VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

You have a choice when you’re writing copy. Will you be clear or will you be clever. Now time and again we’ve seen that clever is nowhere near as powerful as a clear message. clever is really good if you’re trying to write a tag line or the final phrase in an advertisement or commercial. Um, it could be good for that brand impression but it’s not quite as good when you’re on a website and you’re trying to complete a task. There we want to be clear. Clear is great.

Always opt for clear. If you can be clear and a little clever good for you but definitely default to clear. But how do you know when you’re being clear? Right we’re often so close to our own product or there are copy or so far removed from our prospect unfortunately that does happen no matter how hard we try not to have that happen we find ourselves removed from our prospect and we are writing copy that supposed to be clear but we’re not really sure how much our prospect knows or doesn’t know about us and how much detail they need before they buy from us.

So that means we have to make a lot of assumptions. And those assumptions include making assumptions how clear we need to be with the line of copy. Now rather than assuming that you’re being clear without knowing rather than having to test 15 different variations on your body copy to see which 1 is better converting thus likely to be clearer, um, we can actually take a really simple little trick for putting clarity into our copy. This is easy, easy, easy to do. Here’s how you do it. When you are writing your copy and you say what it is that your product does such as a feature, a thing that you can do with the product, you want to express very clearly what the benefit is of that feature do this.

Write out the line, the feature what it is, what it does then period then begin this means that and then explains what it means. That phrase this means that is just pure clarity. It works a lot like the word because which is also a powerful word when you are trying to get people to buy in to what you’re saying. Simply the presence of the word because has been shown to help people really believe everything that follows thereafter because you kind of triggered something in their head that says oh this person has a reason. What that reason is might not really matter just “Oh they have a reason they used the word because.” This is happening of course in our brains not necessarily consciously.

The same with the phrase this means that. That triggers for a lot of people at least and is worth testing to or just plain trying it triggers this idea that you are about to connect dots for me. I don’t have to connect dots on my own. I can rely on you to connect it so I can move on with my life and believe what you’re saying in a lot of cases. Now for best results we want the this means that to be followed by, um, a phrase that is really relevant for your prospect. So that means knowing what you’re prospect wants and connecting the dots between your feature and what they want with the phrase this means that.

Here are a few examples of how you can do that. No more throwing out freezer-burned food. This means that you save money and waste less. Instantly integrates with Dropbox and Github. This means that you won’t have to manually update your timesheets. So with those 2 examples we can really clearly see that it is a very good phrase for connecting the dots between your feature and the outcome that your prospect really wants.

An alternative to this phrase is what this means for you is so you do the exact same thing which you’ve done before but now you’re just going to sub in the phrase. What this means for you is and that can be effective if you find yourself let’s say on a long form page or where you’re using maybe a lot of body copy and trying to connect your thoughts with your prospects. You don’t necessarily want to keep repeating this means that all over the place. Um, so it’s a good alternative. It’s a good other way to go about getting that, um, important message across that there’s clarity here and we’re going to be really explicit about making sure you understand exactly what outcome is, um, using resolution or a feature in our solution.

Now let’s take a look at how you can actually go about using this on a website. Let’s look at how not to use this means that and how to use it. So places where it might be awkward or not really make sense. If we look at the headline and subhead here on this page. It’s the home … the homepage for Groove which is at groovehq.com. When we look at it and we think of this means that, can we make it fit? Does it need to fit? Does it need to provide clarity in the headline or subhead? The simple alternative to Zendesk, the subhead is really here though this means that. It’s a clarification of what you’ve just said. So Groove is a helpdesk that’s easy for you and your customers to use.

Does that require this means that? Doesn’t require it. The next line is deliver awesome personal support without feeling overwhelmed. It’s really the saying that’s kind of an opportunity to use it so we could try it here. Okay, so that sort of might look like if we just add in that simple phrase. So now we’re saying Groove is a help desk that’s easy for you and customers to use. This means that you can deliver awesome personal support without feeling overwhelmed. So it’s really taking what we’re already kind of implying.

We- we’re just now connecting the dots to make it clear. So here I wouldn’t use, uh, this means that phrase in the headline. I’d let the connection happen between the headline and the subhead but in the subhead where you are trying to connect dots for people use that connector to help them get there. Now we can look down the page and see that at other great opportunities and this might be really common for you if you’re writing a features page, a tour page or 1 of these long 1 pager hybrid style lending pages where you have your features listed out like we do here. So look at the body copy here.

This is a great opportunity to round out what you’re saying with really the benefit. So we’re talking about the feature here but it’s not as easy to connect the dots with the benefit. The benefit is sort of in the headline with a signing request, support request easily but is that really the outcome that you’re looking for that … or that you’re prospect is looking for? We could very simply tack on here a phrase starting with this means that that really clarifies what the outcome is.

Right, so we might tack something like that phrase on really connecting the feature, what it does with a really solid outcome for yourself and here as well for your customers. So the benefit is tacked on to the end where really connecting the dots. It’s a very simple technique. It’s not rocket science but it really brings your messages a lot closer to clear.