Landing Page 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!

Working on a recent project as the Website copywriter, I submitted a draft of the home page of the Website to the design firm so they could build comps around it. The initial designs came back with my copy, but with a big ol’ “Welcome to our Web site” headline towering over my carefully crafted, attention getting headline.

As a Website copywriter, I obviously write a lot of Websites. As a consumer and marketer, I obviously see a lot of Websites.

And I do not get the whole Welcome thing. That home page is valuable real estate. You have three seconds to convince a site visitor to stick around and click around. (And this is true for every page of your Web site if those Website visitors are finding you via search engines and SEO.)

It is assumed they are welcome. Otherwise you wouldn’t have a Website, right? You’d have an intranet. You wouldn’t be visible to the whole World Wide Web.

Your headline has to work really hard. It has to grab that visitor’s attention. It should, you hope, include a keyword phrase. It should make the Website visitor want to see what else is on this page.

Don’t scream “Welcome,” you’re wasting your three seconds of opportunity. Instead scream “You want to know more!” OK, not that. But those big, bold words should be engaging, enticing, encouraging them to stay and see what your Website has to offer.

I had to fight the designers to get that banner welcome text removed and my own headline, which I had labored over, thank you very much, inserted in its place. And that shouldn’t happen, for a couple of reasons. One, I am the Website copywriter. Let me do my job. Two, even Website designers should understand the importance of that three second opportunity that your home page presents when a visitor lands there.

Listen to your Website copywriter. Or let your marketing team or Website designer use the tiresome welcome. The choice is yours…and it’s your site visitor’s choice to click the Back button when they find no immediate reason to stick around.

Have you ever met someone and liked them but figured they didn’t like you? This happens in the dating world all the time, right? But marketers do this without meaning to, telling prospects “We don’t want you” with their words, even though what they really want is to turn them into customers…

Last summer at a party I did not plan on attending, I met someone who gave every indication of not being interested. I hadn’t even planned on attending this party. Worse, I wasn’t even invited. I was supposed to be somewhere else, as I drove home from the barn where I boarded my horse, dusty and sweaty. But my cell phone rang with the persuading voice of a friend promising this party would cheer me up and there would be single men. For the record, that night single men were the reason for my glum mood, so that wasn’t enticing, but the cheerful note in my friend’s voice assured me this would take my mind off my troubles.

I arrived at the party, not knowing a soul but the one friend, and not getting any help from him as he flirted his way through the female portion of the crowd. That was okay, I kind of wanted to keep to myself anyway. But there was one guy I thought cute, and as the night wore on, I engineered myself to be sitting by the fire pit with him when no one else was around. Well, that didn’t matter. His body language, his obvious unwillingness to engage in conversation, the fact that he never asked me a thing but only curtly answered the questions I tossed out there all told me “not interested.” No problem! I climbed in the hot tub with a bunch of strangers and didn’t’ think anything of it.

The irony is, later this guy asked my one friend about me, and ended up calling me and asking me out on a date. When I asked him about that night, and told him I thought he was cold as ice and didn’t give any indication at all that he liked me, he said, “That was me being interested.” Like I’m supposed to figure that out!

But, people. Marketers do this all the time. We sit across the fire pit, at a party, under the influence of alcohol in a fun, Friday evening environment…and turn people off. We do! Our words do! Our words can be horribly narcissistic and make the prospect think all we’re really saying is “go away.”

That’s why your copywriting and message are so critical! When someone lands at your Web site, or gets your email, or pulls your direct mail out of the mailbox, or even checks out your Facebook page, your message needs to speak to them, tell them you want them, tell them you are interested in them as a customer.

Plenty of businesses make the mistake of the guy at the party. They don’t talk my talk, they don’t give any indication they are interested in ME, they simply fold their arms and lean back. Then they complain about prospects (i.e. women) and never look at what they’re doing to cause the disconnect.

Be engaging, marketers. Make sure your copywriting engages, that it talks to your potential customer, not at her. That it tells her, “I’m interested, I really am interested.”

