Copywriting Services

I’ve had several bad espressos from those cheap looking, roadside coffee stands. To the point where I won’t even risk it anymore. I’d sooner go to a Starbucks—which is against my principles as a small business supporter and champion—than risk one more really bad latte. My brain knows they can’t all be that poor quality, those little independent barista booths. But my stomach and taste buds have been burned enough times to avoid anything like that.

I’m wary of the roadside coffee stand, I admit it. Just like women are wary of a certain type of guy. At the risk of stereotyping and offending, say a woman keeps dating artists and finds they are consistently moody and unreliable. After awhile, she’ll probably avoid artists as potential dates, even if a guy is rational and reliable as well as artistic. She’ll end up lumping all artists together into one kind of category, just as I lump all roadside coffee stands into one type of category: to be avoided.

When your coffee really is stellar and worthy of a drive by, how do you stand out if your audience is wary due to all your competitors who serve crappy cappuccinos? First off, you’ll have to make sure you truly serve good coffee. That will get you the word-of-mouth marketing that money can’t buy. Secondly, you need marketing and copywriting that differentiates you and makes you stand out as better.

And this applies no matter your business: If your potential customers are lumping you into a category you don’t want to be in, or don’t belong in, only two things can get you out: Your product or service, and your marketing. The former will be your proof that you’re better, the latter will be your story telling people about your proof.

Is your business perceived as a roadside coffee stand or a flaky artist? Then make sure what your selling is better than the competition, and make sure your marketing and copywriting effectively communicate that fact.

Confused about how and why to use blogs as marketing tools? Here’s a little help…

Last week this Seattle copywriter spent a day at Market to the Max, making sure I’m up to speed on the latest and greatest in marketing techniques and trends. I looked forward to the panel on blogging in particular, for two reasons: One, I’m a firm believer in blogs as marketing tools, and two, my friend Chris Baggott was on the panel, and I’m always intrigued by what he has to say.

The panel was a borderline disappointment, however, because Chris’ view, the only one that makes sense for the majority of businesses, was the minor one. (It was also a disappointment because of the moderator’s inappropriate behavior, but that’s irrelevant to my blogging point.)

Chris’ view on blogs as marketing tools is that businesses, including small business marketing, use blogging to get found online. It’s blogging to win in the search engines. What do search engines love? Fresh, keyword-rich content. What do blogs provide? Fresh, keyword-rich content. (OK, now I’m starting to sound like Chris, better be careful!)

But two of the panelists were too focused on using blogs to establish oneself as a thought leader. That’s all well and good and legitimate, but Mychal at Kona Kai doesn’t need to be a thought leader in the coffee business to make his small business successful. He needs to get people into Kona Kai for food, drink and fun (and free WiFi). His blog needs to attract people in Kent, Washington, not New York or Boston or …

Using blogs as marketing tools in the way the other panelists presented isn’t misdirected, it just wasn’t very helpful information for a room full of people charged with marketing their organizations.

Thinking about blogging? Start with a goal. Do you want to be a noteworthy leader in your industry with thousands of people subscribing to your blog? Go that route. Or do you want to sell more products and services and make more money? Then use your blog as a marketing tool and win the search wars.

 Don’t believe customers are narcissists? Today doing keyword research for a Website copywriter client, I typed “restaurant” into the SEO Book tool http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/. I had to laugh when I saw an estimated 175 searches per day in Google for the phrase “restaurants near me.” Not restaurants in Seattle, or restaurants near a certain ZIP code, just “near me.”

Keep this in mind when copywriting your Web site, or overseeing your Website copywriter. People are narcissists. It’s not anything bad I’m saying about consumers, it’s true of all of us (although admittedly some more than others!). But we all are the center of our own universes, as my friend Lisa once said. As marketers and copywriters, we gotta get our heads out of our %$#@s and put the customer first, not ourselves.

This is particular true online where marketing tends to be self serve. Whether you’re revamping, evaluating or starting from scratch, make sure you’re building and copywriting your Web site to:

• Meet your customer’s needs first, yours second
• Have your copywriter use words that will resonate with your customers
• Use keywords your customers actually use, not the ones you assume they’ll use
• Delight your customers by being appropriate, relevant and easy…this includes navigation, the words used for buttons and links, the ease of your forms, and more

Still not a customer-centric Web site after all that? Your Web site is your online sales person, or should be. Maybe you could watch your sales people in action to see how they put the customer first. Then apply those principles to your Web site?

One of my favorite services I offer as a copywriter is Web site assessments. That means I review an existing Web site to assess how well it’s meeting the business’ goals and the customer’s goals. In all the years I’ve been doing these Web site assessments, I’ve yet to review a Web site that didn’t have room for improvement to serve the customer better.

