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A common problem with many businesses is they don’t know what makes them different/better than their competitors. You ask them and they fluff around with vague words such as we give better quality, our team is friendlier or more responsive. Ho hum – yawn.

One way to fix it is to take your boring reasons and then ask the question “which means …”. You want to flesh out the exact reasons your quality is better – what do you do, say or use that means the quality is better than your opposition.  You may want to repeat the “which means …” question a few times to get to the core of the what really is different.

Then ask “is that really different to our what our competitors are doing or are we just clutching at straws”. If you can’t put your hand over your heart and swear that they are really different, go back and have another draft.

And unless you clearly can rattle off the top 5 reasons why you are better (without stopping to think about it), and the reasons  are not platitudes or generalisations, but are unique and specific to you – you haven’t nailed it.

For extra bonus points, ask a random sample of your team or employees to tell you why your company is better than your competition. If they don’t all say the same top 5 reasons, you have some cultural change and communication work to do with your team.

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

As long term readers know, I love Ted Talks. This talk from Rory Sutherland (the ubiquitous ad man) highlights the issue of real and perceived value in a quite funny way.

What do you think? Is advertising just about finding the new in the old?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

This evening we were lucky enough to attend the media preview of Robin Hood, courtesy of Blue Room Cinebar. Originally all discussion of the movie was embargoed until Thursday (the official launch date in Australia). But as  some US reviewers have jumped the gun, the embargo has been lifted. We did have to hand in our mobile phones to MIB style security guards just to make sure of no early pirate movie leaks.

As long term readers of this blog know, I love approaches that take something that is well known and then adds a twist. The latest Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie, does just that. If you are looking for the traditional retelling of the Robin Hood tale, this film is not for you. If you were not taken by the Batman re-tellings, Smallville or Merlin then you may find this version of the tale a tad too loose an interpretation. However, if you are open to a rollicking good yarn that very loosely tells the story of how Robin Hood came to be an outlaw, then book a ticket to see the latest Robin Hood movie.

Brilliantly cast, with stunningly lush scenery and sets (worthy of an Oscar in its own right) and excellent costumes, the movie is an interesting combination of massive battle sequences, the odd bit of light-hearted laughter and a dash of romance … and yes, the stage is set for a sequel.  Russell Crowe gave a solid Gladiator in leather tights performance, Cate Blanchett was stunning as an emancipated Lady Marion and Max von Sydow was absolutely brilliant as Sir Walter Loxley.  My personal favourite was Mark Addy as Friar Tuck – exceptional casting.

There was also an interesting combination of historical attention to detail (the castle siege wouldn’t look out of place in a High School history lesson) and thumbing their nose at history (Marion in full armour fighting the invading French).

As an aside, fans of Monty Python will find the odd reference in the movie to keep them amused. Obviously the group we were with were not Python fans  as we were the only ones giggling at “None shall pass unless you answer this riddle …”

From a business perspective, 10/10 for clever marketing by Blue Room Cinebar in Rosalie. The preview was open to the media as well as top clients of the cinema. The clients gained exclusive access to a brilliant movie, and refreshed their memories of how great the Blue Room Cinebar is for private screenings for clients. (I gather the next Sex & the City Movie has weeks of group bookings already locked in). Other businesses take note of how you can reward your best clients. (Declaration of interest – yes, I am a regular client of the Cinebar and yes we had free tickets tonight, but no financial payment for this review).

In terms of movie ratings, I give Robin Hood 3.5/5 and my daughter gives it a 4/5 (and Blue Room Cinebar a 5/5). It is not an Avatar movie, but still great escapism nonetheless.

Love to hear your thoughts of the movie

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Most businesses have a great range of products or services … and yet most of their clients don’t know the full range on offer. It is one of those truisms that it is harder to get a new client than a repeat one, so why not educate your clients about your full range of offerings. This can be as simple as the sliver of cookie in front of a cake shop, or as complex as direct mail pieces.

For example, a natural health clinic I know runs regular workshops and seminars that look at a wide variety of health issues … and happen to include mention of different treatments and exposure to the full range of their services at the workshop.  Another online business sends out regular newsletters promoting one different product a month combined with useful tips and ideas on how to use their products.

The trick here is to give enough of a taste to whet the appetite, and not enough to fill people up. I mean, how many cookies would be sold in a bakery if the baker let people eat as many as they needed?

The other thing is if you do happen to offer a great product or service, make it easy for people to find it and access it. The anti-example is Australia Post. You can buy postpaks from their post offices – all clearly labeled with signs Padded Bag 1 etc. But I defy you to find out how to calculate postage for their products. You are left measuring in both mm and cm (different calculators use different measures) and fumbling around. If you are like me, after an hour of frustration,  you end up just sticking a King’s ransom of stamps on the thing, crossing your fingers and hoping. Make calculators obvious and linked to your products.

