Can Readers Crack Your Code?

I used to teach mar­ket­ing and sell­ing part-​​time at a local col­lege. One day, one of my stu­dents made me real­ize some­thing important.

Dur­ing my lec­ture, he offered an exam­ple to illus­trate his under­stand­ing of a con­cept I was teach­ing. While it was gen­eral in nature, I real­ized how beau­ti­fully his exam­ple applied to copy. Par­tic­u­larly web copy.

In fact, his point was so well made because he drove it home using the very idea he was illustrating.

But before I explain it to you, let me put the story in con­text so you can understand.

In my Per­sonal Sell­ing class, we were dis­cussing the nat­ural human incli­na­tion to illog­i­cally and uncon­sciously assume that there is a par­al­lel between a part and its whole — even when the two are totally unre­lated or irrel­e­vant to each other.

I call this ten­dency “UPA,” which stands for “uncon­scious par­al­leled assump­tion.” It means that peo­ple will uncon­sciously assume there’s a par­al­lel between one part and its whole, even if the two are totally dif­fer­ent and unrelated.

For exam­ple, you visit a depart­ment store and notice that their shelves are dirty, cheap, dis­or­ga­nized, and unprofessional-​​looking. You will nat­u­rally assume, at an uncon­scious level, that the busi­ness behind it or the prod­ucts it sells are the same. That is…

… Poor, Unpro­fes­sional, Cheap, and so on.

The psy­chol­ogy behind UPAs is sim­ply this. We fear mak­ing bad deci­sions. It’s just human nature. We have a ten­dency to seek out the neg­a­tive in what­ever it is we are con­sid­er­ing so to ensure that the deci­sions we are mak­ing are good ones.

For instance, when we are con­tem­plat­ing an offer online, we’ll likely skim the web­site and the copy to make sure the offer is legit­i­mate. Is it a scam? Is it real? Is it telling us the truth? Is it trust­wor­thy? Is it devoid of any “fine print?” Is there any catch?

Any­thing con­tra­dic­tory in the slight­est will deter us.

If some­thing appears to be out of place for any rea­son (even if it’s just a lit­tle thing like a typo, and good­ness knows I’m guilty of mak­ing errors, too), we’ll tend to refuse to buy, leave the site, or in the very least feel uncom­fort­able or uneasy.

I call this the “Ketchup Prin­ci­ple.” It’s the fact that you will remem­ber the ketchup stain on a salesperson’s tie dur­ing a lunch meet­ing more than you will his impec­ca­ble sales pre­sen­ta­tion or appear­ance — let alone prod­uct or offer.

But appear­ances aside, UPAs, and espe­cially poor ones, can also be the result of peo­ple not fully under­stand­ing the mean­ing of what is being com­mu­ni­cated to them.

We can cer­tainly read the copy, and under­stand the basic mes­sage and learn about the prod­ucts it offers. But do we truly under­stand the mean­ing behind the message?

In other words, does the mes­sage mean any­thing to us specif­i­cally? Is there a bad “meta-​​message” (i.e., a sub­tle nuance, sub­text, or indi­rect mes­sage — the mes­sage beyond the mes­sage — that con­tra­dicts the sales pitch)?

Too many web­sites describe the prod­ucts they are sell­ing or use a lan­guage that only the sell­ers under­stand. More than likely, buy­ers in these cases do under­stand the con­tent but they do not fully grasp what these prod­ucts can do for them specifically.

Why? It’s because the mind thinks in rel­a­tive terms.

Specif­i­cally, the brain processes infor­ma­tion by visu­al­iz­ing what it’s being told and com­par­ing the given infor­ma­tion to some­thing it knows, can relate to, or understands.

Words are not mes­sages. Words are only sym­bols used to encode a mes­sage, with the hope that the mes­sage will be decoded by the recip­i­ent in the way we intended.

That’s why our choice of words is so crucial.

OK, now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s go back to the student’s point men­tioned at the begin­ning. At the end of my lec­ture, he turns to me, and then pulls out a chair and places it beside a class table. He asks, “Mike, what’s the dif­fer­ence between this chair and table?” I said, “One is to sit on and the other is to write on.”

“No!” he shouted. “Not at all.”

