Jim Connolly Marketing

Write short. Be understood

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write short, copywriting tip, marketing

People’s attention spans have never been shorter. This includes your prospective clients or customers, which is why your writing needs to get to the point. Fast. This is something known as, writing short.

Writing short

As you’ll know if you’ve followed my work for a while, I’m an advocate of learning how to write short. (Roy Peter Clark introduced the phrase to me). It’s not for everything you write. Just for those times when space is limited or you want to get an extremely focused message across.

Here are some specific examples, where writing short is essential.

  • Email subject lines.
  • Tweets.
  • Event hand-outs.
  • Advertising copy.
  • Store signs.
  • Elevator pitches.
  • Messaging on products / packaging.
  • Political slogans.
  • Headlines.
  • Banners.
  • Social media profiles.
  • Flyers.
  • Vehicle signage.
  • Website buttons.
  • Calls to action.

That kind of thing.

So, what’s the problem?

By default, most business owners write long and see no reason to write short. And it’s perfectly understandable why this happens.

Think about it.

The internet provides you with endless writing space. You can add an unlimited number of pages to a website, with an unlimited number of words on each page. Your newsletter or marketing emails can be as long as you wish. In other words, you have far more space than you need.

So on the face of it, you have very little motivation to use fewer words than you currently do.

Except you really have.

Write short: The rewards are huge

That’s why I strongly recommend you learn to write with as few words as necessary. It’s a great way to improve your email open rates, get better advertising results, improve your click through rates, get prospects to take action and lots, lots more.

To get you started, here’s some tips on how to write short, from the best writers in the world.

Sorry to disturb you

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why email marketing doesn't work, why email marketing works ,email marketing

I received a marketing email earlier, which contained a serious error. This error will have dramatically reduced its conversion rate. Here’s what happened, so you can avoid it from happening to you.

The email copy started with the following 4 words: “Sorry to disturb you”.

There’s a lot of information packed into those 4 words. Enough for the vast majority of those who received it, to form an opinion on the sender.

  • The sender knew what they were doing was wrong, which is why they opened with an apology.
  • The sender also knew that their email was a disturbance. An unrequested interruption from someone I’ve never heard of.
  • Knowing all this, they still decided to send it anyway.

Like others who received that email, I stopped reading after the opening sentence. After all, a stranger had interrupted us, without our consent, to tell us that what we were about to read is just spam. It’s an instant delete.

What if the email had been valuable?

That email may have contained a useful message. It might have offered an outstanding deal. It could have provided details of a wonderful opportunity. But their email marketing let them down. So no one will know. The copy they used, the list they used and the tone of their opening line destroyed their email campaign.

Oblivious to this, the sender will be wondering why they received no positive response. Especially if they genuinely had something valuable to share. They’ll perhaps be pondering whether they need to lower their prices, or if email marketing is a waste of time, or if their great offer isn’t actually great.

If we consider this to be merely an example of ineffective email marketing, we totally miss the point!

It’s way, way bigger than that.

This example provides us with a powerful insight into how easy it is, for a business owner to offer an amazing product or service, only for ineffective marketing to let them down. It’s the difference between being inundated with sales and enquiries or being greeted with silence. 

The great news

Thankfully, it also gives you an insight into how quickly you can massively increase your sales, when you decide to improve just one area of your marketing. 

Now multiply that potential by every other marketing activity you’re doing, and 2024 can easily be your most successful year ever. This is true, no matter how challenging things have been for you. 

Growing your list

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Build your list, list building

I receive a lot of questions from business owners, who want advice on how to grow their lists. And I usually start by explaining the absolute cornerstone of list-building, which is very seldom mentioned.

It’s simply this.

The idea of growing your list is based on a fallacy. You can’t possibly grow your list or build your list.

That’s because your list is never yours.

You simply borrow it.

Allow me to explain

We don’t own the attention of subscribers; readers, viewers, listeners, or followers, etc. We have to earn their attention… and then keep re-earning it. Never, ever take it for granted. Consistently strive to provide useful information. 

When we stop thinking of subscribers as our subscribers, we operate from a them-first mindset. This motivates us to produce our best work. As a result, we find that we retain far more subscribers for far longer. We also find they proactively recommend us to their friends and contacts.  

The pay-off is huge.

The pay-off from this approach is huge. With greater retention, plus a faster growth-rate, your lists will grow like a snowball. It’s the list building equivalent of compound interest. 

Photo by Melanie Deziel 

All New!

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When it comes to creating a powerful marketing message and attracting customers, the word ‘new‘ is overrated. Worse still, it’s a very loaded word and can absolutely ruin your marketing results.

There are 3 broad reasons for this.

  1. The newest product or service is always a riskier bet. At best, it’s a bigger gamble than the trusted alternatives. At worst, the customer feels like a paying guinea pig.
  2. The newest product or service is seldom the best. It lacks the improvements that come from years of feedback. It lacks the robustness that comes from stress-testing.
  3. New doesn’t last for long. This makes it a short-term marketing message. Anything that’s new is only new for now.

