Why this blog? Because I'm your customer's advocate, reminding businesses that they must talk to customers, not at them, to get heard. This blog is my means of putting helpful advice, tips and reminders out into the world so your marketing will be more relevant, more targeted...and more likely to get noticed. Happy Marketing!
--Sharon Long Baerny
A few months ago, I roughed out the text because I was getting quite a few questions about small business blogging from fellow small business owners. This is by no means a definitive guide, but someone suggested this morning that I post it to my own blog, so here it is:
Why do you want to start small business blogging?
First, be clear on your goals. I hope you are small business blogging for three reasons:
What will your small business blog be about?
Second, decide what your focus will be. What the heck are you going to blog about? What can you talk about that other people might not be? What topic gets you excited and would be easy for you to write about? For example, my friend with an Indian restaurant wants to blog. Possible “themes” for her blog are: vegetarianism, Indian culture, running a small family-owned business, having an ethnic restaurant in a redneck town, cooking, Indian food, recipes, being a single mom running a restaurant, food allergies, etc.
Another example is my local florist. I’m trying to get her to start small business blogging because she’s very online marketing savvy when it comes to pay-per-click, but less so for SEO. I’m also trying to get her to blog because she’s so knowledgeable and well-respected and she could be even more so. I’d love to see her write a blog as the florist expert, offering advice like when to start choosing the flowers for your wedding, seasonal suggestions for wedding flowers, plants as corporate gifts, catering advice, maybe she talks about her favorite catering venues. She could talk about the price of flowers as impacted by gas prices, how to keep flowers fresh, etc. I see it as “advice” oriented.
Or consider my small business blog: Although I’m primarily a Seattle copywriter, my real passion is marketing, and my beliefs about being customer-centric. (Stated at the top of my blog: helping people talk to customers not at them.) My goal with my small business blogging is to get people thinking a little differently about marketing, while still using keywords that are helping my blog get found for copywriting. In the future, I’ll be doing more consulting and speaking, so my keywords will shift, but the blog’s theme will stay the same. So on the other hand, my goal is also to get people thinking about me in a certain way.
Your small business blog title
Third: Decide on the title of your blog. Make sure it reflects your blog’s focus, but also your keywords if you’re small business blogging for SEO. For example, when I started a blog for an email marketing agency, I chose “Email Marketing ROI” for the title, so the URL included those words. (It now has a different name.) And that was the theme of the blog: improving email marketing ROI by providing useful information.
Set a small business blogging schedule
Fourth, set a schedule for small business blogging and adhere to it. Blog at least two times a week, but if you want search engine results, do it more often. I have a Task in Outlook that pops up a reminder for me every Tuesday and Thursday. In that task list is a running list of topic ideas (more on that later). If you have produced an email newsletter or another publication, you know you have a production calendar to stick with. Think of your blog the same way.
Round up the bloggers
Fifth, consider having more than one person at your company blog. It doesn’t have to be the CEO or the marketer writing the blog. In fact, the best blog content might come from someone who works with customers every day, or on the shop floor. The first person would have insight into customer concerns, and the other into production. Both would produce great blog content that an executive or marketer might not think of.
Be clear on your keywords
Sixth: If you’re blogging for SEO purposes, determine your keywords. Use a free keyword research tool like SEO Book (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/) or Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), or maybe you already know your keywords you want to win? Then look at how competitive the search landscape is for the terms you want to use. Remember, more specific keywords won’t be used by as many people, but they’ll get you found by the smaller group of people who are a more targeted audience for you. The less often you plan on blogging, the fewer keywords you’ll be able to use enough to compete. But come with 4 or so keyword phrases. Long-tail keyword searches seem to do well in blogs. Keep this list in mind every time you blog and use your keywords, in a post title and in the post itself. I usually write a blog post, then go back and sprinkle in a keyword or tool. And I admit it, I don’t focus on the SEO part enough sometimes because I get caught up in the topic. J
Do you want editorial control?
Seventh, think about editorial control: If more than one person will be small business blogging, do you want administrative control so content is reviewed before it goes live? Will someone be proofreading blog content before it gets posted?
Developing your voice
Eight: When you first start, you don’t necessarily have to post those initial blogs. Just write them in a Word document first, or even on paper. You’ll want to write a few to get your voice, a sense of how you want to come across. But do be yourself, do be natural and a real person.
