A short while ago, I wrote a post discussing one of three key marketing principles discovered and well-documented by the Eureka! Ranch (Overt Benefit). I’ve gotten a lot of feedback since, and thought it would be worthwhile to complete my review of all three principles as we should all have them at the forefront of our minds as we undertake our work.

The second principle speaks to the skepticism that all of us feel when confronted with marketing.  Let’s face it… life experience has taught us to believe little of what we hear from marketers.

For this reason, strong statements of benefits – no matter how compelling – fail to move people to action without the help of REAL reasons to believe what you’re saying.

The benefit is what your offering.  The reason to believe is HOW you’re going to make good on the promise.  We simply have to provide both.

As I watch the marketplace today, I find that this issue – the real reason to believe is the greatest weakness of new business concepts.

To convert the excitement ignited by the overt benefit into actual sales, people demand that we provide persuasive credibility and evidence that we (or our product/service) will perform as promised.  With customer confidence at an all-time low, giving compelling reasons to believe a marketing message is AS IMPORTANT as providing an overt benefit.

When communicating benefits, you may recall that there is a negative correlation between the number of benefits featured and the impact of the message.  More is NOT better.

Not so with providing reasons to believe. In fact, as a rule, more reasons to believe are better than fewer as is evidenced by successful infomercials.  Think about it. The best infomercials (the ones you see over and over) dedicate more than half of their time to reasons to believe (as opposed to communicating features and benefits).

I have mentioned the Proactiv skin care product line before. You lose count of the “unpaid” celebrity testimonials after a while.

How do you communicate your reasons to believe?

According to the research done at the Ranch, there are five proven strategies to communicating real reason to believe.  With one exception they are all equal in their effectiveness:

Strategy

• Kitchen logic     (42% probability of success)
• Personal experience (45% probability of success)
• Pedigree (41% probability of success)
• Testimonial (41% probability of success)
• Guarantee (60% probability of success)

Kitchen logic conveys how the benefit is delivered, using language that people can easily understand and quickly relate to… old-fashioned logic.

Personal experience is about providing customers with an opportunity to see, feel, and experience the product or benefit.  There are three types of personal experience: 1. sampling, 2. demonstration, and 3. sensory feedback.

A demonstration is particularly effective when it is set in a situation that seems nearly hopeless.  They can be done live OR documented and used as evidence in brochures or advertising.  Sensory feedback is about providing people with signals that reinforce your product’s effectiveness.  At its simplest, this means helping them see, feel, smell, taste, or touch the experience.

Pedigree is about providing people confidence by detailing the heritage behind your product or service.  There are three types of pedigrees: 1. development pedigree (providing credibility as a result of the design, creation, formulation, or production process behind your product or service), 2. marketing pedigree (best selling, recommended by 3 of 4 doctors, etc.), and 3. trademark pedigree (using a brand or trademark that has a pedigree of trust – Good Housekeeping).

Testimonials can be provided by customers, experts, or independent third parties. Media quotes can be an outstanding source of independent testimonials.

Guarantees can be the most powerful reason to believe IF the fine print is minimized. The power of a guarantee is directly linked to the level of risk that you appear to be taking. No risk… no marketing benefit.

6 More tips on being the most believable marketer in your industry:

1. The Internet and infomercials are marketing media that carry high levels of consumer skepticism.  If you use these media, you must triple your credibility communications to achieve the same level of impact as classic physical retailers.
2. Score your real reasons to believe versus your competition.
3. Your reasons to believe MUST BE relative to an overt benefit that MUST speak to a target audience. Therein is created a chain reaction in which each piece of your message works together.
4. Anything done during development or production that is unique offers potential as a reason to believe.
5. Beware of offering irrelevant reasons to believe.
6. Beware of following the industry in offering reasons to believe.  The more a strategy is used, the less credible it becomes.  People simply conclude “they always say that.”

If only they would believe everything we say. How easy selling would be.

After years of being conditioned to believe that marketers are liars (and sales people are worse), we as consumers have evolved into a very skeptical breed.  Sadly, our skepticism is often validated and reinforced by real-word experience in the marketplace.

So what do we do about it?  How do we differentiate ourselves and our message as simply being believable?  If we can figure this out, we’ll sell more (online and offline).  We’ll increase our conversion rates.  And we will be more profitable.

I would argue that believability is among the greatest weaknesses of today’s new business concepts. Consumers insist on compelling credibility… evidence that we will perform as promised. And we generally don’t get it from marketers.

I would go so far as to say that providing consumers with compelling reasons to believe our marketing message is as important as our presentation of features and benefits.

I found an outstanding supporter of this line of thought in author, groundbreaking marketing researcher, and chief of the Eureka Ranch, Doug Hall.  Doug says that it is almost impossible for marketers to over-communicate solid reasons to believe a marketing message.

