The always-interesting Freakonomics blog in the NY Times recently cited a recent study that confirms the importance of providing lots of product information in your marketing and sales material.

The MediaPost headline says it all: “Majority Of Online Shoppers Check At Least Four Reviews Before Buying.” Take-away point: A solid 68% do their homework before making a purchase.

As a savvy marketer, how do you respond to this knowledge?

1. First, make sure you satisfy this hunger by providing all the facts and figures your prospects need to make a buying decision. The more complex — or expensive — your product or service, the more information you need to provide.
2. Differentiate yourself. Find something different, unique, special about your widget that nobody else can claim, and emphasize that in your collateral.
3. Make your product data available in a variety of formats to please every kind of buyer: Web page, pdf, print (e.g., spec sheets), free samples, etc. Give the people what they want, the way they want it.
4. Triple-check your facts. Make sure everything is accurate and complete. Fresh eyes find mistakes that eyes tired miss.
5. Add a case study or two. Customer “success stories” demonstrate how you’ve helped other, similar customers in the past. Pretty compelling and persuasive stuff.

Then, of course, you somehow still have to find a way to keep all these facts interesting — better yet, fascinating — to your prospect. After all, you can’t bore someone into buying. A few tips:

• Good copywriting and graphic design are essential. Here’s how it works: An attractive layout catches the eye and encourages further reading. The headline makes you want to read the first sentence. The first sentence makes you want to read the second, then the third, etc.
• Effective copy itself begins by addressing the buyer’s wants, needs, fears, etc. Don’t just start bragging on how great you are. Instead, tell me how my life is going to be better if I make your widget part of my life.
• Balance features and benefits throughout the copy. Don’t just tell me about the advanced anti-lock braking system (feature), for example. Tell me why I should care. Safety, peace of mind, better protection for my loved ones — those are benefits.

And benefits are why people buy.

The mortgage market is in turmoil, thanks to the subprime fiasco. Millions of homeowners face foreclosure, mortgage lenders are losing billions, new loans are impossible to get — hey, wait a minute.

If mortgage loans are so hard to get, why are Countrywide, Ditech and other big lenders still running TV ads every 5 minutes? Even the National Association of Realtors is running ads, saying there’s never been a better time to buy a house. (Better for their members, maybe.)

Despite all the foreclosures, lawsuits and investigations, the mortgage industry is still spending money on ads like a drunken sailor. A big chunk of the buy has shifted to the Internet, but the total spend is staggering.

In fact, they’re spending more now than they did during the height of the housing boom, according to today’s New York Times.

Naturally, what’s good for the advertiser is not necessarily good for the customer. “There may be some good, legitimate offers,” a spokesman for the Federal Trade Commission told the Times. “But it’s a good time for consumers to be especially wary.” Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, adds, “Consumers need to read between the lines of everything (the advertisers) are saying.”

No, not me personally, of course. I’m nearly perfect just the way I am. (cough-cough)

But after nearly three years on Blogger, it was time for this blog to get a facelift. (No Botox shots, however.)

So now this baby has a whole new look, a sporty leather interior and fuel-efficient hybrid engine. It even has its own domain, www.attract-more-customers.com. So gentlemen (and ladies), start your engines and adjust your bookmarks.

Don’t forget, you can also subscribe via RSS by clicking the icon in the right sidebar. That way, every post will come waltzing into your feed reader with no effort on your part. Life is good.

Now if only spring would arrive… (sigh)

What’s in a name? Or any word, for that matter? A lot, it seems.

Take those rebate checks Uncle Sam will soon start mailing out. If the government really wants us to stimulate the economy by encouraging us to SPEND that money, they need a better name than “rebate.”

Like “bonus.”

In a recent experiment, social psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business discovered if you call a rebate a “bonus” instead, the recipients spend twice as much.

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but calling a rebate a “bonus” stimulated a 100% increase in response!

Here’s the reason. A “rebate” was perceived as getting your own money back, so you were less likely to splurge. But a bonus — hey, that’s new money — found money!

Wait a minute, you’re thinking. You mean you can DOUBLE someone’s spending — just by substituting one word for another?

Yes! In fact, finding and using exactly the right word(s) to stimulate spending is what makes a good copywriter worth the money.

Who says winters in Maine are boring?

Another brand shoots itself in the foot. Botox, the popular anti-wrinkle drug, and its competitor, Myobloc, have both been officially linked to dangerous botulism symptoms. In a few cases, the symptoms were so bad that children given the drugs for muscle spasms have died, according to the Food & Drug Administration.

This should not be a shocker. Don’t these wrinkle-challenged women (and men) realize that Botox stands for “botulism toxin?” Score one for truth in labeling, at least.

Don’t they realize they’re letting (in many cases, encouraging) their doctors to inject a deadly poison under their skin — all in the name of vanity?

Is it the doctors? Haven’t plastic surgeons been diligent enough in informing their patients about the risks?

Or is it those damnable TV ads for pharmaceuticals, the ones aimed directly at consumers. You know the type: “Ask your doctor whether this crap is right for you.”

This kind of advertising is outlawed in every country in the world — except two. (The other, I believe, is New Zealand.) And it ought to be outlawed here. Creating a demand for your product or service is one thing. Creating a demand for dangerous drugs is another. It seems to me it’s only a short hop from there… to the creep dealing smack or crack on the street corner. He’s creating a demand, too. “Psst. Hey, man — the first one’s free.”

Waste Management is not in the garbage-hauling business, thank you very much. It’s actually an environmental services company. That’s the brand-bending message contained in the $25-30 million a year the company spends on print and TV ads. To reinforce its message, the New York Times report, the ads highlight:

“… the amount of energy it generates from burning trash each year (enough to power one million homes), the amount of acreage it has set aside for wildlife habitats (more than 17,000 acres), the number of trees it has saved by recycling paper (41 million last year). It printed some of those facts on the sides of its trucks — all of which are now painted green, of course.”

From a marketing standpoint, the company has its work cut out for it. Not only must it overcome a Tony Soprano-style image, there are still memories of those embarrassing Enron-style accounting strategies it employed in the 1990s. And WM’s target audience is about as fuzzy as they come: influencers:

“(They’re) the people who attend public hearings about landfill expansions, who try to have recycling legislation enacted, who lobby their churches or municipalities or school districts to be customers of “green” companies.”

Now the company is pushing its message beyond TV to the Internet. It’s buying ads on several leading newspaper sites including the NY Times, and is negotiating with broadcast and cable stations to put links to its site on their Web pages.

The broad reach and accessibility of the Internet is important, said a company spokesman, because “our goal is no longer just to educate, but to also create a preference for our company over our rivals.”

Sounds like marketing to me…