Copy Unlimited blog » Technology

Prospecting? Watch out for existing clients.

Kevin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:00:25 +0000

Poor targeting and a missed opportunity (bad). But perfect pitch (good).

Three things caught my eye this week. But first, a digression…

Years ago, I was in a restaurant with my boss and a group of colleagues. My boss was pretty fearsome, and took no prisoners when it came to service.

Her opening line to the waitress was chillingly direct.

“I usually tip 20%,” she said. “In fact, the tip is already 20%. But here’s the catch – from now on, I’m going to deduct points for bad service. OK? Now I’d like to order.”

The poor girl stared with rapt attention, and the service never wavered for the whole of the time we were there. It was impeccable.

My boss’s secret was simple. She knew what she wanted. She asked for it. She got it.

On another occasion, at another restaurant, she requested a sauce that wasn’t on the menu. The waitress, who this time hadn’t had the 20% routine (my boss varied her tactics) said she was sorry, but that it wouldn’t be possible.

“Why not?” barked my boss.

“Because we’d have to make the sauce up,” said the girl, faltering slightly in the glare of the blue-eyed headlights.

“Oh right,” said my boss with exaggerated emphasis. “I see. I mean, it’s not as if this is a restaurant or anything, with ingredients all over the place. You’d have to make up the sauce.”

The dripping irony had its effect. And before long, that special sauce was dripping too.

1. Close (but no cigar)

I was reminded of the second restaurant episode recently. If anywhere knows about sauces, it’s a restaurant.

And if anybody knows about technology, and how to use it, it’s a technology company. But it doesn’t always work out that way.

Just last week, I got a letter from Google with a little surprise in it (well more than one, but we’ll get to that bit).

Here’s what it contained:

The word ‘discover’ should have set alarm bells ringing. But it didn’t.

Inside was a credit-card-sized voucher with a unique code. I logged into my AdWords account and entered the code, relishing the thought of 75 smackers off my next bill.

Not so fast.

Because here’s what it said when I entered the code:

Too old? Well, yes, it’s years and years old. I’ve been using Google AdWords for longer than I can remember. I’m very, very happy with it.

Or at least I was.

Until they dangled £75 in front of me and took it away again. Is it really that difficult to de-duplicate a mailing campaign when you’re targeting prospects, so you exclude existing clients?

Sauce. Technology. Different consistency, same taste (bitter-sweet).

2. Don’t bank on it (the feature, that is)

Just as I’ve been using AdWords since the dawn of time, so too have I been a customer of the Royal Bank of Scotland since the good old days when banks were privately owned and collateralised debt obligations and credit-default swaps were a twinkle in the eye of a Wall St banker.

In fact, I was one of their online-banking beta customers, way back in the mid-90s. And recently, they sent me a leaflet extolling the virtues of their online service:

Can you spot the problem?

Yes, they got the headline the wrong way round. Make the most of digital banking isn’t the best thing about digital banking. It’s the time you save.

So that should be in a big, bold, brash font that shouts Benefit! followed by the more sober feature. And somebody close that gap, please.

It’s Marketing 101. Feature (banking) and benefit (time).

Which would you pick? (Thought so.)

3. U and non-U

And lastly, a company that gets it exactly right.

HTC, who make those super-sexy smartphones, realise that a phone is just a phone. What makes it special is you, as this advert shows.

Their closing line sums it up exactly: You don’t need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you. It’s simple, direct and hits the mark.

And I want one.

[If you're reading this in an email, click here to see the advert on Youtube]

Why is simplicity so complicated?

Kevin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:00:17 +0000

Easy is the new hard. No, really.

So there you have it.

The all-singing, all-dancing, everything’s-connected National Health Service IT system is to be ‘dramatically scaled back’ (i.e. quietly scrapped).

Mind you, I could have told you that. For two reasons.

First, I got a bad feeling about three years ago, when I did some copywriting on the subject. The background reading (all 500 pages of PDFs) was grimly compelling.

A bit like watching a road accident that’s about to happen but not being able to do anything about it.

Front-line staff weren’t behind it. It was ambitious, fiendishly complicated and promised the earth.

Mind you, it also cost the earth. Back then, my bedtime reading suggested anything between £6bn (€6.6bn/$9.8bn) and £30bn (€33bn/$48.9bn).

To date, it’s come in at £12bn (€13.2bn/$19.6bn).

