for a child. That bad experience might put them off horses entirely. Fear wins.

Yet, you can solve this problem. You’re unique. You have values and skills that will benefit the right people.

Let’s say you focus most on a positive bond between horse and rider. What do clients get out of this? Safety. Parents love safety. You also offer character development–kids learn patience, respect, and empathy. Positive experiences support happiness, and a happy kid takes some stress from Mom and Dad.

Essentially, you’re not selling riding lessons. You’re selling an avenue for productive life experiences. Call them dreams, if you like.

Using Facts Versus Emotions

These kinds of benefits strike people deep. They have emotional value. Facts are wonderful, but you have to grab and hold people’s attention with their emotions. Once you have the emotional motivation, then facts begin to have a flare. Alone, or even first, facts can be confusing for someone new to your industry, or lack importance. If you and your potential clientele align your values, facts come to life and are worth learning. They have context. Facts need subjective value to sink in.

Sell with values. Support with facts. Or in marketing terms, sell with benefits and support with features.

Some Household, Somewhere…

“I want riding lessons.” A child tells their parents.

After looking up riding lessons in their area, the parent studies a Google map with twenty markers. How will they know which one is best for their quiet, sensitive child? What about the other child, whose exuberance often lands them in trouble?

Say there’s one thing the parents refuse: to drive more than 45 minutes away…

Whew! A map zoomed in on eight stables helped so much…yet only so much.

Let’s say the kids just know they want to ride, so they haven’t educated their parents on Western versus English riding, what dressage is, and the parents certainly need to warm up to the whole “horse thing” before they can allow jumping.

So…how do they narrow it down? Does the jumping place do just jumping, or they include the basics? Is Western safe?

The thing is, many horse barns simply don’t market well. Parents either say no and hope the kid’s interests move on, or call every place and pick one based on their impression on the phone.

If they’re lucky, a friend has a horse-crazy kid or ride themselves. However, their recommendation may or may not be appropriate for one of the kid’s personalities. Not enough safety precautions and the energetic child may unnecessarily get hurt. Too much tartness and the sensitive child will wilt.

Ultimately, do you see the opportunity for marketing on a local level? Call it communication–that’s all it needs to be. Don’t be shy about who you are and what benefits your services offer. Your ideal client just needs help finding you, their ideal horseback riding instructor, and stable.

The post Make Horseback Riding Unique: A Lesson in USPs appeared first on Leah Markum.

Conversational writing sells. Literally. However, what we learn in school makes what we need in the professional world counterintuitive. The professional world needs people to want to read, and it’s easier to read if the words “sound” like a conversation.

Here are some general rules to help you transition.

Conversational Writing is Natural for the Lazy Brain

I love science and complex ideas, but the mind is lazy. It naturally looks for short cuts. In this case, embrace the laziness–your clients won’t work to read.

First and foremost, visualize talking to your best friend. Our minds hear our friends and close family members more than we read content from strangers, so that’s what we gravitate to. Visualizing a friend will help you write in an energetic tone and keep you from getting too technical.

Keep it casual.

Word Length

Word length says so much about you, even if unintentionally.

Longer words can come off snobbish like a high school senior showing off SAT vocabulary. They seem elitist because only fellow chemical engineers know those words. Words may hog so much space on the page that I would have to direct you to my previous point about paragraphs.

Word length is a symptom of what kind of conversation you’re having. Don’t alienate people with your copy. Keep it casual. You’re talking to people from different backgrounds and desires. They don’t even have to listen to you.

Keep it casual. The appropriate word length will follow.

Sentence and Paragraph Length

Remember in school how we had to learn about simple, compound, and complex sentences?

Natural conversation mixes sentence types. However, compared to academic writing, we speak in shorter sentences. We keep our ideas simple. It’s easier to follow, and it’s visually easier to follow. Ask yourself if there’s a more direct way to word your ideas.

This applies to the paragraph level as well. Smaller chunks of text encourage momentum. Keep ideas to a few lines, hit enter, and keep going.

Visual Formatting

Conversational writing goes well with a presentation like an adult show-and-tell.

You may remember in school, many students would try to get away with as little reading as possible. Cliff Notes, skimming, asking a friend for the gist of things, reading the first paragraph every other page, and perhaps hundreds of other ways.

Working adults aren’t much better. It’s one thing to lie back on the couch with a tablet to read a fun book. It’s another to read undifferentiated blocks of text on a blog or landing page where plenty of sites take a more visually appealing approach:

• BIG, bold headlines and subheads
• bullet points
• photos
• infographics
• bold and italic and colored keywords
• whitespace

All of these break up the text. If someone wants to skim or don’t bother, they can skim.

