Welcome to episode 24 of Write with Influence. Today, I want to share a secret copywriting weapon with you – making a big deal out of little details.
If you can go into a business and spot the small details that make their offering unique and tell a good story around it, quite often, you can paint a bigger picture of value and create interesting and engaging copy out of what most people would overlook.
I’ll give you some examples of how this technique has been successfully used in the commercial world in the past and has resulted in huge increases in sales for the businesses involved and I’ll show you how to apply it to your own copy also.
Listen to discover:
- The importance of small details – how to turn a potential negative judgement into a positive belief about your business
- How to build a story around small details – a step-by-step guide
- How to recognise and find value in the small details of your own business
This is a really powerful technique that will not only help to stack the value of your product/service but will also inspire lots of different content ideas that you can use in your blogs or emails to remind people about what you do without saying the same thing again and again.
I have included some examples from my own copywriting work to illustrate the value of this skill in real life situations and show you how I have put it to action with my clients in the past. I have also thrown in some fun sketches to illustrate how sometimes, the things that seem small and unimportant to you might just mean the world to someone else … like the postman turning up on time and NOT whistling Total Eclipse of the Heart while he delivers your mail!
I hope this gives you fresh ideas for your copy and helps you to create a bigger story around value by using the small but very important details about your own business or the businesses you are working with.
Please feel free to get in touch with any comments, feedback or suggestions for future shows, I’d love to hear from you.
TRANSCRIPT
HOW TO MAKE A BIG DEAL OUT OF SMALL PRODUCT DETAILS
AMY HARRISON
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Write with Influence. This is a show where I share my experiences of being a copywriter, tell you about tips I’ve learned and answer your copy questions. Today, I want to talk to you about making a big deal out of little details – sometimes the little things count. If you’ve ever had a tiny bit of eggshell your sandwich, a grain of rice in your shoe, or a bite from a mosquito, you know how even small things can cause a big effect. People can also judge you on small details. You could be wearing a beautiful suit and be impeccably dressed, but maybe you’re in a bit of a rush and you have a cup of soup, and you’ve got a slight stain of oxtail on your tie -people are going to notice that and probably write you off a sloppy, even though it’s just a small thing, just a tiny dash of oxtail. I found that parents are excellent at this. So, you may have carved out a wonderful life, a career and home for yourself, but if you don’t have a milk jug, a peg bag or know how to darn sock, they’re never going to believe that you’ve actually got your shit together. I mean, how can you call yourself an adult if you don’t know how to make jam or starch collars? But just as people can make a negative judgment from a small detail, they can also make positive judgments from small details. I started thinking about this, about the idea of making a big deal out of small details and covering it on the podcast because I’d been asked to create some copywriting training for non-profits. One challenge that non-profits have is that donors understandably want to know where their donation is going, right? And I can understand that. I feel good if my donation is being used to buy a food parcel or build a well, I feel a connection to that result, but how do I feel possibly if my donation is going to pay the light bill in the office or getting stationary printed and branded pens? So, a challenge that a lot of charities have is that they can’t promise all of their donations are going to go and build the well. So, I designed this training to help organizations build a story around the importance of these seemingly small things, and then show how these small details are actually vital to the bigger transformations. You can absolutely apply the same approach for commercial products and it’s not just a way of stacking the value of what you do, this is also a great way to come up with lots and lots of different content ideas that you can use in blogs or emails to remind people about what you do without saying the same thing again and again. I looked at this previously in episode 14, if you’re interested, ‘How To Repeat Your Sales Message Without Sounding Spammy.’ So, before I walk you through how this works, I want you to spend a few moments thinking about the last great day that you had. It doesn’t have to be an award-winning, great, front row seats at a Dolly Parton contest, great, but it shouldn’t just be a regular humdrum “I guess that was an okay, regular kind of day.” Maybe you had a racing tip that paid off or your food delivery company made a mistake and sent two salmon en croute and said, “Keep them both.” Okay, are you thinking about it? Have you got a day now? What made it great? So, imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner now with your family and you say, “You know what? I had a wonderful day because…” what would you tell them? Now, I don’t know what it might be. It could have been a promotion or a good exam result, a bump in sales, or just an appreciative message from someone you’ve not heard from for a while. I have a list of things here, but I’m going to bet that they did not make your list. You ready? Okay, these are:
- Cleaning your teeth
- Having a hot shower
- Eating breakfast
- Wearing clean clothes.
