10 Ways Specificity Helps You Build a Profitable Audience

The Freelance Studio Denver, Co.User Experience Agency why you should sweat the details If you’re building a business through content marketing, you’ve probably noticed that the attention span of your audience is shrinking by the second. We’re all on the verge of an attention meltdown. This can be a huge hurdle if you’re trying to effectively engage your audience and get your products or services in front of them. That means you have to use every writing tool you can to gain and keep audience attention. Believe it or not, a return to solid writing fundamentals — and more specifically, specificity — can get you out ahead of the competition without having to strap dynamite to yourself to get noticed. One small note before we get started … If you only read one section of this article, read this one Specificity is especially helpful for writing your headlines. Remember the 80/20 rule: 8 out of 10 readers will read your headline copy but only 2 out of 10 will read your entire post. Since headlines persuade your audience to read your content, you should dedicate 50 percent of your efforts to writing magnetic headlines before you write the rest of your copy. The experts have been touting the importance of getting specific all along, and here are some of their more compelling tips to help you win the battle for your audience’s attention. 1. Get to the point Old-school copywriter George Lois wrote a very useful guide titled Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!). In it, he gets to the heart of the importance of specificity. Lois writes: “All creativity should communicate in a nanosecond.” That’s about all the time you have to make an impression, but “creativity” can be misunderstood. He reminds us that brevity is the key to good copy and that every single word counts. “It’s not how short you make it; it’s how you make it short.” Creativity is getting people to read your copy, without confusing hyperbole or jargon phrases. 2. Without attention, you have nothing Without an attention-grabbing headline, you can chuck your great content in the trash. AIDA is the classic marketing acronym heralded by many great copywriters, including Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, and John Carlton. Attention. Interest. Desire. Action. Gaining attention is gold because it’s the first step on the path to getting your prospects to take action and buy. 3. Grab attention by being ultra-specific The Four U’s of headline writing, as outlined by American Writers and Artists Inc. (AWAI), are a helpful guide when evaluating any piece of sales copy or content: Useful Ultra-specific Unique Urgent Useful is absolutely required. If your headline can only be one more thing, make it ultra-specific. This is key because specificity presents the most benefit to your reader. You make a promise of the reward you’re offering up front so your prospects will have a reason to give you their precious time and read your first paragraph. 4. Specificity builds credibility Brian Clark’s How to Get 53% More Readers for Every Blog Post You Write reminds us that “Specificity increases credibility because specific details are simply more believable than broad assertions.” He has some great examples of ultra-specific headlines: In This Free 10-Chapter, 123-Page Ebook, You’ll Learn … Lose 36 Pounds in Only 7 Weeks How to Shave 5 Strokes Off Your Golf Score in 3 Days If your headline isn’t presenting specific, rewarding information, you’re bound to get bogged down with the rest of the unreadables. Just remember that the #1 rule for building credibility is making good on your headline’s promise. 5. Specificity is persuasion Chris Garrett wrote about the advantages of precise details over vague guesstimates in his post The Persuasive Power of Specificity. Statistics, exact details, and case studies: Catch the eye Build curiosity Reinforce authenticity Show your readers your attention to detail Being vague doesn’t work in real life, and it doesn’t work in copywriting. Getting specific means revealing the cold, hard facts of what you have to offer. However, he also warns us not to use specifics if they are overly technical, confusing, or can get you into legal trouble. 6. Specificity boosts your conversion rates Marketing Experiments have proven that optimizing your headline can boost your conversion rates by 73 percent. Not only will you boost your readership, but optimizing your headline by just a single word or figure can actually get more people to take the action you want them to take. That’s reason enough to do some split testing of your own. 7. Warning: Big words make you sound dumb In Dean Rieck’s post 11 Smart Tips for Brilliant Writing, he references an important psychology study that showed using overly complex language doesn’t make us look smarter to readers. We’ve all seen inexperienced authors use big words to make themselves feel smarter. You’re not fooling anyone, so do your research and know your audience. Remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s maxim: Easy reading is damned hard writing. 