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NEW FORMAT TAKES EFFECT MARCH 30 (however, you can switch your page over today)
Facebook implemented major changes to business pages today (some still refer to these as fan pages). This affects a lot of our clients, so we decided to give you a quick digest of all the tweaks that will eventually affect your page. You can maintain your original look and layout for the time being, but the whole business page universe magically converts to the new layout on March 30th. That means you’ll be forced to accept the new layout and rules at that point.
Generally, there will be no more landing tabs (or navigation) on the left side of the page. Under the new “timeline” layout, these now show up in a horizontal bar across the page, beneath the text big icons they’re associated with. It’s the white background and blue lettering you see in the following image for Starbucks below (“About,” “Photos,” “Likes,” “Starbucks Card,” “International”). Those are the old tab links.
Another big change is that customers/followers can now directly message you as a brand. Remember how (unlike personal pages) there was no message feature or button on Facebook Business Pages? Well, now there is. Hooray, more engagement (“engagement” btw is definitely the word of the day from the Facebook Marketing Conference today). Another interesting, high-level development is the addition of a fully featured admin panel. We’ll talk more about that below.
Here’s a summary of the major changes and their implications:
- Photos, Likes, and Apps are now at the top of the page, so photos show up in the first spot. You can change the order of things that appear here. Prioritizing what shows up first is easy. There’s also a maximum of 12 apps that can be shown
- The new layout also allows you to pin your favorite post to the top of the timeline. When you hover over the story, you can click on the star icon to make it wider or use the pencil icon to pin it to the top of the page. There’s also an option to delete it.
- The new admin panel keeps track of your page activity. You can respond to people directly when they write on the timeline, and there are nifty logs where you can track all your posts and activity.
- The Messaging feature allows your fans to privately message you, and those notifications show up in your admin panel as red alerts (just like personal pages).
- The cover photo can be up to 850px by 315px but there are some limitations.
Cover image/photo LIMITATIONS: You can’t have overtly promotional info in there, like pricing, discounts (think 40% off!!!), and downloads. You don’t want to put your web address, email, mailing address or other contact info in there. Facebook wants that to all be in your About section. They’re also discouraging references to “like,” “share” or any other Facebook site features. We have, however, seen companies bucking the system today. We’ll see how long it lasts. They’re doing the traditional fangating practice of using graphical arrows in the image to point to the like and message buttons. Lastly, Facebook is discouraging calls to action in the cover image. These are things like “Get it now,” “Tell your Friends,” and “Act Now and Save 10%.”
There’s lots more info in the official Facebook marketing guides here.
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From Ogilvy On Advertising, one of the ad world’s most famous texts.
- Roughly six times as many people read the average article as the average advertisement.
- Four times as many people read captions as read body copy…So, caption every photo if you want the opportunity to communicate and persuade.
- Headlines get five times the readership of body copy.
- Body copy is seldom read by more than 10 percent of the readers of a publication (ad, brochure, data sheet, web copy). Those 10 percent are the serious prospects you’re looking for.
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Why Giving away Freebies Promotes Sales
Give away something original, artistic, informative or of recognizable value and your sales will increase. End of story.
This little tip has been working for centuries. It’s built into our societal code of ethics, our culture, and our collective behavioral systems. People reciprocate when they are given a gift. It doesn’t matter if they don’t like the gift or the giver. They feel an obligation to reciprocate.
You may say: ‘Hey, that’s not me. I don’t feel obligated to reciprocate.’ You may eat the cheese at the supermarket freebie station and pass on purchasing. You may receive personalized address labels from the American Heart Association, actually use them and then still toss the donation card into the garbage. It’s probably because you recognize and analyze the marketing concepts at work and second-guess your impulses.
Most people do reciprocate, though. On impulse, we’re trained to reciprocate and feel guilt and shame when we don’t live up to that contract. Giving back provides closure when we’ve been given to.
You can really see the power of the contract in action when you try to return or refuse a gift. Have you ever been given a gift and then decided to give it back after accepting it? You usually don’t give it back because you don’t want it or you can’t use it. You give it back because you don’t want to be bound by the reciprocation contract. You don’t want to be obligated to the exchange relationship. When you accept gifts, you accept the reciprocation obligation. This is where the phrase “much obliged” comes from.
Remember, gift giving in combination with originality increases sales conversions. Address labels and cheese samples are pretty worn concepts. Think creatively and offer value. Simple art, inside information and inspirational gifts will help your generosity stand out and your prospects remember this unclosed loop of debt.
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Moving Decisions Forward with Contrast
Customers act on drama, not subtlety. We rarely buy if a product promises to offer only marginal improvements in our lives. That applies to virtually everything we consume, from brochures and emails to gum and movies. Without some compelling motivation, we pass on reading the brochure, watching the demo or making the purchase.