Want this freelance Website copywriter and marketing maven to take a look at your Web site? Just say the word: sharon@weknowwords.com.

This freelance copywriter is technically still on vacation today, but catching up on email and blogging now that I’m back home. Travelling seems to always give me plenty of blog ideas, but, being on the road and busy with my kids, I don’t get them jotted down and forget them. But this past week’s trip to Phoenix brought to mind two biggies in my humble marketing maven opinion…and both fit my marketing is like dating analogy.

Monday morning, we took a very short Horizon flight from Seattle to Portland, to catch a connecting flight. This was a smallish plane, only four seats across, nothing fancy. But there’s “nothing fancy” and there’s shameful. In this case, three rows up from our seats, the plastic panel that houses the fan, light and call button was duct taped in place. Ouch.

Marketing happens at every single touch point with your customer. And marketing is like dating. If a man shows up for a date and his glasses are duct taped together, or his pants are hemmed with duct tape, or any other obvious and in poor taste use of duct tape, the woman is going to raise her eyebrows and feel like she doesn’t really matter to this guy after all. Even if he impressed her on the phone, even if he takes her to a nice place for dinner, even if he shows up with a token gift, she’s going to wonder about the duct tape…and the lack of effort and caring the man shows by blatantly displaying it. If he (and Horizon) is so cavalier about that, what else is he cavalier about? His hygiene maybe?

The duct tape was not a confidence builder, rather a confidence shaker.

On the other side of the coin, Sam’s Café in Phoenix offers a great “free prize inside,” (And yes, I’m borrowing “free prize inside” from Seth Godin’s book of the same name.) The restaurant is marketed as a southwestern grill. The food was good, the service okay, but the free prize was a piece of white chocolate with almonds wrapped in a corn husk delivered to everyone at our table at the end of the meal. It was a free prize both as an unexpected treat, and in presentation. As a marketing is like dating analogy, this is akin to showing up for a date with a rose. Or choosing a particularly nice restaurant. Or some other sweet but simple surprise. It’s the extra touch that a customer—or date—remembers.

OK, last day of vacation so I’m off to ride my horse while the sun is still shining! Back to regular copywriting blogs next week, as I continue my commitment to blogs as marketing tools in 2009!

I hate The Ram. When Kent Station opened a couple of years ago, people were so excited to get a chain restaurant in downtown Kent. Meaning they were happy to get The Ram. My first experience there was awful, and after three more tries, I finally gave up on the place. Besides I like the food and the bar at Zephyrs better, it’s more my style, and now I have a martini bar as an option too.

But the other night a friend wanted to go to The Ram, because it would be new to him, and I’d drug him to Zephyrs and Shindig Martini Bar a few times already. Now he knows why I was reluctant to go there. The service was atrocious, the food awful and the prices high.

Hang on, hang on, this isn’t copywriter PMS. This ties into my copywriter theory that marketing is like dating: the customer expecting one thing and getting another.

When you are marketing to potential customers, you are wooing them, trying to get them to date you. You woo them with promises in your copywriting: good beer, good food, friendly service. But if you don’t follow through on your promise, your marketing and copywriting are for naught. Your marketing is a lie and trickery meant to get them in the door to spend their money. And then your marketing goes after the next prospect, just like a serial dater who seems intent only on getting someone to say “yes” to a date so he can start on his next potential date, to win her over.

Great marketing isn’t just great copywriting, killer taglines, awesome email copywriting, fabulous Web sites, kickass direct mail, etc. Great marketing is the whole enchilada. It means a business promises something to me as a customer, then delivers on it. That’s how you win a repeat customer.

If your company is a serial dater, then keep plowing away at marketing that gets them in the door but disappoints. Because you’re only aiming for the next customer anyway, not aiming to keep the one you just got. But if you’re company wants to be in a committed relationship, follow through on the promises your marketing makes. If you can’t, hold off on your marketing until you can, or make your marketing fit what you can really deliver.

And if you go to The Ram and order the calamari? Don’t be hungry or picky. So sayeth one disappointed freelance copywriter!

I’ve been thinking on my listening skills lately. Or lack thereof, due to some communications issues that have come up. I think I’m a really good listener, in my personal life, but turns out I’m not as good as I could be. I want to jump in and fix things for people sometimes. Or I get tired of hearing the same old story, so I jump in then too. Or I think my idea is so brilliant, I have trouble keeping my mouth shut. Or… you get the idea! Hey my business is We Know Words. I'm sometimes ready to overwhelm with mine!

