SEO Hosting Blog

I’ve often talked about how today’s customer is more wary than ever before. When shopping around online, customers have their BS detectors turned all the way up. Every claim you make will be met with skepticism and seen as a lie until you prove otherwise. And for good reason. After all, consider all the crazy claims you get in your email inbox every single day:

“Lose 50 pounds without working out!”

“Make millions working just 4 hours a week!”

“Increase the size of your…”

Well, you get the idea.

The point is that if you have a claim, you have to prove it. You can’t just say your products or services will yield a certain benefit without presenting proof. By presenting facts, your claims are legitimized, and once your claims are legitimized, you earn the trust of your customers and eventually their sales.

There’s an old quote by Dr. Charles M. Edwards, an NYU professor at the School of Retailing, where he said, “The more facts you tell, the more you sell.” It’s simple, but truthful.

Of course, this leads to the question: How can you prove your claims? There are many ways to back your words up with facts.

• Case studies—Case studies are an in-depth investigation that show how your products or services yielded a specific result for a client. For example, if you sell a product that’s supposed to streamline contact management, a good case study would be to follow a client who purchased the product to show comparisons of how much time the product saves on contact management, how much it has improved customer loyalty, etc.
• Independent studies—Even better than your own studies are studies performed by independent researchers showing how effective your products are. You see this a lot with cleaning products. Labs will study Clorox and show that it cleans a certain percentage of germs or outperforms other cleaning products by a specific amount.
• Studying the competition—Take a look at the claims made by your competition. Are there any of them that you can prove you do better? For example, if the competition sells a printer that prints 100 pages a minute, can you prove that your printers print 200 pages a minute? By beating the competition at their own claims, you render them completely powerless.
• Testimonials—Even with all the facts in the world behind you, some people still don’t trust the word of a company because they know you’re trying to make a sale. However, customers do tend to trust other customers. So, include testimonials in your marketing materials that backup your claims.
• Video demonstrations—Seeing is believing. That’s why infomercials are so effective. When you see the ShamWow guy cleaning up a liter of coke in just seconds, you believe the product really does work. When you saw Billy Mays pulling an 18-wheeler with a chain patched with Mighty Putty, you suddenly bought into his claims. Incorporate video whenever possible.

What are some other things you do to prove your claims? Share your tips by leaving a comment.

As a freelance copywriter, a lot of the projects I work on involve SEO copywriting. Sometimes, I work with the client directly, and other times, an SEO company contracts the work out to me, giving me guidelines on what they want for their client. In the latter situation, I have a little less leeway to do what I want since it’s the SEO company’s client.

Usually, it’s not an issue, but some SEO companies are still stuck in the past, using silly metrics like keyword density and word counts to judge the worth of website copy. And here is where I have a problem. I’ll save the topic of keyword density for a future post, but today I want to talk about the problems I have with using a word count in SEO copywriting.

1. There is no real evidence that word counts directly influence rankings. Thankfully, most SEO companies have gotten beyond the idea that copy needs to be between 400 and 800 words to rank well in the search engines. But there are still some out there that cling to this theory. Whether you believe in it or not, the simple truth is there is no real evidence that supports needing a specific word count to rank well. The top-ranked pages in Google for various search terms vary greatly in word count. I’ve seen pages rank well with 50 words or less and pages rank well with thousands of words. The truth is your rankings are largely determined by offsite factors, like link building. Word count does NOT directly influence rankings.
2. Quantity and quality are not directly related. When it comes to copywriting, quantity and quality are completely separate from one another. Just because a page is long doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. And just because a page is short also doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. What makes copy good or bad is how effective each word is and how well it converts.
3. Writing to a specific word count is restrictive and leads to forced copy. When you force a copywriter to come up with a set number of words, you’re just asking for trouble. The copywriter will either have to add fluff to meet the word count or cut back severely to meet it. Either way, it leads to unnatural copy, and forces the copywriter’s attention onto a trivial matter.

What do you think about word counts for web copy? Good idea or terrible idea?

I’ve often mentioned that shoppers are a selfish bunch. The only thing they’re concerned with is how your products or services will help them. Every marketing message you create needs to answer their biggest question, “What’s in it for me?”

This, of course, boils down to the benefits of your offerings. How can you tie your product to the benefits your audience cares most about? Here’s a list of common benefits your customers desire.