Contrast is one of the most highly effective ways to communicate the benefits of change or action to people. It provides the emotional impetus for buying and, in the least, moves prospects closer to a decision.
Try the following experiment to get a feel for the impact of contrast on your sense of touch. Pour three buckets of water, one hot, one room temp and the other cold. Simultaneously put your separate hands into each of the hot and cold buckets, and then simultaneously dunk them into the room temp bucket. Trippy, isn’t it? The room temp water feels cold to the hot water hand, and it feels hot to the cold water one. Contrast shows you the profound impact of change relative to other situations.
By showing customers a contrasting experience with respect to your products or services, you gain the same kind of emotional impact. In terms of writing, this is often achieved with the case study or success story. The contrast of highly undesirable circumstances against a pie-in-the-sky solution provides readers with a grand vision of how the world could be better. First you elicit pain, and then you provide the refreshing, enlightening, ingenious solution. There’s some additional psychology at work with case studies, but the principle of contrast provides that fundamental kick. If you don’t sustain a clear line of contrast in the story, the punch and pay-off flattens out. You can even lose key ideas by allowing solution and pain points to co-mingle too much.
The measure of success you attain when writing a success story is directly related to how sincerely the writing identifies with the reader. If you’re not talking about the right pain points, for example, your credibility goes out the window. A good interview can help illuminate and bring forth these coveted pains from the interviewee. You can get a sense for the right kinds of issues to address by talking to customers and digging for the visceral reactions that accompany problems. On the flip side, you need to dig a little deeper than “we installed your product and solved the problem” to gather the contrasting emotional pay-off to the purchase. Ideally, responses like, “it made my life so easy,” “I looked like a hero,” or “we’re so relieved,” help color in the descriptive spaces between standard pay-offs like ROI and time saved.
If you want to research pain points and the uplifting emotions that accompany their solutions, it’s worth checking a few sources before concocting your interview questions. Read up on:
1. Your competitors’ case studies
2. Industry Forums
3. Analyst reports (Gartner, Meta, Yankee, IDC, etc.)If you have a keen eye, you can notice contrast in marketing everywhere. For an “old school” example, check out your local haberdasher. The next time you go shopping for nice clothing, see if you can pick up on this concept in action. The sales people will usually steer you toward high dollar purchases first. For example if you’re there for a suit and a shirt (and you offer up that information), they’ll focus on the suit first so that the following shirt price seems relatively less expensive. The potential for further add-on sales is also excellent after the biggie purchase. It’s the hot and cold water test. Every perception is colored by the one that precedes it. Master these types of presentations in your collateral, and you’ll be way ahead of the game.
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Sugar-Free Methods for Selling With Words
Packing marketing documents with hyperbole and sensationalism is like bringing wedding cake to a casual potluck party. People are taken aback by the butter cream frosting, frilly edge treatments and impeccably placed rose petals. The sheer volume of sugar sets them up for a crash. Also, the bride and groom replica thing and the plastic pillar supports can be hard to swallow.
When it comes to offering quickly digestible and easily understood messages, it’s best to lay off of the puffery. Potential buyers want substance, clarity and brevity when making decisions about products and services.
Here’s how to de-fluff your marketing materials so your prospects know that you’re serious and committed – rather than a wild storyteller or worse, a prevaricator.
- Make claims after you’ve established familiarity with the prospect’s business problems and expertise in dealing with them.
- Honesty, brevity and matter-of-fact tone establish expertise and clear the air of smoke (or frosting).
- Understated selling works well because it’s honest, but it also stands out in the crowd of rah-rah materials.
- State benefits up high.
- Make sure benefits are in a language that the audience understands, and make sure that they address issues that prospects appreciate.
- Make clear connections between features and benefits.
- Tell a complete story. You never know how much or little a reader will ingest. Make sure that you provide all examples, features and benefits that will apply to your intended audience. If you leave out important information, you’ll alienate the one person who read the whole brochure and was looking for that one selling point.
- Make simple offers with a minimum of conditions.
Champagne, pomp, confetti and ribbon cutting are fine for political rallies and building dedications. Marketing writing should be kept simple and unadorned, though. The subject matter will provide the right amount of interest to the right prospects.
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Why do so many companies struggle when it comes to describing their business in quick, simple terms?
Surf the “About Us” or “Company” pages of most technology sites, and you’ll be treated to an impressive display of what’s known as writing by committee. It always seems show up on these pages, because so many top level executives get involved with crafting these ambitious descriptions that intend to sum up a company’s business in one sentence. The result is copy that often sounds strange and decidedly uninformative.
Here are some examples: (I masked the true identities of these companies to protect the committees of innocents):
“Founded in 1975, XYZ Inc. helps Global 1000 companies improve business by creating new value from existing information systems and, ultimately, aligning everyone in the enterprise with key corporate goals.”