But good listening skills are paramount in my career as a freelance copywriter. Every project with a first-time client starts with a kickoff call during which we go through a long list of questions, whether they hired me as Website copywriter or a print project. The goal is for me to learn about the copywriting client’s customers: what are their pain points, what do they want to do better, etc. And listening is primarily what I do during those calls. That’s how I’m able to help my copywriting clients talk to their customers, not at them.

But there’s another level of listening, beyond personal, beyond being a conscientious copywriter. And that’s asking customers to interact with us as businesses, whether we’re in small business marketing or big.

Customers want to have their say! That’s why we have an explosion of Web sites like Yelp and YouTube. Customers don’t want to just be fed content, no matter how great the copywriting. They want to contribute it too!

Is your business a good listener? You’d probably say yes, thinking if someone calls customer service, they get listened to. But there are multiple ways to engage your customers and solicit their input:

• Ask for feedback in your email newsletters, or use a survey tool to ask customers to vote
• Ask for comments on your blog
• When you ship an order, entice the customer to comment on your Web site, about their experience or the product
• In your email copywriting, when you send out transactional emails like order confirmations, ask for input or comments that way
• If you use blogs as marketing tools, put their comments in your blog
• Set up a wiki so customers can contribute content that way
• Have a Facebook group where customers can write on your wall

But then, as all good listeners must do, pay attention!! Don’t just solicit the input then ignore it.

Asking for and listening to customer input has multiple benefits, for small business marketing to huge corporate marketing. Today, for example, I listened in on a discovery call a copywriting client was conducting with a prospect. Why? So I could hear what the prospect had to say, not the client’s translation of it. Now when I work on their email copywriting, I’ll be able to play up the aspects the prospect loved, clarify the aspects that were confusing, and reassure about the aspects that were a little scary.

We got that info straight from the horse’s mouth, and my client listened.

Plus customers like to be listened too, so you're creating all that goodwill too!

Got a way to get input from your customers and to make sure you listen to it? Post a comment! J

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!

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!

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!

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.

Maybe this is sacrilege coming from a copywriter, but it’s not what you say that matters, it’s what your customers say that matters.

From clean uniforms to a usable Web site, from friendly service to great product…what your marketing promises better be delivered in the actual experience, start to finish, or your marketing is lying.

Check out the “Trusted Sources of Information” table at http://www.bridgeratings.com/press_08.01.067.Influentials.htm. Note that family, friends and acquaintances are the most trusted but a close second is strangers with experience. This group rates second overall as a trusted source. Strangers are trusted over religious leaders and teachers even. That’s how important your customer’s experience is. All the marketing in the world won’t replace a bad experience because people will talk, or blog, or post a review online.

OK, then, why do you even need marketing? Why do you need a copywriter? Because marketing gets people in the door, to the Web site, or on the phone in the first place. Then the experience either seals the deal or kills it.

Speaking of the customer experience, I want to share a nice email I received recently about this blog:

“I definitely enjoy your blog. I can only assume that this type of thing comes naturally for you in your line of work, but yours is one of the few blogs I always look forward to reading.”

Tim Oten
Chukar Cherries

Thank you, Tim! If you find this blog helpful or not, speak up and let me know! I write it to share my opinions and musings, but want it to do some good in the marketing world too, hoping to change how marketers look at messaging!

As a copywriter, I had to laugh when I read the following comment in Email Insider yesterday:

“44% of marketers surveyed believe the biggest challenge in email is providing relevant content. - eMarketer (2006)”

That’s hilarious to me because any copywriter worth her salt can serve up relevant content on a daily basis. Really what these marketers are probably saying is they don’t know how to not talk about their products or services. Relevant content means simply information that’s useful to the recipient, not a sales pitch.

Take the email newsletter as an example: I’ve yet to sit down with anyone thinking about doing an email newsletter and been at a loss when we started talking topics and articles. Quite the opposite! My brain typically goes into overdrive.

Maybe it’s my magazine editor background, maybe it’s because I’m a writer, or maybe it’s because I’m not stuck in the company mindset meaning I can think like a customer: What would be interesting to me, the customer, not you, the marketer?

And this should be true of any copywriter.

So if you’re a marketer who thinks “relevant content” is a challenge, I challenge you to bring in a copywriter who doesn’t eat, drink, breathe it like you do…and relevant content will be a breeze.

As copywriters, we try and push our clients to be real, to have a distinct voice and sound like real people rather than generic, corporate boringness. We don’t always succeed. It’s scary to be real, to be different. It’s much more comfortable to just sound like everyone else. We’ve even had clients flat out say they want their Web site written to sound like a competitor’s. I guess I get it. I mean, I have a teenage son who would hate to stand out from the crowd. I guess when it comes to copywriting and marketing communications, most businesses have a teenage mentality and prefer to blend in. Kind of hard to get noticed that way, in my humble copywriter opinion.

