Doh! I forgot to publish.
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It occurred to me I hadn’t posted my latest research. Michael Fortin had a copywriting tool on his list and it was a doozy… it included rhyming words.
Who cares?
Well, a while back I had this macro software, and I had created a little program that would score words, it could grab words out of a particular page and score each word using my scoring software. When I tabulated the results I discovered that the word “no” had a negative score. I also notice that the word KNOW also had a very negative score and so my idea was that you should not be using the word “know” in your sales copy either.
Because it sounds the same. So now I have this copy writing tool that gives me a long list of rhyming words and sure enough, you go to score a list of words that sound like NO and you end up with a bunch of very low scoring words.
So here’s what I discovered:
Actually it’s the SOUND of the word that is having the effect. When a person gets to the call to action, they have a positive action path and a “no” path. If you have used the word “No” a few times in your sales copy, you’ve planted the seeds of self-destruction.
Or “Know”.
Or even “now”.
whoa -6
throw -8
toe -11
tow -11
stow -11
stowe -11
towe -11
mow -14
moe -14
mo -14
tho -15
though -15
pro -20
show -23
doh -34
doe -34
dough -34
noh -37
noe -37
You can see from this rhyming list that even letter sequences aren’t the cause of sales impact. Actually it looks like there is a “Homer Simpson” effect causing sales to drop.
The exception being “flow”, which is one of Clayton’s “water” words.
Thanks to the cool rhyming tool , I’ve been able to test my hypotheses.
Unfortunately, there is no “Yes” equivalent to “Doh!”
Let me correct that….I havn’t found one yet. I need to work with the rhyming tool some more. Maybe rapp’as are on to something.
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