At the point when individuals consider product messaging, they as a rule start with the highlights and advantages their item gives. Indeed, while these additions should be characterized, this won’t be the primary thing to zero in on. Product Messaging is tied in with conveying how communicating offers some incentive, and how it will help take care of your client’s real issue, why it’s superior to other products.
How to Assess Your Copy
1. MECLab’s Conversion Heuristic Formula. It isn’t an equation to solve, it’s more of a thought tool to help understand the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) method.
C = 4M + 3V + 2(I-F)-2A
C = Probability of Conversion
M = Motivation — When?
V = Clarity of Value Proposition — Why?
I = Incentive
F = Friction
A = Anxiety
2. Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion. Once motivation, value proposition, anxiety, all those things are taken care of, I want to start incorporating other persuasive principles that science has proven to be effective in helping boost persuasion. These are:
· Social Proof — evidence that other people are saying yes to you.
· Authority — some kind of third-party authoritative statement from either press, media, what have you, that supports the fact that your offer is great.
· Liking — It is easier for people to say yes to you when they like you.
· Scarcity/Urgency — If they know that there is a limited amount of resources, they are going to be more motivated to try to grab those resources.
· Reciprocity — You are more likely to return a favor to someone if they’ve already given you something first. So if you can be generous, give things openly first, and build that rapport, people are more likely to say yes to you.
· Commitment/Consistency — getting someone to do a small act will increase the likelihood that they will say yes to a bigger ask later.
· Unity/ Tribalism — Can you make people feel like they’re part of something, like a group or community?
3. Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising. These are the tested copywriting principles. Be Specific. Offer Service. Tell the Full Story. Be a Sales(wo)man.
Funnel sections covered by this tear-down framework
1. Attention Capturing Copy
SERP Snippet, PPC Ads, Display Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.
2. Persuasive Copy
Home Page, PPC Landing Pages, Product Details Page
3. Transactional Copy
Cart Page, Order Summary, Checkout Page, Signup Page
Message-mining
Message mining is the process of collecting opinions, statements & ideas about your product or competitor products from your target customer. So we build our copy based on verbatim terms of phrases and messages directly from our customers online. This helps us identify key messages and “swiping” memorable copy. In this course, we learned how to use reviews (if you already have users and visitors), surveys, polls, user tests, and interviews to be able to get a broader perspective about what our customers really feel and need about our product.
Identify Key Messages (so we can use them in our heuristic formula)
· Motivation Messages — Desired outcomes, Pain points, problems, Purchase Prompts
· Value Proposition Messages — Unique benefits and advantages, Delightful features, attributes, Dealbreaker needs
· Anxiety Messages — Uncertainties, Objections, Perceived risks
“Swiping” Memorable Copy
This means turning real customer reviews into our sales copy. So turns of phrase that they use when they describe our product. We’re also looking for the multiple benefits and points of value that they talk about, as well as specific things that they don’t like about products similar to ours, so we can differentiate ourselves from competitors. At the end of the day, we will get
· relevant, value-focused headlines,
· authentic lead paragraphs and hooks,
· market-specific terminology/slang,
· emotionally engaging purchase prompts and
· laser-accurate objections
by using these “swipes”.
So full voice of customer insights (VOC) from which we can start mining customer data and then creating a full sales narrative is a great way to start your product messaging.
Value Proposition
While we can’t change our visitor's motivation, the value factor is the most influential element of our heuristic formula. Our value proposition will answer our potential customer’s two critical questions:
· “What’s in it for me?”
· “Why should I choose you (over X)?”
When it comes to your value proposition types and audience types, there’s a bit of a difference you need to take into account based on what kind of product you have, and what kind of audience you’re dealing with.
1. Niche/ new products — few or no customers, low or no traffic, unproven business model. Your audience is mostly problem-aware, and not solution-aware, so your value proposition will focus primarily on what kind of desire your product helps them achieve.
UVP strategy: brainstorm internally, at first, then validate.
2. Broad/ established product — active customers, medium/high traffic, proven business model. You probably have comparison shoppers, who are solution-aware, so focus on differentiating your solution from others. You also want to help your visitors get to their point quickly.
UVP strategy: generate through VOC research.
Messaging Hierarchy/ Sales Flow
We have to know our audience’s awareness level first, to figure out how extensive our messaging flow needs to be. How to identify? With surveys or poll responses. Then you will be able to pinpoint your UVP using voice-of-customer research. As the last step, you will mine your surveys, transcripts, polls, and user tests for top Motivation, Value, and Anxiety Messages.
Clarify Motivation > Demonstrate Value > Address Anxiety > Give Call-to-Action with Incentive
Drafting, Format, and Layout
We got amazing frameworks and excel sheets where we can easily put together our sales copy, also the wireframe for our design.
1. We learned how to create a customer-informed data-driven first draft of our sales page by slicing and dicing the voice of customer data instead of stringing together a bunch of words and cliches on a blank page.
2. We learned how to improve weak sales copy by following a shortlist of 7 simple, conversion-focused editing principles.
3. We learned some key design principles that help you control the order, the pacing, and the emphasis of your copy, in your readers’ heads, also to put this into a prototype in tools like Balsamiq, Sketch, or Figma.
The CXL’s mini degree in Product Messaging & Sales Copywriting has great insights into how we can apply these techniques for better conversion.
