Good headlines are a courtesy

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With most things related to business, a “yes” is what you’re really going after but a “no” isn’t bad either. Better to hear “no” today than to waste weeks before getting to the same result. This why we’re happy to send business to our competition if it makes sense, as it becomes a win for everyone.

The same is true in marketing. Tricking people into viewing your content isn’t going to do any good for you; you’ll get more generic traffic, but it won’t lead to sales. Why not be up front about what you’re offering?

In David Oglivy’s book “Confessions of an Advertising Man“, he pulled some great thoughts from Barbara Minto’s “The Pyramid Principle” when it comes to headlines. Those thoughts, in part:

Whether you’re crafting an ad or any other kind of writing, summing up your conclusion at the beginning allows readers to immediately understand what you’re trying to say. Minto contends that if you fail to do this, readers will struggle to identify your conclusion as they read—a slow, mentally taxing process. This flawed structure makes your ideas and arguments seem weaker than they are.

Ogilvy emphasizes that a preview-headline can lure readers into the rest of the ad, but Minto contends that a preview can also be valuable for its potential to push away those who don’t need to read it. In other words, previewing your argument allows readers to decide whether they want to keep reading.

For this reason, Minto argues that writing previews is a courtesy.

As you saw, there are two main purposes behind Minto’s idea:

First, you want to help interested users understand your content. It’s similar to the idea of reading a table of contents before diving into a book, so that you can appreciate what’s coming your way.

The second is to provide that courtesy to users that might not have an interest in what you’re offering. Don’t try to trick them to read more; let them go on their way, and you can dig in deep with those that are truly interested in what you have to offer.

SKUs per square foot

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In the books that I read, Costco tends to come up a lot. They’ve grown slowly and steadily for decades, and they’re a business that we should all try to draw lessons from.

Even in books about other companies, such as Joe Coulombe’s “Becoming Trader Joe“, Costco was there. In this case, it was in reference to a metric I had never really thought about before: SKUs per square foot. Put another way, it’s a measure of how many different products are in a given area.

From the book:

“No fixtures. The store would have most of its merchandise displayed in stacks with very little shelving. This implied a lower SKU count: a high-SKU store needs lots of shelves. The average supermarket carries one SKU per square foot. Trader Joe’s carried one SKU per five square feet! Price-Costco, one of my heroes, carried about one SKU per twenty square feet.”

Based on my experience, this seems to add up. Publix seemingly has a different SKU every few inches, whereas Costco will have huge pallets full of the same item. Costco’s method is much easier to manage and grow, but we certainly need Publix for their variety. Both are great, but I hadn’t ever thought about that unique measurement of SKUs per square foot.

The Sunday Summary: Informational keywords, mobile tasks, cold outreach, and creative committees

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, April 7: Informational keywords don’t help your business
The goal is often to get “more traffic”, but a better approach is to get “good traffic”. The mistake I see is when companies work to rank well for informational terms that won’t lead to new customers — it brings traffic to the site, but sales don’t come with it.

Tue, April 8: Who needs to know your plans?
“I took a cue from General George Patton, who thought that the greatest danger was not that the enemy would learn his plans, but that his own troops would not.”

Wed, April 9: What kind of work should be done on mobile?
Do you separate tasks for phone versus computer? Do you ever make big purchases on your phone, or is that “laptop activity”?

Thu, April 10: Cold outreach is a form of the tragedy of the commons
“People are smart enough to see that once spam becomes professionally and socially acceptable, all open systems fall apart.“

Fri, April 11: Committees should never be creative
“Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.”

Sat, April 12: Elon Musk is William Shockley
“Only time will tell how Shockley is remembered by the annals of history: as a visionary, hero, Nobel Prize winner, and Silicon Valley pioneer – or as a fanatical racist who died a lonely man.“

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Elon Musk is William Shockley

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If you’re familiar with the history of computing, you’ve probably heard the name William Shockley. Shockley was a brilliant man and helped make computing today possible, as shown with the Nobel prize for Physics that he won in 1956 for “research on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect“.

He was also a horrible human being. Among other things, he said:

“My research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro’s intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment”

As a result of his behavior (detailed well on his Wikipedia page), he had a difficult time keeping talented people at his company and you can trace many of the largest companies in Silicon Valley back to employees that left his firm.

An article in the BBC from a few years ago offers a solid summary:

Only time will tell how Shockley is remembered by the annals of history: as a visionary, hero, Nobel Prize winner, and Silicon Valley pioneer – or as a fanatical racist who died a lonely man.

To me, this sounds a lot like Elon Musk. The man is brilliant, and has brought amazing scientific contributions to the world, but he’s also struggling to retain his reputation, keep his staff, and keep his companies running smoothly. I think it’s very possible that in 20 years we can look back at some of the great new companies that have sprung up and link many of them back to staff that used to work at Tesla or SpaceX.

Like Elon Musk, not everyone hated Shockley. He put himself on the ticket for Senator in 1982 and while he didn’t do well, he picked up a few thousand votes in the primary.

Elon will continue to have his supporters, but I suspect history will show more similarities to Shockley than most would like to see.

Committees should never be creative

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There are good sides and bad sides to having committees involved with a project. Oversight and a variety of opinions can be helpful, but things can often get bogged down if consensus can’t be reached.

One thing that committees should never try to do, though, is to be creative.

In his classic book “Confessions of an Advertising Man“, David Ogilvy said it simply:

“Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.”

Taking it a bit further, he shared this thought:

“Search all the parks in all your cities; you’ll find no statues of committees.”

Committees can be helpful, but they should be kept under clear restraints when working with a creative project of any kind. Let them criticize, but never let them create.