Coming up with topics
Now the “hard” part (not really): small business blogging!! The biggest hurdle for people seems to be topics. What will we blog about? If after reading this you still don’t know what you’ll blog about, let me know…
Keep a running list of topic ideas. Then when it’s time to blog, use one of the ideas (then make sure you delete it from your list!). If you have a recurring task in Outlook, like I do, you keep your list there. Then when Outlook pings you, you’ve got your idea list right in front of you. But once you start blogging, you’ll start seeing topics all around you. I use one of the topics on my list maybe every 3rd or 4th time because something will have happened that prompts a blog post in the mean time.
Look for ideas in the newspaper, trade magazines, in other blog posts. I even get ideas from the radio and from conversations.
I haven’t done this yet, but try and use photos sometimes. Not cheesy ones though, don’t include photos just for the sake of photos. Or clip art, ugh! But real photos of real people, like your staff or your customers. Videos too…
I saw a blog that copied and pasted in press releases verbatim. I wouldn’t recommend this because search engines hate duplicated content. It’s better to blog on the press release and link to it. And if your company creates press releases and posts them online (and you should!), write a summary of the press release in your blog and link to it.
Link to other sources. If you read a blog that makes a good point, write your own blog post with your take on it, and link to the original blog. Ditto for online news articles, video clips, etc. You can link to anything. Consider subscribing to a couple of email newsletters or other blogs just to get your own thought processes going. Your reactions to what you read are also valid blog content.
Link to studies and reports that are released. Some bloggers are the filter for their readers, helping their readers find important information without having to look for it.
Talk about what’s going on with your business: Are you going to be at a tradeshow? Will there be live music at your tavern? Are you moving?
Be creative in thinking about what content will be interesting. Like my business is a copywriting agency, but I don’t tell people how to be copywriters. I try to help people be better marketers. If you owned a coffee shop, you wouldn’t necessarily blog on your coffee shop, that would get boring fast, but you could blog on the coffee industry perhaps, because you could still use your keywords.
Include customer testimonials with an introduction, maybe “We received a great email from Susan Smith about her new vacuum, and just have to share it with you…”
Never forget that small business blogging is about being real. You could even include a recipe! Say you had a staff potluck and Joe’s potato salad was a huge hit. Talk about the party and include Joe’s recipe.
Please don’t post just to post. I have a friend that does that because his only concern is SEO, and that means he’s putting a lot of useless stuff out on the Internet. L I want subscribers to my blog, and if I did that, just posted blogs based on keywords, subscribers wouldn’t stay very long because I wouldn’t be providing useful information!
That’s my start on blogging basics. Please, please let me know if it was helpful or not by commenting!!
Four years ago, I remodeled my kitchen. OK, according to my ex husband, HE remodeled my kitchen. But I’m the one who designed it, researched it, carefully sought out the cabinet maker and appliances and fixtures and wallpaper and…you get the picture.
I was so excited to buy a big, fancy range. I love to cook, and had my heart set on a Viking range with six burners. It’s black with stainless steel trim and it looks fabulous in the kitchen. It’s usually the second thing people comment on when they walk in the room the first time. (The first comment is usually, “I love your kitchen!”)
It was a splurge, I admit, the second most expensive part of the remodel. But that range has been a piece of crap. I had to have a repair person out right after we installed it, and four more times since then. Each visit costs me at least $250. In four years, I’ve paid a quarter of the price of that range all over again. I could have bought a good quality Kenmore for what I’ve paid in repairs.
And despite the price of the range, I never heard boo from Viking. No follow up to find out how I liked it, to make sure it was working correctly. Viking took my money and disappeared. Until this week.
Out of the blue I get a letter from them. Looking at the envelope I’m thinking it’s a recall notice of some kind, that all the ranges made when mine was built must have flaws that make them so prone to breaking down. Uh, no. It’s a letter selling me mixers and toasters. It starts with:
“As an owner of a Viking major appliance, you know the style and performance it brings to your kitchen.”
That makes me laugh. Style, yes. Performance, no. Not when half of your cookies burn while the other half are doughy because one side of the oven is hotter than the other! Not when one of your burners’ starter clicks and clicks and clicks when you’re using the burner in front of it!
But Viking is clueless about how unhappy I am with their product because they never asked! They just took my money, went away, and now show up again because they want more of my money.