• Improved health—Does your product help people live a longer life? Lose weight? Increase their strength? Get sick less often? Have more energy? Just feel better?
• More money—Money talks, BS walks. It’s all about the money. Money resonates with nearly everyone. If your product helps people get more money, play that angle up.
• More time—Who can’t use a little more time? With more time, people can travel, have fun, spend time with the family, or even work more and make more money if that’s what they want to do.
• Convenience—Does your product make something that’s normally a hassle much easier? Is it “so easy a caveman can do it”? Ease and convenience are always desirable benefits.
• Social advancement—Social status is important, and it ties to more products than you think. It’s usually the reason people by certain cars, tech gadgets (iPhone anybody?), clothes, you name it. Everybody wants to keep up with the Joneses.
• Business advancement—Success. Career advancement. More recognition. More money. People are always looking for ways to further their careers, so if your product can help with that, let readers know.
• Improved self-confidence—Why do people lose weight? Why do they get their hair cut? Go to the tanning salon? It all comes down to self-confidence. People want to feel good about themselves. Help them do so.
• Being on the cutting edge—In this tech-driven world, a lot of people want to be the first in different things. These people are the innovators and early adopters, and using words like “new” and “first” can really capture their attention.

What are some other types of benefits products can deliver?

To run a successful website, it’s not enough to rank well and get quality traffic. Those are nice starting points, but unless the people visiting your website convert, it’s really all for nothing. I’ve talked quite a bit about getting more conversions in the past, but today I want to focus specifically on the call to action.

Without a call to action, you have an “actionless” website that doesn’t motivate visitors to do anything with the information you’ve given them.

Here are some simple ways to craft a more effective call to action.

• Place a time limit on your offer—Say what you want about infomercials, but they’ve always understood the power of time-sensitive offers. And they just work. Same thing goes for home shopping networks. They say, “You have to call in the next 10 minutes if you want to get 50% off your order.” And guess what? People take action.
• Offer something free—Giveaways are kind of like a gateway drug. They entice people to take action and push them closer to your main goal: getting them to make a purchase. You can offer a free eBook, whitepaper, consultation, product demo, etc.
• Emphasize the limited supply—If only a specific number of products are available, make sure to point this out in your call to action. It makes readers realize they have to take action now if they want the product because it may not be available later.
• Show that price has been reduced—Another infomercial trick that always works is they show the old price of the item, then slash through it and display the new, lower price. Visitors love feeling like they’re getting a great deal, so when you’ve reduced the price of an item, emphasize that point to make taking action more desirable.
• Use a strong guarantee—Online customers are hesitant by nature. They’re wary of doing business with companies they don’t know, and if you want to convince the skeptical customer, you have to remove any roadblocks that keep them from taking action. Stressing your guarantee helps them see they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

What are some other specific techniques you use to get immediate action from your visitors? Leave a comment with your best tip.

If your business is like most others, you lose at least a few customers every year. It’s just part of doing business. Customers move on for a range of reasons and never come back. While some loss of customers is acceptable and even unavoidable, you have to be careful and make sure the customers you’re losing can’t be saved.

To minimize the number of customers you lose, there are many tactics you can put to use.

• Ask customers why they’re leaving—Chances are, more than a few customers have stopped doing business with you for a similar reason. By finding out what it is that’s driving customers to leave you, you can try to resolve these problems, and more importantly, you can prevent them from happening again in the future. The key is to always listen to your customers. Most times, they’ll give you the insight into why they’re leaving. If not, you can try emailing links to online surveys to learn more from them.
• Keep in constant contact with your current customers—Don’t take your current customers for granted. You can’t just assume they’ll remember you and keep doing business with you. You have to continue nurturing your relationship by keeping regular contact with them and offering them the highest level of service.
• Be willing to apologize and resolve customer complaints—Disputes happen. No matter how excellent your customer service is and how flawless your products may be, there will always be customers who are seemingly impossible to please. If you want to save the customer, you can’t make excuses. You need to apologize for any possible mistakes your company has made and do what it takes to resolve the situation.
• If you have permission, continue marketing to lost customers—If a lost customer is still on your email or mailing list, send special messages aimed at getting their business back. You can offer special discounts for coming back. Make sure your messages speak directly to their situation. Netflix is very good about this. When you unsubscribe, they’ll follow up saying “we’ve missed you” and offer a coupon for coming back.
• Reward loyal customers—I’ll say it again, don’t take your current customers for granted. If you do, they will leave you. You need to make it impossible for them to find a reason to leave you. Show them how much you appreciate their business by rewarding loyal customers with extra perks like discounts, free service, etc.

What are some of the steps you take to minimize the number of customers you lose? Share your best strategies by leaving a comment.