To Up Sales, Up Words!

I first taught this tech­nique in 1998. While there have been tons of improve­ments since then, today I still see copy on so many web­sites, sales let­ters, or emails using a lan­guage that only the per­son who wrote them understands.

The bot­tom line is, most mar­keters and copy­writ­ers still seem to ignore the most impor­tant part of their sales copy…

… Their readers.

Abra­ham Maslow once com­mented, “If all you have is a ham­mer, every­thing looks like a nail.” Abra­ham Maslow may have been a psy­chol­o­gist, but he prob­a­bly knew more about copy­writ­ing and par­tic­u­larly sell­ing than what most peo­ple cared to admit.

Even now, most of the copy I cri­tique dis­obey this impor­tant rule the most. Their sales mes­sage doesn’t com­mu­ni­cate with their read­ers, par­tic­u­larly at their level. Now, I’m not talk­ing about a socioe­co­nomic or edu­ca­tional level. I’m talk­ing about the level at which they under­stand and, above all, make buy­ing decisions.

They fail to use what I call “upwords.” It’s an acronym that means…

“Uni­ver­sal Pic­ture Words Or Relat­able, Descrip­tive Sentences.”

Upwords are words that paint vivid pic­tures in the mind, or expres­sions that describe an idea to which the mind of your reader (or prospect) can quickly and eas­ily relate to.

Here’s an exam­ple. Sev­eral years ago, I took a media com­mu­ni­ca­tions course in which I dis­cov­ered an inter­est­ing exam­ple of the way the mind works. As part of a given les­son, a video­tape was shown of a tele­vised news­cast dur­ing which a jour­nal­ist was about to give a live report on a large, dev­as­tat­ing for­est fire.

The news anchor in the tele­vi­sion news­room said: “We now take you to reporter Sally Smith, who’s in the station’s heli­copter fly­ing above the scene of the fire.”

He then turned around to face the back­ground screen, which showed a live bird’s-eye view of the rag­ing fire. Asked the anchor­man: “Tell us, Sally, how big is the fire?”

In a voice par­tially drowned by the whizzing sound of heli­copter blades, Sally offered this inter­est­ing insight: “John, the for­est fire so big, it’s cov­er­ing well over 140 acres of land — now that’s about 200 foot­ball fields back-​​to-​​back for you and me.”

Why did she do this? It’s because peo­ple tend to think in pic­tures, not in words and cer­tainly not in num­bers — unless, of course, it is told to do exactly that.

The mind hates confusion.

It will nat­u­rally trans­late words or phrases into some­thing it can refer back to, some­thing it already knows, often rapidly and uncon­sciously, in order to under­stand what it is told.

If the reporter didn’t give a visual equiv­a­lent to 140 acres, the audi­ence — unless the tar­get mar­ket is com­prised of lad sur­vey­ors — would have either ignored and skipped over this piece of infor­ma­tion, or attempted to visu­al­ize what was being said.

For instance, if I told you to think of a garbage can, you’re not going to think of the word “garbage can” or the let­ters “G,” “A,” “R,” “B,” “A,” “G,” “E,” etc. If I asked you to think of a garbage can your mind will auto­mat­i­cally visu­al­ize some sort of garbage can.

It is Mark Twain who once said, “Num­bers don’t stick in the mind; pic­tures do.”

Microsoft and Mac­In­tosh dom­i­nate the mar­ket­place in oper­at­ing sys­tems because, rather than typ­ing some elab­o­rate com­mand for your com­puter to exe­cute, you can sim­ply use your mouse, point to an icon that rep­re­sents the com­mand or pro­gram, and click.

Icons rep­re­sent com­mands, which, when clicked on, are trans­lated into pro­grams (i.e., codes or com­puter lan­guages) that the com­puter can under­stand and execute.

In the same way, the mind works very much like a com­puter does.

Peo­ple who know lit­tle about com­put­ers will likely have a dif­fi­cult time under­stand­ing the var­i­ous writ­ten com­mands, scripts, and codes that the com­puter needs to process. But on the other hand, most of us can eas­ily iden­tify the icons that sym­bol­ize them.

Sim­i­larly, the brain instantly trans­lates the infor­ma­tion it receives into some­thing it can eas­ily under­stand and act upon — some­thing it already knows and can eas­ily refer to.

Albeit a quick one, there is always a trans­la­tion process going on.

As we write our copy for our audi­ences, we must be aware of that. We must be aware of how our read­ers will “decode” the mes­sage we are try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate — hope­fully, they will decode it in the way we intended when we “encoded” it in the first place.

There­fore, the chal­lenge fac­ing most mar­keters is to ensure that their copy is encoded in the right way — so that it com­mu­ni­cates effec­tively to its audi­ence, espe­cially when get­ting that mes­sage and its ben­e­fits across is at the heart of mak­ing prof­itable sales.