Now, why might these things not make your list? Why wouldn’t you sit down with your family and say, “God, this was an awesome day – I cleaned my teeth.” Well, because they are little things and if you were raving about cleaning your teeth, your family might be a little bit worried. Why aren’t you just doing that every day? These are not the stuff of interesting stories, they are the everyday, the boring and the mundane things, but they’re still important so I want you to flip that around and imagine a day without those things. Imagine, for example, someone has forced you to go camping, but hasn’t let you prepare. So, for a couple of nights, you’re sleeping on the cold, uncomfortable ground, you’re in the same clothes, you can’t shower, you don’t have your toothbrush and instead of a kitchen where you could whip up a quick cheese and pickle sandwich, you’re foraging for the berries and leaves that aren’t going to kill you. Then after a couple of days in the wilderness, you get to go home. How good does it feel to get back home to those small comforts? So, while we probably wouldn’t talk about these as highlights of a great day, we would definitely complain about them if they weren’t there and that’s why what I want you to do is, start thinking about the small but vital details in your business and in your organization. When you learn to find value in the small details, it’s one of those skills that, if you’ve been writing copy for a few years, becomes a bit of a secret weapon because when you can go into a business and you can spot the small details and tell a good story around it, quite often, you can build a lot of value out of what most people overlook. A lot of organizations are looking for that big idea or a flashy new tagline, but if you’re smart, you can look for those small, mundane, boring details and create a different story.
Using small details to write great copy isn’t new in the commercial world. A famous example of this is Schlitz beer. Now, if you’re not familiar with the story, definitely look it up, but I’ll give you a brief overview. So, back in the twenties, the Schlitz brewery was fifth in sales in the U S and it was a time when a lot of companies were promoting purity as a selling point in their beer. Everyone was trying to make sales by saying the same thing. Now, that hasn’t changed today, how often do we see that happening? Different companies all promising you that you can save money, save time, do more with fewer resources, make better decisions, faster, et cetera, et cetera. We hear a lot of the same thing and one of the big challenges in copywriting is: how do I say something different? So, Schlitz hired Claude Hopkins, who was a serious copywriter, and he would spend time researching and understanding the products he promoted. One of the things he was asked to do was to tour the brewery and see how the beer was made. Now, all the beer companies were promising purity, but he wanted to see how it was done. He was shown the plate glass rooms where the beer was cooled by filtered air to eliminate impurities. He saw how the bottles were sterilized, not once, not twice, but four times before being filled with beer, and he was shown the 4,000 ft deep wells dug to provide the cleanest water. He took notes of everything and from there, he started to list all the things that Schlitz beer were doing to ensure purity and he presented what he found. Now, something to remember is this, when I say small details, I don’t mean the size of them because a 4,000 ft well isn’t small, I mean, that’s massive. But the brewery thought the value of these details was small and as such were not important enough to be part of the marketing. Now, have you ever thought about that before? You get an idea for writing copy and you think, “Ah, that doesn’t seem that dramatic or interesting enough …” and you throw it away? Well, you could be overlooking these small but vital details and you could be throwing away some great ideas. So, what happened when they started running campaigns that talked about the how? Well, it worked. Apparently, they shot up in sales and were able to go from fifth to neck and neck first in sales. So, they made their promise of purity stand out with these tiny, seemingly mundane details, and it’s really important to remember that something which seems small and unimportant to you might just mean the world to someone else.
