How long has it been since you added content to your website? A month? Two months? 6 months? A year? Wow. Are you kidding? Small business owners and managers commonly create websites and proceed to do absolutely nothing more with them. By not updating and adding to your website on a regular basis you are missing opportunities to improve your online offers, attract more visitors from search engines, and generate additional sales leads.

Updating Offerings

Your website should always stay updated, especially if you list “Upcoming Events” or “Recent Projects.” This seems obvious and redundant but I commonly see event notices starting with dates from last year and recent projects that were completed 3 years ago. In the very least, keep your website up to date with actual upcoming events, recent projects, and your newest products and services. If you are prone to forget about updating then at least design your site’s copy so it will not appear outdated. For example, use just “Projects” instead of “Recent Projects.” If part of your site is out of date, I am going to assume your services are out of date.

Updating your website is often unappreciated because you should be doing it anyway. It is like being in a grocery store where the shelves have not been “faced.” You might notice when they are messy but pay no attention when they are straight and tidy.

Additional benefit: Updating your site should also attract more attention from search engines, too.

Attract More Visitors

Adding content to your website increases the size of your online footprint and will bring your more visitors over time. You have probably heard about search engine optimization and how important it is but it seems too complex and tricky and you might be skeptical of hiring someone to do it for you.

Well, you should know that content is king in SEO (this is basically a cliche now) and you might be the very best person to add that content to your site. After all, you know your products and customers best and should be able to easily create new content on a variety of subjects that will directly add value for your customers.

There a variety of ways to add content to your site on a regular basis. Writing content under the headings of how-to, comparisons, or specifications are usually easy to write and use as value-adding embedded links (links in the text) in your existing pages. Adding a blog to your site makes it very easy to immediately publish each article without knowledge of html or other online coding.

Generating Sales Leads

Your additional content will attract more visitors from search engines and your updated site will invite people to stay who might have left your outdated one. The combination will bring your more sales leads.

Start a program of updating your site and generating new content on a regular basis and you will see an increase in traffic and sales leads. First start with one new article per week. Do this for at least eight weeks. By the end of the eight weeks you will probably start seeing a small increase in your traffic. I am confident you will want to continue adding new pages after that.

Tags: Copy Writing, increase-sales, online-marketing, online-sales
Posted in Business, Copy Writing, Sales & Marketing

When I first started learning about selling online, my first reaction was, “How boring!”  After all, I had many years of outside sales and marketing experience. I had the “I can always do one more cold call” mentality to build up a business. My impression of selling online was of a person sitting passively, looking blankly at a screen waiting, hoping, willing someone to visit their site, let alone click and covert to a sale.

Boy, was I wrong.

Online sales is challenging in a much different way. While I used brochures and written materials when I was in outside sales, it was really me and extra services that I could offer in conjunction with my product lines that closed the deal. I hardly ever depended on the written word.

Online, the written word is the key to success.

There are some similarities between outside sales and online sales. In online sales, you use quality writing with SEO techniques to draw clients to your site. Then, you work on building a partnership between you and your customers by providing information that your customers need. This is similar to some of the “extras” that I used to provide to my clientele when I was in outside sales.

The difference is that I usually presented this information piecemeal manner over a longer period of time when I was in outside sales rather than upfront on a website. Of course, it is not a bad idea to add new material to your website to keep it “fresh,” just like I brought in new information to my clients as needed.

And, if the purpose of your website is to create leads for your business, you can still use all of the “traditional” sales techniques to work with and close your accounts.

Then, why is it that traditional sales reps can close at a higher rate than online sales?  Prospecting in both outside sales and online sales both include a lot of chaff.  However, online sales has more in common with direct marketing than outside sales.

A good outside sales representative will semi-qualify a potential account before making the first call. In addition, an outside sales representative has other means of qualifying a customer before making that first call, such physically checking out the potential customer’s facility, something an online marketer cannot do. This is one of the reasons that outside sales representatives have a higher closing rate.

In addition, outside sales representatives do not wait for customers to contact them.  While reps hope that someone will call them first after leaving a brochure or card at the receptionist’s desk, reps do not count on it. Outside sales representatives actively pursue accounts until the accounts go cold.

Stated clearly, the customer is more in control of the sales process, at least initially, than with online sales.  For example, if your objective is to get someone to sign up for your newsletter and a potential customer chooses not to at that point, you have no way of responding to their immediate objections except with your copy.

This leads to the biggest reason that I think that outsides sales close at a higher rate than online sales. It is much easier to say “no” to a machine than to a person, particularly if that person is sitting in front of you. And, most successful outside sales people take that “no” as being just for today or this month, but not forever, something a computer cannot do at this point. 

What does this mean for an online marketer? 

It all goes back to the written word.

Since we don’t have the technology today to enable a computer to have a discussion with a potential client, you have to anticipate objections and address them in your materials. Having well written sales copy is a must.

In addition, put a little of “you” into your websites. Many websites that I visit all have the same type of bland information about the company, those who are working to make the company successful, and the company’s product lines. These websites lack the excitement that surely exists within the companies that could help differentiate the sites from their competitors.

While online sales and outside sales pursue different means to bring in customers initially, the objectives are the same: to close and to maintain their clientele.  Both online and outside sales are dynamic and challenging.

Neither of them is boring.