Every page of your Website is a potential “home” page. That’s because any one of your Website pages could be the one that shows up in the search engine results page (SERP) when someone is searching online.

For example, type Seattle copywriter into Google and it’s not the We Know Words home page that shows up on page one of the SERPs, it’s a page within my site.

When working with your Website copywriter (or me), remember that each page must be able to stand alone. When a visitor lands at any page on your Website, they should still get a sense for where they are, what they’ll find, and what to do next.

With or without your copywriter, review each page of your Website and make sure it stands alone, and it includes at least one call to action to do something or to click to another page on your Website.

And along those lines, regarding a call to action, make sure every page is selling. As a freelance Website copywriter, I like to figure out one key action we’d like visitors to take, and to call that out on every page. See for example www.agrmarketingsolutions.com. Our primary goal is to get people to schedule a discovery call. So every single page of the Website includes that call to action in the sidebar.

Whether you’re focused on small business marketing or a huge ecommerce production, search engine optimization or blogs as marketing tools, you can easily make sure every page is a landing page, and every page is selling.

And if you want an objective eye reviewing your Website, ping this Website copywriter at sharon@weknowwords.com. I'll do a Website assessment to determine how well each of your pages is doing its job. Because in this competitive economy, you can't afford wasted space, even in cyber space. Every Web page has to do its job. And that job is to help you sell.

This Website copywriter's blog topics are often prompted by current copywriting projects. Right now I’m working on a small business Website copywriting project that’s requiring a lot of education…and all we’ve worked on so far is the home page.

People get confused about the real job of a Website’s home page. It’s not going to sell or convert. But it should get visitors deeper into your Website…and that’s the home page’s job. It should be short and concise and direct enough to tell someone at a glance what you’re offering, and compelling enough to get someone to click on a link to dig deeper.

As a Website copywriter, I think of home pages as doorways. A visitor knocks on your door when they land at your home page. You want to invite them in and have them accept the invitation. Then you can start leading them down the path to conversion, whether that conversion is to buy, to register, to subscribe, etc.

That means your home page has to be very targeted, another area where clients have trouble understanding how Website copywriting works.

If you have one main audience, one ideal type of customer, you’re better off speaking to that specific group with your home page rather than watering down your message trying to be all things to all people in just 150 words.

I once read words of wisdom that will stick with me always: Would you rather have one client who pays you what you’re worth or two clients who don’t? (I think it’s from a book called “Your money or your life.”) Every single time I’ve asked a small business client that question—and I do when they want to confuse, clutter and water down their message—they always, always answer “one client who pays me what I’m worth.”

If you try and make your home page work for a bunch of potential clients, you’re speaking to the masses and you’re less likely to get that one client. If you speak directly to that one client, you’re more likely to get him/her/it.

You also lose credibility when you try to be all things to all people on your home page.

So next time you sit down with your Website copywriter (or if you choose to work with me on your Website), remember these things about your home page:

·         It’s a doorway into your Website

·         It should tell your ideal audience what you offer at a glance

·         It should be the right balance between concise and compelling

And now this Website copywriter must stop preaching, er, I mean blogging and get back to copywriting!

The landing page.

It is fast becoming the bane of this Seattle copywriter’s existence.

It’s such a simple thing in a way, the page a prospect lands on after clicking on a pay-per-click ad or after getting an email promotion.

So why am I complaining?

Well, it could be my ex is bugging the heck out of me right now so I’m in a pissy mood, but I suspect it has more to do with the ignorance around landing pages. Too many marketers go about them all wrong. I run into this all the time as the online copywriter responsible for developing landing page content: What the We Know Words team can do in copywriting is limited by so many other landing page factors over which we have no control…but over which I try and exert some influence, albeit futilely.

But I’m not going to blog on how to make your landing pages right because that’d be a looooonngggg blog, and because a great little guide from Pardot will put you on the right path. Go to Pardot’s web site and get it at http://www.pardot.com/company/white-papers/landing-page-conversions.html. It’s just a primer, but surprisingly, the basics it covers are just the very basics I find myself arguing about with copywriting clients all the time.

Even if you think you are a landing page rock star, get it and give your current landing page approach a quick checkup.

Now, to put my ex in his place…kidding!!! I’m holding back, I promise.

This Seattle copywriter’s life suddenly seems filled with clients turned copywriter. Not that we don’t regularly have clients rewriting our copy, typically high tech ones. (If you’re a copywriter with high tech clients, you know what I mean.) I’m used to having to go back and explain to the techie marketers why we do marketing writing the way we do.

But wow, we have lots of people turning into copywriters all of a sudden, both marketing folks and non marketing folks.

Problem is, we know what we’re doing. We know about writing for the Web, what type and how much information goes on the home page. We know how to speak to the customer, not at them. We know what makes a good headline, and what goes in a brochure vs. on a landing page. We don’t make this stuff up. At We Know Words, our copywriters are constantly reading email newsletters, case studies and more to keep up with the changing world of online marketing and new marketing techniques.

In my humble opinion, hiring a freelance copywriter and then rewriting her copy is akin to redoing your taxes when your accountant is done with them, or redoing the paperwork when your lawyer is done with your incorporation forms (or divorce paperwork!).

So if you know you need a copywriter—and obviously you do or you wouldn’t have hired one--how do you work with her? Listen! Let her do her job. She really is the expert, just like your accountant and your lawyer. It’s her job to make you stand out, not blend in, to get prospects to sit up and take notice of you.

If you want killer copy that’s going to help you market your business, find a great copywriter, answer all her questions about your goals, customers, products, etc. Then stand back and trust her. You know your business, she knows hers.

Now, how can I sneakily make sure this blog post gets in front of the clients who are working under the delusion that they can do my job…?

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!

When writing for the Web, Search engine optimization (SEO) is only one part of the equation. Yes, SEO gets search engines to index and rank your site to help you get found, but then you have to do two more things: you have to get people to click on that search result to go to your Web page, and you have to keep them there once they land there.

Jakob Nielsen this week had great advice about the first task: A copywriter must go against conventional wisdom and use (gasp) passive voice when writing the descriptions a user sees on a search results page. As he points out, users only read the first two words, so you want those words to be the ones that get the user’s attention and get them to keep reading and/or therefore get them to click through.

His explanation is great, see it at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passive-voice.html. And his explanation of active and passive voice is better than what most of us learned in school, as my copywriting cohort Marina pointed out!

But most importantly remember that writing for the Web is not just writing for Google (or Yahoo or MSN). Ultimately your copywriting should move beyond getting your site listed well to getting it converting well.

Yesterday I got an email from a company trying to sell me on a landing page optimization webinar. Now, we write a lot of landing pages at We Know Words (yes, landing pages are another piece of marketing collateral best left to professional copywriters!), and I’m constantly watching for opportunities to stay current on marketing trends. So I was more than interested.

As I skimmed the email, I counted four different calls to register, but no price. So I clicked on one of the “register now” options thinking that would take me to a landing page (of course) with more information about the webinar, including price. Nope, took me to a registration form. So I tried another link. Same thing. And another. Same thing. Every link on that page took me to the same registration form.

OK, does it make any sense at all for a company to advertise a webinar on optimizing landing pages when they can’t even do one themselves?? And this is a big name company! (Just for the record, no, a registration form is not a landing page if there’s no selling going on. It’s fine to have a registration form on a landing page, but don’t stick it there by itself and expect a conversion.)

The main marketing communications lesson to be drawn from this is: Walk your walk and talk your talk! If you’re going to sell a webinar on landing pages, use an optimized landing page to sell it. That’s also part of show AND tell. (Marketing has to be the right mix of copywriting—tell—and delivery—show.)

The other mistake they made from a marketing perspective: They asked for too much of me early on in the sales cycle. Which is hilarious given that their email marketing included a picture of a funnel. They apparently chose to send me straight to the bottom of the funnel, but marketing doesn’t work that way.

Maybe they’ll do a better job after they see that webinar they’re marketing…