If this were a dating situation, what would it look like? Probably a man taking a woman out for an expensive dinner and being clueless that the woman is miserable the whole time (for reasons I’ll let you imagine, they could be anything). So the man drops her off at the end of the evening, and drives off thinking all went well while she’s emailing her girlfriends to tell them how awful it was.
Then four months later, he calls her to suggest they get a drink. He’s clueless, she’s amazed that he didn’t ever get in touch with her before this.
What brought this about? Complete lack of communication. The man never asked the woman for her input or feedback. He just assumed that all was fine because he got what he wanted.
Marketers do the same thing. We convince customers to buy our products or services, then we take their money and run, and never ask if they were happy with what they got.
If marketing is like dating, I say this is a case of being respectful: Viking should have followed up to find out if I was happy with the range. The man should have followed up with the woman soon after the date.
OK, that’s enough preaching for a Friday. Have a great weekend!! And be respectful to your customers! Remember, marketing happens before, during and after the sale!
What does a little tavern in an even smaller town have in common with a healthcare powerhouse like Group Health? They’ve both delivered on their promises. And as I develop my marketing is like dating theory, I've realized being true to your word is important in dating and marketing both.
Last week at the Puget Sound Marketing Association (PSAMA) luncheon, Jay Gusick of Group Health talked about the enormous rebranding effort his organization has gone through since 2000. When he put up his slide showing the phases they’ve gone through, and the first was on figuring out their brand, I right away made a note about “yeah, but the important thing is to follow through on that brand, that promise!” And sure enough, as he continued to describe the process, turns out that’s what they did: They determined their brand, then went back and made the reality fit, from staff appearance to the look of their facilities to the level of care. And only then did they start to promote the new brand, once they could deliver on the promise.
That same day I drove north to visit my cowboy. He was excited to take me to Burlington’s newest tavern for dinner. It had just opened the night before. Walking up to it, I saw an old brick building with the words Train Wreck painted in huge letters on the side. And I began to anticipate the experience: What I hoped for, what an old brick building in a small town “promises” to me, is a straightforward yet neighborly experience, with an interior full of the character that only a renovated industrial building can offer and a menu of what I affectionately call “bar food.” That’s just what I got. The Train Wreck delivered on its promise by being warm and friendly, appropriately decorated with vintage photos hanging from the exposed brick walls, a handful of popular beer choices, and the perfect bar menu. (If you ever go, have the Oyster Grinder. Wish I could have one today!)
In one day I witnessed both a big business and a small business be true to their marketing. They delivered on their promises. You might think what does that matter, marketing is just to get people through the door in the first place, right? Wrong. Your marketing is a lie if you don’t follow through on what you promised in the first place.
It's just like in dating: If you say you're going to call, call. If you present yourself as an outdoorsy person when you first meet someone, you'd better be an outdoorsy person. Think how frustrating it is when someone pretends to be something they're not.
Marketing is like dating. Think how frustrating it must be for your customers when your marketing makes you out to be something you're not.
I’m vindicated! JupiterResearch says work that transactional email!
I’ve long advocated for email copywriting in your transactional emails to take advantage of an opportunity to reinforce your brand, cross-sell, or even grow your in-house email list. And a new report from JupiterResearch, sponsored by StrongMail, not only validates my opinion but takes it a step beyond: JupiterResearch is saying time to get promotional in those transactional emails, people! And for this Seattle copywriter, that means make your messaging promotional too!
A transactional email such as a welcome email, order confirmation or shipping confirmation email is another chance to market to your customer. They’ve already purchased from you (like a widget) or requested something from you (like a whitepaper), so they already have a relationship with you and expect to hear from you. Take advantage of that warm, fuzzy feeling to say “Hey, by the way, you might also be interested in our gadget to go with that widget you just bought.”
It was interesting for me as a copywriter to read that transactional emails often aren’t owned by marketing. OK, that makes the lack of email copywriting make sense! So the first thing we need to do is change the mindset about the transactional email…and any other opportunity we have to touch a prospect or customer, like packaging, customer service, etc. Although I’m just a copywriter, I’m constantly preaching that everything you do is marketing. This just proves it, but also proves how narrow-minded we sometimes are, with clearly defined ideas about what marketing “is” or “is not.”