8. There is no substitute for great copy Robert W. Bly wrote in The Online Copywriter’s Handbook that the most important thing that will set you apart as an effective online marketer is “powerful, attention-getting, compelling copy.” Your words must grab your prospect and never let them go. 9. To approach greatness, you have to start at the start Ernest Hemingway started out as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. He won a Nobel Prize in his later years and credited his formative years writing “copy” as a journalist. Cub reporters were each given a style book when they started, with these rules: Use short sentences Use short first paragraphs Use vigorous English Be positive, not negative It doesn’t get much simpler than that. 10. One word can make all the difference Mark Twain wrote: The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — ’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. Specificity is the lighting rod that will lead your prospects through your sales cycle to take action. Let’s get specific We can all use help getting more specific in our copy. There is no “the dog ate my homework” in content marketing — do your research or somebody else will do it better and with more detail. Know your audience, their problems, fears, desires, and dreams, and you’ll be well on your way to getting them to reading your copy and taking action on your offers. Do you have more suggestions for getting specific? Let us know over on LinkedIn … I recently got an email from a potential client that was all too familiar. She had spent lots of money on courses and materials to learn to get a website up, do email marketing, social media and all kinds of things. However, she was still frustrated, wasn’t making money and didn’t know what to do next. I’m going to tell you a secret: I don’t know what you should do next, either. I don’t even always really know what I should do next! Ok that’s not really a secret but it’s a very common misconception. The misconception is that those of us who are making money have ‘figured it out’ and that we ‘know exactly what to do’. The fact of the matter is that a product can sell awesome one month and tank the next and you might never know why. A product you think is going to be a hit might totally bomb and one you think will bomb is a hit. The key – getting stuff out there. Often. Repetitively. Many Times. Forever. The challenge – knowing what to do on a day to day, hour to hour level. That’s where business planning comes in. If you take the time to look at the ‘big picture’ then the smaller picture just falls into place. Why You’re Stuck and Planning Nothing: I know exactly what you’re thinking. You can’t plan! You don’t know what to sell. You don’t know what’s going to sell. You don’t even know what people really want. Right? I’ve been that way too and I’ve talked often on my blog and in my newsletters and even recently on my podcast about ways you can sell your product without taking a huge risk because you sell it BEFORE you even create it. So wipe that ‘sticky spot’ off your list. I can hear you saying but you can’t plan because you don’t have your website ready yet. Your marketing funnel isn’t in place. Your graphics designer doesn’t have your ‘brand’ just right yet. OH give it up now! I’m sorry but these are ALL just ways you’re stalling yourself from getting out there because if you knew what I know you’d know that NONE of those things are as important as immediate, often and swift ACTION. You can always fix those things ‘later’, after you make some bucks. I know what else you’re thinking… You can’t plan right now because a family member is sick, you’re about to have a baby, you broke your leg, yada yada yada. Look, these are real issues and all issues I’ve faced in the last little bit myself. The fact of the matter is there will always be LIFE happening. You’ve got to take the reins and decide you’re going to keep running your business around the things that happen so that you CAN afford to take time off for the things that happen. Now – I hope that’s a good enough pep talk for now. Let’s get to basis of the ‘Sticky Note Unstuck Method (TM)’ I’m about to share with you: Image ​​The Sticky Note Unstuck Method (TM) Step 1 – Print out your calendars. Step 2 – Gather your highlighters and sticky notes. Step 3 – Lay out the calendars. Step 4 – Plan! ​Give this whole process at least a few days. It’s amazing the things that will come to you as you drift off to sleep or while you’re driving in your car if you give this process time. As you fill out the calendar focus the most on the next three months (by the way NOW is the perfect time to plan those last three months of this year). Those are the most ‘solid’ in your current agenda and most likely not to change. I highly recommend you create plans for the rest of the year but be well away that you’re going to need to revisit the calendar and firm up those ideas so you can take action on them. Step 5 – Once you’ve given yourself enough time to really plan out a large portion of your year, it’s time to turn that into a weekly plan you can actually DO. So I like to move my sticky notes from my calendar right onto my weekly agenda. The agenda, by the way I bought at Dollarama and it looks like this: Image Why I LOVE the Sticky Note Unstuck (TM) Method: I tried for years and years to ‘plan’. I was told how important it was and I knew it. I was very much a fly by the seat of my pants kinda girl and I knew it was to my detriment. So one day I finally pulled out all the sticky notes I’d bought over the years and started planning. What I just love about it is that you can brainstorm and visually see your plans as they are created. I can’t work in a rigid format and writing something down before I know where it fit didn’t make any sense to me. Now with sticky notes I can easily thrown something down initially just to get it out there and then move it around as I figure out where it goes. Now It’s Your Turn: A weekend is on it’s way. I find that’s the best time to do this kind of planning.. Will you plan? Will you make a commitment to get this DONE? Go grab yourself some highlighters, sticky notes and a weekly planner and make me proud! You can do it :) pssst. If you want even more help with this then for a limited time you clan grab my Sticky Note Unstuck pre-recorded Training. Grab it here! - See more at: http://marketersmojo.com/sticky-note-business-plan/#sthash.6bzpO5A2.dpuf