A dozen better alternatives

Given the challenges of using the word new, I recommend you replace it with something more compelling. More motivating. More attractive. 

To get you started, here are 12 alternatives.

  1. A faster way.
  2. A professional way.
  3. A cleaner way.
  4. A proven way.
  5. A stylish way.
  6. A profitable way.
  7. A premium way.
  8. A relaxing way.
  9. A friendly way.
  10. A safer way.
  11. A reliable way.
  12. A smoother way.

What next?

Take a look through your marketing and search for opportunities to replace new with a better alternative. This is usually in situations where new is used as the only adjective. 

Also, you can apply this to your presentations, negotiations or meetings. For example, if you’re trying to sell a new product, service or idea to someone, they’re more likely to pay attention when you tell them about your ‘more profitable way’ of doing something, than your ‘new way’ of doing something. 

Finally, in situations where you need to use the word new, such as a press release or product launch, always combine it with another word or words. For example, new and improved. 

Stop using buzzwords in your marketing. Seriously. Stop it

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remove buzzwords, marketing copy, clarity sells

One thing in business is certain. There’s no shortage of buzzwords and phrases. Here are just some that I’ve seen in use recently.

  • Knowledge transfer.
  • Price point.
  • Intersection.
  • Deep dive.
  • Disrupt.
  • Ruckus.
  • Knowledge transfer.
  • Ideate.
  • Pragmatic.
  • Whiteboard it.
  • Paradigm.

Buzzwords are used by people, in an effort to appear informed or fashionable. Interestingly, using buzzwords has the total opposite effect.

Here’s how they work against us and our marketing.

  • Buzzwords make informed people cringe. Not only is this embarrassing, it’s a terrible idea if we want our peers to take us seriously or recommend us.
  • Buzzwords confuse the uninformed. And that’s the last thing we need, when we want people to understand our message.

In short, buzzwords not only add nothing positive to our marketing, they actively weaken it. And because they’re totally unnecessary, we can remove them with no negative impact.

Remember: One of the keys to effective marketing is to always aim for clarity.

Photo by Kim Gorga on Unsplash

Your opinions, voice, uniqueness and AI

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human opinion, ai, chatbots, marketing

Opportunity is knocking. It’s knocking loud and it’s knocking clear.

The best part? To benefit from this spectacular opportunity you just need to be yourself.

Allow me to explain.

It starts with a statement of fact: Your opinions are exactly that. They’re yours. They’re as specific to you as your unique blend of life experiences and lessons.

Conversely, artificial intelligence doesn’t have an opinion. Everything about its knowledge base is artificial.

Instead, AI is fed with masses of data. And it’s trained by groups of AI experts. One of the primary tasks of AI trainers, is to keep their AI as neutral to everyone as possible. And in seeking not to offend anyone, AI lacks even an artificial opinion.

In stark contrast

No person who has ever lived is neutral. Unlike AI, we not only have an opinion, we have countless opinions. This includes the opinions and feelings we have regarding the way we do business. And it impacts everything, including:

  • The business tactics we rule in or rule out.
  • The atmosphere we create for our clients or customers.
  • The way we sell or negotiate.
  • The value we place on our products or services.
  • The baseline quality of service or products we provide.
  • The type of staff we hire and the way we look after them.
  • The suppliers we choose.
  • The profile of customers we want to attract (and those we want to avoid).
  • The type of promises and guarantees we provide, etc., etc.

Your business, opinions, voice and uniqueness

Your opinions matter. They always have. They’re what give you your unique voice in the marketplace.

I firmly believe that today, and for the forseeable future, that uniqueness is a powerrful way, maybe the most powerful way, for your business to gain your biggest ever slice of the marketplace.

How?

A growing number of your competitors are switching to AI for their voice. For example, AI tools are creating and guiding their business plans; what to do and what to avoid. Chatbot apps are handling their frontline customer service. Chatbots are also guiding or shaping (and in many cases providing) their; newsletter content, blog posts, video / podcast scripts, advertising copy and social media interactions, etc. In short, everything that prospective clients or customers use in order to judge these businesses, is bland and lifeless.

I’m suggesting that you adopt a very different aproach to AI.

The most savvy business owners I know are also using AI. But the way they use it, excludes every area of their business that carries their DNA. Their opinions and their voice remain 100% human. It’s what guides their messaging, their priorities, their values, their commitment, their customer service and their willingness to go the extra mile. Their businesses have a pulse and personality. They are extremely easy to connect with. They are easy to relate to. And on a very human level, they’re easy to trust. Because they are human. And so is their brand. Not dull and lifeless like the previous example.

Very soon, you’ll be able to stand out and get noticed, in a way that wasn’t possible before. The opportunity is knocking. But only for those who choose to take notice of it.