[New Scene – Unveiling of Evil Machine]
Henry: We have gathered here today for the unveiling of my evil power machine. For eight years, three months, and two days I’ve laboured upon this idea that I could build a machine to give me control of everything. Everything in the world will come under my command. The government, the police, the army, the national infrastructure, I can make trains on time, but I won’t because it’s not very evil. We’ve come a long way since the first inception. To start with, I could only control small things like my bladder in the stationery store – the excitement around post-its always makes me want to pee just a little. But then I could control others, again, not a major influence, it was limited by distance, but did manage to get the postman to deliver to a somewhat regular routine, but I couldn’t stop him whistling ‘Total eclipse of the heart.’ I realized the power machine needed more power, so I’ve spent the past year working on the heart of the machine. The components have been hooked up to a type C charging port for months, absorbing power from the national grid. When I attach it to the rest of the evil powers, I’ll have control of everything. Here it is …what …where is it … it was here the other day. Mum … mum …
Henry’s Mum: Why have you got your lights out? Good gosh Henry.
Henry: Evil power Mum.
Henry’s Mum: This room’s a mess. You better tidy this up before the cleaner gets here. I’m not having her sifting through your Spiderman briefs just to vacuum the floor.
Henry: Mum!!
Henry’s Mum: Who are your friends?
Henry: They’re my puppets, ready to do my evil bidding.
Henry’s Mum Nicholas. Isn’t it? And Walter? Oh, your mums are in my reading group. Would you like some tea and toast?
Nicholas: Oh Yeah thanks …
Henry: Mum!
Henry’s Mum: What?
Henry: Have you seen the heart of my evil power machine?
Henry’s Mum: What does it look like?
Henry: Small black box with a little scull on it.
Henry’s Mum: I threw it out.
Henry: What?
Henry’s Mum: No, I’m sorry Henry but we’ve been through this. It was on the living room floor for weeks. I asked you several times to put it in your room and I figured, well, it can’t be that important. So I threw it out.
Henry: That took me ages to build.
Henry’s Mum: Well then you should have looked after it.
Henry: Well, how am I going to take control of everything?
Henry’s Mum: You can’t take control of everything, you can’t even control your bladder in Staples.
{Sound of doorbell}
Henry’s Mum: Oh, that’s the postman, gosh, he’s late again today.
[End]
So, I’m going to walk you through how I did this for the non-profit training. Here’s how it works. You think about a product or a service that you offer customers and think about a promise you want to make to your customer about that product or service. Then you’re going to pick some important customer experience details. These are things that your customer can see. Then finally, we’re going to pick our small, or sometimes I refer to these as our behind-the-scenes details. So, for example, in the case of the Schlitz beer, the product is beer, and the promise was the purity of the beer. Now, the customer experience, remember these are details that customers can see, hear or feel so it may be the taste, it may be the crisp flavour – what is the customer going to experience when using this product? Then the behind-the-scenes details are those small mundane details that make the customer experience possible, for example, the four thousand ft well. So, for our non-profit example, I chose an organization that supported people who had a health crisis and the service that we decided to focus on was a home visit from a nurse. Now, the promise that we wanted to make is that through the home visit, clients would feel supported and cared for. When thinking about the customer experience details for this, I jotted down some very simple things that the client would experience, for example, the nurse would turn up on time, the nurse would be wearing a clean, smart uniform and have the correct medication or information needed. Now I’m going to focus on just one of these as an example, let’s take turning up on time. How is it possible that these nurses turn up on time for appointments? I mean, it’s an important part of the home visit -what makes that happen? Well, this is when we go behind the scenes. So, remember Claude Hopkins wanted to tour the brewery to see how the beer was made? Well, we need to start doing that with our organizations and our companies. We might find, for example, in this case that there’s a whole team of people working hard to schedule appointments, or perhaps there’s been an investment in calendar software to make it easier for nurses to track and keep their appointments. By linking all of these different details, the service you offer, the promise you want to make, the customer experience and the behind-the-scenes details, we’re starting to build a bigger picture of value, and we can turn this into copy. For example, if I was writing a donation email for this organization, including some of these different details, I might write something like this:
When you’re living with a health crisis, every second is important and precious. We don’t think people should wait any longer than they need to before they get support from a home visit by a nurse. That’s why we’re always working hard to make sure nurses spend more time doing what matters most, caring for clients. You might not realize this, but your support means we can use software to help clients and nurses schedule appointments faster and what this means is that clients spend less time on the phone making appointments and more time with their family. Nurses spend less time on paperwork and more time helping people in need. And back office staff spend less time juggling calendars, so they have more time to answer phones faster and spend more time talking to clients when they call. These improved efficiencies mean we can have a bigger impact and provide more support, and that’s just one of the many ways your donation helps.