The big test, there­fore, is to put our­selves in our reader’s shoes.

It is impor­tant to com­mu­ni­cate using words, phrases, and a lan­guage that the vast major­ity of peo­ple in your tar­get mar­ket can eas­ily under­stand and appreciate.

So, the more you use upwords in your copy, the more your reader will not only be able to visu­al­ize and grasp the mes­sage you’re try­ing to con­vey, but also appre­ci­ate that mes­sage at a deeper, more inti­mate, and more vis­ceral level.

And that is the level I was refer­ring to, earlier.

Upwords are words and phrases that help mes­sages to be eas­ily read, under­stood and inter­preted by the major­ity of the peo­ple to whom the mes­sage is tar­geted, like with the use of men­tal imagery, exam­ples, analo­gies, metaphors, pic­ture words, etc.

For exam­ple, in my early career I spe­cial­ized in copy for cos­metic sur­geons. And a chal­lenge among doc­tors is the fact that peo­ple will call for a quote over the phone when a sur­geon needs to see the patient before­hand to make an assessment.

But obvi­ously, cos­metic surgery is an uncom­mon process. Peo­ple don’t under­stand why doc­tors can’t sim­ply give out quotes over the phone. Some even get upset about it.

As a way to work around this prob­lem, I tell doc­tors to use a more com­mon approach, such as cos­metic den­tistry for exam­ple, as an anal­ogy. Why? It’s because, unlike cos­metic surgery, most peo­ple have had their teeth done at some point.

That way, their brains have some­thing they can remem­ber, pic­ture, refer back to, and relate with. To that end, I tell doc­tors to say this, when asked for a quote over the phone:

“Just like a den­tist, I can’t give an esti­mate over the phone with­out any X-​​rays of your teeth” or “with­out the knowl­edge of how many cav­i­ties you really have.”

Mar­keters are cer­tainly in a sim­i­lar position.

Many tend to com­mu­ni­cate in a lan­guage that only a few under­stand. If you’re a pro­gram­mer sell­ing your ser­vices to busi­ness own­ers, and your copy is laced with tech­ni­cal jar­gon that only geeks will under­stand, you will obvi­ously do very poorly.

Speak their lan­guage! This is a step beyond using sim­ple indus­try buzz­words and niche-​​related jar­gon your audi­ence is used to and com­fort­able with. You should also mold your mes­sage in a way that it can be eas­ily under­stood by your tar­get market.

If your mar­ket con­sists of artists, use art exam­ples. If it’s com­prised of man­agers, use busi­ness analo­gies. If it’s made up of fish­ing afi­ciona­dos, use fish­ing metaphors. For exam­ple, say you sell cus­tomer ser­vice con­sult­ing to florists. You can then say:

“Your clients are like fresh-​​cut roses; they need to be han­dled effi­ciently. But if han­dled improp­erly, they can prick and hurt your busi­ness, or sim­ply wilt away.”

Here’s a recent exam­ple. One web­site I cri­tiqued sold skin­care lotion. They called it “micro­der­mabra­sion.” It’s a facial scrub that helps to smooth away wrinkles.

But the prob­lem is, she used the term “micro­der­mabra­sion.” But no one under­stood that. Sure, the term has been bandied about among der­ma­tol­o­gists and beauty salons. And most peo­ple may have heard it before. But most of them don’t really know what it means. Plus, the only ben­e­fit men­tioned was “skin regen­er­a­tion.” What the heck is that?

So after some inves­ti­ga­tion, I real­ized that her lotion offers three main benefits.

• It reduces the appear­ance of wrinkles,
• It comes in a easy-​​to-​​use home­care kit,
• And it’s gen­tle on skin, or “pH balanced.”

But these are not ben­e­fits let alone ideas her tar­get mar­ket can eas­ily appre­ci­ate. Again, they may under­stand what these are, and they likely under­stand what they mean. But they don’t fully under­stand what those ben­e­fits mean at an inti­mate level.

So, I told her to change it to:

“Reverse the aging process and give your skin a youth­ful radi­ance with our non-​​acidic, non-​​greasy facelift in a jar! Just imag­ine… no incon­ve­nient clin­ics, no risks asso­ci­ated with harsh chem­i­cals peels or injec­tions, and no costly doc­tors or painful surg­eries. Get beau­ti­ful skin in hours in the com­fort of your own home! It’s like get­ting the power of a sand­blaster applied with the gen­tle­ness of vel­vet glove!”

There are many more ways of apply­ing upwords to your sales copy. Here are some brief exam­ples of how to mold your mes­sage in order to com­mu­ni­cate more effectively…

1) Rep­e­ti­tious Words

As the adage goes, “Rep­e­ti­tion is the par­ent of learning.”