Make it clear where people can sign up to your newsletter – buried on page 40 of your website is not helpful. It should be on your front page as well as many other pages on your website.

Finally, make it easy to get in touch with you.  Today I spent another fruitless half hour trying to find a phone number to contact a business from their website – it didn’t exist as the person prefers to communicate via email. I communicated that they had unfortunately lost our business.

What do you think? Any good examples of businesses making it easy to buy from them?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

A few of my clients have been asking me what to put on their business cards.  You see,  you go into business and everyone tells you that you have to have one.  What I tell them is before you race off to your printing store or graphic designer, take a breath and ask yourself a few questions.

1. What do you need it for? Sounds simple, but will you mainly be giving it to people at networking events, to confirm appointments, in case they have a problem with one of your products or some other reason.  Many people find that they have a couple of different ways they hand out their cards. Fantastic! Get different cards for different purposes – there’s no rule that says you can only have one type of card.
2. What do you want people to do with it when they get it? This sounds bizarre, but do you want people to file it in their card file (then make sure it fits into card files and is not a strange “creative” shape), stick it on their fridge (perhaps a magnet is what you are looking for instead of a card), scan it using a business card reader (be careful of the fonts you use if you want your card to be clear in scanners) or what?
3. If you want to send people back to your website - make it worth their while to go there. Use the back of the card to include an enticing offer or giveaway.
4. If you use them for networking or at conferences – then maybe you need a photo instead of a logo on your card so people can put a face to a name.
5. What is the minimum contact information you can get away with? Many people try and cram an encyclopedia onto their cards. By the time you add in phone, mobile, fax, switch, email, website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc etc – it is starting to get silly. Take pruning shears to your contact information and keep it to the essentials.
6. If your graphic designer insists 6 pt font is stylish and modern, belt them severely around the head with your bifocals. As people age we need bigger font so we can preserve our vanity and not have to bring out the magnifying glass to look at your card. Keep the essential details – your name and your main phone number – in a decent sized font.
7. Work out if your brand is cheap or you want to inspire a perception of quality. Cheap business cards look precisely that – cheap. You are your business card – what do you want it to say about who you are?

So that is my deadly seven. What do you think about business cards? What do you like, not like on cards that you have seen?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

There has been an increasing trend in the past 12 months of businesses using contact forms on websites to “share information” to the website owner. It seems like many people new to business are not getting the message about Spam – and what constitutes spam communications.

Spam is not just about selling viagra or phishing scams. Many small or new businesses can unwittingly find themselves caught up spamming people, without realising it. The funniest one I received was from a Brisbane company selling double opt in mailing lists. Now given I did not consent to receiving any of their marketing material I had to wonder about their understanding of what they were selling.

So … if you are in Australia, before you hit the send button on your next email read over the information contained on the ACMA government website about Spam.  If you are in the USA – then the Can – Spam Act is for you.

No matter where you are the basics are still the same:

• Use accurate from addresses & clear subject lines
• Explain how people can unsubscribe from your mailings (and honor their requests promptly)
• Include your valid postal address in all emails
• Only send emails to companies with their explicit consent (and no, grabbing their business card at a networking event doesn’t cut it)
• There are gray areas relating to inferred consent – and you would want a pretty good lawyer to be able to argue them.  So when in doubt, don’t use contact forms or email addresses on websites to contact people and tout your wares. In the words of the ACMA – you cannot infer someone’s consent just because you believe your product or service will benefit them.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

We have all seen them – the ubiquitous product demonstration. Cuts through boots and can still cut through a tomato. Picks up things that you normally would use a dustpan for. Put on this cream and instantly look like a Hollywood movie star.  Wave this magic wand and suddenly be 25 pounds lighter, 15 years younger and a supermodel (OK that last one may have been a fantasy).

Product demonstrations are the bread and butter of selling. If people know how to use your product and can see what it does, then you create more sales.

But what about a product for which you can’t demonstrate the properties? What if it is taboo to show the product in actual use. This is the problem that has faced ad agencies for decades. One of the hardest categories to do a product demonstration for is “feminine hygiene” products (pads and tampons to mere mortals). You can’t show them in real use and the use of blood is even more taboo. Who can remember the wonderful blue liquid of years past? For a while as a kid I was sure that “blue blood” royals really did have blue blood and were used in pad demonstrations – but I digress.

You see women are very loyal to their products. They generally choose a brand when they start their cycle in their teens and are reluctant to change unless something major happens (like their brand is out of stock at the Supermarket).

Smart companies know this and woo pre-teen girls with free product samples,  information and funky websites – hoping to capture brand loyalty at an early stage. Cigarette advertising has nothing on the campaign tow in the hearts of pre-teen girls. For a time our house was awash with free samples from feminine hygiene companies.

