A button is the survey answer you hear more often than any other. It opens the door, your message goes in through it, and you give the button itself back to the public in the words the public used.
That sounds simple, and still there are three common mistakes: thinking the button is a deep insight, thinking it is the message itself, and polishing its wording before you publish.
What a button is
According to the source behind the booklet, a button is the primary datum you get from a survey: the answer that was given more times than any other. There is no interpretation in it and no insight, only what came back most.
The source's example explains why it works. Suppose you ask ten people, or a thousand, what they most want from a car tyre, and seven in every ten say durability. That is the button. According to the source, it is the point of agreement of that public on tyres.
When you use that button with the same public, you have agreement. Then, according to the source, they are ready to hear what you say about tyres.
In a small business it can look like this. Suppose an installer finds that his public's button is no mess left behind. Quality and price are nowhere near the top of that public's list.
Likewise a consultant finds that two of her publics name entirely different buttons for one and the same service. The service is identical, and each public enters through a different door. A button always belongs to a particular public, and the source speaks of using it with that public.
The button is the opening, the message is the substance
Here is the commonest mistake with this tool. The source says buttons have their uses, but the message is what any promotion is really made of. Buttons, in the source's words, are only the grease that gets the message across.
Put simply, the button earns you the public's attention, and the message is what you do with it. If you stop at the button, you have the attention and nothing to say.
For the installer in the example, no mess left behind starts the conversation. What he says next, how exactly he works and what the job includes, is the message.
Now suppose an owner puts the button in the headline, in the body and in the sign-off. There is no message in that, only an echo of one phrase.
Do not improve their wording
This is the hardest part for owners who enjoy writing, and the source addresses them directly. School teaches you to be original, but “communication is duplication.”
It is simple. You run a survey, the public hands you a button, and you hand it back to the public. The source calls that duplication, and says it works. According to the source, when you write ads, copy or promotion, you have no need to do anything else with the button.
So the words you write are the words they said. A polished version of them is no longer the words they said.
Suppose customers say I don't have to chase you. The owner writes exactly that, and does not turn it into high availability.
Now suppose an owner who turns nobody at the bank understands me into personally tailored financial guidance. None of his customers recognises themselves in the second sentence.
Why their words, specifically
According to the source, the button is the point of agreement of the public. The agreement came in those words, so when you swap them, you swap the part that worked.
The bank example shows it. Nobody at the bank understands me is a sentence a person says about themselves. Personally tailored financial guidance is a sentence a business says about its own service. In the first, a person can recognise themselves. In the second, they hear a business talking about itself.
This also connects the chapter to the ones before it. The finding out, the wording of the questions and the count were all meant to bring you to one word or one sentence that the public said. If you polish it, you delete part of that work.
The booklet has two exercises for this chapter, one for spotting and one for building, and self-check questions. The booklet as a whole deals with the question of who you are talking to and how you find out what they want to hear, and the button is where the two questions meet.
The sentence your customers repeat most is already written. What is left for you is to leave it as it is, and to say something worth listening to after it.