I was puz­zled. “You’re think­ing in rel­a­tive terms,” he adds. “You are describ­ing each indi­vid­ual prod­uct and its respec­tive func­tion. You are not directly stat­ing the dif­fer­ence. You are imply­ing it. The dif­fer­ence is their func­tion. Get it?”

Notic­ing that I was still per­plexed, he con­tin­ues: “What’s the dif­fer­ence between a ten­nis ball and a soc­cer ball? Not that one is small and the other is big, or that one is yel­low and the other is black-​​and-​​white, which is what most peo­ple will say…

“… The dif­fer­ence is their SIZE or COLOR,” my stu­dent said.

I was still a lit­tle puz­zled but even­tu­ally got it. In fact, just like I was at first, when I first pub­lished this arti­cle, a reader right­fully emailed me with the fol­low­ing headscratcher:

“I read your lat­est arti­cle with great inter­est. I under­stand most of it, except for the point you were try­ing to make with the chair and table, as well as the point with the ten­nis ball and a soc­cer ball. Quite frankly, I’ve read it over and over again, but I sim­ply don’t get it. You seem to be say­ing that the dif­fer­ence is not their size, it’s their size? This makes no sense to me, and what­ever the point is that you’re try­ing to make to me is less than obvi­ous. I’m feel­ing cheated, like I’ve missed the joke that everyone’s howl­ing over. It’s leav­ing me so uncom­fort­able and baf­fled that I’m moved to write this inquiry for fur­ther explanation.”

Here was my answer…

Don’t feel cheated because you are, in real­ity, prov­ing my student’s point — and the point of this arti­cle. You’re think­ing in rel­a­tive terms, which is how most peo­ple think.

In fact, you just did it, your­self, when you said, “I’m feel­ing cheated, like I’ve missed the joke that everyone’s howl­ing over.” By the same token, you are also prov­ing how uncom­fort­able peo­ple feel when they are con­fused, just as you are.

Let me try to take a stab at it.

If I’m describ­ing two dif­fer­ent sizes (or col­ors), I’m not telling you what the dif­fer­ence is. Not directly, any­way. I’m merely imply­ing what the dif­fer­ence is by describ­ing two dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics. I’m show­ing or illus­trat­ing it rather than stat­ing it directly.

In other words, say­ing “one is this” and “the other is that” is mak­ing a com­par­i­son. I’m describ­ing HOW they are dif­fer­ent rather than telling you WHAT makes them different.

So rather than say­ing “color,” “func­tion,” “size,” etc, which is the right answer, I am there­fore relat­ing the dif­fer­ence by describ­ing it through illus­tra­tions or examples.

If I said, “The dif­fer­ence is their size,” you have to think for a moment and pic­ture each item to grasp the dif­fer­ence. But if I said “one is big­ger than the other,” or “one is big and the other small,” your mind will instantly grasp what I’m saying.

Here’s a really sim­plis­tic exam­ple. If I asked you what color is the sky, rather than telling me “blue” (which is the direct, log­i­cal answer), you could answer with “it’s the same color as my car.” In other words, you are relat­ing it to some­thing else.

You’re think­ing in rel­a­tive terms.

Most of us do. And most of your prospects and vis­i­tors do, too.

You were baf­fled, which is the point I tried to make. If we’re too direct or too lit­eral in our copy, we will baf­fle our audi­ence. Your copy must work to appeal to this behav­ior. The last thing you want to do is con­fuse your prospects. If they are, they’ll click away. Fast.

We often write copy that we under­stand — con­tent only a few peo­ple may under­stand. But we are never our mar­ket. So it’s best to use com­par­isons, analo­gies, sto­ries, sim­i­les, exam­ples, and metaphors so that the mind can under­stand what it is being told.

Say you’re in real estate. You want to con­vey the sheer size of a piece of land you’re try­ing to sell. But if your copy only says “140 acres of land,” this is only a log­i­cal mea­sure­ment — the mind may still not grasp the mean­ing (or the value) of “140 acres.”

The reader may ask, “What’s the size of 140 acres?” The mind thinks in pic­tures, not in num­bers. And since it thinks in rel­a­tive terms, it will try to com­pare 140 acres to a visual equiv­a­lent, which will be dif­fi­cult. Either that or it will come up with the wrong one.