My second inkling came when my doctor tried to use the system. She didn’t want to do anything complicated – just to book an appointment.

But it was complicated, as I’ve written about previously (High tech or hype tech?). And in the end, I bypassed the system and used the telephone to make the hospital appointment myself.

Not good.

Easy peasy lemon ketchup

The trouble with big projects is that they’re big. No one person can get their head around all the individual pieces, so they project is compartmentalised. And that means it very quickly becomes fragmented, complicated and disconnected.

A couple of years ago, I boarded a train at London’s King’s Cross station in the rush hour. I took an outside seat in a group of four. In the two seats opposite were a hassled-looking middle manager and her shiny-suited sidekick.

As the train pulled out, she flipped open her folder and peered at a spreadsheet printout.

“You know that consultant, the one with the gold-rimmed glasses, in Peter’s section – you know, whatshisname?” she said hopefully.

“Oh Graham, you mean,” he said. “What about him?”

“Well,” she said, “he’s paid £900 a day and he’s been with us six months. Do we know exactly what he does?”

I did a quick mental calculation, and came up with a figure of close on £100,000 (€110,000/$163,000).

“Hmm, ” said the shiny suit. “Not really. I mean, not exactly. Erm, no.”

“We should find out,” she said, lazily snapping the folder shut, “one of these days.”

Or tomorrow, I thought. Or right now. Because that’s my tax money (yes, they were civil servants – couldn’t you tell?).

Easy does it

Difficult is easy: you do one thing, then another thing, and yet another. Each without reference to what came before. You add a bit here, and there. You spread responsibility among different groups, and patch holes as they appear.

Issues are dealt with as they come in, not according to how important they are. And before you know it, you don’t know where you are. And neither does anybody else. And the result is organised, project-managed chaos. At £900 a day.

So what’s the answer? If difficult is easy, what’s easy – difficult?

Actually no. It’s easy – when you know how.

Here are my top tips for keeping it simple, staying on top of things, and never losing sight of what’s important.

And for leaving the office early (that’s the clincher, isn’t it?):

Keep a log of your day: and see how you really use your time. Important things should take priority, with urgent ones trumping them only if they’re also important.
Review your tasks, and update and re-prioritise each one every day. Or better still, at the beginning and end of every day.
Take stock: check where you are with a project regularly, and make course adjustments if you’re off-track.
Be realistic & honest: if you know you can’t achieve it, don’t say you can. If it’s too big to tackle, break it down into smaller, manageable chunks.
Peel off. Adding another layer to an already-complicated process just makes it more complicated. Instead, strip away the unnecessary layers and get back to basics.
Communicate. Tell people what you’re doing. Ask them what they’re doing. And if you’re the only one doing anything (like me) sit down and have a serious talk with yourself now and then.
De-junk. Recently, I threw out old clothes, LPs, clever-but-useless kitchen gizmos and anything I hadn’t used in a year. It felt so good (better than skinny, to paraphrase Kate Moss). Take the same ruthless approach to your work and you’ll feel supermodel-light in less than no time. Need it? No? Junk it. Move on.

Now wasn’t that easy?

DIY SEO? Yes, you can.

Kevin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:00:21 +0000

It’s a lot easier than you think.

“I don’t care what it takes, as long as it gets me to the top” said the woman with the big hair and the satin blouse, jabbing at me with her glass of sauvignon blanc.

Networking was never so much fun.

I took a precautionary step back to give her room to express herself. And just in time, as her glass described a wide arc, narrowly missing my Sunday-best jacket.

She was in full flight. But she wasn’t talking about career advancement: she’d already reached the top in her profession. Instead, she’d set herself a new mountain to climb.

Search-engine rankings.

She wanted to be number one on Google, she said, with steely-eyed determination.

Who doesn’t?

I let her expatiate a little more.

“Keywords!” she barked, like Archimedes in his bathtub. “Keywords are the key.”

I surreptitiously drained my mineral water into a pot plant. Then, wiggling my empty glass, I quickly made good my escape.

The next day, I couldn’t get that phrase out of my head: ‘I don’t care what it takes’. For that pretty much sums up some people’s approach to SEO. That and keywords, of course.

Bung in those keywords, then add a few more. Then, one for the road. And maybe just another teensy little one for luck.

Then, get your web people to hack away at the back end so you’ve got every chance on your side. And hey presto! It works. People come to your site.

But quickly leave again.

Why?