Peoples, marketing is everything and everywhere. It’s 24x7, round-the-clock. And it should most definitely be happening in your transactional emails. So pull those dry, straightforward text-based emails out of the system, do some kickass email copywriting, and stop wasting opportunities to sell and brand.
Now. J
Yeah, so I guess all this Seattle rain gave me some attitude today!
Using blogs as marketing tools is more organic than pay-per-click advertising, that's for sure. It takes time to biuld an audience and to get indexed in the search engines (the latter goes faster than with a regular Web site, however!). But done consistently and correctly, blogs as marketing tools make a lot of sense for a small Indian restaurant like Punjab Sweets.
I just had a copywriting article published in MarketingProfs.com (hurray!) which has led to a flurry of requests from potential copywriting clients (double hurray!). Since I’ve finally started getting serious about my “Marketing Is Like Dating” book, I’m exploring those themes here. Hence this blog post, which comes from getting the article published…
When I first went to two of my mentors with my book idea, they both thought it brilliant, but they both asked about gender. Was the marketer one gender or the other or did it matter? I was surprised to realize that I hadn’t thought about it, I just assumed the marketer was the “man” because the marketer’s role is similar to the traditional man’s role in the dating world. (Note: Both of these mentors are men.) The marketer pursues, woos and courts the customer.
Getting that article published proves my gender breakdown is viable, because I as the marketer (marketing my copywriting agency We Know Words) play the role of the man in the relationship with these prospects who are reaching out to me. They have made initial contact by emailing me and asking me to contact them. That’s equivalent to a woman making eye contact across the bar to let a man know she’s interested.
These prospects “make eye contact” but it’s my responsibility to make the first move, to walk across the bar and actually strike up a conversation. I must make the first move by calling these prospects to see if there’s a spark, meaning any interest in working together.
Yes, the marketer is the man.
P.S. As part of the book and this blog, I’m soliciting your input. Right now I’m particularly interested in dating disaster stories. The book has nine principles that apply to marketing communications and each one is also a “dating” principle. It will be full of dating analogies. So send your dating horror stories to sharon@weknowwords.com and I’ll see if I can match it up with one of my principles. And I promise to ask for happy stories at some point. Maybe. Depends on how my dating life is going probably. J
Today I got a fun email from a company that normally sends me a fairly dry email newsletter. The timing was perfect. Even though I’m primarily a copywriter, it’s my job to know about many aspects of marketing, especially up and coming trends. I’d been thinking on all the case studies and whitepapers I read about social networking that apply to B2C marketing, but was wondering how well the approach will work for B2B.
Then I get the “Can Water Cut It?” email from Flow International with a link to a video featuring Flow Man and asking the question “Can Water Cut a Titanium Golf Club?” Flow makes industrial strength water jets that can cut anything. See the video at http://www.canwatercutit.com. You can also watch them cut a cell phone and a blender.
The videos are tongue in cheek and deliberately amateurish and the approach works. I just watched them with my 10-year-old and her friend and they were impressed. But more importantly, the manufacturer with extreme cutting needs is going to be blown away watching these! And watch them he or she will because they are fun, not “work.” Compare cutting up a coworker’s annoying cell phone to watching a dry online demo!
As soon as I got the email, I contacted Doug at Flow. Doug said they started the videos after attending the Online Marketing Summit in Seattle (where I ran into Doug!). And the videos are working. Flow is starting slow with a gradual introduction but they’ve already gotten leads from the videos!
On the site they let people like us submit ideas for things to cut. And people are! Doug says, “We've already received a bundle of interesting ideas on what people would like to see cut (for example, plasma TVs to laptops to boulders to bread).”
Just this morning I read an article about integrating email and social media. Flow’s “Can Water Cut It?” videos are a perfect example of doing just that.
Kudos to Flow for figuring out how to harness social networking and video for marketing an industrial product in a B2B marketplace!
OK, back to copywriting on a rainy Seattle afternoon…
When I first fell for a cowboy, a friend teasingly sent me a link to a Garth Brooks song about whatcha going to do with a cowboy. And it’s has been stuck in my mind the past few days but with “website” instead of cowboy. Here’s why…
Sunday night at a wedding reception, I fell into a conversation with the owner of a medical billing company. Although she and her partner have a successful and growing small business, they do not have a website. Usually I avoid talking about work at social events, but small business marketing is a subject near and dear to my heart so I couldn’t help myself. I talked shop…
Because they’ve grown without one, they haven’t felt a website was necessary, and I explained that maybe they don’t need one but suggested reasons why they might.
