It’s easy to write about certain topics like celebrities, technology or social media. Everybody wants to know about these topics. But what if your passion is botany, supply chain logistics or cognitive psychology? How can you make these topics compelling when your subject is… boring?
In the summer of 2006, an economics book was on the New York Time Bestseller list. The title was provocative and promised to be anything but a boring read. Since I’m not a big fan of economics (hated it ever since college), I skeptically handed over my $25 and took Freakonomics home with me.
From the very first page, I was treated to a wild ride through the most bizarre stories that I’d ever encountered. I learned about cheating schoolteachers, self-sacrificing sumo wrestlers… and why drug dealers still live with their moms.
Every story taught a boring economic principle in a way that made me want more. I realized that Freakonomics was an instruction manual for transforming boring content into sexy must-read masterpieces.
Here’s the bottom line… people love “dot connectors.” Think about this for a moment. Have you ever read something that was a true “aha” moment for you. Could you stop reading at that point… or were you now excited and compelled to continue reading? In fact, weren’t you hanging on every word?
Our world is getting more complicated by the second. Every day your prospects are trying to get a handle on what happened yesterday, what’s happening today and what will happen tomorrow. If you connect the dots for them, you can get popular in a hurry.
Freakonomics is built around connecting dots in an interesting way. For example, it’s long been an economic principle that almost every choice we make is connected to incentives. Pretty boring stuff – until author Steven Levitt used a story about daycare centers to show how some incentives backfire.
When parents began to show up late to pick up little Susie or Johnnie, the daycare center implemented a policy of charging a $3 fine to incentivize parents to show up on time. Unfortunately, the fine wound up incentivizing parents to pay $3 for an hour of babysitting and not feel guilty for showing up late!
When you give your prospects these “aha” moments, you keep them reading what may otherwise be a so-called boring topic… and have them asking for more.
However, headlines still matter. Even with all of our shiny social media tools, good old standby skills like writing great headlines still matter. You can be a masterful storyteller and write killer content, but you will still lose if no one reads any of them.
Titles are the closest thing marketers have to a “silver bullet.” So whatever you do, don’t waste them. Do you think that Freakonomics would have been a New York Times Bestseller with the title Aberrational Behavior and the Causal Effect of Incentives?
The quickest way to give your boring marketing a facelift is to put some eye-hijacking power into your headlines. In fact, write your headline first before you even start the rest of the ad. It really is that important.
Numbers are a marketer’s best friend. One common complaint of marketing collateral is that no one takes them seriously. Let’s face the facts… most marketing plays fast and loose with the facts… and often lacks any type of substantive proof. It’s easy to avoid hard numbers and focus on writing the soft stuff, but Freakonomics shows that this is a mistake.
Many marketers are afraid that statistics, equations, and hard facts will scare away our prospects, but that’s not giving them enough credit. The problem isn’t the numbers – it’s that we stick numbers out there without connecting them to a story.
Freakonomics uses numbers to reveal a hidden story. Levitt looked up the numbers on standardized tests for Chicago students. On the face of it, this was pretty boring data. This district got this score, while this district got that score. BORING… until those numbers revealed that teachers were cheating.
In some districts, teachers received salary boosts when their students performed better on standardized tests – motivating them to fill in a few additional correct answers for their students. The story makes the numbers interesting. The numbers make the story credible. Give it a try.
Another good tip is to remember that everyone loves a good mystery. Why would a successful sumo wrestler throw a match? The obvious answer would be that he’s getting paid to do so, but Levitt quickly discovered there was a much more mysterious motivation that drove who won and who lost in Japan’s sumo contests.
The answer is buried in psychology, probability and incentives, but the only thing that I care about is that there’s a mystery. Any mystery begs for detective work. We can’t leave well enough alone and we want to know why – especially if someone else is going to do the legwork of figuring out the answer for us. That’s why the CSI series has spun off more offspring than anyone can count.
You can use this quirk of human nature to make your topic enticing. Look closely at your content and uncover some old-fashioned mysteries. Now write an ad that presents the mystery and leads your reader through the investigation to its incredibly satisfying conclusion.
Another way to present compelling copy is to provide a better way to solve a common problem. Freakonomics uses a powerful set of tools to explain the way the world works. By the end of the book, you can’t help but think that every problem imaginable can be solved with the right incentive, data analysis or storytelling. When you’re finished you feel that there is a better way to tackle your problems.
This is what “added value” means. Simply restating a problem is boring. Offering new tools and perspectives to solve problems helps your prospect get closer to their goals – and that makes you someone whose content they’ll want to read every time you come out with something new.
For example, does your business have a website? Look at it right now. Do you have the name of your business at the top of the site? I’ll bet you do. Do you have a “menu” of the products or services you provide listed in the body copy? I’ll bet you do. Do you have your name or picture somewhere on the site? I’ll bet you do. What about your phone number? It’s on there too, isn’t it? Well of course it is.
EVERY one of these is wrong, wrong, wrong! Your prospects could care less what you have named your business, what you look like, what your name is or what you sell. Why in the world do I need a window cleaner to tell me on their website that they “clean windows”? Why do moving companies tell me on their website that they can move me local or long distance… or that they move both residential and commercial? And yet… they ALL do.
Your prospects care about themselves… period. What the moving company SHOULD be telling me as a prospect is that ALL movers claim to be “fully insured.” And legally, they all are. It’s required by law. What no one knows however, is what that “legally” means. Ahhh… are you now interested in what I have to say next? Are you now hanging on my every word because I have just introduced a “mystery?” What pray tell is this “secret” information? Can’t wait to find out, can you? See why all of this works?
Well, wonder no more. ALL movers are “fully insured”… PER POUND OF DAMAGE! What does that actually mean? It means that if you have a $5000 plasma screen TV, and your moving company destroys it in the move, they MUST replace it based on 40 cents per pound of damage. That TV typically weighs around 100 pounds, so the moving company is obligated to reimburse you $40 for your $5000 TV. Read the fine print (which of course, no one does). EVER!
But since I told you about this startling information in my moving ad, and then went on to tell you that I avoid “ripping off” my moving clients by providing “full replacement value” insurance that reimburses you for the full market value of anything I break, and go on to give you my insurance policy number, name of my insurance agent and that agents phone number for verification, well… who are you going to have handle your next move? Big difference huh?
To get devoted prospects who will anticipate your every email, ad, brochure, etc. with rabid enthusiasm, give them solutions… NOT features.
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