you can’t satisfy gourmet clients with fast food – with examples

By Stella Orange | Comments Off on you can’t satisfy gourmet clients with fast food – with examples

This may sound like a radical idea.

But I swear on my mother’s toes, it’s true.

The language you use telegraphs who you are, what you believe, and the sort of experience you’re up for having.

This goes quadruple in your marketing.

For the sake of illustration, let me invite you into my brain when I review copy. (You should know that I have been in business for 6 years, as a copywriting teacher and consultant. I’ve worked with hundreds of business owners, helping them craft copy that sells without being corny or cliché.)

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a woman who told me she wanted to learn how to write something like this:
copy-swipe And I told her I couldn’t help her.

Do I know how to write an opt-in page?

Of course I do.

But I have grown weary and cantankerous of what I call the fast food approach to marketing. So I refuse to do it. I refuse to add to the pile of garbage that gets farted out on the internet, with its empty promises of cheap, fast and easy.

Let me tell you what I see, when I look at this page:

  • It’s completely generic
  • Could be written by ANYONE
  • Doesn’t have a personality
  • I feel empty and emotionally flat, reading it

What’s interesting to me is that this page does everything “right.” He’s got the social proof of with the WSJ and Newsweek logos up top. He’s got the benefit-driven bullets that talk about increase, boosting, and all sorts of nice-sounding things. He’s got the “get free access” call to action…

But you know what?

I don’t care.

I don’t care because:

  • I feel no connection with the person.
  • I have no relationship with him.
  • I am not intrigued by anything he’s saying
  • It doesn’t feel genuine
  • Feels like advertising

My B.S. detector isn’t even going off, because I’m bored to get that worked up. There’s nothing interesting to me about this page, other than how strong my negative reaction is to it.

Here’s what you need to know if you aim to court high end clients and build a fan base that loves and buys from you repeatedly. Everything I just said above? They are thinking and feeling the same thing. Namely, that the page above – and other marketing like it – screams fast food.

And you also need to know that sophisticated clients are looking for something else. In a nutshell, it’s the opposite of the fast good experience:

  • Results
  • An uncommon experience
  • Great service
  • A real, even long-term relationship with their teachers, mentors and advisors
  • To be treated as an individual

The reality is this: fast food marketing attracts fast food clients. If you use the fast food approach, you can be sure that you are NOT going to attract sophisticated clients, who are turned off by the clichés, genericness, and lack of personality.

When I teach this idea to my clients, I show them the opt-in page I shared with you above (with apologies to Rich), and then I show them an example of gourmet marketing copy:

copy-good

This is from a sales page for one of my online programs. It sells well.

And why, yes, that is a picture of Gustav Flaubert!

The reason I put things like this in my sales materials is because, when I was a little girl, after visiting my grandparents, my grandma would hug me goodbye and say, “I love you and don’t forget to have fun.”

We need to have more fun in our marketing.

Fun is a gourmet experience.

(Side bar: I distrust people who write about “having fun” in their copy. If someone has to tell you that you are going to have fun in their program, it’s a red flag. Having fun is like good sex. You can tell who’s having it, just by their energy.)

Unlike fast food marketing, gourmet marketing:

  • Dares to be specific (and not speak to “everyone”)
  • Has a personality, voice and point of view
  • Would not work if it was on your competitor’s website
  • Is self-aware that the context is sales, but is detached from whether or not you buy (I call this being “emotionally clean” around a sale)
  • Sets up a world that is honest + grounded: “hey, this won’t solve all your problems, but I can help you get results with _____.”
  • Feels conversational, like you are talking with them.
  • Delights people and makes them feel something they want to feel

So, there you have it. The difference between fast food marketing, that seems to be the standard for so many people online, and gourmet marketing, which is more rare but flavorful, rich, and so much more nourishing.

Stella Orange is a copywriter who helps people put their work into words. For eight years, she wrote email campaigns that resulted in more than a million dollars in sales for her clients. In that time, Stella also taught popular marketing writing workshops to business owners on both sides of the Atlantic -- and a few in Australia and New Zealand. In 2017, Stella cofounded a creative and consulting shop offering a complete and slightly unorthodox line of business advising and marketing services. She continues to write copy and advise clients on customer delight, how to resonate with more sophisticated, discerning clientele in your marketing, and just who, exactly, your ideal clients are. Stella is the founder of Show Up And Write, a weekly writing group and writes a letter every two weeks or so (here’s the sign-up). She lives with the Philosopher and their two kiddos in Buffalo, New York, a fifteen-minute bike ride to the Canadian border.

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