Cold outreach is a form of the tragedy of the commons

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The tragedy of the commons is the concept that if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. This is generally applied to things like farmland, but I think it can apply to the internet as well, with the “finite, valuable resource” being our attention.

If everyone behaves properly, the resource stays useful for all. If a few people misbehave to take “just a bit more” for themselves, it can encourage everyone to try to take a bit more and destroys the value for everyone.

This is cold outreach in a nutshell. We have an amazing tool with the internet, but as more people try to do shady things to steal a bit of attention, it encourages others to do the same to try to keep up. As I’ve shared from Seth Godin a few times:

“People are smart enough to see that once spam becomes professionally and socially acceptable, all open systems fall apart.“

Techniques like cold calls and spam are tempting, for sure. The cost is essentially zero, and you can potentially make 10 more sales if you just bug 24,990 other people in the meantime.

The internet is unbelievably massive, but the attention of humans is a scare resource and should be respected by everyone or we risk ruining the entire system.

What kind of work should be done on mobile?

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Over the years, I’ve gone through times where I really wanted to optimize the use of my mobile devices. I don’t mean “optimize” in terms of removing things, but the opposite — seeing how much work could be done on mobile-only.

We had a client a few years ago that shared a Powerpoint presentation with us, and he was proud of the fact that he did it entirely on his phone during breaks in his day. It was impressive, but it sounded like an awful task to try to do on there!

These days I’m a bit more focused on keeping things specifically for “computer” use versus “mobile” use. For example, every word of blog post that I write (including this one) is written a computer. While I add quick notes from my phone, I don’t even start a draft on there. It’s a computer task. I still keep most apps on my phone just in case I need them, but I’m trying to limit use on there to do the “real” work on my computer.

This means I’m old.

A hot topic lately is the idea of where you are willing to make big ticket purchases. This article on Thrillist sums it up well with things like this tweet:

How about you?

Do you separate tasks for phone versus computer? Do you ever make big purchases on your phone, or is that “laptop activity”?

Who needs to know your plans?

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The rise of Trader Joe’s was something that most people didn’t see coming, as they stayed under the radar for a long time. In his book “Becoming Trader Joe“, Joe Coulombe shared a lot of great insights from his journey, and this is one that stuck out to me.

He shared how many companies are scared of their competition finding out their plans and beating them to the punch, but that it almost never happens. It’s like I shared last year about our processes at GreenMellen — execution matters way more than learning the steps.

In his book, Coulombe shares that he has more concern about his staff not understanding the plan, saying:

“I took a cue from General George Patton, who thought that the greatest danger was not that the enemy would learn his plans, but that his own troops would not.”

If he got so worried about his plans leaking that even his own team didn’t get it, then he had no chance of success anyhow. It’s also similar to Tim O’Reilly’s famous quote of:

“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”

Don’t worry about others stealing your ideas and plans — they have enough to worry about already, and I promise they’re not worried about you. Teach your staff, execute well, and maybe someday you’ll have a chance to share your story of success like Coulombe did.

Informational keywords don’t help your business

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The world of search engine optimization has been changing dramatically over the past few years, and you can find many of those changes in my SEO category of posts. However, there are still some fundamental truths that people often miss.

A big one is around keyword targeting. The goal is often to get “more traffic”, but a better approach is to get “good traffic”. The mistake I see is when companies work to rank well for informational terms that won’t lead to new customers — it brings traffic to the site, but sales don’t come with it.

For example, if you’re an HVAC company you might try to rank for the phrase “why don’t they still use freon in air conditioners?“. It’s a good question, and might get some good traffic, but who is asking it? It’s unlikely to be someone looking for help right away, and more likely just a general query. You’ll get traffic from it, but it won’t help your bottom line.

Correcting this mistake often leads to a weird result — you’ll get less traffic on your site, but more revenue. Getting better traffic to your site can lead to more sales, even if the overall volume of traffic is down a bit. Rand Fishkin recently shared a great “5-Minute Whiteboard” video that unpacked this further, and I encourage you to check it out.

Traffic from those informational keywords isn’t hurting you, but it’s giving you weird data and isn’t supporting your goals. Focus instead on terms that convert and you may seen the fun mix of traffic dipping and revenue rising, which is ultimately your main goal anyhow.

The Sunday Summary: Resumes, Signal, and clarity of memory

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, March 31: Putting out resumes? Have NotebookLM take a look first
This prompt has been great: “We’ll be interviewing this person for senior designer role at our agency. Based on their website and resume, what are some questions we should ask to dig into any interesting areas of theirs?“

Tue, April 1: Why is Signal problematic for the government?
If Signal is a solid, secure app, then what’s the problem?

Wed, April 2: Shake it off and change direction
“Sam Walton is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I’ve ever known. And once he sees he’s wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction.”

Thu, April 3: Recording the journey
“How I wish, on just one of those nights, I’d had a tape recorder. Or kept a journal, as I did on my trip around the world.”

Fri, April 4: Friction for you is more friction for the bad guys
Technical security is making all of our lives a bit more difficult. Between two-factor authentication, passkeys, and other technical hurdles, things are getting a bit more complex all the time. However, those little bits of inconvenience for you are much larger inconveniences for those that are trying to hack you.

Sat, April 5: The clarity of a memory doesn’t reflect the accuracy of it
Memory can be a frustrating thing, as I often struggle to find the answers that I know I have somewhere in my head. The more frustrating thing is that even if I have a clear memory of something, that memory might not be accurate. The event that you remember from 20 years ago “like it was yesterday” may have been nothing like what your memory is telling you.

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.