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.

Although I'm "just" a Seattle copywriter, I've always found in the 8 years I've been doing We Know Words that I have to know about much more than copywriting. My clients typically aren't as up to speed on what's happening in the world of marketing, from email marketing to Web writing to using blogs as marketing tools.
That's OK by me, because it gives me an excuse to keep up with marketing trends...and then I get to be the expert for my clients, helping them figure out not just what to say (the copywriting), but when, how, to whom and more (the consulting).

How does a marketer keep up with new developments in marketing though when you are busy doing your day-to-day job and you don't have someone like me (who is delighted to keep learning!) around to keep you current?

Even more importantly, how do we make sure we have marketers entering the field who know email marketing, blogging, social media, Web 2.0, Twitter, etc.? Because it doesn't seem to be taught in college. Heck, even copywriting is something anyone can claim to do! Hang out your sign as an online copywriter and have at it. No one can ask for credentials, because there aren't any!

Which makes me very happy to be on the Advisory Board for the University of Washington marketing certificate programs. UW Extension is looking forward, trying to determine what marketers need to know. And now we have a new program that starts this fall: the Advanced Interactive Marketing program. 

You can read about the program at http://www.extension.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aim/aim_gen.asp, but to sum it up, here's how a marketer can benefit from this marketing program:

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?

 

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!

Big news for this Seattle copywriter! I have an article in today's issue of MarketingProfs.com, my favorite marketing publication:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/webnews/8/news8-5-08_0.asp?adref=mpt188

Seriously, this is my favorite email newsletter, and one I recommend all the time to fellow marketers, copywriters and marcom people. The quality of the articles is always high, whether the authors are addressing email marketing, blogs as marketing tools, SEO or small business marketing.

The article is also on one of my favorite marketing topics: The Sin of Assumption. Read it and let me know what you think!!

If you’re in email marketing, you’re using a welcome email (aka welcome letter), I hope! It can be one of the most powerful tools in your email marketing toolbox, because it’s the most often read email a business can send to a prospect or customer. (If you’re new to email marketing, or getting into small business email marketing, or just wondering what a welcome email is, it’s the email automatically generated and sent to a new subscriber to your in-house email list, someone who signs up on your Web site.)

 

Sadly most businesses don’t use one or use a crappy one. Yet the welcome email should be required in email marketing. Not only is it highly likely that your customer will open and read it, it gives you a chance to make a deeper connection with them, further your relationship along, and even up sell them or get them back to your web site.

 

Earlier this week I started on whitepaper project for a new client and we were talking about how people would get the whitepaper (because this Seattle copywriter believes how you deliver a marketing message is almost as important as the message itself). I mentioned about using a welcome email and did he want me to do the copywriting for it, and I found myself explaining the welcome letter…which led to a great new term (I think) and this blog post.

 

I told him to think of it as a reinforcement email, and then had my “ah ha” moment: Maybe if marketers thought of this welcome letter as a reinforcement email, they’d both be more likely to use one and they’d make sure to have better copywriting too.

 

By “reinforcement,” I mean this piece of email marketing reinforces to your customer that signing up for your email newsletter or email promotions was a smart decision. It’s like a buy for the customer: She is giving you her contact information. In return you will provide her content of value. It’s an exchange of “goods” and you can confirm for her that yes, that was a good idea. It also reinforces your message regarding frequency and what type of information she’ll receive from you via email, ensuring that she’ll be more likely to look for messages from you in her inbox. It can reinforce your brand in tone and voice (which is why I keep mentioning copywriting). And it can reinforce the beginning of your relationship with this person. She raised her hand and said yes to hearing from you. You can take the next step in the relationship with this email.

 

I hope calling it a reinforcement email instead of a welcome email makes it make sense to marketers, because—like I said already—it is so important, it should be required in all email marketing, especially small business email marketing. If you have a small business, this is one easy way to stand out and differentiate yourself from the big guys…wait, that’s the start of another blog post.

If you want to grow your in-house email list, use blogs as marketing tools. Huh?

 

Hold on, let me explain…

 

Think from the end: People sign up for your email newsletter or email marketing when they are at your Web site, right? So one way to grow your email list is to drive more traffic to your site.

 

People go to search engines like Google and Yahoo because they have a problem to solve. You want them to find your Web site when searching, right?

 

That’s why I suggest you use blogs as marketing tools. Done right, a blog helps with search engine optimization so you get found online when people are searching for solutions to a problem. That’s because search engines like fresh, up-to-date content, which blogs are assumed to have, so search engines rank blog content faster than static web sites. And because blogs are by their very nature more targeted in subject matter, making them naturally keyword rich

 

Blogs as marketing tools are not ends in themselves though. You use your blog to drive people to your Web site: They search online, they find your blogs, they then find your Web site by clicking on a link in the blog. Once they are at your site, you sell them on the idea of signing up to get emails from you. That’s how you build your in-house email list using blogs as marketing tools.

 

Then your email marketing is for continuing and building the relationship. Ideally once they are at the site, they sign up for your email newsletter or email promotions. They are opening the door to hearing from you by doing so, giving you permission to market to them.

 

Think of it as a three-step process involving a series of yeses:

1. Yes, it looks like this blog is relevant, I will click on this search result
2. Yes, I like what I see in the blog, I will click on a link to this web site to learn more
3. Yes, I like what I see at this web site so I want to sign up for emails and hear from this company again in the futu

The customer has found you and engaged with you, and you’ve grown your in-house email list. All because you blogged.