It will be eas­ier for your reader’s mind to relate it to some­thing it already knows and to which it can com­pare it. So if you added, “140 acres is like 200 foot­ball fields, back to back,” your mind will now under­stand because it can relate it to some­thing it knows.

Here’s another exam­ple. Say you sell a hand cream. Instead of say­ing, “Skin-​​Be-​​Soft has a com­plex, lubri­cat­ing hydra-​​dermic for­mula to reduce the symp­toms of skin dis­or­ders like skin sen­si­tiv­ity, eczema, and pso­ri­a­sis,” say…

“Skin-​​Be-​​Soft makes your skin silky smooth, and soothes nag­ging itch­i­ness, lubri­cates unsightly scal­ing, and relieves pain, which are caused by eczema, pso­ri­a­sis, and sen­si­tive skin. Rub it on, and it’s like wrap­ping your skin with a warm blan­ket that relieves, pro­tects, and replen­ishes your skin.”

Nev­er­the­less, as you can see my stu­dent made an excel­lent point.

That’s why it’s impor­tant to use pic­ture words, metaphors, and analo­gies with your copy so that the mind of your read­ers can eas­ily inter­pret and fully appre­ci­ate what is being com­mu­ni­cated to them. (That’s why sto­ries, what I call “sto­ry­selling,” work so well.)

I call these UPWORDS (which stands for “Uni­ver­sal Pic­ture Words or Relat­able, Descrip­tive Sen­tences”). With the use of UPWORDS, peo­ple will under­stand and retain more. And of course, UPWORDS will also per­suade vis­i­tors more effectively.

Say that you’re sell­ing a com­puter backup device. And through mar­ket research, you’ve dis­cov­ered that your audi­ence is made up of clas­sic movie video afi­ciona­dos. To explain the main ben­e­fit of using a com­puter backup device, you can say this:

“This backup sys­tem will save you a lot of frus­tra­tion and time if your com­puter ever mal­func­tions, which may lead to the loss of crit­i­cal data you worked so hard to cre­ate and com­pile. It’s like watch­ing your favorite movie you waited for days to buy at your local video store, when sud­denly your VCR dies and destroys the video­tape, espe­cially when an impor­tant scene in the movie was about to unfold. Now you have to return to the video store. It’s frus­trat­ing! What’s more frus­trat­ing is when you real­ize it’s the only copy they have.”

Are you encod­ing your mes­sage so that your audi­ence can eas­ily decode it? Does your copy truly com­mu­ni­cate in their lan­guage? Does it explain the prod­uct you offer — and par­tic­u­larly its ben­e­fits — in terms they, and their minds, can relate to?

If not, then your read­ers’ UPA will be one that will lead to dis­in­ter­est, mis­un­der­stand­ing, or frus­tra­tion. They will uncon­sciously assume there is a par­al­lel between the qual­ity of your mes­sage and the qual­ity of your prod­uct, let alone your cus­tomer service!

Since peo­ple can’t inspect prod­ucts online, your copy has a great respon­si­bil­ity in replac­ing the tan­gi­bil­ity and the feel­ings your offer lacks and vis­i­tors want.

If it doesn’t, then your read­ers will make assump­tions — assump­tions that might not work in your favor. If they have to think to fully appre­ci­ate what you’re say­ing, even if it’s only for a frac­tion of a sec­ond, it may be counterproductive.

So make sure the UPAs your vis­i­tors make are the ones you want them to make. If you want them to assume your busi­ness has good cus­tomer ser­vice and has a great prod­uct that’s easy to use, then make sure your sales copy indi­rectly com­mu­ni­cates the same.

The long and short of it is this…

Is your web­site confusion-​​proof? Is your copy describ­ing your prod­uct to your tar­get mar­ket in rel­a­tive terms? Are you speak­ing in their lingo, using sto­ries, analo­gies, metaphors and vivid men­tal imagery they can eas­ily and instantly relate to? Do you describe your offer with some­thing they can under­stand, appre­ci­ate, and visualize?

Since your vis­i­tors will make uncon­scious par­al­leled assump­tions (or “UPAs”) about you or your prod­uct, and they will whether you want to or not, you bet­ter make them good ones. Guide them by mak­ing those assump­tions for them. The ones you want.

About the Author

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