Have you ever considered that your work can bring you more work if you play it right?

Take me as an example. I am not a well-known copywriting guru and I don’t make a big noise about it being one of my services. When people do hire me I try to remember to ask where and how they found me. You know what? My copywriting clients find me through my copywriting.

Proof, if you needed it, that the work you produce can be your best advertising. Continue reading Make Your Work Contagious

Tags: copywriting, freelancing, marketing, sales
Posted in Sales & Marketing

A common theme with corporate sites, ecommerce and service oriented sellers I speak to is what I call “The lights are on but nobody is home” syndrome.

What is this sales-killing malady and how can you solve it?

Read on!
Continue reading Can Customers Tell You Are Open for Business?

Tags: copywriting, Ecommerce, marketing, sales
Posted in Ecommerce

When people hear that I am an internet marketing and new media consultant very often the conversation becomes all about how to get the persons business more traffic, more attention, better search results and “what can we do with this social media stuff?”.

Yes, they are all valid concerns, but on further questioning the majority of the time I work out these are not their most pressing problems. There is a common issue, a deeper factor, that most of these companies have, and more traffic would only serve to cover up the root cause of their woes, not cure it.

What is this issue? How to get into your prospects brain …
Continue reading The Real Secret of Sales Copywriting

Tags: Branding, copywriting, positioning, sales
Posted in Sales & Marketing

WIIFM?

This should be the first and last idea in your mind when developing a marketing campaign or even the smallest tactic.

What’s In It For Me?

Answer this for everything you do and you are more likely to see results. I mean everything. Everything from your Google Adwords copy, through to your blog articles, email newsletter, white papers, or that funny video you are sure will go viral.

Heck, you need to be able to answer this next time you are handing your business card over at a networking event.

It’s Not About You!

We need to get out of the old “broadcast and consume” mindset. More than ever before our customers have distractions and they have choices. “New and improved” won’t cut it. Just being out there is doomed to failure.

• Who is your message for precisely?
• What exact needs do you address?
• How does your product or service address those needs in a beneficial way?
• Which specific benefits will the customer acquire?
• Why is this important?

Look over your work. Does it talk about who you are and why you are great? Or does it speak to a specific customer with specific needs about how your service will help them?

You have an instant where you have your prospects attention, are you going to waste it on lots of flannel about yourself or are you going to talk about issues that matter to them?

Today we can’t just interrupt our customers with our message and expect them to take notice. We need to give good reasons why they should listen, attract them and hold on to them. We need to promise value and deliver on it.

You will know this from dating, Me Me Me is not attractive. What do you have to offer? You have 10 seconds, make it good!

Tags: advertising, copywriting, marketing
Posted in Sales & Marketing

Do you expect your customers to shop in ways you wouldn’t behave yourself? You would be surprised how many marketers do.

Here is one example just from this last weekend: How many times have you seen a banner ad go straight into a credit card details page?

Have you ever purchased a reasonably expensive product, previously unknown to you, directly from a banner click? I am guessing you are saying ‘no’.

Our customers are the same. Yes, we do make impulse purchases, but in the majority of cases we need to know some facts and imagine ourselves owning and using the product. It is not enough to see the product is available and be shunted straight to the checkout.

Customers have various buying modes, from not even in the market to highly motivated to solve a problem. These modes are on a spectrum, and we can move between categories as we gain more information, get distracted or lose urgency.

Just looking at how motivated the customer is, you can see how your strategy has to adjust:

• Zero motivation - Not even shopping, unaware your product even exists, or that they have the problem your product solves. Many products sold directly work on this type of customer. They grab attention, bring the problem to the surface, then provide the solution along with an order form. This person is not shopping so Google Adwords are not going to work, but “push” advertising, such as direct mail or email list might.
• Some motivation - This person has a problem and would be open to solutions. Imagine a person who knows they have financial problems, their solution might be debt consolidation or might be blogging for cash, etc. It would depend on their own biases and the persuasiveness of your message. Awareness advertising with the right message would inspire this customer. A trusted blog or opt-in email list in the right niche would warm these people up perfectly.
• Motivated - The customer knows there are products on the market and would like to buy, but needs a good deal. They are researching and comparing prices, rather than go direct to a supplier they will use consumer guides and price comparison sites eg. Flights and Hotels, Credit Cards. Education and soft-sell are key, they will be ready to buy when convinced and not before. Affiliates make over half their commissions from this type of customer. Think also of blogs such as Engadget and magazines like Which.
• Highly motivated - Have a specific problem and need a solution, right now. These people will search on Google, to make the sale you need to appear visibly and with the right offer. They would happily take a free option but are ready to buy. This is a highly tactical requirement and involves fitting to search behavior and matching the exact need. My friends PDF to Excel converter fits this type of buyer. Solution-focused blogs and forums are a good way to attract a wide number of people with various problems, or use a well-optimized and heavily linked landing page for a specific solution product.