Regular TV ads were more to reinforce brand loyalty and didn’t make much a dint in sales … until now. Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne have created one of the most memorable product demonstration ads that has “gone viral”. The ad is designed to demonstrate the extra stick factor of Libra Invisible pads – and does it brilliantly.

It is being uploaded to You Tube, it has its own Facebook Fan Page and blokes around Australia have taken to covering themselves in Libra pads for photos (that are uploaded to blogs, Facebook pages and assorted other places). The local High School has reported a number of boys turning up to school covered in Libra pads. It is the hottest topic in hairdressing salons. It seems like everyone is talking about it, with about 95% positive response.

So what is all the fuss about?

They have taken a taboo and made it funny … really funny. They have memorable characters.  Quotable lines and a twist.  Brilliant marketing!

What do you think?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Builders homes that are never finished. Mechanics cars that never seem to get serviced. Doctors who are regularly sick. These archetypes are so well ingrained into our psyche that you could be forgiven for thinking that it is normal for businesses to stuff up what they tell other people to do.

But … what about if businesses actually did their own “thing” really well. What if the car detailers car was always immaculate. If a web developers website was always the best in their field. If writers regularly wrote and shared their writing with clients.

What if you “be the brand that you sell? ” That’s the question that a colleague of mine (Brandrally) posed the other day – and I loved it! Doesn’t it make sense that your business should walk your talk?

So now the question for your business. What do you want your brand or business to be known for? How can you make sure that you do that 100% of the time every time? No exceptions!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Testimonials are great for business. They sing your praises and help potential clients understand what it is like to do business with you. They are so powerful that the FTC in the USA implemented a whole raft of regulations and restrictions around how to use testimonials in marketing.

In the past few years video testimonials have been all the rage, which means popping your favourite clients in front of a camera and getting them to talk about their experience of working with you. Seeing “in the flesh” a real person talking in a positive way about your business is more powerful than written testimonials alone.

But … and this is a huge but … not every video testimonial that is filmed should be used. This is my favourite example of one of the worst testimonials I have seen – made even funnier because it is Ian Healy (ex-Australian cricketer and accomplished media commentator) talking about his web company. So what? Well the web company uploaded it to You Tube.  OK, Ian may be taking the mickey out of the whole process and trying to be funny with his comments, but you judge for yourself (from about 31 seconds in), whether you would like your client telling the world that “you can’t measure anything they do”, “results … well who knows”, “the company is a little top heavy” and other gems.

If you are going to use video testimonials, you may want to talk with your clients before hand. Help them gather their thoughts and don’t be afraid to do a few “takes”.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Have you ever looked at the humble shopping trolley? I mean really looked at it and wondered “who the heck invented it”? Yes, I know shopping is my least favourite contact sport and I will do anything to avoid grocery shopping, which is why one day I was pondering this question while I studiously avoided thinking about the wonky wheels and while dodging the local kids who were treating the shopping aisles like a roller derby.

So I went hunting … and discovered a brilliant book by Rudolph Brash called “A Bee in Your Bonnet?“  This quirky little book covers the history and meaning of a whole litany of useless phrases as well as useful information about the inventor of many modern day marvels … including the shopping trolley.

Now I know you are dying to find out who to thank (blame) for the shopping trolley – it was Sylvan Goldman in the 1930′s. Mr Goldman owned a supermarket in Oklahoma City and figured that people only ever bought as much as they could carry in their shopping bag. He thought that if he could make it easier for people to carry more, they would buy more, so converted a folding chair by adding wheels and a basket and hey presto – the shopping trolley was born … And people ignored it in droves.

Apparently people were afraid to use the new fangled invention – they thought they would run into things. Undeterred, Mr Goldman thought for many a long night on how to get people to use them. So what did he do to get over people’s fears?

1) He hired a pretty girl to hand people a trolley the moment they entered the store instead of the older shopping baskets

2) He advertised the new invention widely in the papers so the early adopters would know about it

3) And (drumroll please) he hired actors to smilingly wheel around fully laden trolleys through the shop and carpark

Mr Goldman went on to patent the idea and died in 1984 a multi-millionaire – all from the one simple idea.

What can you learn from the humble shopping trolley?

• A good idea is not going to make you money unless people want it and use it.
• There’s ways around many problems if you are creative enough.
• People value the opinion of other people – if they see other people enjoying your product it makes them more willing to try.
• You need to tell people about your creations – positive press is still important.
• Sex sells

It’s good to see modern day supermarkets going back to the basics. We are all now used to the massive trolleys – and until recently people only had the choice of the behemoth trolleys or a small red basket. Note the introduction of a range of smaller trolleys that bridge the gap. People have taken to them in droves and average basket sale has increased as a result. Everything old is new again!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter