Banner Ad Copywriter

Yes, I admit it. I’m weird. I’m a copywriter who loves writing whitepapers. Is it because I spend too much time alone and my mind is warped? Is it the wet Seattle weather? Or maybe my hours spent as an SEO copywriter has damaged my perspective?

Nah. It’s none of those things. I enjoy working on whitepapers because they are such great sales tools, and because they give me as a copywriter the chance to really delve into the customer’s mindset.

I just got off the phone with one of my favorite copywriting clients. We are about to do three whitepapers around a new product launch, so this morning’s call was to get me ramped up. But we don’t spend all our time talking about how the product can do A, B and C. No, I as the copywriter want to know what to say based not on the product’s capabilities (what it can do) but rather based on the customer’s worldview (what do they want).

I get to learn about, and write to, their pain points, desires, daily frustrations and wish lists in a way I can’t do when a copywriter for ads or direct mail pieces.

The benefit for you as the marketer is the appeal of the whitepaper because it’s customer centric. The potential customer who downloads your whitepaper is pretty sure he or she is going to get mostly factual, useful information, not a 5-page sales pitch. That’s a feel good in your favor as the company they might buy from!

And crazy as I might sound, I think whitepapers are easy to write! They are straightforward and objective. They don’t require clever turns of phrase or picturesque verbosity. They are what they are.

I’ve also written enough whitepapers, and studied information about writing whitepapers, to have a structure I use pretty much every time. That’s how straightforward it is.

Plus they can be about a variety of topics. I started out writing whitepapers for high tech only, but over the years We Know Words copywriters have even written whitepapers for the corporate travel industry, and we wrote a series of banner ads and landing pages for a whitepaper written for the HR industry.

Whitepapers. They rock. For the copywriter and the customer both. Are you using them as part of your marketing mix?

To see a bit more about whitepapers written by We Know Words copywriters, go to http://weknowwords.com/whitepapers.htm.

Hmmm… I love them so much, my next blog topic might just be on how whitepapers help you date your prospects and customers!

Driving down the freeway yesterday, I saw a van for Insite Inspection with the question “What’s in your crawl space?” stenciled on the back window right above the Web site address (www.terrisinspect.com).

This is a fabulous example of asking the right question!

All marketers and copywriters know asking questions is a great way to get people’s attention, to engage them so they read your ad, Web site, brochure, email, etc. But those questions often miss the mark because people can just answer them without really thinking and move on.

Asking me what’s in my crawl space gets right to a fear factor and therefore gets my attention. Plus it’s a question I can’t easily answer! It makes me think of that dark, dank place full of countless spiders and other creepy things (so Halloween-y) and yes, I do wonder what’s going on in there: Termites? Carpenter ants? Rotten wood? Is there a leaky pipe perhaps? But I certainly don’t want to crawl in there and find out!

Another favorite example of mine is the huge banner hanging by the side of the freeway asking “Are your trees safe?” as an attempt to market the tree-topping company located there. The thousands of drivers passing by that banner each day no doubt think to themselves “Of course they are.” Imagine the reaction if the banner said “Are your trees dangerous?” Now that would make people stop and think! “I don’t know, are they?”

Questions are a great way to engage and to show people right from the start that you’re familiar with their pains and can relate to them. But make the questions—and all your copywriting—relevant to the customer to make them work.

P.s. I checked out the inspection company’s Web writing. Sadly, it slips right back into that writing for the Web that is so common, the “let me tell you all about me” copywriting instead of the customer-centric copywriting that can be so much more effective.