Because spiders aren’t people. Search-engine spiders, that is. While we’re all sleeping soundly in our beds, those virtual arachnids are running all over our sites, seeing how they square up to the Google algorithm of interestingness.

Bingo, they say. Lots of keywords. Let’s move this up to number one.

Damn, they say (the readers). Lots of keywords. Let’s close this site and go somewhere that doesn’t insult our intelligence.

You see the problem. And it’s just the first of many when it comes to search-engine optimisation.

Think of a number – any number

Search-engine optimisation isn’t a science – it’s an art. And as such, it’s priceless.

A while back, a client of mine shopped around for some quotes on SEO. £300 a month, he was confidently told by the first company. That’ll see you right.

Not bad, he thought, when he worked out that he could lop it off his substantial advertising budget.

He continued his round of calls.

£3,000 a month, said the next. £950 said the one after that. Then £1,650.

And finally, £175.

All for the same service: putting him on page 1 of Google. He decided to take a break and consider his options.

So which one did he go for in the end? The most expensive? The cheapest? The one in the middle (the classic choice)?

None of them.

Instead, he climbed online, found a free course, and optimised his site on his own. Saving himself almost three grand. Or 175 quid. Whatever.

The point is, it wasn’t that difficult.

Years ago, I heard the boss of an airline answering an interviewer who’d asked him what he attributed his ‘Best airline to the Far East’ award to (the latest in a string of six straight awards). What was it that set him apart from the rest?

“It’s not one thing we get right,” he said slowly and deliberately.

“It’s all the little things.”

From little acorns

And that’s the story of SEO too. Cramming your copy full of keywords will keep our multi-footed insects happy, but put off your potential clients. So make it just part of your search-engine strategy – and use it sparingly.

Get all the other little things right, and you’ll be flying high in the rankings too.

And here’s the scoop: you can do a lot of those little things yourself.

There’s no definitive, must-follow, sure-fire, one-size-fits-all recipe for SEO success. But here are some of my top recommendations:

Content: add more copy regularly. Search engines love sites that change and develop. Sites that are static will never bring readers back, so make sure your site grows, expands and adds value (through blogs, forums, articles, news stories).
Inbound links. These show how popular you are out there in cyberspace. Ask people in your network to link to you. You’ll be surprised how many will say yes, especially if you do the same for them.
The nuts and bolts. Freaked out by the prospect of looking ‘under the hood’ of your site? Don’t be. Technical doesn’t have to mean scary. Get in touch with your inner geek – you might just enjoy it. And once you’ve learned about Alt tags, filenames, titles, descriptions and keywords, you’ll be able to fine-tune your site like a pro.
Divide and conquer: don’t try to cram everything into one page. Subdivide your site. Create pages that are optimised for a specific search term rather than trying to use one page to cover all products, services and client types.
Be patient: if you want to be top of the pops by next week, you might as well not start. If you’re thinking longer term (3-6 months) then you’re far less likely to give up. Going up the listings takes time.
Never stand still. Congratulations! You’ve got to page one of Google. Now get back to work. Yes, really. SEO is not a destination – it’s a journey. If you stop when you’ve reached your goal, and everybody else keeps moving on, you’ll be left behind before you know it.
Think like a reader. What do you like to find at the top of the Google list when you search for a specific term? And why should a potential reader be any different? Give your reader relevant copy, with enough – but not too many – keywords. Write for them first, and our furry six-legged friends second. People buy, spiders don’t. Never forget it.

Happy optimising.

(And next time you’re at a networking event, if you see a woman with big hair, a satin blouse and a love of keywords, make sure you stand next to a pot plant.)

Find out more:

Class act: don’t miss this free SEO course run by Mississippi-based J. Walker (aka ‘Cricket’). An absolute must if you’re serious about doing your own SEO. Sign up here.
Seek and you shall find: before you start SEO’ing, make sure you know what keywords people are searching on. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Good Keywords v3 will tell you everything you need to know.

The power of storytelling

Kevin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:00:30 +0000

We all do it – so why not use it to your advantage?

Did you blow out over Christmas? Wine, beer, sherry, turkey, mince pies, Christmas pudding, cakes, chocolates, and lots of yummy cheese?

If you did, perhaps you’ve blown up too. And you’ve seen the inevitable New Year, new you! headlines in the glossy weekend supplements. So maybe you’re thinking about turning over a new leaf.

And what better way to do it than a detox?

Well here’s a newsflash: detox doesn’t exist.

