a campaign by @shanemacsays

Running a business, executing a successful marketing campaign, analyzing your sales data, all of this can be very complicated. But the experience your customers have shouldn’t be.

Simple is everything

Today I gave $5 to charity: water, partly because I believe in the cause (giving people access to clean drinking water), but mostly because Shane Mac asked me to. Shane explained to me that if he raises $5,000 (enough to build one well), charity: water founder Scott Harrison will play him in a ping-pong match in NYC.

He also told me that he didn’t want me to give much. He just wanted me to give up my coffee today.

So I did.

But really, why?

The reason Shane is 5 bucks closer to building a well is a combination of four mind-numbingly simple things:

1. A simple benefit statement: help people get clean water and see Shane take on Scott in an epic ping-pong match
2. Removing barriers to objection: jeez, who can’t skip coffee (or whatever else you can buy for $5) for one day
3. A personal invitation
4. charity: water’s super easy giving process (no extra account creation, just enter your credit card info, and you’re signed up)

Sure, Shane will need to gain four to ten times as many people at $5 per donation. But giving big isn’t the point.

Giving small because it’s easy, that’s the point.

[update]: Lest I forget, the invitation is important too. Give small, and invite 10 people to do the same.

What are you over-complicating?

The experience has really pushed me to ask what overly complicated things I’m doing in my day job that could be standing in the way of sales. And I’ve come up with with a couple of things already:

» The process of buying online is too difficult.

I need to make wrangling the shopping cart easier.

I am not alone in this. Think of the last shopping cart experience you had. Unless it was at a site where you have one click shopping enabled, it probably took five or six clicks to finish the transaction.

Recent research by Foviance shows that memorable online purchases are easy and quick.

charity: water’s giving process was the quickest and easiest online transation I’ve ever completed. Make sure to try it out for yourself (hint, hint).

» I have too much copy in some places.

If there are two paragraphs, why not one? If there’s a paragraph, what about bullets?

I’m not alone in the need to simply this either. I mean, you’ve been to GoDaddy, right?

Two great examples of clearly communicated value are jivaldi and Shopify. Each has just three bullets above the fold. There’s nothing to distract you, just a simple presentation of what they want you to know.

When I implement these two really simple changes (pardon the pun), I’ll immediately add value to the experience customers have when they’re buying my products.

It’s something I can’t afford not to do.

How about you?

What could you stand to simply? I’d love to hear what you’re working on.

And would you think about giving up your coffee today? Even if it’s $3, please head over to Shane’s mycharity: water page and make a donation. Then, come back here and tell the world you made a difference.

-Andrew

Image Credit: Shane Mac

Related Posts

1. There are no blog how-tos for the hard stuff
2. A case for rethinking product and brand
3. Community Management Should Include In-House Culture
4. The Voice of the Org in Social Business
5. What we can learn from Boone Oakley

Tags: charity: water, easy, Marketing, simple

If you liked this post, subscribe to get updates via RSS or email