Can Fear-Based Messaging Backfire? (And Other Burning Questions About Calls to Action)

 This Q&A is from a live event that took place on January 28, 2009, Three Steps to Developing Effective Calls to Action. Ahmed Taleb, director of strategic planning at Bulldog Solutions, answered some great questions about A/B testing, cascading calls to action and fear-based messaging. View the on-demand Webinar. 

Question: Is it advisable to use different subject lines or headlines to drive to the same white paper or Webinar—one subject line for one persona, but a different subject line for a different persona? 

Ahmed: I think it's not only advisable but quite effective. At the core of A/B testing is this idea of what is going to resonate the best to drive traffic. So the assumption that there is a blanket message out there that really appeals to everybody is somewhat false. Going through a persona exercise, we realize that there are different needs and different "care-abouts" for each of those groups and each of those levels in the organization. 

What I find often is the issue is not really whether or not it will be effective, but how do we support that from a tactical and operational level? So I'd say there's probably a balance that needs to be achieved between the number of discrete messages going out and simply the heavy lifting required to deploy all those different messages to all those different groups. 

So somewhere in your organization you'll either find a capacity restraint or some other restraint that will help you right-size the number of approaches you undertake. 

Question: Since we can't afford to follow-up on each potential inquiry, I want to use cascading calls to action that qualify the prospect. What are the best practices around that? 

Ahmed: Regarding a potential inquiry, there are two approaches. The first is that if an inquiry is of a very general nature, I've seen many companies drive to very generic solutions, things like FAQs, forum locations or any peer-to-peer-based content sources to answer those inquiries. 

And then there are inquiries that are more urgent. When we're talking about calls to action, we're crafting a path that we think our typical buyer will take. 

In other words, their buying cycle may have 10 steps in it and each of those steps has a discrete need or care-about. There's typically an objection they will have at some point along the way. If one of their inquiries is directly addressing one of those objections or care-abouts, we want to make sure that we're responding to those in a way that matches the level of urgency around that question. 

An example off the top of my head: Say you have a client who is really kicking the tires around, and asking, "Why does your company offering cost 40% more than the market average?" If that's the level of inquiry you're getting, it should be fairly clear that they're looking to disregard you from consideration within their purchase process. Then a white-glove level of response should be used. 

If the inquiries are of a general nature, I would want to drive those into a self-service mode to take the burden off your organization. If the inquiries are more high-importance, then I would definitely step in and handle those in a different way. 

Question: Can using a very aggressive fear- or emotion-based message backfire? 

For decades, it's been doom-and-gloom fear messaging that marketers have gravitated towards. While a fear-based message is effective, you can definitely overdo it. 

I think the point here is not the severity or force behind the message, but more the "hookiness"—how much can you back up your claim? An example: If we were to approach a CIO in today's environment, and hand them a message like, "Is the C-suite secure in the world of IT?" The reaction to this could be, "Well, what does that mean? These are troubling economic times, but there's no evidence to suggest there's greater or less pressure on CIOs to show positive ROI for their organizations." 

However, the same argument may not be true of Marketing or Sales; those are typically areas of high pressure in this kind of economic environment. 

So I like to balance things this way: Think about whether there's enough credibility behind the claim, and then balance that with the potency you're putting behind the message. The backfiring is a reality. Unfortunately there are a lot of "boy who cried wolf" marketing messages that are being put out there. I think most of us would have a feeling for that if we're looking at that kind of copy before it gets put out there.