Evidence of his wisdom can be seen in successful infomercials (the ones we see over and over… Bowflex, The Little Giant ladder, Proactiv skin care, etc.).

Let’s face it.  Along side the Internet, infomercials are about the least inherently trustworthy marketing medium there is. On the other hand, it is a powerful format to present fully the benefits of a product.

So what do successful infomercial creators do? They load up the message with reasons for us to believe what they are saying.

We’ve all seen the infomercial for Proactiv.  This is the skin treatment regimen invented by a couple of dermatologists (Doctors Katie Rodan and Kathy Fields) to eliminate acne. Their spokesperson is Vanessa Williams.  You know the one… it’s on every night (or so it seems).

I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that less than 20% of this infomercial is dedicated to an actual discussion of the product.  The rest is just reasons we should believe.

After a very short product description, it starts with a list of the non-paid celebrities who owe their flawless faces to the magical elixir.  Jessica Simpson, Kelly Clarkson, Lindsay Lohan, Paulina Rubio, Puff Daddy (make that P-Diddy), the list goes on….

Then it’s on to the real life stories.  Amy Tucker, age 19, couldn’t get a date.  Look at her acne marred face. Presto! She’s hot and beating the guys away with a stick.  Ronald Bowman, 15 year old African American (Proactiv is not just for white girls.) – same story.  Margaret Chen before and after – (works for Asians too). Patrina Gunsolley, age 38 – worked like a charm (not just for kids). In fact MILLIONS of people have “discovered Proactiv Solution and changed their lives for the better.”

Now for the story of the doctors, Katie and Kathy, their impressive bios, and why they created Proactiv.

More stories. More celebrities. A few tears of joy. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t pick up the phone and order some! Not just a sample… I bought the continuity plan. As my inventory of Proactiv grew, I decided to cancel. But I swear I think it works – especially that Refining Mask.

My point – Proactiv and the other infomercials we see over and over succeed because they reassure us with LOTS of seemingly good reasons to believe what they are saying.  We should all take a lesson from them and apply it to our own messaging. Why SHOULD your audience believe what you are saying to them?

Doug Hall has discovered five proven strategies to communicating reasons to believe a marketing message.  With one exception, they are all equal in their effectiveness according to his research.

• Kitchen logic (Probability of success: 42%)
• Personal experience (Probability of success: 45%)
• Pedigree (Probability of success: 41%)
• Testimonial (Probability of success: 41%)
• Guarantee (Probability of success: 60%)

Kitchen logic conveys to customers HOW your product/service benefit is delivered, using language that your audience can easily understand and quickly relate to. Good old-fashioned logic…. We see HOW it works.  And it just makes sense.

Personal experience is about providing customers with an opportunity to see, feel, and experience your product or benefit.  There are three types of personal experience: 1. sampling, 2. demonstration, and 3. sensory feedback.  A demonstration is particularly effective when it is set in a situation that seems nearly hopeless.  “Can the amazing bathroom cleaner really work on this horrible mess???” Sensory feedback involves reinforcing a product’s effectiveness by helping prospects to see, feel, smell, taste, or touch the experience.

Pedigree is about providing confidence to potential customers as a result of detailing the heritage behind a product or service.  There are three types of pedigrees: 1. Development Pedigree (providing credibility as a result of the design, creation, formulation, or production process behind a product or service). Consider the impressive bios of the two Proactiv dermatologists.  2. Marketing Pedigree (best selling, recommended by 3 of 4 doctors, etc.); and 3. Trademark Pedigree (using a brand or trademark that has a pedigree of trust – Good Housekeeping).

Testimonials can be provided by customers, experts, or independent third parties. Media quotes can also be a good source of independent testimonials. In my opinion, however, our skepticism as consumer is even beginning to attack the tried and true testimonial. Particularly in print, we are becoming suspicious.  Is this a real person?  Did they actually say this?  How can we be sure? For this reason, particularly online, marketers are evolving to the next-generation testimonial: customer reviews.  Which would you rather read – a testimonial (which almost by definition is a positive statement) or a review? For now at least, reviews are perceived as more objective.  And the most effective ones contain a little something NEGATIVE. We all know nothing is perfect.  And we trust the few marketers who will acknowledge that about their own product or service.

Guarantees can be the most powerful reason to believe IF the fine print is minimized. Doug Hall made an interesting discovery relative to guarantees that we can all validate at a gut level.  The power of a guarantee is directly linked to the level of risk that the marketer is perceived to be taking. If you aren’t taking any risk with your guarantee – you must not have much confidence in what you’re selling.

In no particular order, here are a few more practical tips especially for online marketers.

