It’s something that came up the other day while working on copy and design around a critical conversion point in my new venture http://gig.fm (follow @gigfm)
Here it is…
The most successful business and marketing plans I’ve seen and watched grow have been those aimed not at a broad group of “everyone” but at a very specific type of person.
So specific, in fact, that it seemed in most of these cases that there wouldn’t be many people (a large market) who matched that description or would fit into that group that was the intended market.
But the incredible part is that, time and time again, it’s the very well-defined and targeted strategy that works.
When you try and market and sell to everyone, you often get no one.
It’s not what EVERYONE will like about your product that will lead individuals to buy it. It’s what ONE INDIVIDUAL will light up when hearing that will create your success in marketing.
Many people forget that you aren’t communicating One-to-Many in todays world. Instead, you’re communicating One-to-One in almost every context… even when the One-to-One dynamic is spread across thousands or millions of users and you.
So think about it. This principle of Specificity is an important design principle, but it’s also VERY important in marketing and copywriting and most forms of communication. The more specific your communication, the more people can grab on to it.
Tip of the hat to John Weir for sending me the image and the design conversation and learnings shared.
I’ve always had a tough time wrapping my mind around design as it relates to offer pages. I’ve been focused squarely on conversion through copywriting, offer creation, and price testing for the last 5+ years. I haven’t made a focus of Design as I should have to become a better marketer.
The last few months have been trial by fire in a few areas and new tests.
This 37Signals article has some quick usable chunks around design optimization in offer testing. Most of all, I like how they share their reasoning and thinking behind WHY. There are a few top level design considerations that have led my thinking.
Top Level Theories/Approaches That Guide My Marketing Design
Remember “Readability”
Less is More (Paradox of Choice, simplicity in one-decision marketing)
Use only a few Dominant Visual Elements
Customers respond more when design emphasizes BENEFITS and OUTCOMES
Great converters can be created with little or NO GRAPHICS- with great copy
Use Social Proof elements as Secondary focus (testimonials, “as seen on”, user stories)
If you read the 37Signals post, you caught a few of the theories they used to guide their iterations.
I think 37Signals should also be thinking hard about the dramatic impact relative pricing, upsells, and downsells have on conversion. I haven’t tested a ton of design iterations to say this with 100% confidence, but I’ve seen tens and hundreds of cases where no design changes and big changed to these other areas I mentioned created 2, 3, sometimes 15 to 20X conversion rates in one fell swoop.
That’s not to say that design isn’t a major piece of building the overall CONTEXT of your offer.
Besides, I don’t think the 37Signals guys are looking ro radically change their pricing and test (at least openly). Obviously they have a great community, lots of attention, and seem to value transparency for themselves and others. Price testing is rarely a crowd favorite.
Good times ahead, as I’ll get to test some new design iterations over the next few months across a pretty large scale of 6-7 figure impression numbers.
