6 Simple Tips for Presenting Benefits that Convert

"Copywriting can be fatally disconnected from the real world of buying and selling," says Brad Shorr in Convince & Convert.

To bridge the gap, B2B marketers need to converse with salespeople, because "they are in the trenches, actually talking to customers and prospects and hearing firsthand what motivates them to buy and what keeps them from buying," Shorr says.

But how do you turn the conversations into copy that converts? Shorr offers six tips:

Lead with "application" benefits. First things, first. Nothing else matters if the product offered doesn't fill buyers' needs.

Hit buyers over the head. When you're reaching more than one audience, call out the high-value benefit applicable to each segment. Here, subheads and design can help.

Let customers do the talking. Testimonials, "if they are employed systematically and not arbitrarily," speak volumes. Using a benefit-bearing subhead to introduce a testimonial will clarify it.

Track. Track website form and phone leads back to their marketing sources, to learn which benefit statements convert the most buyers, and favor those statements in the future.

Get personal. "Don’t underestimate the power of personal benefits, even in B2B," Shorr says. Find out what they are by interviewing buyers. Prompt them to choose or rank personal benefits from a list.

Avoid temptations to pile on benefits. Avoid at all cost the "laundry list of benefits." Lists only convert buyers into skeptics.

Happy Accidents

Christopher Columbus discovered America while seeking a sea route to Asia.

Alexander Graham Bell was hoping to help teachers of the hearing impaired when he stumbled on the telephone.

Three PayPal employees built YouTube to compete with the dating site Hot or Not.

Objectives feel good, but accidents often outshine them, as researcher Andrew Smart says in Harvard Business Review.

"Our objective obsession might be doing more harm than good, causing people, teams, and firms to stagnate," Smart says.

Statistics and stories about inventions prove that.

"Reports indicate that half are the result of not direct research but serendipity—that is, people being open to interesting and unexpected results."

Smart says we should ditch all the goals for "detours" that might lead to "something new and interesting."

"The more time we spend defining and pursing specific objectives, the less likely we are to achieve something great."

The Past isn't Dead. It isn't Even Past.

Ideas that Germans call Schnapsideen are those so stupid, you must have been drunk when you conceived them.

What kind of schnapps-idea is this? a German might ask. 

Urban Outfitters' Vintage Kent State University Sweatshirt is an example.

Whether a real offering or a PR ploy, the product was a Schnapsidee.

In 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired on anti-war student protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine.

When Urban Outfitters released its product, the members of the Twitterverse into Vergangenheitsbewältigung—the struggle to overcome the past—went ballistic.

The company quickly fired off a retraction:

Urban Outfitters sincerely apologizes for any offense our Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt may have caused. It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such. The one-of-a-kind item was purchased as part of our sun-faded vintage collection. There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray. Again, we deeply regret that this item was perceived negatively and we have removed it immediately from our website to avoid further upset.

The lesson for marketers? 

Those who forget the past are condemned to recall.

5 Ways to Combat Design Fixation

Marketers who default to an old fix for a new problem are guilty of "design fixation."

It's one reason so much marketing looks copy-cat.

Design fixation—also known as the Einstellung Effect—refers to our tendency to rely blindly on old solutions, and insist our first idea is always the best.

Fortunately, novices are more susceptible to design fixation than old hands, studies show.

How can you free yourself?

Jami Oetting, writing for Hubspot, suggests five antidotes:

• Immerse yourself in new subjects. Escape your marketing bubble and reach for far-afield ideas. Learn a little about voles, snow-sports, fire protection, Washington Irving, and Czarist Russia.

• Work with others. Diversity in experiences, expertise and cultural background and can stimulate fresh thinking.

• Review previous solutions. Peer reviews will expose biases and flaws faster than anything. They force you to look at your ideas with iron-cold eyes.

• Analyze and brainstorm. Generating more ideas helps assure an innovative one will emerge.

• Test. Gather feedback from focus groups and A/B experiments.

Emissary of Humankind

Comparative Communist Political Systems was one of the more desultory courses I took in college.

The reading list was brutal, and I had to trudge many a dawn to the Library of Congress, because a lot of the stuff comprised unpublished papers by NATO diplomats.

But had I not elected the course, I might never have met the professor, Jan Karski.

Karski had been a young army lieutenant when the Soviets invaded his native Poland at the outbreak of World War II.

Captured near Ukraine, Karski managed to conceal his rank from his captors by swapping uniforms with a private. Uninterested in privates (they executed officers), the Soviets put Karski on a train bound west for Nazi territory; but he escaped, and made his way to Warsaw.

Before long, Karski joined Poland's Resistance, couriering dispatches to the country's government, exiled in Paris. On one trip, he was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured. Afraid he'd betray his fellows, Karski cut his own throat; but Nazi doctors stitched the wound before Karski bled to death. Members of the Resistance secreted him out of the hospital.

Karski immediately resumed his role as a courier. Ordered next to gather evidence of Nazi atrocities, he was twice smuggled by Jewish resistance fighters into the Warsaw Ghetto, to see first hand what was happening to its citizens. Karski witnessed Nazi soldiers hunt down and kill Jewish children for sport, and saw Jews herded into boxcars heading for the death camps. So sickened was he by the sights in the railroad yard, Karski vomited.

After his final mission in Poland, Karski was ordered to England and the US, to spread word of the Nazis' atrocities among the Allies. He met in 1943 with the British Foreign Secretary in London, and with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House. Karski pleaded with both men to intervene. His stories were met with disbelief.

Undaunted, Karski wrote Story of a Secret State, published in 1944 as a Book of the Month Club selection. Over 400,000 copies were sold. Unable to sway their leaders, Karski helped open the eyes of Brits and Americans to the Holocaust.

After the war, Karski remained in the US, earned a doctorate, and joined the faculty of Georgetown University, where he taught for 40 years.

In 1994, Karski was made an honorary citizen of Israel, in recognition of his efforts on behalf Holocaust victims. He was also nominated for a Nobel Prize shortly before his death in 2000.

There are public memorials to him today in Washington, New York City, Warsaw, Lodz, Tel Aviv and elsewhere.