1. Proof your copy. Misspellings and grammatical errors erode credibility. That said…
2. Write as though you are speaking to only a single prospect at a time.  We experience the Web alone – you and the site you are visiting.  Write accordingly. Write like a person might speak – not like you are writing an article for a technical journal. A casual writing style does NOT erode credibility. To the contrary, it gives your audience a sense of your company’s personality and thereby builds trust.
3. Have a simple privacy policy and remind people of it every time you ask them to give you personal information.
4. Test your site. Broken links, like misspellings, erode credibility.
5. Permit a negative product review.  If you are transparent enough to reveal a criticism of one product, prospects will be more likely trust your positive statements about another.
6. Write using the active voice. A brief lesson on active vs. passive voice… All sentences that contain action verbs have a voice, either active or passive.  The voice tells the reader whether the subject performs or receives the verb’s action.  In sentences with active voice, the agent (doer) of the action is the subject. EXAMPLE: Bill shot the clerk.

In passive voice sentences, the receiver of the verb’s action becomes the subject of the sentence. EXAMPLE: The clerk was shot.Writing scholars say you should use the active voice in most of your writing because it engages the reader more effectively than passive voice.  I agree.  But the real reason I advocate use of the active voice in marketing copy is because we as consumers what to know exactly who does what.We want accountability. Passive voice is squishy and feels like the writer is hiding something.

   Judge for yourself.  Which do you feel better about:
   Your order has been received.  OR We received your order.
   You will be notified…. OR We will call you….
   Returns will be accepted…. OR We accept returns….

   Things just feel better (more definitive) when they are communicated in the active voice.  So use it.

Twice in two days, I’ve had the same conversation with marketers suffering from the same confusion. Both are organizations that rely on lead generation as the first step in their sales processes. That is to say, they expose prospects to their marketing message in an effort to move them to contact the company, learn more, and finalize a sale.

The problem both companies had (and I see this all the time) is they were falling into the trap of over-communicating in their marketing materials… telling their whole stories… every detail… forgetting that the goal of their marketing is not to close the sale on the spot. Rather, the goal is to motivate a prospect to call and engage in the sales process.

I find this happens most often when companies write their own marketing copy.  They are so close to what they’re doing, they lose their ability to trim down their story. They can no longer write copy that engages prospects quickly, established the firm’s credibility, yet leaves enough to talk about that it makes sense for the prospect to call.

This problem is VERY easy to stumble into. I struggle with it myself when I’m writing about products or services that I’ve been part of creating.

Here’s what seems to happen…

You understand so well the rationale behind each element of what you do. And you’re such an informed critic of your own product/service offering that anything less than a full explanation of everything you provide (and why) starts to feel incomplete to you.

The result – you wind up trying to wet the whistle of your prospects with a fire hose.  WAY too much information… and way more than they need in order to reach the decision to give you a call.

The information overload either dissuades prospects from investing the time to process your message – or you answer so many of their questions that they no longer need to call you to learn more and begin the sales process.

The next time you find yourself reviewing a lead generation program, ask yourself the following questions:

• Does our marketing earn the scarce attention of our audience?
• Does our marketing (design and copy) establish our firm’s credibility?
• Does our message differentiate us from our competitors?
• Does our copy help prospects qualify themselves?
• Are we providing a compelling reason for prospects to engage in our sales process?
• Is our copy concise and scannable enough to engage a busy prospect?

These can be tough questions to answer for yourself. This is one time when it can really pay to get some objective feedback.

I was working on the early planning of a new web site recently, and I was struck by a realization that I think may prove helpful to many of you who follow this blog.

As I have said countless times, effective online selling hinges on your ability to climb into your prospect’s head (empathize) and speak to her in the way she needs to be spoken to in order to move her to action. You have to anticipate her questions and make answers available in the right places – coinciding with her own buying process.

I have done this dozens of times now, but as I worked through the process today, something useful occurred to me.

When people sit down to think through the content of their new web site, the process often goes something like this. (This is especially true in smaller businesses where the web site doesn’t have a dedicated person/team attending to it.)

Step One: Identify the pages that all sites seem to need – Home, About Us, Contact Us, Products/Services, FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)… you know the ones.

Step Two: Identify the pages that are unique to the company. Often these pages show up on sub-navigation underneath of the standard pages.

Step Three: Assign each page to someone on the team to write the content.

Step Four: (often overlooked): Review and edit the content to be sure that it is error-free and has a consistent voice.

Here’s the problem.

Empathy for your audience often never surfaces in this process – with ONE exception.  The FAQ page.

There are two types of FAQ pages. There are the FAQs that are really just softball questions that you lob up to yourself in order to make the case for buying your product. And there are FAQs that actually resolve questions that prospects really have.

I would argue that you want your FAQ to generally fall in the latter category.  The case for buying your product should be made in the more prominent site copy. If you are pinning your hopes to making the sale on the FAQ page – forget about it.