For example, all their business comes from referrals and word of mouth. A website can be a great first introduction. I know people looking for a Seattle copywriter almost always look at the We Know Words website before they contact me for copywriting. And that works well for both me as copywriter and them as prospect: My website is a pre-qualifier. If you don’t like the attitude all over it, you probably won’t like my customer-centric approach to copywriting (as opposed to generic, me too copywriting and web writing).
with a website, this company could give a sales pitch to potential customers by having a website these prospects could go to after getting a referral.
And that can save time. Instead of prospects calling the small business to ask questions about their services and rates, they could get the answers themselves by going to the website.
In talking to the small business owner further about the idea of a site, it turns out there’s a lot of information they need to update clients with on a regular basis, and she realized the website could work for that. Plus I pointed out they could use an RSS feed to push the updates out or at least to let clients know there’s new information.
Small business marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. But it doesn’t have to be copycat either. Maybe the smart approach is to first figure out what you want to do, then look at how a website could help you do it. A website just for the sake of a website is silly. But a website that helps you sell and saves you time and lets you do a better job of serving clients makes a lot of sense.
Is it time to revisit your small business website and make sure it’s pulling its weight? Is there some function you could have your website do to save you or staff the time of doing it?
Whatcha gonna do with that website?
And I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with that cowboy!
I know nothing about football. In fact, yesterday at lunch I was even asking a friend ignorant questions about how overtime works because I happened to see the end of the Seahawks/San Francisco game on Sunday.
That’s my disclaimer for what’s going to be today’s post, because it has to do with football but then again it doesn’t.
Apparently a referee committed the sin of being (gasp) human by…making a mistake. Now I know to the team and fans his call affected, it was a huge mistake, one this Seattle copywrtier wouldn't understand. But that’s not the point of this blog.
I happened to come across this sports blog because admittedly sometimes I just let the Internet sweep me away to wherever. It’s the closest I come to keeping up with pop culture. This post is about how this ref, Ed Hochuli, is so devastated by his mistake. But what got my attention and why I want to write about it is this: He’s responding to his hate mail.
Here’s one man who has been publicly lambasted for an error, and he’s man enough to admit to the error, admit publicly that he feels bad about it, and respond to hate email. Proving that he is in fact human...and a pretty good human at that.
If only more companies could be this human. Here's an example of what I'm talking about (and this does tie back to marketing):
I just ordered my third power cord for a Dell laptop I’ve had for less than a year and a half. My Dell printer just died, again after less than a year and a half. You know what I’d like? I’d like Dell, and other companies, to be human enough to not produce crap first off, and to admit it when they do. (I’m only singling out Dell because they are costing me so much money right now. Plenty of other companies are equally guilty of crappy product. Not according to most companies, of course, but just ask unhappy customers and you'll get an earful. )
Okay, so why am I bringing this up...besides that fact that it shouldn't be so hard for a company to a)make good stuff and b) own it when they don't? well, there are two lessons here: First, marketing isn’t just wooing prospects so sales can convert them to customers. Marketing is the whole enchilada. It’s before, during and after the sale. Second, there’s only so much marketing can do to make up for inferior products or service.
No NFL ref in his right mind would go out and call a lazy game of football, the way Dell is being lazy in their quality control. Ed Hochuli, bless his heart, is paying dearly for a human error. And trying to make up for it by responding to people angry with him.
Imagine a company that cared that much about their product in the first place, and smoothing things over with customers when the product doesn’t live up to expectations. That's a company that people would clammer to do business with all the time. I know I would!
(Thanks, Mave, for copyedit of the above!)
This Seattle copywriter has been swamped!! So I have no time for dating the guy who went from sweet to not-so-sweet anyway!
Being such a busy copywriter means it’s a struggle to find blogging time—which I shouldn’t admit to because I believe in blogs as marketing tools—but that’s my long-winded excuse for referring to something I heard weeks ago at Online Marketing Summit Seattle…
One of the speakers (maybe Aaron Kahlow?) talked about Web sites and how the user has control, the user is like your competitor now. My memory is fuzzy on exactly what was said, but it sparked my take on it as a copywriter/marcom person: The customer now is your competitor. It’s less about your company vs. the competition and more about the customer simply deleting your email marketing, ignoring the Web copywriting by clicking the Back button, or tossing your direct mail.
