GROWTH MARKETING MINIDEGREE / CXL — REVIEW 8

In my previous articles about my growth marketing studies with the CXL Institute, last week we covered landing page features in detail. Today, I am going to talk about product messaging with the eight-part of CXL Growth Marketing Minidegree.

You can go to the CXL website from here.

This course starts with the concept of tearing down our copy. There are a few principles to keep in mind while assessing text to get the most out of it. This process will give us what is wrong or missing in our message. It will not be going to tell us what will work.

While teardowns, always base them on proven persuasion principles, not on what we like or don’t like. Always make sure to add elements to the copy.

There is a hierarchy of the basis of copy tear down -

• Claude’s Hopkin’s scientific marketing
• Cialdini’s Principle of Persuasion
• MEClab’s Conversion Sequence Heuristic

The MECLab’s conversion heuristic formula

I see the MECLab’s conversion heuristic formula as a general check of your copy. Let’s start by explaining its components.

The formula: C = 4M + 3V + 2(I-F) -2A

• C = the probability of conversion. This is not an equation to be solved but a framework to understand and keep in mind the main elements that drive your copy to conversion.
• M = Motivation. This is by far the most important element of the formula since it leads people from page to page and determines whether your offer is compelling or not. However, this is the only part of the equation that you cannot control. You can do that in your ad copy for example, but we are talking about the sales page copy here. When people land on your page, well, they are already on your page. What you can do instead is to make sure that your message is aligned with people’s motivation.
• V = Clarity and power of the value of the proposition. What are you offering to your users? What are the benefits and which problems does your product or service have? Why should users choose your product over another solution? This V is supposed to clearly answer these kinds of questions. If you dig deeper, this component is the one that you can focus on to craft effective value propositions.
• I = Incentive. What do you do to encourage people to take action? It could be a discount, a limited offer, a special promotion… Incentives can take many forms.
• F = Friction. What prevents people from taking action? Do users have to go through tons of steps to convert? Do you ask for sensitive information? You must reduce friction as much as possible.
• A = Anxiety. This is all about objections and perceived risks. Just like friction, it prevents people from taking action, but not because of something they cannot or do not want to do, but because they are worried about things like losing money, safety…

The conversion heuristic formula is not only super helpful for your copy teardowns but for a bunch of other things too. One of them is identifying key messages. Key messages can be divided into three different categories that match the conversion heuristic formula: motivation, value, anxiety.

• Motivation: those key messages include desired outcomes, pain points, problems, and purchase prompts. They clearly show what types of problems occur when people do not use your product or service. People who experience those problems can identify themselves in these key messages and get hooked.
• Value: those key messages include unique benefits and advantages, delightful product features, and deal breaker needs and requirements. Make it clear that your product or service has THAT feature that customers absolutely need. If you don’t, they are just going to assume that your product or service just does not have it and leave.
• Anxiety: those key messages include uncertainties, objections, and perceived risks. You must anticipate them and show that users can buy without worry.

Claude Hopkin’s Scientific Advertising principles are the rules to follow while writing a copy.

1. Be Specific
2. Offer Service
3. Tell the Full Story
4. Be a Sales (wo)man

Also, check google analytics to know where the traffic is coming from & find what People Search. This will help us to align our message with customer search.

Message Mining means that it takes a message from the prospects instead of writing a new one. Our customers already Speak a common language with our market. It means that we don’t need to scratch too much of our heads to know their language. We only need to Search for their voices on the internet to get the proper messages.

We can find their voices on Amazon reviews, their website, forums, Facebook & LinkedIn groups, or on the competitor’s website. We do not need to overwhelm them with too many specifications, preferably giving value to the customer.

Message mining is good for Identifying Key Messages & Swiping Memorable copies.

Identifying key messages helps us in heuristic analysis. While swiping a memorable copy will help us to find the popular messages or pain points.

How to do the message mining

1. Prepare the list of keywords.
2. Search keyword reviews
3. Also, check popular review sites.
4. Collect into Spreadsheet.
5. Categorize & rank message.

There are some Dos & Don’t of surveys targeting

For Website Visitors

• Use poll format or (softly appearing) modal boxes
• If possible, avoid mobile device-based audiences
• Avoid triggering survey immediately upon site entrance

For Customers

• Target paying customers (by email) Experiment with vague subject lines
• Avoid promotional email design (keep it simple: plain text and links)
• Make it a one-on-one dialogue, not a generic email from a company or team

Some of the other common mistakes are -

• Poor Timing/Targeting
• Boilerplate Invite Copy (Popup or Email)
• Asking Obvious Questions Mindlessly
• Not Respecting the User’s Time
• Not Explaining Why
• Using Turn-off Words(“survey”, “Feedback”)

This was it for this week’s content & review. There was so much in the course but, I can only share the overview. I hope you find this useful.

Thank you!

Mert Kolay