I was at the Affiliate Forum event, several years ago. There was a session about black hat techniques. It was pitched as what to know so you can overcome these practices.
I thought I was switched on and I believed honesty and emotion in digital marketing was the norm. It is in the main, don’t be worried. There was one practical demonstration that made me shake my head and wonder at how clever and underhand digital marketing can be. I’ll come to that in a bit.
Marketing Jargon Leads to Detachment
One of the elements I look at when specifying a website comes from talking to the business owner, salespeople and customer service. Who are the people who buy? What is on their mental shopping list? With that information, it becomes possible to personalise copy and other content. That’s persona marketing. That comes from honesty.
The jargon used is ‘Segmentation’ and I loath that word along with the word ‘content’. There appears to be no escape from jargon, there’s no one synonym that covers ‘content.’ Segmentation can be described as ‘audiences’ but that’s jargon. Jargon detaches you from reality and dealing with people. When you detach you may sway away from honesty.
How do you overcome that detachment?
By creating your persona, you make people real AND you write for a single person. When you have one person to write for then what you write becomes more like a chat with a friend. That’s what I am for when writing copy and creating information/fun known as ‘content.’
Conversion Copywriting
There are many different strands that come together to increase the conversion of a website visitor to a lead, a sale or a subscription. From user experience stuff to a low threshold for free delivery, onto signs of confidence like industry logos. At the forefront of good conversion practice are the words.
When you are armed with the persona and their mental shopping list (there’s a lot to that, plus some other factors to make a unique approach to conversion) you can write words.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
Write some words
What sort of words?
Honest words, words with emotion and words that form a subtext. The subtext in creating writing is ‘show not tell.’ The underlying message is not explicitly stated or shown.
You wouldn’t have to state something obvious ‘He loves her.’ You’d imply ‘He considered her smile and that made him happy.’
In conversion copywriting this is different. Yes, the obvious is stated but also an emotion is elicited. What does this person want? It’s not just the ‘thing’ they want to feel what? That’s the subtext to aim for.
The writing of the subtext must be honest to have any effect. It may appear to be manipulation. It is. Writing in any form is manipulation by eliciting emotion.
That’s honesty in digital marketing. People will be more likely to buy, especially if you put this subtext over in a chatty, tongue-in-cheek style.
Dishonesty in Digital Marketing
The example I mentioned at the top of this piece concerned the use of a plugin. A plugin used by thousands of websites. With a prompt the developer could make that plugin (on thousands of sites) point, that is link, to ONE website.
I thought it very clever (yes Google would be suspicious of a sudden storm of links to one site). The developer stated he’d done this at another event. Someone from the audience gave their website address. Bingo! Thousands of links.
The only thing is the developer forgot to turn it off. The example website became no. 1 in their market. I doubt it lasted.
Look for the clever underhand stuff and be honest. Honesty has a value, honesty gains respect and honesty gains loyalty.
About Conversion Detectives
Conversion Detectives is a full-service digital marketing agency in Hertfordshire.
We find the best quality traffic for your website and convert more of that traffic into sales or sales leads.
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