3 Tips On How You Can Double Your Results by Using the Right Words
Words are powerful. Why? Because you can use them to move people to action.
The action might be to read an article (like this one), to buy a product, or to willingly take up a new habit.
Martin Luther King used words to help bring our nation closer together.
Winston Churchill used words to help defeat Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
My 12-year old daughter is currently using words to talk me into getting a cat (even though I don’t want one). Yes, words are powerful!
This article contains three tips that you can use to make your communications even more powerful. To set the stage for the tips, here’s how I recently used the tips and the result of using them.
Recently I began selling a programming course. Initially the course was selling at a rate of about 3 courses per week. The name of the course is “Enhance Your Skillset with Perl”. The subtitle stated, “Learn Perl to Become a More Efficient, Effective, and Valuable I.T. Professional”.
After a month of sales, I decided to tweak the subtitle of the course. My goal was to make the subtitle more focused on what the student would experience if he or she signed up for the course. I changed it to, “See Perl work, Hear Perl explained, Practice Perl to be an even more Skilled, Versatile, and Valuable I.T. Professional”. Within minutes of my making the change, the course sold 2 units. Sales went from an average of 0.6 units sold per day in the first month to 1.12 courses sold per day in the second month. So far, here in the third month, the course is selling at a 1.42 per day clip. Thus, if the current sales rate holds up, the subtitle change will have resulted in a more than doubling of my sales.
Here’s what was done to make the subtitle more effective.
Focus on the Listener/Reader
Initially, the course subtitle was focused on what the prospective student might become from taking the course, i.e. “a More Efficient, Effective, and Valuable I.T. Professional”. I thought that subtitle was good when I created it.
However, I tweaked the subtitle to include a bit more about how the course would help the professional reach that desired end. The takeaway from this is that when attempting to sell, we should focus on the end result our product or service will help the potential buyer attain. And it may help to explain, in brief, how our product will help the client get there.
The Rule of Three
Next, I used the “Rule of Three”. The “Rule of Three” is a communications principle that says that people are more receptive to lists of items delivered in groups of three. You can see this principle in use in many places. For example, there were three musketeers, three blind mice, and three little pigs. Notice that the wolf in the Three Little Pigs delivered his ominous pronouncement in a list of three. He said, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!”
Another well-known list of three is given in the Declaration of Independence. It states that among the unalienable rights are, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
There are two groups of three in my course title. One is “See, Hear, and Practice”. The second is “Skilled, Versatile, and Valuable”. The rule of three makes both lists easy to consume for the prospective student.
Involve the Senses
Thirdly, I involved as many senses (see, hear, practice, i.e. touch) in the subtitle as I could.
Each of us has a preferred learning preference. Some prefer auditory (hearing) styled learning. Others like their learning content to be visual (seeing). Others may have a preference for hands-on (kinesthetic) learning. People also may enjoy some combination of two or more of those learning methods.
The subtitle to the course says, “See Perl work, Hear Perl explained, Practice Perl”. This covers the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning methods. This lets the person reading the subtitle know how he or she will be taught in the course.
Also, this subtitle causes the mind of the person reading it to imagine doing those three things. This creates a desire on the part of the reader to want to engage in the course.
In summary, to make your titles and subtitles as powerful as possible, use these three tips:
- Put yourself in your prospective buyer’s shoes when you create your title and subtitle. What does the client want that your product will help him or her attain? How will your message or product help the buyer get what he or she wants? State, in brief, both what your product will help your client achieve and how your product will help the client achieve it.
- If possible, use the Rule of Three. Doing so will make your title/subtitle more pleasing, more persuasive, and more powerful than any other number of items.
- Use language that involves as many of the senses as possible. Use words like “see”, “picture”, and “bright blue” to engage the visual sense of your reader. Use words like “touch”, “grasp”, or “practice” to excite the reader’s kinesthetic sense. Use words like “hear”, “listen”, and “rang” (as in, ‘the bell rang’) to appeal to the auditory sense of your reader/listener.
