Content Marketing Services

I envy the freelance copywriter who can cite an exact response rate for a direct mail campaign. Much of the copywriting we do at We Know Words falls more into the category of what I call indirect marketing. Our copywriters are often busy with writing whitepapers, email newsletters, case studies, guides and writing for the Web. It’s a nice change of pace when we write email marketing or landing pages, where we can get definite feedback.

The truth is, as much as executives might like it to be otherwise, not all marketing is measurable. Yet it is still valuable. Just about everything a small business or large corporation does in some way is marketing that has nothing to do with metrics. Can you measure the positive yet subtle effects of clean uniforms, courteous customer service folks or brand appropriate content? What about a tagline, or a well-written how to guide? Convenient parking at your location? Free mints by the cash register? I could go on and on. Marketing is a promise you make to your potential customer that their experience will be a certain way. And it’s a promise we are making each and every day in business, whether we’re copywriters, graphic designers, marketing managers, or the “director of first impressions” who greets people as they walk into your office.

Just because we can’t measure something doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.

p.s. I apologize for the seemingly random font sizes in the blogs lately. It's getting fixed on the tech end, nothing I can do about it for now!

I used to be a strong advocate of email newsletters, probably because of my publishing background, but also because I believed in them enough to create a list of 25 reasons to publish an e-newsletter. I came across that list the other day rummaging through a file. I laughed to myself at how much my thinking has changed in the last 4 years. But then as I read through the list, I realized most of those reasons translate to blogging! So below are the 18—count them, 18!—of the 25 reasons I used to use to support enewsletters and now offer up as reasons to blog.

Blogging can:

1. Help your search engine rankings by putting useful, relevant content online
2. Give prospects an easy way to learn more about you, and for clients past and present to keep up with you
3. Strengthen your brand and market position
4. Lead to referrals
5. Drive traffic to your Web site
6. Market without coming across as marketing
7. Increase your credibility and that of your business
8. Evolve and change in a way printed material can’t
9. Offer cost effective testing and adapting
10. Communicate quickly and efficiently
11. Establish a dialog and enhance customer loyalty
12. Educate your customers in new ways to use your products and services
13. Generate leads
14. Reinforce other marketing efforts, offline and online
15. Cost the same, no matter how many people are reading it
16. Lower costs compared to printed marketing
17. Be tracked, showing you how many hits and where they come from
18. Build an ongoing relationship with your target market

I still believe in marketing with enewsletters, because what I’ve been preaching for years is still true: it’s not just what you say but how you say it. Delivering the right marketing message with the wrong marketing medium doesn’t work. So use blogs when they’re right, and create newsletters when they are.

One of my favorite marketing books of all time is Seth Godin’s “All Marketers are Liars.” If you only read one marketing book in your life, read this one.

In it, he talks about world view: You have to know your prospect’s world view to market to them, because you have to frame your marketing message in a way that speaks to that world view, or you’ll be ignored. It’s a matter of perception: You have to frame the problem as the customer perceives it.

I don’t think this can be repeated enough, because it’s so difficult for companies to stop thinking about what they want to say to focus instead on what customers want to hear. So here’s a real-life example that might help you remember what you’re dealing with next time you or your copywriter is crafting a marketing message…

My daughter hates vegetables, no matter how you cook them. Her world view is “vegetables are yucky” and you have to get past that to get her to eat them. But it’s a challenge because her perception is her reality! The other night we had sweet potato fries that were delicious. They were sweet and crunchy and salty and a real treat. Emma eyed those sweet potato fries warily as soon as they hit her plate. When told she had to take a “no thank you” bite, she scrunched up her face and grimaced before even picking up a fry. She decided she wouldn’t like them before she even tasted one. And when she did taste it? Her suspicions were confirmed: Sweet potatoes are as icky as fries as they are cooked in other way. Her perception became her reality.

Next time you’re copywriting a new marketing message, writing your email newsletter or updating your Web content, picture nine-year-old Emma’s grimace. Remember, that’s a perception you are dealing with. As fabulous as your product or service might be, the reality is your potential customers could very well see it differently, and you might have to smother it with ketchup just to get them to try it.

My last post was about user generated content. And I just had to smile when I saw that blog generated user generated content! In the form of comments, I mean. Hey, this stuff works! And the comments are thoughtful, adding another layer of insight onto what was just a germ of an idea on my part. Check them out… 

But heavy on my mind this week is—as usual--putting the prospect/customer first.  

 I call it talking to customers, not at them. And that means knowing how they think about a problem (“how they see it”), as well as the words they use (“what they call it”). 

First the problem: Many companies fill their Web sites and marketing collateral with copywriting about all their features and benefits from their own point of view. And who can blame them? After all, these people are living, breathing, eating, sleeping these products and/or services every day. Of course that’s their focus.  

But first you have to know what your prospect sees as the problem. If you sell mattresses, but your customer sees the problem as being tired all day—not as a need for a new mattress—then don’t have your copywriter fill the white space with talk about your great mattress. Instead, use marketing messages about how a mattress can improve sleep. 

Then there are the words they use. A former We Know Words client was an office furniture manufacturer. They wanted their Web site optimized for search engines, and they wanted to call their products work stations and panel systems and to use those terms in the Web writing. But guess what their customers called these same products? Yep, cubicles. In the company’s opinion, a cubicle was a derogatory term, one made fun of in Dilbert cartoons. But that’s the word customers used…and searched on.  

Talking their talk isn’t just for search engine optimization. You have to use your customer’s words in all your copywriting or you won’t connect with them: your ads, email marketing, brochures, you name it. And if you don’t know what words they use, ask your sales force. They’ll know.  

Until next blog!