Rep­e­ti­tion aids com­pre­hen­sion and increases reten­tion, espe­cially of com­plex or crit­i­cal ideas. But the objec­tive is not to repeat the same words over and over. It’s to use dif­fer­ent exam­ples to illus­trate your point and drive the idea home.

To that end, sub­sti­tute cer­tain words with syn­onyms and add new pieces of infor­ma­tion each time the idea is repeated. Here’s an exam­ple to show you. In order to drive the idea that pri­vacy poli­cies on a web­site help to increase sales, it can be repeated with:

• “Pri­vacy poli­cies pro­mote purchases,”
• “Pri­vacy state­ments increase sales,”
• “Con­fi­den­tial­ity is a key to online success,”
• “Post­ing a pri­vacy pol­icy is prof­itable,” etc.

2) Emo­tional Words

Words are not mes­sages in them­selves. They are sym­bols. They are cho­sen in order to sym­bol­ize the mes­sage we intend to say and hope­fully get oth­ers to understand.

Dif­fer­ent words mean dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. As such, they can be inter­preted dif­fer­ently. While sev­eral words can be used to com­mu­ni­cate a sin­gle mes­sage, your choice of words is the most impor­tant deci­sion you will ever make.

Words can actu­ally alter the impact of your mes­sage. For example:

• Instead of “cost,” say “investment,”
• Instead of beau­ti­ful “teeth,” say beau­ti­ful “smiles,”
• Instead of “skinny,” say “slim” or “slender,”
• Instead of “prod­ucts” or “ser­vices,” say “solutions,”
• Instead of “cost-​​effective,” say “return on investment,”
• And instead of “house,” say “home.”

3) Pos­i­tive Words

As my friend and copy­writer, Rachel McAlpine, often says, “Avoid using neg­a­tive words — say what it is, not what it isn’t.” I agree. Rachel is absolutely right on the money.

Speak­ing of cos­metic surgery, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a cos­metic sur­geon him­self who also wrote the best­seller “Psycho-​​Cybernetics,” states that the brain is a goal-​​seeking organ.

He said our brains need a goal in order to function.

For exam­ple, if I told you to not think of a white car­na­tion, you will have hard time since your brain needs a goal. It will nat­u­rally pic­ture what it is sup­posed to avoid. The mind needs a ref­er­ence point and will tend to think about what it is being suggested.

On the other hand, if I asked you to think of a pink car­na­tion instead of a white one, you will think of a pink car­na­tion. (And you won’t think of a white one!) I gave your mind a goal rather than tak­ing one away from it. I replaced it, in other words.

By stat­ing what some­thing isn’t can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive since it is still direct­ing the mind, albeit in the oppo­site way. If I told you most den­tal work is pain­less, you’ll still focus on “pain” in the word “pain­less,” even though pain­less has a pos­i­tive meaning.

Here are some exam­ples of using pos­i­tive words:

• Instead of say­ing “inex­pen­sive,” say “economical,”
• Instead of “this pro­ce­dure is vir­tu­ally pain­less,” say “there’s lit­tle discomfort,”
• And instead of “this soft­ware is error-​​free,” say “con­sis­tent” or “stable.”

Also, one of the most neg­a­tive words we use is the word “but.”

“Buts” can turn any mes­sage, which in essence may be pos­i­tive, into a neg­a­tive. Plus, a state­ment fol­lowed by the word “but” can sub­tly com­mu­ni­cate that what was said up to that point was a lie or unim­por­tant, and what fol­lows is the truth or the real message.

Remem­ber when a for­mer girl­friend or boyfriend dumped you? They prob­a­bly said: “You’re really nice and I like going out with you, but…” I’m sure you know the rest.

Con­se­quently, leave the “but” out. Rather, use “and” and then focus on the positive.

For exam­ple, say you’re a web­site designer. One day, a client look­ing for a com­plete site redesign asks you for a quote. You also real­ize that they are cost-​​conscious.

So instead of say­ing, “It’s a great web­site but expen­sive,” say “it’s a great web­site and worth every penny.” Instead of, “it’s a large web­site but it’s going to take at least a month,” say “it’s a large web­site and it will only take thirty days to get it up and running.”

Can you see the difference?

We are all dif­fer­ent. We all come from dif­fer­ent back­grounds. We each have a unique edu­ca­tion, expe­ri­ence, and envi­ron­ment. They all con­di­tion our thinking.

So use analo­gies, metaphors, and imagery in your copy that will make your mes­sage eas­ier to grasp by the major­ity of your market’s set of circumstances.

As Jack Trout once said…

“A word is worth a thou­sand pictures.”

About the Author

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