What Makes Good Selling Technical Copy?

You know the myth, don’t you? The myth that you can persuade prospects to buy technical products using creativity alone. Just fill that copy chock-full of superlatives and exclamation points, but keep it short, because people won’t read long copy!

No competent advertising copywriter believes this myth, but amateur writers and some clients do. The truth is technical buyers are, first and foremost, technical problem solvers. And those technical problem solvers use two criteria for making their buying decisions: technical factors and buying factors.

Technical factors include performance descriptions, materials considerations, configuration constraints, power limitations, etc. Buying factors emulate marketing issues such as price, availability, delivery and service.

If your business is industrial or highly technical, most of your sales are driven by technical factors rather than by buying factors. Yet, even if buying factors seem to be primary, it’s important to construct your marketing pitches to focus on the benefits of the technical differences your products provide. At all costs, find a way to offer a superior technical solution that solves problems. Keep in mind that when your copy does a good job with a technical argument, the purchasing agents and other buying factor gatekeepers will be constrained, and you can justify a value-added pricing structure.

So, ask yourself…do those two paragraphs of puffy, pun-filled creative prose you or your agency just wrote make a superior technical/business solution argument? If not...look out...it could throw the purchase decision into the hands of a faceless gatekeeper!

Melinda

Do You Optimize? Web Graphics...A Special Case

Time is precious, especially if you’re on the Internet looking for a solution to a problem, such as information on industrial products. How many times have you lost patience with a slow-moving website, laden with large graphic files that take tens of seconds to download? Most people don’t care what your plant looks like or super fancy product visuals if it takes 20...30...45 seconds or even minutes to download to their machine.

With websites playing an ever-increasing role of providing ready access to products, services and information, faster is generally better. That great product glamour shot on your booth that grabs attention at 20 paces in a crowded trade show is NOT the same file you should put on your website. At the same time, don’t settle for a quick shot your plant supervisor took with his camera-phone on the loading dock.

Find the happy medium. A clean, well-lit product shot or illustration that loads quickly tells prospects you not only know your industry, but you also understand your customer’s needs.

Steve