So what a treat I had last week when 37 Signals demonstrated how being real can make a real impression. They had a down day and they were perfectly honest about the problems. They didn’t hide behind any generic, corporate speak, their copywriting said exactly what was happening and expressed their apologies. Below are just a few snippets to give you a taste:

As they announce all systems were offline due to a problem, we users got an explanation and a simple “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

When they located the problem, they stated what it was and said “Again, we're terribly sorry for this disruption of service.”

As the day went along, they kept us users posted. This was my favorite when talking about the technicians working on the problem: “We're breathing down their neck as heavily as we can. And we profusely apologize for this unacceptable interruption of service.”

And finally:  “We should be in the home stretch now. Again, we're incredibly sorry for this disruption. This is not how Fridays are supposed to be.”

There were undoubtedly some customers annoyed that they couldn’t use 37 Signals service that day, but for me, seeing this personal language, this willingness to be honest and apologetic, well, it more than made up for any inconvenience. It made this copywriter’s day.

Although we’re often locked away expressing our brilliance with words behind closed doors, sometimes a copywriter gets a chance to go public. This copywriter gets another chance this spring.

In March, I’ll be part of an email marketing panel presenting for the Northern California Direct Marketing Association. We're calling it Extreme Email Makeover: Marketers will submit their email marketing campaigns to have them reviewed by the panel. We’ll be covering deliverability, content, design and mobile deployment, and giving attendees the chance to learn from the email marketing mistakes of others.

It's a great panel, and I’m delighted to be part of it as the copywriter and messaging guru:

• Michelle Eichner - COO and Vice President of Client Services, Pivotal Veracity
• Morgan Witt - Director of Marketing Strategy, Juice Media Worldwide
• Cameron Kane - President, Strategic Design Group
• Michael Kelly (moderator) - Director, Sales and Business Development, ClickMail Marketing
• and me as President of We Know Words and Past President of the SDMA

Read more about it at http://www.dmanc.org/calendar.html (scroll down to the March 19 event).

And if you’re in the area and you can make the event, please do!

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!

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 son gleefully sent me a link to a comic offering a huge lesson in marketing. He’s ecstatic any time he finds a Web comic I’ll like because it means he gets to share something from his world with me. :-)

The comic is great, and reminded me of an enewsletter I wrote a couple of years ago about “indirect” marketing.

We spend lots of time and energy and worry on direct marketing—and copywriters are tasked with making measurable results happen as part of that effort. But really there are so many other ways we market and put our brands out into the world, without even realizing we’re doing so. And people notice and talk…about you, your company, your product, your service. They talk about how easy or cumbersome your Web site is to use, how happy or dissatisfied they were with their purchase.

I love my new saddle, but loads of people have heard me complain about the horrible experience I had with County Saddlery.

People talk. So give them something good to say, by making sure your indirect marketing is as well-thought out and consistent as your direct marketing is.

Does your target market really care how long you’ve been in business? Maybe. But that’s not the first piece of information they want to know.

We are often hired as copywriters on projects where the client wants to emphasize how long they’ve been in business. And sure, that matters, but not at first. At first you have to get the potential customer’s attention. After they are already interested in you and listening, then you can tell them more about yourself. But at first you have to tell them about them.

Yes, your customers are narcissists, just like you. Just like all of us. But your job as copywriter or marketer is to move beyond our natural tendency to talk about ourselves.

In my city, Kent Floral has been in business since 1906. That’s over 100 years, and that’s pretty impressive! But, other than the trivia, “isn’t that something” aspect, I don’t really care. What I love is that I can call them up and they know just what I want without me describing it (elegant, unusual, sparse, eye-catching, not the usual floral frou frou).

We just had two birthdays in a row here at We Know Words (Marina and Jill), and I of course sent flowers, not just because it’s our brand, but because everyone loves getting flowers. I use Kent Floral because I like to use local small businesses and I get personalized service I wouldn’t get from calling a toll-free number. They just know what I like. A few months ago, they even went so far as to contact a certified floral designer in Phoenix make sure my Arizona-based aunt received an usual get well bouquet.

Let’s face it: The years in business are impressive, but they a secondary point. Lots of times businesses want to talk about superfluous stuff like that first, but really, that comes later. First get your customer’s attention by making it clear to them that you are empathetic, understand them and what they need. Then you can tell them the secondary stuff to reinforce that they’ve made a good decision by choosing to buy from you.

There are many bits of information that you probably want to tell your potential customers, not just your longevity. Customer service, quality, awards won, etc. Those all fall into the same bucket as your years in business, the bucket that should come later, not first.