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Comment by vsl2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about having "silver bullet" advertisements be your landing page and text ad. It looks suspiciously like spam or some kind of con (think about the majority of "Work From Home" ads). Every reasonably smart person I know wouldn't trust "silver bullet" ads enough to seriously consider paying for the product being advertised. In the particular example, most doctors are supposedly smarter than the average population and so I think the conversion rate would be even lower.

I don't claim to know a better way to garner attention through advertisement than eye-catching (yet suspicious) claims, but I think the described method helps you determine the interest level in your product from a small subset (more trusting or naive, depending on your point of view) of your target audience, not your total target audience. Maybe there's a known "naive-to-total" extrapolator that I'm not aware of.

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There's a balance to be struck because the polar opposite - discussing features rather than benefits - is the norm and it's worse than ineffective for the average user, it's confusing noise.

I just came back from running two days of usability tests on-site at a security software company. I wish everyone could see the test subjects' eyes glaze over the typical marketing text describing exactly how the thing works and conversely, how they'd light up about 20 minutes into it when I'd guide and moderate them towards the hidden nuggets of real tangible value, like "4x faster than Norton" or a chart showing that the memory usage was a tiny fraction of competitors.

I agree that there needs to be a balance and furthermore, that finding that right balance is very difficult. Probably why marketing whizzes get paid the big bucks.

In your example though, there is difference in that you're an actual person representing a reputable company on-site, not a random anyone-could-have-created-this advertisement on the anonymous web. From more trusted sources, I'd be interested in hearing the benefits and not necessarily the features. But in an environment where seemingly every third website activates my anti-virus software and I read about data hacks every week, I definitely don't trust Internet ads filled with hyperbole and exclamation points.

It's true that people in a usability test don't behave exactly the same as at home, but that actually proves my point. If they're obviously trying to be positive and helpful (no matter how much you tell them to relax and be honest) because they're constantly saying nice things about the site or app, then it's even more noteworthy to hear any negative comments or see that they're confused. Especially in the beginning of the session when their energy is higher.

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