As you can see, a number 1 Google result is not going to capture the first category, those people are not even looking, while the last category will have highly motivated people searching frantically for your product if you would only put it where they can find it.

We have many strategies and tactics at our disposal but it always comes down to the same thing. Knowing your product and your customer!

Tags: copywriting, Landing-Page, marketing, sales, SEO, site-conversion-rate
Posted in Sales & Marketing

When you are communicating it is often helpful to think of your audience as being a single target. We speak of laser-focus, and drilling down your niche to find a target.

In fact with a tiny amount of research you will usually find it is not actually the case. Our audiences are made up of distinct but overlapping groups. Each group will have subtly or wildly differing interests. This is quite normal and it is our behavior and content that attracts them.

If your blog is marketed well you will primarily attract people interested in a certain theme. For example Invesp will find people who are interested in business and marketing. Those topics though are still quite wide, it will include people interested in SEO and also people interested in conversion copywriting. Those topics overlap but also have their own specific audiences too.

In addition we need to attract people other than our prospects or ideal reader. We want links from other bloggers, in some cases we need advertisers, and then there are our peers for networking.

So I said it is useful to think of our audience as one and now I am saying it is more complicated. How does this help?

Well first of all it is worth keeping in mind when creating your Flagship Content. You have to first decide if you are targeting a sub-group or if your whole audience will find it valuable. Then you need to answer the following questions:

• What is this content for?
• Who does it need to attract?
• What is the outcome you would like to see?
• Who is most likely to perform the action we want?

Each sub audience will have their own specific interests, needs and approach to finding your content.

While there will always be a primary reader or prospect that we want to attract we need to be aware of the other members of our audience that we could be overlooking.

Tags: copywriting, online-content, online-marketing, writing
Posted in Blogging

Time and again you see it. This isn’t just something new marketers do, it appears in the entire spectrum of business. I have seen marketing directors at Fortune 500 companies and one person operations do the same thing.

What is this mistake and why is it so devastating?

First a little history lesson. In the past there were not so many television channels and radio stations. Many more households bought a newspaper and it was pretty predictable which paper they would subscribe to. Advertising was a case of getting your message out and watching the sales come in.

With few distractions and fewer choices even the most mediocre advertising would find an audience. Like cattle at a trough, “consumers” had no option but to buy what was on offer and advertisers didn’t particularly have to engage or even be entirely truthful.

Fast forward to today and we have an ever-growing number of distractions, not just from a constellation of TV channels and the internet but in every facet of our daily lives.

We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages and todays word of mouth travels at light speed.

Old school prime-time broadcast just doesn’t cut it. The old TV ad man mentality of shoving whatever they want to sell in customers faces is getting more expensive and less effective. It’s the famous Superbowl spot. Or should I say, infamous.

Broadcast techniques from yesteryear might not work but there were marketers from the golden age that we can learn from. Direct marketing copywriters learned how to sell a ton of product by appealing to the true wants and needs of their market. Unlike the TV folks with their “because we say so” attitude, the direct marketers were persuading, influencing and offering solutions.

Which brings us to the number one mistake even modern marketers make; talking at prospects rather than to them.

Consider your marketing message:

• Do you key in to your audiences problems and desires or are you just bombarding prospects with features?
• Have you spoken to customers to find out what really makes them tick?
• Are you using real testimonials or relying on tired and fake “spokesactors”?
• Is your marketing located exactly where it is going to be most welcome and therefore most effective, or carpet bombed hoping some of it will stick?

If we do not tune in to our customers and meet them where they live our campaigns bomb.

At worst the campaigns are not just ineffective, they actually serve to damage future performance by teaching prospects the brand is irrelevant or out of touch with their needs.

Today more than ever before we have to be smart about how we speak to our customers. They are savvier and have many more choices than previous generations, and do not tolerate anything less than clear messages that address what they want.

People will not do just what you tell them, you have to explain what is in it for them in a way they will understand. If you want people to take interest in your offer you have to introduce it where it is most relevant and address what they need right now. Match the message and delivery to the audience mission. It is no good serving up music and games, no matter how beautiful and award-winning, if your prospect is searching for flash photography advice or for ways to convert PDF to excel files. On the other hand if your prospects are surfing, browsing or looking to be entertained they might prefer cartoons and humor rather than lectures and wordy articles.

Find out what your prospects think, want, need and deliver it to them where they hang out, in their language.

Do you see marketers making this mistake? How do you talk to customers real needs? Share your thoughts in the comments …

Tags: advertising, conversions, copywriting, marketing
Posted in Sales & Marketing