UK charitable trust Sense About Science recently investigated 15 detox products from bottled water to face scrub. And their conclusions? The detox claims, they said, are “meaningless”.

We’d be better off, according to them, eating healthily and getting a good night’s sleep.

Their claims caused a furious debate. I heard one myself, on BBC radio.

On one side, a spokeswoman for Sense About Science. On the other, a woman who’d been through a five-day detox, and said the results were amazing.

So who’s right?

They both are.

The scientists are right because the science is undeniable. But the detox fans are right because they believe they’re right. They’ve told themselves that detox exists – so it does.

It’s their story, and they’re sticking to it.

Tell (a story), don’t show

We all tell ourselves stories.

I do (I’ve even got some ‘detox tea’ in my cupboard to prove it). You do. Everybody does. It’s part of who we are and how we function.

It’s something Seth Godin explores in his addictive (in a good way) book All Marketers Are Liars. It’s packed full of examples of how we tell ourselves stories about everything. That’s our way of justifying purchases, cutting through the clutter of choice, and making ourselves feel good.

Often, we use stories to deceive ourselves. Here are just a few examples I picked up on recently:

A woman at my gym who spends £30 an hour (her membership only costs £35 a month) once a week to chat to her personal trainer. She’s told herself she’s working harder, that it’s easier when you’ve got somebody motivating you, that it gives her structure and purpose. But it doesn’t. In six months, to my inexpert eye, she’s lost no weight. If anything, she’s gained weight.
Two acquaintances of mine who proudly announced that they’re self-diagnosed dyslexics. Their spelling is pretty bad, but it’s easier to blame it on a medical condition than do something about it.
An art gallery in Melbourne that gushed with enthusiasm over a new artist, until they discovered she was only two years old.

OK, these examples are frivolous, but they prove a serious point.

People aren’t looking for facts. They’re looking for a story. And it’s a hugely powerful marketing tactic you can use to your advantage.

The plot thickens

Let’s be clear here: we’re not talking about deceiving people. If you market something using deceptive practices, you’ll be found out – every time.

Instead, what you need to do is put yourself inside the mind of your potential customer. What stories do they tell themselves? What, in the words of the Wise One (Seth), is their worldview?

Find out that, and you know how to talk to them.

Why do people pay what they do for works of art? An art dealer friend put it very succinctly to me:

“Art isn’t ‘worth’ anything,” she said. “It’s simply an agreed point on a spectrum, usually midway between the buyer and seller.”

In other words, they tell themselves a story. If they didn’t, how would they justify paying (or charging) a fortune for pickled sharks and unmade beds?

Baby on board stickers work because it bypasses the need for speed and appeals to people’s parental instincts. The same goes for safety cameras (the new name for – you guessed it – speed cameras in the UK).

Once you know what’s important to people, you can look at your product or service from their point of view – using their vocabulary and terms of reference.

Or put another way, tell them a story.

So what’s your story?

Find out more:

Uncover the truth about the ‘detox myth’.
The art wizard of Oz: Art gallery fooled into showing work of a two-year-old.
Think you’re messy? Check out Tracey Emin’s bedtime bombsite.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the gallery: Damien Hirst’s pickled shark strikes again.

The best of 2008

Kevin — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:00:53 +0000

The good, the bad and the very bad

Another year rides off into the sunset, and a new one dawns. But before it does, here are the highlights of my blogging year:

January: Big Business makes big mistakes, including dead bodies in planes and the toy that turned into a date-rape drug.
February: It’s advertising, Jim – but not as we know it looked at product placement in film and TV.
March: 10 ways to increase your productivity, from mind-mapping to Mavis Beacon.
April: 5 ways to beat blank-page syndrome, to help you fill all that white space quickly.
May: The uncomfortable truth about comfort zones might make you feel a bit…well, uncomfortable. But that’s the point.
June: Are you underselling yourself? explored the fine art of getting the price right.
July: What makes you different? talked about ways of standing out from the crowd.
August: Think smart and beat the downturn was ahead of its time, and is even more relevant today than it was in the summer.
September: The trouble with technology highlighted a problem: the technology.
October: Country branding: lessons we can learn looked at why we think what we think about countries, and why Germany is way cool.
November: The pitfalls of specials offers found that sometimes, they’re not that special.
December: How to increase your chances of making the sale took us to the wonderful world of first-class travel (sort of).

And that’s it. See you in 2009.