Which Candidate is Talking About You?

It’s fascinating to watch.

As the presidential campaign comes down the homestretch, the candidates and their surrogates are making their pitches to the electorate. To watch the messaging and positioning of the candidates on TV, in print, and on the web from a marketing perspective is just fascinating to me.

As some of you probably know, I came up with the idea of adding an About You page to your website. It’s a page that talks about your prospects, not your company.

The most effective marketing messages are the ones that focus on the prospects and show how your product or service can improve their lives. Adding an About You page to a website forces companies to do that (on at least one page of their site) as opposed to the egotistical, company-focused marketing that seems to be the norm.

So as I was listening to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech the other week, you can imagine how this line got my attention:

“But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring.  What the nay-sayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me.  It’s been about you.“

And while John McCain didn’t utter the exact phrase “about you”, he did say this:

“I don’t work for a party. I don’t work for a special interest. I don’t work for myself. I work for you.”

In thinking about the two speeches, I started to wonder which one focused more on the voters (ie. About You) as opposed the candidates themselves. Luckily, there’s a handy tool to help me do just that.

Internet marketing optimization firm FutureNow also understands the importance of focusing on the prospect. To help companies figure out if their web copy focuses more on the company or the prospect, they put a handy little tool on their website called the “We We Calculator.” To use the calculator, simply enter the URL of a webpage and the calculator will look for certain words on that page to determine whether the copy focuses more on customers or the company.

I decided to use this tool to evaluate the text of both John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s acceptance speeches. I copied the text of each speech onto their own page on my website to strip away any advertising, commentary, comments, etc. that could impact the results. Then I entered the URL for each page into the We We Calculator.

Here are the results:

John McCain’s Customer (ie. Voter) Focus Rate: 12.14%
Barack Obama’s Customer (ie. Voter) Focus Rate: 19.29%

MCain’s Self Focus Rate: 87.86%
Obama’s Self Focus Rate: 80.71%

According to the calculator, McCain had 51 instances of voter-focused words and 369 instances of self-focused words in an acceptance speech that had a total word count of 3912.

Obama had 65 instance of voter-focused words and 272 instances of self-focused words in his acceptance speech which totaled 4610.

By focusing on the voters about twice as much as Senator McCain as well as focusing on himself much less, Senator Obama seems to get the About You concept more than Senator McCain (at least as far as acceptance speeches are concerned).

What does all this mean?

First, it’s probably no surprise that in evaluating the speeches of politicians, both spent the vast majority of the time talking about themselves (I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing in politics, just not surprising).

Second, I’d make no assumptions about the outcome of this presidential campaign based on the voter-focused vs. self-focused language in just one speech from each candidate.

However, I would make the assumption that if you applied this calculator to the pages of your website and got results similar to either candidate’s speech, your marketing needs some help. If your copy focuses on your customers less than 20% of the time and on yourself over 80% of the time, it’s time to get some new copy!

To see how your copy scores on the We We Calculator, put it to the test here.

And one last thing, please keep any comments focused on marketing – not the virtues of the candidate you support or the lack of virtues of the candidate you don’t!

Copyblogger’s Talking About You

There was a short, yet powerful post by James Chartrand on Copyblogger last Friday titled “I Don’t Care About You.”

James writes about “Egotistical Marketing.” It’s a great term that describes a mistake many marketers make – focusing on themselves instead of others.

Bottom line: If you want people to pay attention to your marketing then tell them about their favorite subject – themselves!

After you read James’ post, check out my take on the concept and how to put it to use by creating an About You page on your website.

Do You Have LFAQs on Your Website?

I’ve already made an argument for including an “About You” page on your website. The basic idea is that while everyone has an About Us page that describes you and/or your company, customers don’t care. They care about themselves so you should have a page on your site, the About You page, that describes your ideal customer.

Another page that frequents websites is the FAQ page. Businesses use it to list the Frequently Asked Questions they get asked about their business. The problem with FAQs is that they are asked, well, frequently.

Frequent is common.
Frequent is what prospects are asking your competitors.
Frequent focuses on similarities.

What if you were to focus on LEAST Frequently Asked Questions instead?

The questions that are uncommon.
The questions that you wish your customers would ask you, but usually don’t.
The questions that focus on what sets you apart from the competition, not makes you similar.

What questions do prospects not frequently ask you that you could add to your website? How can you use these questions to uniquely position your company to set you apart from the competition? Please post your thoughts in the comments section below.

Ultimate Writing Tip That Will Blow Your Mind and Boost Your Response

Want people to read your blog posts, promotional emails, articles, advertisements, press releases, or web site? More often than not, it’s going to come down to the headline.

You have precious few seconds to entice a reader. If your headline fails to do that, odds are the rest of what you’ve written will not get read – no matter how good it may be.

Perhaps no one knows this better than those in the magazine industry. This industry pays headline writers big bucks to come up with catchy headlines that instantly grabs the reader’s attention and gets them to add the magazine to their cart.

So why not put their expertise to use for your business?

One of my favorite copywriting tricks is to browse magazine covers at Magazines.com. At this website, you can view the latest covers for just about any magazine in print. From Cosmo to Maxim to Men’s Health to many more, it’s a crash course in writing headlines that command attention.

