Atlanta – Straight down the middle

Postcards from Rethink Central

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Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript:

My name is Liz Scully. I’m a business strategist and location independent. Which means in my nomad life I travel a lot.

Recently I was changing flights at Atlanta airport.

If you know that airport, it’s huge, you spend a long time trudging from terminal to terminal. There are very wide corridors and they have almost trains of those little carts that help people that can’t move so quickly or the elderly move from terminal to terminal.

They’re driven by quite bolshie Atlanta people who are used to the idiocies of the local travelers and the foreigners not getting out of the way of their carts. So they shout at people. And what they shout is  – it took me a long time to realise – it sounds like just vowel sounds when it comes out.

What drivers of carts are actually shouting is ‘straight down the middle’.

I think, what they mean is ’I’m coming straight down the middle. Could you move out of the way?’

I know this because I was walking straight down the middle minding my own business and was being beeped and shouted at by someone behind me. I realized there was this little train of old people who needed to get to places.

The thing is, ‘straight down the middle’ is neither a normal sentence or it’s not a command.

It has no instructions in it. If they’d said ‘Coming through!’ at least that is ‘This is what we’re doing.’ It’s got a verb in it for a start. ‘Stand to the side! Let us through!’ They are commands. It’s easy.

The reason this really stuck in my mind is this is what I often see with my clients when they’re not being clear in their business communication. So if on a sales page, it’s not clear what you want somebody to do then they’re not going to take that action. If they don’t know that this is the buy button, if it’s not clear that this is the join button.

The very, very first sales page I made ten years ago, I thought I’d made it very clear where the buy button was – it wasn’t clear. That’s the same equivalent to ‘straight down the middle’.

So, what I would love for you to do today is just slide back and

look at some of your calls-to-action:

Are you making it absolutely clear?

And, are they actual calls-to-action?

Is it perfectly clear what you want someone to do?

Is it used in the most simple language of people that do not know what you’re talking about, people that are new to your world?

Just like to the people driving the OAPs around in Atlanta it’s clear to them that we come straight down the middle, we need you to stand out the way. To them it’s clear. To me as a foreigner, it made no sense at all.

So, have a quick review. Even if it’s just going back and looking at some of your buy buttons or your calls-to-action and see where you go.

And as a clear call to action, if you have questions about your business that you’d like me to answer, come along to our friendly Q&A calls. I run them every other month. There is a little box below where you can drop your email in. It would be lovely to see you.

Next live call is October 10, 2023 - Noon Eastern / 6pm UK.
Come along to ask your questions about launches, strategies for marketing, Masterminds or whatever you're stuck on in your business.

Add your email below and I'll send you the zoom info for the calls. See you there!

Or come say hello on Instagram here.  I microblog daily.