Brand Messaging: Choose Your Words Carefully…

Years ago, when I was the marketing manager for Hallmark’s greeting card products, we discovered something very interesting from an in-store merchandising test: using the exact words customers use in their purchase decision making process on point-of-purchase (POP) signing increases sales significantly. Website usability studies have demonstrated similar results: using the exact words customers use in trying to find something on links significantly increases click-throughs and user satisfaction. In-store and online studies also both found that the order in which one is led through the process must also match how customers shop.

For instance, when sending a greeting card, most people think of the recipient first and the occasion next. So, one must first direct people to ‘father’ and then to ‘birthday.’ And one should be sure that ‘father’ works better than ‘dad’ or ‘pop.’ The type of card, serious versus humorous, is a tertiary consideration for most shoppers so it must be the third level of navigation. (For those shoppers for whom it is the first level, we offered the Shoebox brand in a separate display.) We are currently designing an Adirondack Youth Treks website based upon how (and in what order) people look for information. So, people might click on ‘treks’ first, which will lead them to a page that has click-throughs for ‘backpacking,’ ‘canoeing’ and ‘combination’ treks. This may seem obvious, but how many organizations formally test different word choices and navigation paths for their web sites or POP signing? Optimizing the navigational words and paths affect sales significantly.

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One comment

  • Nic Mitham

    August 30, 2006 at 5:18 pm

    A great post. Clearly the psychology behind purchase decision is being demonstrated here.
    We see similar results from our ppc campaigns. The highest performing campaigns always have a right words in the right combination and focus on the words potential clients are using to search. This then leads to us creating sub-campaigns almost down to the specific phrase (and its permutations).
    Test, test and test again.

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