I’ve never liked listening to gripes. When my kids were young and would start griping about something, I would tell them, “You’re only allowed to gripe in duck language.” Then I would illustrate, “Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack.”
Corny, I know. But it made the point, while breaking the tension.
But as a marketer, I’ve learned how important it is to listen to what customers are griping about, and to empathize with and even key in on those gripes.
If you want to make sure that your headlines are hitting customers’ hot buttons, understanding their gripes is an excellent place to start. Because when you’re talking about what they are griping about—and how you’ll help solve it—you’ve got their attention.
In fact, keying in on a customer’s gripe is much more effective than simply hyping your product or service!
I’ll give you an example.
Emergency Medicine Physicians (EMP) is a company that staffs emergency rooms for hospitals all across the country. So they have an ongoing need to recruit new ER docs as they graduate from the top medical schools. They asked me to help them develop a recruiting program.
I interviewed a number of their staff ER docs—people who had worked for other emergency medicine companies and then moved to EMP. I asked them what their gripes had been at their former job and how EMP had solved some of those problems. And believe me, I got an earful!
Then we incorporated some of those gripes into headlines. Here’s one:
You got the pay and location you wanted, but now you’ve also got
MBA TYPES TELLING YOU HOW TO PRACTICE EMERGENCY MEDICINE.
NOT AT EMP
I think you can see the gripe that led to this headline. And the copy went on to explain that if you came to work for EMP, you wouldn’t have that problem. Here’s another one.
You joined a cozy little independent group,
And now you want to be the director, but
BEFORE YOU CAN BECOME DIRECTOR, THREE PEOPLE WILL HAVE TO DIE OR RETIRE.
NOT AT EMP
Another gripe! We used headlines like these in ads and postcards, and we got literally hundreds of responses. So we knew we hit some nerves.
You want to make your ads or mailers more effective? Skip the hype and go for the gripe.