Then we would transition into the request for a donation. So, this is a very simple example, as I say with all examples, this isn’t the only way to write copy, but it should illustrate how we’re pulling these details, some of them very small, into a bigger story about value and as I said before, this isn’t limited to non-profits. Let’s say you’re a teacher, you’re running online sessions by video and that’s your service. Perhaps one of the behind-the-scenes details is that you set yourself reminders 30 minutes ahead of a lesson so that you can start preparing for it. The customer experience detail is that not only do you turn up on time, that’s something that they experience, but when they turn up, you’re fully prepared to crack on with the lesson straight away instead of having to spend time catching up on the previous one or spending that first five or ten minutes on chit-chat. The promise, because of the way that you do this, could be that you deliver a more efficient use of your time together so that your students can progress further and faster. These small details are a way of providing proof around the promises that you want to make. And it really is worth spending some time doing a tour of your brewery, so to speak, and just trying to piece together, why are you able to give such a good customer experience? What are some of the details that go into offering that that customers may not realize and may find interesting? Obviously, what you choose is up to you, but seriously, looking for and linking small details to your big promise in this way paints a bigger picture of value. Just remember though, I am making the assumption that when we go behind the scenes of your business, we are all going to see something good!
[New Scene – Business Building Blueprint Boot Camp]
Speaker: And that concludes our two-day self-empowerment business building blueprint boot camp. What a ride! You have been breaking down barriers to unlock your potential. How does that feel? Do you feel unlocked?
Audience: Yes!
Speaker: Do you feel like you can go out there and step into your own value and own it?
Audience: Yes!
Speaker: And don’t forget for limited time you can join my inner circle called Blow Your Mind Mastermind for next year with VIP access, less than three pence a minute for the year, a small price to pay to achieve your dreams and live your best life, don’t you think?
Audience: Yes!
Speaker: And I know some of you have found this boot camp tough, you’ve even had questions, you know, is this right for me? When are we breaking for lunch? Why are there no seats? Was that slap really necessary? But I think you understand now that this was the victim in you talking, the worrier. And we are not worriers. What are we? We are …
Audience: Warriors …
Speaker: You’re a warrior and you’re ready to live life on your terms. Though do remember to stick to our terms or legal will come after you with the power of a million-pound lawsuit and we will bankrupt you. So, go out there and get your dreams and remember like a good, inspirational sports apparel advert once said, don’t ask if your dream is crazy, ask if it’s crazy enough. Jeffrey, can you quit your career as a below average web developer and open a successful bakery on the high street despite having no experience, few social skills, a severe wheat allergy and competition from three very well-established brands in the area? I believe you can. Sheila, can you launch your new board game, which is basically monopoly, but with street names from your home village? Can you get that deal with John Lewis and avoid copyright infringement claims from Hasbro games? I believe you can. Now go out there and do me proud. I love you; I love you all.
Boss: That was great. Well done. Another successful boot camp wrapped up.
Speaker: If I hear another person say, “I’m a warrior, not a worrier” I’m going to puke.
Boss: Just stop asking them to say it then.
Speaker: I’ve never seen a more sorry group of daydreamers running to lay out fifteen grand they can’t afford on shitty mastermind. What are we giving them in the end?
Boss: One monthly Q and A call.
Speaker: £1200 a call basically. They’ll get about five minutes each if they’re lucky. That’s £250 a minute they’re paying … idiots.
Boss: Bit more than 3p a minute then hey!
Speaker: Oh, and if Jeffrey or Sheila apply just tell them no, no, no. We’re fully booked up. I’m not having them lower the collective IQ of the group with their mental ideas.
[Sheila enters the room]
Sheila: Hello …
Speaker: Sheila! Hello darling. Gosh, you already look like you’ve unlocked some more of your potential and it’s only been a few minutes.
Sheila: Your microphone is still on.
Speaker: Sorry?
Sheila: We heard it all – the daydreamers, the low IQ.
Speaker: Oh F…
Sheila: It’s not just like monopoly, it’s completely different street names.
[End]
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