Tags: Copy Writing, online-marketing, online-sales
Posted in Sales & Marketing

Price is a funny thing. Charge a client too much and they think you are ripping them off; charge them too little and they think you are not providing the value they deserve. I have discovered that it is much easier to give clients an overall price per project as opposed to trying to break some of the fees down. But clients always want to understand how we come up with our pricing. Of course pricing depends on how much we pay our team members. So every few months, I have to evaluate our pay structure to make sure that we remain competitive within the market place. Trying to gather information about appropriate rates normally involves visiting several industry web sites, looking at trade magazines and evaluating our current project load. Since I am an advocate of publishing prices for B2B companies, I wanted to answer the question of how much should you expect to pay for a web copy project?

I did a little search and discovered that some of my friends at webmaster world don’t mind paying $5 per hour for a copy writer. As a matter of fact, there is an Indian company that is relentless in sending emails about the quality of their writers and how fast they can turn the material in. I do not know about you, but to write for an American audience, I am a firm believer that the writer must be a native speaker and lives in North America. No matter how much an Indian writer may think he/she understands the culture, watching American movies is not the same as living in this country. I wonder if that Indian company would actually quit emailing me if they read this blog.

Some of the big names in the field of copy writing charge close to $15,000 for creating a sales letter. The logic they follow is simple. A well written sales letter can generate hundreds of thousands in sales. Of course the idea of copy writers getting paid on performance, while popular amongst writers, is not very popular with their clients.

Math is the secret behind paying a copywriter

Before you determine a “correct” rate for web copy services, you need to determine the revenue generated as result of the project. If all you expect from a landing page to generate 10k, I would not think you want to pay more than $500 for it. On the other hand, some of our ecommerce clients can generate tens of thousands of dollars from a well optimized landing page. A well designed and written landing page can easily double if not triple the conversion rate for the client. The moral of the story is “do the math.”

What is involved in creating successful web copy project?

Keep in mind, completing a meaningful web copy project involves a lot more than hiring a copywriter and telling them to write. Completing the copy is normally one of the last steps in creating a website that will actually generate revenue. We usually ask our clients to provide us with a marketing assessment, online visitor persona development, site story boarding, and general wire-framing before we start doing any copy work. Only when all of these elements are provided, is it meaningful to discuss the rates per project.

Rates vary based on the type of the project and the experience the company brings to the table. Here is a quick survey of the on going rates for two large categories of copywriting  projects we have been involved with.

Rates for web copy for a single page (landing page):

Assuming the client developed all the elements required to create a successful a single landing page, these project are small in nature. Rates for a single landing page project can vary from $350 on the low end to $5,000 on the high end. Sean Carton gave a nice break down of the fees associated with creating a single landing page. Although Sean’s breakdown contains cost for other team members besides copy writers, I think it gives a good idea of what is involved in full landing page implementation. With our own projects, the client is responsible for supplying us with site personas, information architecture design and page layout. These projects involve usually a single copy writer who will work for about 2 to three days on completing the copy for that one particular page. At a rate of $125 per hour, the total cost for these projects starts at around $2,000.

Rates for web copy projects for a whole site:

True web copy projects normally involve staffing between 2 to 3 copy writers on the project. Similar to single page project, I am assuming that the client will do most of the marketing analysis required prior to creating the copy. Rates for a full site web copy creation range from around $1,200 on the low end to upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. For our own projects, we assume the client will be provide us with marketing assessment, persona development and information architecture elements.  These projects do not involve developing story boarding or any wire-framing for the site. Projects as such start at around $10,000. 

To recap, the following are the factors that impact the price you might pay for web copy project:

• Size & Complexity of project/Website
• Size of Organization
• Reputation & Demand for the copy Firm
• Amount of work supplied by client

Tell me what do you think?

Tags: B2B-fees, Copy Writing, online-marketing
Posted in Business, Copy Writing

Everyone is claiming to be the ultimate SEO expert, but who can you trust?  I know it can be quite tricky these days since more and more writers are claiming great SEO expertise and knowledge.  So what do you look for when hiring a SEO writer?  Well, there are a few things to consider:

1. Experience:  How much experience exactly does the writer have?  What work has he/she completed thus far?  Is the work measurable and notable?  All of these questions are extremely important when you’re going to make that consideration.  You need to be aware of the extent of experience and knowledge this person truly has (does it match their claims??).
2. Practice what they preach:  A great way to measure their success is to see how well this writer’s own site ranks amongst the competition.  Now, it is important to keep in mind that ranking changes very often and may not be so accurate.  But if they truly are the SEO experts they claim to be; they will be able to show for it through their overall status and online presence.
3. Clients:  It might be a good idea to actually take a look at their client list.  If they don’t have much of a list; it is crucial to view their previous work to give you an idea of they are capable of in terms of SEO writing.

I remember reading a funny PPC ad that claimed ultimate success and SEO expertise.  They even claimed that they would never subject your company to a PPC campaign, although they had several ads listed through Google Adwords themselves.  I don’t know if I would trust them!

There are a lot of things to consider when hiring an SEO writer.  Ultimately, the decision may come down to the nature of the work you would like the writer to complete:  copy, articles, etc.  Make sure you do your homework, and never fall for scams!

Tags: Copy Writing, SEO-Writer
Posted in SEO