That’s not to say that the FAQ can’t reinforce your selling points. Sure, lob yourself a few softballs if you like. But also provide answers to the questions that people actually need to resolve in order to move to the next step in the buying process.

The reason I raise the issue at all is simply this.  Developing the FAQ page is too often the only time that the people building web sites ever really attempt to empathize with their audience.

Creating a quality FAQ forces you to empathize. God forbid – you may even ask your sales and customer service people what your prospects are really asking.

Let me propose a simple exercise that without a doubt will help you to squeeze more sales from your web site.

Invest some serious energy in your FAQ page.  Really think hard. And enlist the help of the people who actually touch your customers and prospects to define and articulate the questions that your prospects bring to their buying processes. Write down these questions and carefully craft your answers.

Now… PRETEND YOU HAD TO DELETE YOUR FAQ PAGE.

That’s right.  You have to answer these questions in your site copy… in your product descriptions… through the course of your checkout process. You no longer have your FAQ crutch to fall back upon.

How does that change your site?

Certainly there is a place on most every site for an FAQ page, so don’t delete yours – even after you complete this exercise. But consider the empathy that a good FAQ page demands of its author, and bring that empathy to each page on your site.

What are the questions that your prospects must resolve in order to take action?

Go answer them!

How long can you hold your audience’s attention with a message that starts out with ambiguity? This is a question for TV and radio advertisers, copy writers, and public speakers alike, and getting it wrong can be embarrassing – or worse…

Sometimes a mysterious opening can be powerful and have great impact upon resolution.  Other times it flops.  Not unlike humor in advertising, people tend to respond with either love or hate – rarely neutrality.

Here’s an exercise for you. Watch this advertisement.  I guarantee you haven’t seen one like it before.  Show it to a few folks around your office, and watch the varied responses that you get.

Then, see if you can piece together a pattern of reactions among the people you show it to such that you can predict who will like it and who won’t. Herein lays the litmus test for when to steer clear of ambiguous, mysterious openers in your communications.

In their book, Made to Stick – Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die…, Chip and Dan Heath offer some tremendous insights into the art of grabbing and holding people’s attention.

Among the many lessons in communication that I took from their work was that we humans seek resolution to what the Heaths call “curiosity gaps.” These are gaps in our knowledge… things we don’t know… even trivial things that when presented properly hold our attention (for some period of time) until they are resolved.

Consider how those trivia questions hold your attention when they appear amidst the ads on a movie screen before the movie begins… or how you stay tuned to the news to find out what common item in your kitchen may be slowly killing you.

We have a natural tendency to want to fill in gaps… resolve mysteries… answer the unanswered question… and marketers can exploit this tendency to captivate an audience long enough to get their message across in a meaningful way.

The question is – how long is too long?  And how ambiguous can the set-up be before we fail to engage our audience in the first place – or even worse, annoy them?

This ad, I would argue, pushes the limits.

This is why I think it makes an interesting study.  Not everyone agrees. And teetering on the edge of taking a good tactic a little too far, I think it reveals a way for us to gauge our limitations with regard to this important communication technique.

I tried this little exercise on my own recently and arrived at the following conclusions.

First, reactions ranged from people loving it (I loved it but think it’s about 30 seconds too long) to people finding it annoying and not worth the time it took to watch. I don’t think anyone abandoned it prior to its resolution, but reactions were very mixed.

Then there were people who just didn’t get it. And for those of us who loved it, we have to appreciate the fact that not everyone is as perceptive and/or attentive as we are.  On those people, the message is a total waste.

In my experiment, reactions appeared to vary based on three variables:

• the personality of the viewer;
• their frame of mind at the time; and
• oddly enough, the degree of trust present in my relationship with the viewer.

Most of my experiment was conducted in-person.

Here are my results.

• The hard-charging, task oriented people were annoyed by the time it took to get to the point.
• Creative people loved it.
• Women seemed to like it more than men.
• People who were relaxed and in no hurry liked it more than people I pulled from busier, more hectic circumstances.
• And finally, the people with whom I enjoy a higher level of personal trust tended to like it more than those who I knew less well. Why? They gave it a chance and approached it with an open mind. They were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and patiently invest a minute or two at my request knowing that the result was likely to be interesting and worth the investment. Friends can get away with asking you to close your eyes for a surprise.  Strangers usually can’t.

So what can we take away from this experiment?

First, consider the personality of your audience before you launch into this type of communication.  If they are task-oriented type-As, be careful.

Second, anticipate their circumstances at the time at which they will receive your message.  If they are likely to be stressed, busy, distracted, etc. keep your communication more to-the-point.

Finally, if you haven’t established trust with your audience in advance, be careful trying this -- especially online.  It’s too easy for people to abandon you before the punch line.

Try this for yourself, and share your observations. This is hardly scientific, but I’d love to hear what you think.