Category: Marketing

When the URL Is the Call to Action

On Interstate 15 outside Pocatello, Idaho is a billboard with a very simple message. Here it is, in its entirety:

“buyhashbrowns.com”.

I couldn’t wait to get to a wi-fi hot spot — I absolutely had to call my wife in Portland right that second so I could find out what it was about. Turns out the web address is owned by the Nonpareil Potato Company. And yes, they sell hash browns.

This billboard does a number of things really, really well:

1. It tells people exactly what to do — there is absolutely no question that they want folks to buy hash browns.

2. It tells them exactly how to do it — customers can order their hash browns right from the web site.

3. It recognizes the limitations of the billboard form: at 75 miles an hour, they’ve got about three seconds to tell their story, so they don’t try to list any features or benefits. All that stuff can be done on the site.

4. The URL is really memorable, with the call to action built in.

5. They over-deliver on their promise. Not only can you buy hash browns on the site — there’s also a potato size chart, some recipies, and a place for customers to submit their own recipies.

All in all, an excellent job grabbing attention, inspiring curiosity, interacting with customers, and selling. And they start the whole thing with a single word on a billboard.

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How Important is the Call to Action?

Nearly fifty years ago, social psychologist Howard Leventhal conducted experiments in which he tried to convince Yale University seniors to get a tetanus shot. Leventhal initially divided the seniors into several groups, and gave each group different versions of a seven-page booklet on the disease and its effects.
 
According to Malcom Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point, there was a “high-fear” version of the booklet, with dramatic descriptions and photographs of the disease, and a “low-fear” version with toned down descriptions and no pictures.  

A few months later, Leventhal redid the experiment, with one change: this time “…he included a map of the campus, with the university health center building circled and the times the shots were available clearly listed.”

This change, by itself, increased the vaccination rate from 3% to 28%. Nine times as many students got the shot when they were told how to do so.
“…Of the 28% who got inoculated, an equal number were from the high-fear and low-fear group. Whatever extra persuasive muscle was found in the high-fear book was clearly irrelevant… The second interesting thing is that, of course, as seniors they must have already known where the health center was, and doubtless had already visited it several times already.
“The students needed to know how to fit the tetanus stuff into their lives; the addition of the map and the times when the shots were available shifted the booklet from an abstract lesson in medical risk… to a practical and personal piece of medical advice. And once the advice became practical and personal, it became memorable.”
Like Leventhal, your goal when you advertise is to persuade your prospects and customers to do something.
 
Your odds of success increase greatly when you make your message practical, personal, and memorable by telling them exactly what to do, and how to do it.
 

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Great Reason for a Sale

In Influence, the Science of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini cites experiments demonstrating that people are more likely to comply with your request if you give a reason. The reason doesn’t even have to make much sense. Copywriting instructors have incorporated the “Reason Why” technique into their lessons.

Mr. Toskana’s obviously been studying up on this stuff — and his “Reason Why” makes all the sense in the world.

Special thanks to Rick Lewis of Clear Channel for tipping me off.

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“The Phones Aren’t Ringing Anymore”

If you work in media sales, and your client tells you that your campaign isn’t making the phones ring anymore… don’t forget to check the phone system.

I have a client in the elective medical field. The practice had been using my stations and web sites for more than two years. It was a nice setup. The commercials would run; listeners would call the clinic, and a substantial number of them would make appointments. Happy patients came out looking younger and thinner, the client bought more advertising, and my kid’s college tuition got paid.

Until one day the client told me that listeners had stopped calling. We discussed, at length, all the possible reasons — the economic downturn, the fact that we’d been advertising the same procedure for a long time, even the possibility that we’d “used up” the station’s audience. For several months, we experimented with different copy approaches and different voices, but nothing seemed to help.

Finally the client cancelled. I understood.

In the course of the conversation, I mentioned that I’d tried to call her a few days before and had encountered an automated phone voice rather than a live person. Rather than wade through a series of prompts, I’d hung up and called her cell phone.

This caught her by surprise — although her staff was leaner than before, there was no reason for a machine to have picked up during business hours. We didn’t dwell on the subject, but a week later she told me that she’d investigated and found a glitch in the phone system. She had it fixed, and the phones were ringing again.

I was mortified. She and I usually communicated by cell phone or email, and when she was out of the office she’d usually call her staff on their cell phones. It had not occurred to me to call in the way a patient would.

Was the phone system the culprit? Maybe, maybe not. There’s no way of knowing how long the glitch had been there, and now that it’s fixed, the client is off the air.

But the next time a client tells me the phones aren’t ringing, I’ll be dialing in. Lesson re-learned.

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When the Disclaimer Cancels the Rest of the Ad

A recent issue of Automotive News had a print ad for Force Events. Here’s the headline:

GET 1000 UPS* IN YOUR SHOWROOM THIS WEEKEND!

An “up,” in auto dealer lingo, is a prospect who walks onto the lot. So if a dealer hire Force Events this weekend, he’ll get a thousand customers through the door, right?

Not so fast, Chester. The asterisk takes you down to some really, really tiny print at the bottom of the ad: “Results may vary.” It could be a thousand customers. Or a hundred. Or ten.

For all I know, Force could be a terrific company. But the fine print at the bottom wipes out the promise they make at the top. And auto dealers are masters of fine print — they won’t miss it.

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