Dear
Software Marketer,
This
month I’m going to share with you a few words
that I believe you should almost never use and
the ones that you should use instead. In a
future issue, I’ll tell you how you can use
hypnotic embedded commands to get your reader to
take the desired action.
1.
Don’t Create Doubt
I’m
continually surprised that people use words such
as “can”, “could”, “would”, or “if”. Why?
Because their use subtly raises doubts in the
mind of the reader. You should never say: “If
you use our product…” You should say: “When you
use our product…”
Similarly, don’t say: “You could save as much as
$2,000 per seat.” Instead say: “You save $2,000
or more per seat” or “You will save $2,000 or
more per seat” or “Clients typically save $2,000
or more per seat.” Obviously, be sure that you
can back up your claims.
The
point is: never unnecessarily raise doubts in
the mind of the reader.
The only
exception to this rule is when you raise doubts
in order to prove them wrong or when you answer
the prospect’s objections to purchasing (or
signing-up or whatever the particular action is
that you want them to take) directly.
2.
Make the Prospect’s Life Easy: No One Really
Likes to “Learn”
You
always want to convey to your prospect that
using your system, product or services will be
relatively easy. Basically, we’re all lazy!
I often
see people using the world “learn” and sometimes
I catch myself using it, too. However, I believe
that you shouldn’t use the word learn because
“learning” is associated with school, studying,
hard work and struggle. Even in personal
development, “learning” – while prized – is
associated with challenging life experiences.
Better words might be “growth”, “development” or
“evolution”.
So,
instead of saying: “Learn how our turbo
doohickey will make your life easier” you should
say: “Discover how our turbo doohickey will make
your life easier”.
3.
Make the Prospect’s Life Easy: “Do It For Me”
Another
way of showing your prospect that his life will
be easy is by conveying the idea that everything
is “automatic”. For example, I have a client
who has the headline:
“Make your website easy to maintain!”
I
suggested that they make one small change and
that by doing so their conversion rate (sign-up
for beta program) would probably increase.
If they
change the headline to:
“Makes your website easy to maintain!”
Just by
adding an ‘s’ to ‘Make’ they convey the idea
that the user doesn’t have to do all the work,
the software does it for them.
Unfortunately, they didn’t follow my advice,
but, hey, you can’t help everyone!
That's
it for this issue of "The Software Marketer's
Toolkit". If you have any questions, comments or
an issue that you'd like to see covered, please
send me an email:
paul@paularinaga.com.
To your
software success,
Paul
Arinaga
paul@paularinaga.com
www.paularinaga.com
Tel: +32 2 782 0207
download pdf (58 kb)
Next
month: "Hypnotic Writing: How to Use Words
to Hypnotize Your
Audience”
