How to Create Great Marketing Messages
Welcome back to another episode in our passion marketing series. In our previous episodes, we’ve talked about identifying our ideal customers, finding our customers’ passion statements, the five whys exercise, passion platforms, and more.
During the last couple of weeks, I have missed recording live streams in this series and I apologize. My father in-law was sick with COVID-19 and I had to spend time supporting our family. Today, we will pick back up where we left off and talk about the next step of passion marketing: creating passion marketing messages.
Key Takeaways
Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:
- If we want our customers to keep reading or watching our messages, we have to start with a great headline.
- To capture our customers’ attention in a headline we can marry a passion to a problem, turn the passion statement into a question, or combine a passion with what they want the least.
- It is also essential to use passion marketing messaging in our ads. In addition to tying in a passion, we should keep our ads concise and have a strong call to action.
Passion Marketing Messages
Once we know our ideal customers’ passion statements, we can start to use it in all of our marketing copy such as in our headlines, ads, lead magnets, assessments, blogs, podcasts, drip email campaigns, brochures, sales funnels, social media, etc. In every form of writing for our marketing copy, we should be using these passion statements.
Here are a few ways we can capture our customers’ attention in our messages by using their passion statements:
1. Marry a Passion to a Problem
One thing I like to do is marry a passion to a problem. Think about a business that has successfully identified and described the biggest problem that you’re wanting to solve.Then they use the passion statement as the solution to that problem.
For example, we talked about Deseret Digital Media and how one of their top passion statements was, “I want a more loving marriage.” Instead of only using the messaging, “Do you want a more loving marriage?” you might start off with describing the problem. You might say, “Do you feel disconnected in your marriage? Do you feel like your marriage has lost its spark?” Describing what the customer feels like they’ve lost can sometimes be a very effective way to target their passion statement.
We can find the problem associated with the passion statement, lead with the problem, discuss what they’ve lost, and then lead with a passion statement as the promise that you’re providing to the customer. People generally respond very well when you use this type of messaging.
2. Turn the Passion Statement into a Question
Another really good way that I love to use passion statements is in a question format. So if the statement was, “I want a more loving marriage,” we can try putting that in question format as, “Do you want a more loving marriage?” The customer then assumes that you are going to help them find the solution. That’s generally a very compelling way to capture leads. If you can get them to say, “Yes, I want that!” you’ve grabbed their attention.
3. Combine the Passion With What They Want the Least
Another good way to use passion statements in our messages that I learned from Jim Edwards, the author of Copywriting Secrets, is to take the thing that the customer wants the most, put that in the title, and then say, “Without….” and you put the thing that they want the least.
So, if the thing they want the most is a more loving marriage, you might write, “How to have a loving marriage without paying for marriage counseling.” These types of headlines tend to be extremely compelling.
We can even extend this headline format and add, “Even though…” followed by an obstacle, to the end as Jim Edwards suggests. So, the headline would become, “How to have a loving marriage without paying for marriage counseling even though you’re currently separated.”
The Importance of Great Headlines
Even though the focus of this episode is great marketing messages, all of the tips above are mostly about headlines because I think page titles are one of the most important things for us to get right with our passion marketing messages. Once we get that right, we can use that in a bunch of other places.
According to Copyblogger, on average, 8 out of 10 people will read the headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 people will read the rest of the article. If we want our customers to keep reading or watching our messages, we have to start with a great headline.
There are a lot of good copywriters who use a 50/50 rule. They say you should spend 50% of your time writing the article and the other 50% writing the headline. The headline is what’s going to attract and pull the people into the article. It’s going to hook them and get them to read more. If we don’t do a great job of the headline, they’ll never make it to the rest of the article.
Questions you should ask when creating a headline:
In a recent issue of the Early to Rise ezine, copywriter Clayton Makepeace says to ask yourself six questions before you start to write your headline:
1. Does your headline offer the reader a reward for reading?
What are your customers going to get out of your post? What is the benefit for them? We should know who our ideal customer is and ask ourselves, from the customer’s perspective, what’s in it for me? If our headline isn’t telling them that then our headline has failed. I’ve seen some exceptions to that, but that is generally a really good rule.