Because “marketing is like dating” is my favorite analogy, put it in that context: Say you’re a man who wants to date a certain woman. You’re not up against all the other men who want to date her. You’re up against what she wants. She will choose to go out with you or not based on criteria like your behavior and appearance. (If she’s shallow, she’ll also check out your shoes and car apparently.) It’s not you vs. them. It’s you vs. her expectations.
Now apply that to marketing: Customers today are more likely to decide whether or not to buy from you (date you) based on their criteria, not on how you stack up against a competitor. (I’m talking B2C here.) If you’re selling things like pop, clothes, sheepskin slippers, espresso and cars, the customer will first consider how well you fit his view of himself and how he wants to world to see him, not comparison shop.
And it’s your marketing that tells the story the customer bases his decision on! Does your story map to his or not?
Be customer-centric. Be focused on what the customer wants, and do your copywriting in his terms. Make your email marketing relevant. If you use blogs as marketing tools, make your blogs personal and authentic. Purge your database so your direct mail goes to a quality list, not a quantity one. Segment and personalize.
It’s no long you against “them” (the competition). It’s you against the customer. Meet her criteria and she will choose you. You’ll win.
I’ve been taking some grief from people lately for not blogging and it’s true, it has been on my list but at the bottom as all these copywriting clients who were busy doing other things all summer all of a sudden realize they need a copywriter right now! Don’t get me wrong, I love my copywriting clients! But it is funny how one Seattle copywriter can be so quickly buried by an onslaught of work from clients, no matter how much she might love them!
Which is my segue into this blog post, which, I might point out to people like Brent, I’m not writing because I have time to, but because it’s easier than putting up with the comments about not blogging. (Said with affection, Brent. J)
This post has been sitting in my head for a few days now, and I hope I do it justice because I’m literally dashing it off in a few minutes…
Once again, I come back to marketing is like dating. Today it’s about you gotta keep courting the customer. Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows I’m single. It has come up a couple of times…at least. But dating is such a great analogy for marketing! And the dating/marketing lesson I just recently experienced was someone being very sweet and very attentive…and then not. What he doesn’t realize is, it was the sweetness and attentiveness that I liked about him, it set him apart from other guys. Take that away, and what do you have? Just another guy.
When you’re marketing, you’re (I hope) being sweet and attentive to that prospect. But once they give you their money and go from prospect to customer, should you stop courting them? Of course not! But companies do. There’s a marketing mindset that’s focused on lead generation, getting new customers, filling the pipeline, etc.
But what about the customer you already have? Do your sales people still pay attention after the invoice has been paid? How much of your marketing is focused on continuing to be sweet and attentive to the people who have said yes to you? Who have given you their money and become a bona fide customer? Or is your marketing focused on the next conquest instead?
Are you taking your customers for granted once they become customers? If so, do you think they’ll continue to “date” you? Probably not, because, like the guy referenced above, when you take away the sweetness, all you’ve got left is just another guy. They’ll go spend their money elsewhere next time, because you’re no longer anything special.
If you already know how to harness the technology, this program will teach you how to choose one marketing tool over another based on sound business principles. If you're still completely oblivious about how best to put email marketing, blogging, SEO, web analytics and more to work, then here's your chance for an overview that won't help you master all these online marketing tools, but will help you know enough to make sound marketing decisions.
A program like this is great for people already working in marketing, and I'm so glad they started it! But we still need to be teaching interactive marketing at the college level too. I wonder how long until that happens?
I found my notes from OMS Seattle!! I had tucked them into the copy of “Groundswell” I got that day. I didn’t win the drawing for the book, as much as I wanted to, but my friend Carmen did, and she kindly gave it to me as she already had a copy. J When I started reading it last night, lo and behold, I found my notes with all my blog topics! So I admit sometimes this Seattle copywriter is a little spacy...
Now, with all these marketing topics to touch on, where to start? How about with this great observation made by Aaron Kahlow, the guy behind the Online Marketing Summit, excuse the paraphrasing: Companies spend a ton of money on lobbies that most prospects and customers will never, ever see. But how many thousands of people will go to their website? And is the same investment made there to make the same great first impression?