Subheads can tell a whole story. Subheads can also be like a table of contents and attract someone to switch gears and read the paragraphs in between.

Sometimes the photos on the page tell the whole story. Bolded, italicized, and colored words add emphasis for a mind ready to wander. Bullet points along with subhead create whitespace, or mental breathing space, to make the reading journey less intimidating. Less intimidating than…a college thesis.

One Idea Per Page

The internet loves this.

One blog post on one page.

An “about” page.

A landing page.

Click on an Amazon item and open a unique page.

When speaking with a friend, you say your piece, they say your piece, and the cycle perpetuates. You don’t whip out an essay. Think of conversational writing as exchanging one turn in a conversation, where one turn is a page or a post.

Each page expresses one point. One idea. Or–

Yup, your reader just went elsewhere.

Personally, I always end up on YouTube…where every page I open provides knowledge or entertainment, and social interaction.

That’s tough competition.

This is practically opposite to a college paper or textbook. You can skip so many of those pages or forget so many ideas because there weren’t enough subheads to keep your attention, and just too much in one sitting.

Yet that is what we do at the computer on the internet. We complete a large number of tasks in one sitting or standing if we’re reading a tiny phone screen. Your reader might go back to living their life before they complete one page.

We can’t vouch for what someone is doing while reading, how invested they can be, or what kind of eyestrain they’ll face on their device.

That’s why writing has to be snappy. Get your idea out and put the next on a new page.

Conversational Writing Voice

This was like that. That happened because of this. Big words followed that. This was 40 percent and that was 60 percent.

Academia likes just the facts. Often with “was” and “is” to replace a distinct verb.

This style allows the writer to vanish. Maybe a robot wrote it. Perhaps in the business world, a corporation can be a single, faceless entity and write. This style benefits formal situations like research papers and business reports.

Not your marketing.

Especially not on the internet. Informality–humanity–trends on the internet. This makes visualizing a conversation with a friend even more important.

A conversational voice attracts readers–or viewers, on videos. People want to feel like there is a real person with some character behind the words. We’re preparing for when robots take over. We need to support humans and be cared for by humans. An exchange of humanity satisfies us.

Empathy–in the form of the writer’s tone, or voice–matters as much as practicality–the details you impart. At least, if you want to attract readers and supporters.

Conclusion

Simply, conversational writing is short, straight-forward, and broken up with purposeful formatting. Think of fancy, dreary college (heck, sometimes high school) papers and flip the rules.

The post How to Create a Winning Conversational Writing Style appeared first on Leah Markum.

Having a direction is effective. Working directly creates a connection. Environmental and agricultural professionals have both. They work directly with land resources, and with direct response copywriting, with the people who need them.

That’s the beauty of direct response for industries that work directly with the land. Other than if you’re restoring, landscaping, or brush hogging, why beat around the bush?

There are two major, relevant ways to do this:

Firstly, tell your audience the human value you provide, the logic for your service or product, the fair price for that exchange, and make the offer. Call for action. Work together. You, your customers, and the land you treat become a part of something good. This is copywriting.

Secondly, ask your customers to read your blog post to build rapport. Send them a letter inviting them to invest in biotechnology research. Either way, direct engagement is the most effective way to market. This is content writing.

Hard Copy vs Soft Content

Copywriting calls on the reader to act. It can make a hard sell or a soft sell such as offering an ebook for an email address that will receive news and build to sales emails.

Hard copy: sales emails, sales letters, landing pages, product descriptions

In contrast, content writing is the fluff in the soft sale approach. It develops a relationship with potential customers, shows your brand’s personality, and your credibility. Content provides conversation, exchanges knowledge, and a way to reach new people.

Soft content: blogs, articles, newsletters, website copy, press releases, case studies, white papers, reports, brochures, flyers

And sometimes you need neither. Grant writing doesn’t sell or connect with customers, but you still need to persuade people to act on your behalf.

Direct Response…or Agency Advertising

Got milk?

If you drank the last of your milk and want more, a glorious magazine ad will fail to charge and deliver your milk. Traditional ads can’t respond. They are vegetables. They also increase brand awareness. You still have to drive to the store on your own time and volition.

Traditional ads also can’t target as specific of an audience as direct response or track responses to prove they were successful.

Essentially, agency advertising promotes your brand. Direct response promotes actual sales.

Agency advertising is to produce a show people observe for free as direct response is to collaborative work.

Wouldn’t you prefer to engage directly? You’ll have more human connection AND payment…so you can go buy that milk.

The post Direct Response for Professionals Tied to the Land appeared first on Leah Markum.