One sentence that helps people understand what you do and why they’d want to work with you, buy your product, or sign up for your event.
Why is writing the “why” so hard?
Years in the business of writing our client’s websites has taught us that crafting the language of “why” is incredibly challenging for brands and their marketing teams.
And for good reason.
First, long before they have to get the first sentence of their websites right, a lot of brands fail to commit to a single target customer. They want to keep their appeal large, their Total Addressable Market as wide as possible.
Narrowing an audience sounds a lot like potentially missing out on sales, a nail-biting proposition. This failure to commit prevents companies from being able to communicate why their why is important to the customer.
The second reason that getting the “why” right is hard, is that many businesses get distracted – investing in large, elaborate marketing efforts.
Buying giant email lists.
Running SEO campaigns targeting tough keywords to rank for.
Investing in perpetual content creation, trying to keep the attention on themselves.
Lots of times, these efforts find companies investing vast sums of money in their SEO and lo and behold, their attribution numbers go up!
Good news, you say.
But wait, the numbers go up, yet somehow these companies still lag behind in gaining new customers.
It’s as if all these new eyeballs come to the website and find nothing worth staying for.
A lot of companies are proficient at creating marketing plans.
Few are great at creating customer acquisition plans.
When we stand back and look at the numbers, both widening one’s audience and elaborate marketing efforts generally end up as exhausting and wasteful endeavors.
Companies end up losing more than customers with their un-targeted spaghetti-at-the-wall tactics. They lose reputation, revenue, and viability too.
Write a love song.
The average conversion rate for an e-commerce website is 2%. That means 98% of the people who come to the page don’t buy something.
98%.
If that number seems disheartening, it’s because it is. We’re in flyers-on-the-sidewalk territory.
A great first sentence anchors your efforts. It communicates boldy that you know your customer. You know who you serve best.
I often compare this approach to a love song.
Adele didn’t write a love song for a million people. She wrote it for one. But it was so well written to that one person, that millions of other people still connect with it in their own way.
Be that specific, you wonder?
You must.
When they didn’t have to rely on online sales, many companies were able to rest on their physical location as part of their value.
But we live in a fully digital world now.
Distributed teams AND distributed services are a real part of our present, and an essential part of the future. When someone has the choice between your company or another who does something similar, it’s going to be a great first sentence that makes the difference.
Here’s Frank Fulco, of America’s Beauty Show, talking with MC’s Joe Martin about crafting that one sentence love song for their upcoming trade show.
America’s Beauty Show’s competitors used inauthentic, generic messaging.
Competitor #1: The nation’s leading network of beauty industry events and world-class educational programming.
Competitor #2: Registration opens in March. Please check back for more information.
Competitor #3: The leading B2B event in the Americas dedicated to all sectors of the beauty industry, including a new edition in Miami in 2024.
America Beauty Show’s original first sentence: Celebrating The Next 100 Years of Beauty
NEW! First sentence: Crazy-inspiring beauty show packed with original people and badass hair.
The sentence is simple. It’s easy to understand. It’s unique and has a feeling attached to it that is dramatically different from their competitors.
If you take nothing else away, pocket this: Simplicity used to be a luxury for brands 20 years ago. Now it’s a necessity.
Find a clear, compact message that helps communicate what you do, who you do it for, and why they’d want to work with you.
After going through our 6-Week Process, Frank and his marketing team at LeadLab Media were able to do just that – tailor their marketing with real clarity.
Dana Todd, CMO of America’s Beauty Show talks about how the process helped to yield the right results.
All teams are now equipped with a first sentence that’s as unique as they are, a new hero area for their website, and sales arguments to use in upcoming promotional material.
Check out their new first sentence as a part of their 2024 show, and tell your salon friends about America’s Beauty Show happening in Rosemont, IL this April.
Then if you’re ready to have the best damn first sentence on your website, drop us a line.