Because your website is your first impression, and you only have a few seconds to let the visitor know they’ve arrived at the right place before they click away. Your home page has to clearly and immediately state what people can expect to do/find/buy at your website.
As a website copywriter, it can be a challenge to get clients to look past what they want to say to what the customer wants to hear. Because with only a few seconds to get someone to stick around, your only choice is to talk to customers, not at them! (See my copywriting mantra at the top of this blog.)
And the lobby vs. website analogy is a great one. Imagine an office building with droves of people coming through the door into the lobby, looking around quickly, then marching right back out again. How unnerving for the security guard or receptionist at the front desk! But that’s exactly what happens when your home page fails to communicate right away what you offer and people just click away.
(Makes me wonder if the lobby is really for impressing the potential customers, or more for boosting the egos of the executives? Which some websites seem to be built to do! To boost egos, that is.)
And the really good news is, this is another place where small business marketing plays on a level playing field with big business! It might take tens of thousands of dollars to create a truly impressive lobby. But a truly useful website doesn’t have to cost much at all! But small business or big, you'll want to invest in a great website copywriter, of course. :-)
Every morning I get a bquote from Bguides.com. If you don’t get them, I highly recommend them. Anyone who has been in my office knows how much I like them: I have printed out many and have them taped all over my desk. (OK, most of the time they’re buried, I admit: I might be a really good copywriter, but I’m also a messy one.)
This morning’s quote tied in perfectly with what I was already thinking about blogging on:
"There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." -- Sam Walton (1918–1992), founder of Wal-Mart
Now, he’s talking about sales, but this works for marketing too. And here’s how it ties into what I was already thinking:
Yesterday I was interviewed by potential clients as a Website copywriter. They had sent me some documents and wanted to know how I would position their business based on what they had sent. It wasn’t a fair question to ask of me, since nothing in their documentation delved into their customers’ mindset…which I pointed out, and I launched into my customer-centric copywriting spiel about talking to customers, not at them.
Sure, I’m a Website copywriter, among other things, but how could I possibly tell them how I’d position their company without knowing their customers’ world views, pain points and awareness? And how the customers would find their Website or if they’d even be looking? Or how the customers view themselves, as savvy or helpless? All of that comes into play, as does so much else when copywriting Websites. As I’ve said before, don’t try and sell me a new mattress when all I know is I want a good night’s sleep.
If your copywriting doesn’t talk to the customers’ concerns, they won’t listen, no matter how good your Website copywriter. You won’t even get to the point where they can fire you because they’ll never even think to buy from you in the first place.
Oh, and they loved me and hired me as their Website copywriter. Despite all my preaching. :-)
Last week this Seattle copywriter went to the Online Marketing Summit in Seattle. Although most of the information was stuff I already knew, I took notes and had about eight blog post ideas jotted down, prompted by the day’s presentations. I was delighted to have so much blog fodder, knowing I could post every day for a few days and have sweet Sarah, my Client Success Manager at Compendium Blogware (whose job it is to keep the bloggers blogging!), praising me for my blogging frequency. But alas, I lost my notes! And I don’t lose things! Especially anything related to copywriting. Frustrating!
One thing I remember though: Although the Online Marketing Summit is, of course, focused on online marketing meaning anything from email marketing to web usability, there were two recurring themes I noticed throughout the day:
1) Social media: Again and again presenters either framed their talks around social media, or the attendees asked questions related to it.
2) Face to face: Several times I heard people say something akin to “nothing can replace in-person, face-to-face communication.”
Do you notice those two themes go together? When companies are using social media to market, they are able to act more like they are marketing in person. Think blogs as marketing tools, where you have a real person doing the talking, not a generic, faceless company. Or the segmentation that can be done with email marketing: Your marketing can be very targeted and specific to an audience, making them feel like you are talking just to them. How about User Generated Content (UGC) where the users are creating the content for you, as real people talking to your audience “face-to-face”?
Perhaps most exciting is how doable this is for small business marketing. From small business email marketing to small business blogging, this Seattle copywriter sees plenty of opportunities.
Just something to think about… Meanwhile, I’ve ransacked all my recycling bins and my car and my purse, but I remain convinced those notes are around here somewhere. And ransacking my brain isn’t helping: I’m coming up empty, trying to remember all my great blog ideas!
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