Here are a few suggestions on how to make the most of using Magazines.com for marketing your business:

1. Don’t obsess over the words so much as the structure of the headlines. For instance, you’re probably never going to write a headline for your business “When Your Boobs Act Weird.” However, if you’re in IT, you could use the headline “When Your Server Acts Weird.”

2. Pay particular attention to the headlines from magazines that target the audience you’re writing for. If you’re writing for small business owners, check out headlines from Entrepreneur, Inc., or Fast Company.

3. Use the headlines as a cure for writer’s block. Don’t know what to write about for your next blog post or newsletter? Start browsing those magazine covers and the headlines are sure to trigger an avalanche of ideas.

4. Magazine headlines can also make for great Google AdWords ads. You have very limited space when writing text ads to promote your business on Google. Adapt some particularly catchy headlines into your AdWords campaign and see if they give your clickthrough rate a big boost.

5. Start a headline swipe file. Spend an hour each month browsing the most popular magazine covers at Magazines.com. Add all the headlines that capture your attention to a Word document on your computer. Before long, you’ll have 100s of possible ideas for headlines, blog posts, AdWords ads, etc.

Some copywriters say the headline is so important they spend 80% of their time on it and only 20% writing the body copy. Using Magazines.com can be a shortcut for generating that attention grabbing headline that will boost the response to your next blog post, email marketing campaign, sales letter, AdWords ad, etc.

And, by the way, the title for this blog post was adapted from the magazine headline in my swipe file, “Ultimate Health Check Up That Will Blow Your Mind and Change Your Life.”

Why Most Websites Have It Wrong: It’s Not About Us, It’s About YOU!

Do you have an About Us page on your website? If you’re like most businesses, I’m betting you do.

How about an About You page? I’m betting you don’t.

One of the biggest mistakes most businesses make in marketing is focusing on themselves. The About Us page epitomizes this mistake. Most companies use it as a place to spout off about one of more of the following:

1. How great their company is.
2. How fantastic their employees are (at least the management team).
3. That their widget is the best widget around.
4. Their incredible mission statement that states how great the company is, what fantastic employees they have, and how their widget is the best widget around.

That’s all well and good, but there’s just one problem.

No one cares!

People care about themselves. They want to know what’s in it for them. They want to see how your company, your employees, your widget can improve their lives.

When done right, the About Us page can help a business connect with prospects and turn more of them into customers.

(A little secret about the About Us page is that the most effective ones actually focus on the customer, not the business. They paint a clear picture of the benefits one receives when doing business with that company. )

I’d like to propose taking things a step further. If you’re going to dedicate a web page to “Us” (your company), then dedicate one to “You” (your customers).

Without customers, you don’t have a business. So why not give them their very own page on your website?

What Goes On an About You Page?

Use the About You page to tell prospects and customers about themselves. Detail their problems and frustrations. Describe who they are. Describe who they’re not.

On my website, the About You page has a bulleted list of qualities that describe my ideal prospect.

It tells them who they are – small business owners, entrepreneurs, or the head of a not-for-profit.

It tells them about common problems that my clients have that I can help solve – not having enough customers, being in the dark about internet marketing, or staring at a blank screen that needs to be filled with words for an article or marketing copy.

It tells them who they are not – affiliate marketers or MLMs (multi-level marketers).

What Can an About You Page Do For You?

There are a few main benefits that an About You page can provide.

1. It forces you to focus on the ideal client for your business. Most small businesses make the mistake of trying to be everything to everyone. That generally leads to chasing leads and servicing clients that can suck the life out of your business.Writing down a clear description of your ideal client puts your focus on attracting prospects who are perfectly suited for your business’ core competencies (this is a worthwhile task even if you don’t want to put it on your website).

   Attract these types of clients and you’ll be a lot happier.

2. Clients that aren’t a good fit for your business can quickly disqualify themselves. If you’ve posted the attributes of your ideal client on your website, prospects who don’t fit the bill can see that for themselves and move on to find a better fit. This keeps them and you from wasting valuable time trying to figure it out later.

3. It ensures you have at least one page on your site that puts the focus squarely on your customers’ favorite topic – themselves.

4. There’s a powerful psychological aspect to having an About You page on your website. When a prospect comes to your site and finds a description or checklist that describes them perfectly, it gives them a feeling of finding the mothership. A place where they belong. This can help convince them that becoming a client of yours would be an ideal fit for them.

5. It makes you stand out from the crowd. I did exhaustive research (ie. a Google search) and found almost no websites have an About You page. In a web full of sites with Home, Products, Services, Blog, About Us, Contact Us, etc., the About You page is a great way to stand out and get noticed.
   

So that’s my case for adding an About You page to your company’s website. This is uncharted territory and there are no set guidelines. If you like this idea, run with it! Be creative. Have fun. Email me a link (and if your About You page describes me, you may just get a new customer!)

But most of all, take the idea of focusing on your prospects and customers to every page of your website. Then incorporate it into all of your other sales and marketing activities. Because focusing on your customers will ultimately benefit you.