According to digital marketing expert Scott Cunningham, there’s actually a (relatively) easy approach that everyone can follow that involves capturing the attention of your customers and keeping them interested while you tell them why they should buy from you. It involves sharing a variety of attributes and values about your company and products, backed up by some useful ChatGPT prompts.

As a presenter at Affiliate Summit East, Cunningham, who was given the nickname “Scott-ify” for his prowess with the Shopify platform, broke down a five-step process that has been proven to get almost unlimited sales from all types of clients.

Cunningham has been helping clients enhance their Shopify experience for more than 10 years. He’s the founder and CEO of SocialLite, a marketing agency and Shopify partner – and 2022’s Digital Marketing Agency of the Year.  He’s also co-founder of Merchant Mastery, a series of courses and a mentorship program available through Thinkify, an online education platform.

He began his presentation by sharing an easy but ultimately unproductive and expensive strategy that many marketers fall for. He calls it “chasing channels,” referring to putting all your ad money into different social media channels, and then moving to another one, and another one, when you’re not getting the results you are hoping for.

“My solution is to understand your customers better,” he said. “Instead of chasing channels, we should be working on how to make our pitches more prudent. If we win at getting their attention, we win at getting the sale.”

This focus requires identifying your ideal customer and creating an avatar of them -- not just their buying power and basic demographic info, but identifying their interests, values, how they spend an average day, and what they hate and love. He suggests creating a Before and After grid breaking down these personas, including what will make them immediately want your products once they learn about them, and how their lives will be better after the purchase.

He used the example of “Steakhouse Sam,” a middle-aged man who loves to barbecue in his backyard and is always looking for tools to enjoy this hobby/lifestyle even more and build his skills on the grill.

Cunningham’s five-part positioning formula is designed to make your products attractive to customers and build up your sales. Though No. 1 is firm, Nos. 2-5 are interchangeable in order that they can be presented to potential customers in different areas, such as ads, sites, or social media. 

• Hooks. These are casual questions designed to immediately get people’s attention. They’re not designed to give great details about your product such as specifics like durability, cost-savings or why they should buy. Hooks are more about letting readers know you might have the best solution to a particular problem or something that can immediately improve their life.

The form of these hooks is based on your identification of your avatars and what they need and don’t need in their life. Your grid can have different hooks for each of your avatars, which gives you a plan for testing to see which ones have the better response.

In Steakhouse Sam’s case, the hooks may relate to ways to prevent a bad barbecue experience. The messages are casual, and can even start with “Hey…”

• Transactional Values. This is the first of the important Value Attributes that can be emphasized to boost sales. These are the financial incentives that may interest potential customers. Cunningham suggests making a grid of all the ideas that you can offer potential customers or keep customers coming back, everything from free shipping at certain purchase levels to deep discounts for new customers.

Along with specific items like “free gift with purchase,” this is an opportunity to emphasize factors like “not many in stock” to emphasize scarcity and grow demand.

Ultimately, if you get customers excited enough about the other attributes, they may not be as interested in price.

• Brand Values. This attribute gives viewers information about your company and what it holds to be important. Who started it and why? Has the company stayed in the same family for years or even generations? What charities does the company support regularly? What standards and practices are important to focus on? (Such as working hard to buy American-made products, hiring veterans, or sponsoring a community sports team.) All of these areas can make a customer feel more connected and ultimately more loyal to a company, rather than just buying something.
   
• Influencer Values. What do other people think about your company and your products? More customers are using online reviews to guide their purchasing and learn what the online community thinks about the products and the overall shopping experience. These attributes can include testimonials from fellow customers and even information about where to find certain products in certain states. “Do people really like this brand? Is this company legitimate? Can people vouch for buying things from them?” Cunningham asked.
   
• Function Values. This attribute focuses on the product for sale and why the customer needs it to make their life better. It can include specifics about what the product is made out of, why it’s special, and what you can do with it. For a sala dressing that would interest Steakhouse Sam, Cunningham suggested things like the healthy ingredients plus “also works well as a marinade and dip.”

The final component of the stack formula blends the five positioning items with ChatGPT.

Cunningham suggests starting with creating hooks about your different avatars and feeding these into the GPT prompt, starting with the following questions:

• Name
• An activity they do with your product
• Three activities they do that are related to your product
• Two values they have

You’ll receive a better fleshing-out of the avatar and what they love. ChatGPT will even come up with some verbiage that can appeal to this persona, starting with a hook. In the ongoing example of Steakhouse Sam, it can appeal to his interest in barbecuing better with quality ingredients.

From these, request five hooks as a statement, five as a question, and five as a “Challenge to their undesirable state.”

Step 2 is to feed the TBIF values into the prompt as well as customer testimonials.

Step 3 is to ask ChatGPT to create copy for emails, landing pages and ads for each product and corresponding avatar.

Cunningham wrapped up his presentation by encouraging people to keep on testing and validating all sorts of combinations of the different “TBIF” values and attributes to see what messages are the most effective at promoting likability and loyalty.

“You don’t even have to use all five at once or in order,” he said.

If this type of information helps your business grow, consider attending Affiliate Summit West, which takes place in February 2025 in Las Vegas. To learn more about tickets and sponsorship opportunities please visit https://www.affiliatesummit.com/west.