 

And this use of blogs as marketing tools works no matter the size of your business. In fact, it might just be the most effective way to go about small business blogging and small business email marketing!

As much as I push blogs as marketing tools, I confess my own is the first to be neglected when I get busy. But I still keep learning more about marketing with blogs and blogging, so I can pass that wisdom along to my copywriting clients. (I’m really pushing small business blogging, because I am a blogging believer! Even though I neglect my own!)

 

The other day I was reading up on blogging best practices, and came across a blog that said to link out, link out, link out…. This blogger was really pushing the concept of getting your blog fodder from reading other blogs and linking to them.

 

To me, that’s a strange concept. I find my blog topics come from living, breathing, doing…seeing real-life examples of marketing and copywriting at their worst and at their best both. If I focused on reading other blogs and commenting on them, what would I really be adding to the conversation?

 

It’s my own experience, like the grief I had the other day on Verizon’s web site trying to view a photo a friend sent me, or the conversations with clients who just don’t understand email marketing but think they do, or a story from one of my kids…

 

Maybe it’s because I blog on marketing, and marketing is something that goes on all around us all the time. Whether it’s my daughter trying to talk me into buying her a Slurpee, or a man asking me out on a date, or me as Web site copywriter helping a client with SEO…it’s all marketing all the time. So maybe that means I don’t have to turn to other bloggers for blog fodder. Besides, that sounds boring. I’d rather live and comment on living (as related to marketing, of course) than spend any more time online.

Great post this morning from Email Insider on small business marketing with email . In it, blogger David Baker reviews just how simple and easy email marketing can be for the small business, with a few “how to” reminders.

 

It warms my heart to see this post, and I hope it’s read by loads of small business owners, because really, email can be such a cost-effective way to market. But, as with so many marketing tools, email is easy to do wrong.

 

I’ll add a couple of tips to what David suggested:

 

Have a plan—I see small business owners (heck, bigger businesses too!) start out with email marketing and then flounder because they didn’t have a plan. How often will we email? What is the point of our email? How will we track our results and know whether or not it’s working? (How often as a consumer have you signed up with your email address at the cash register of a small business—then never heard from them? No plan.)

 

Think like an editor—As part of your plan, create an editorial calendar. He mentions tying in to local events. Great idea! Know what events are coming up, know what your seasons are and what you might want to promote.

 

Have a theme—I use theme for lack of a better word, but I hope it resonates with you. I mean, knowing what your email marketing is supposed to be and be doing. Is it informal with tips for doing something better? Is it more of an event calendar? Is it written with humor, from the standpoint of the business owner’s dog perhaps? Whatever it is, determine the theme from the start, then be consistent.

 

Speaking of consistent—Be consistent with length, types of content, frequency…you want to train your recipients to know what to expect and, we hope, look forward to your email.

 

OK, that’s enough of an add-on to the original post. But hope it gets you thinking about email marketing if you’re not doing it already, or reviewing your email marketing if you are!

It’s often my job as copywriter to figure out what the benefits are; clients are too close to their products and services to see clearly.

 

This week I’ve been working on an email marketing campaign for a series of whitepapers. It’s much easier for me to play the role of customer and distill what the benefits of each whitepaper are. The existing messaging emphasizes the so-called features, what the whitepaper “is.” The outsider (i.e. copywriter or marketing writer) can much more easily figure out the benefits, what I call the “so you can” parts: “Read this whitepaper so you can…” What is the end result of downloading and reading a whitepaper? That’s what the customer wants to know, not the content of the whitepaper, but what she’ll be able to do if she reads it.

 

And it makes me laugh how often I walk into a situation where the marketing team is just scratching their heads, trying to come up with the real benefit, and I can sum it up right away. That’s because I have the outsider’s view.

 

Too many companies pay too little attention to their copy. They keep it in-house, they trust the marketing people to do the copywriting. They end up with me-too Web sites and ineffective marketing campaigns. Then they wonder why their marketing does such a poor job of generating leads! Hint: It’s probably talking at customers, not to them, because it’s too subjective.

 

Maybe that’s why I’m becoming such an advocate for blogging as a marketing tool? Blogging by its very nature is more focused (or should be) on information that’s useful to the customer. It can unintentionally sell just by being real and authentic and objective.

I really do love small businesses and small business owners, but they can make me crazy…

My best example right now is the small business owner who is pissed at me because they put up their new Web site and aren’t getting any hits. This is apparently my fault because my copywriting agency did the writing for the Web site. Never mind that their Web developer neglected to use the title tags and other meta tags we’d written. Never mind that it’s poorly coded and designed. Never mind that they chose not to do all of the pages we’d suggested for more content. Never mind that it only went up three weeks ago. Never mind that no sites link to it yet. Never mind that they have no content management strategy for updating the site. Never mind that I had explained all of this to him months ago when we first started on the project.

Just because someone is running and marketing a small business doesn’t excuse them from educating themselves about marketing. I’m not saying they should be an expert. (I joke that I don’t want to know about taxes, that’s why I have an accountant. But I still know what taxes get paid and when, I just don’t have to know the nitty gritty.) But they should know something.

Not all are like the client described above. I’ve worked with plenty of small business owners who took the initiative and learned enough to have a dialog about their marketing, whether it’s an email newsletter, web marketing, blogging or direct mail.

And thank goodness for those clients! Copywriters and marketers can’t do their jobs with clients who don’t know anything and aren’t willing to learn is the lesson I’m learning this week. Sadly, it’s usually the small business that falls into that category.

And for any small business owners who now feel compelled to know it bit more about web marketing and SEO based on this gripe, start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769.