2. What specifics could you add to make your headline more intriguing and believable?
This is the rule of specificity. When we get specific, generally, we become more credible. For example, if we’re going to talk about having a more loving marriage, we might specifically talk about how they could have a more loving marriage. What are the specific things that would indicate that their marriage is more loving? Is it more communication? Time? Is it more intimacy? Giving those types of specifics generally make you more credible.
3. Does your headline trigger a strong, actionable emotion the reader already has about the subject at hand?
The best ads evoke emotion. When I did adoption ads targeting a family wanting to adopt, we would show a beautiful baby or a mother holding a beautiful baby. That helps evoke emotion within them. Does your passion marketing message evoke an emotion?
4. Does your headline present a proposition that will instantly get your prospect nodding his or her head?
This goes back to turning your passion statement into a question. If you put your passion marketing message in a question format, and you can get them out loud or even internally responding, “Yes,” then you’ve captured their attention.You’ve sold them and you’ve helped convert them to your promise or proposal.
5. Could your headline benefit from the inclusion of a proposed transaction?
Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. For example, if you’re a coach and you’re going to coach your clients through their marriage, sometimes it’s better to put that in the title so they know exactly what they’re wanting to get out of it.
The reason that’s important is because some of the people seeing that ad or that headline would want a coach and some of them wouldn’t. So, by including the information about the transaction or the service you would provide, it helps weed out the people that don’t want what you do. It also helps magnetically attract the people who do want what you’re doing.
6. Could you add an element of intrigue to drive the prospect into your opening copy?
The last suggestion that Makepeace proposes, is including an element of intrigue to drive the prospect into your opening copy. In other words, don’t tell them everything. Create suspense, create something that makes them want to keep reading so they can find out the rest.
Passion Marketing Messages in Ads
It is also essential to use passion marketing messaging in our ads. Over the years, I’ve worked with designers to design thousands and thousands of different ads and I have learned that putting the passion marketing messaging in the ads is incredibly important.
I typically create 10 different variations of ads, run them, and then collect a big enough statistical sample to find which ones work the best. That way we can turn off eight of the ads and only keep the two that did the best. Then, we’ll try to create variations of the two that do the best and test those too.
If you do that every month for a year, turning off the ones that do the worst and creating new variations of the ones that do the best, you will likely find much more success. I’ve seen people that have radically increased their click through rates by 300% just following that simple methodology.
I think that every ad needs to have three elements to be successful. If you’re missing any one of these elements, I guarantee you will not be successful with your ad. Every ad should:
1. Have an Attention Grabber
Every ad needs to have an attention grabber. Often those attention grabbers are images. Sometimes they’re animated images. Sometimes they’re video, but you need something that’s grabbing their attention.
2. Be Concise
Every successful ad I’ve seen has what I call a concise compelling argument. In just a few words, you’ve got to tell your audience what’s in it for them. What’s the benefit? In other words, what’s the passion statement? If you can convey the highest level of passion in your concise compelling argument, it’s a formula for a very good ad.
Generally, you cannot use very many words in effective ads. I’ve seen that the more words that get included, the less effective the ad becomes.
3. Have a Call to Action
Finally, I would have a call to action at the end. Call to actions are often buttons, but can also be drop down menus, boxes, etc. I’ve found that using a word like “submit” or “go” is not a good idea. Those are too generic and not the best options for call to actions. The best words to put on a call to action is what they want. So going back to this example, from Desert digital media, I was doing ads for them, the buttons might say, “Improve my marriage.” We should figure out what it is they want the most and put that on the call to action.
Thank you so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to tune into next week’s livestream on Wednesday at 12 p.m. MST about creating passion monetization.
Next Steps
- Get a free ebook about passion marketing, and learn how to become a top priority of your ideal customers at PassionMarketing.com.
- Subscribe to Monetization Nation on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, our Facebook Group, and on your favorite podcast platform.