Ok – As a customer, I would be a little perplexed as to what I might buy from this company. Would it be software? Hardware? A systems engineer on rental? A coach? A guru? Examples of companies that clearly define what they sell include, Oracle – database software, SAP – ERP software, Red Hat – Linux OS, Siebel – CRM software. All “About Us” sections should allow the reader to walk away with a similar definition.
Here’s another..
“Acme helps organizations harness the power of collective intelligence by creating secure virtual knowledge networks for company-wide information discovery, expert identification and knowledge sharing.”
This one’s not horrendous, but a couple of things bug me. One, they could have used the word “portal.” I think most people who are looking for solutions like this have come across that word by now. Two, “secure virtual knowledge networks” sounds pretty “out there,” and the fact that they’re secure seems like information that should be discussed lower down in their description. As is commonly the case, they tried to cram every possible idea into this one-liner.
And finally..
“ZZZ Company, with its Universal Business Platform and more than 500 global application partners, enables customers to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by delivering business solutions that simplify their operations, are fast to implement, provide lowest total cost of ownership, and have unparalleled reliability.”
I guess they decided that it was important to add standard benefits — speed, low TCO, and reliability – to their amorphous company description. If they really wanted to blend in with every other mediocre, non-distinct company, they could add “excellent scalability,” “rapid ROI,” and “easy to use.”
My advice is to:
1) Tell readers what you sell in direct language.
2) Don’t be afraid of using more than one sentence.
3) Try to offer a phrase or sentence that demonstrates your company’s uniqueness.
4) Avoid incorporating catch-every-customer credos and conquer-the-world mission statements. -
Each year over 400 billion dollars is invested in advertising campaigns. Yet, a considerable amount of these ads still fail to properly engage consumers. Well, not for long. An emerging field of study called neuromarketing has fused consumer behavior with neuroscience, allowing marketers to peer inside the consumers’ brain using an array of metrics to measure engagement levels, locate consumer “buy buttons” , evaluate ad memorability or even unlock valuable subconscious information.
Neuromarketing companies are focusing their efforts on our brains activity during subconscious processing. Surveys and focus groups are the traditional means of research; however, neuromarketers are crying foul on these typical strategies because they do not reflect how consumers actually feel or what they really want. It’s the neuromarketers job to tap into these thoughts and offer companies valuable insights into what consumers are truly thinking.Here’s how it works. Volunteers either undergo an fMRI scan or wear a fabric cap that houses an EEG(studies brain electrical frequencies) sensors and an eye-tracking device while they look at a commercial, use a web site, or view a movie trailer. These dual devices enable researchers to connect the volunteers’ brain patterns with exact video images or banner ads or logos. With all this, they are able to measure attention, emotion, and memory; basically connecting stimuli with deep subconscious response.
Although the technology is in its infancy, businesses are starting to allocate larger portions of their research budgets towards neuroscience technology. So who’s jumped on board? Google, CBS, Disney, Frito-Lay, A&E, and political campaigns.
Obviously, there are some ethical concerns that arise with the use of this technology. Brainwashing is one term commonly used to describe the practice. On the other hand, advocates argue that these tests simply provide consumers with better products and services, enhance user experience, and tailor only relevant and valuable advertising to end users. Whether you’re for it, or against it. Nueromarketing is gaining traction in the marketing industry and could possibly revolutionize how marketing research is conducted in the future. Will traditional research methods become a thing of the past? Do our subconscious thoughts posses the key to better marketing? Will neuromarketers enslave our population and control our deepest desires and buying decisions? Only time will tell.
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From Ogilvy On Advertising, one of the ad world’s most famous texts.
- Companies sometimes change ad agencies because one agency can purchase circulation at a slightly lower cost than another. They don’t realize that a copywriter who knows his craft (the experience and skill that induce people to read copy) can reach many times more readers than a copywriter who doesn’t.
- Ads that are designed to look like editorial pages gather far more readers than those that don’t.
- Never put large amounts of white type on a black background (reverse). Some say never do it, period. Study after study has proven that it’s difficult to read.
- Write to the self-interest of the reader rather than treating your audience as a large company or group of people.
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A lot of people that start businesses get really excited about making millions and taking the world by storm.
It’s more likely, however, that your business will grow organically. You’ll chip away at daily tasks, improve your marketing skills, create better offers over time, and generally plant seeds at a pace you can handle. Then you’ll wait out the growing seasons to reap better rewards and profits each time around. It will all snowball, and you’ll be making great dough in due time.
It’s just not going to happen all at once.
I like to keep a quote from Teddy Roosevelt in mind when I’m building my own business and helping others add to their bottom lines:
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Great advice. If you show up every day and put in the necessary work to keep the wheels going, you’ll do fine. And you’ll find that what you have will become better every day (knowledge, resources, contacts, customers) and where you are will improve from week to week.
Driving Traffic. Driving Results.
E: info@3rdstreet.com
T: 562.435.0333
