Online Copywriting

Why do so many companies shy away from being real? I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s like my dad used to say, that people are rude drivers because it’s anonymous, they are sheltered by their cars. They’d never cut in front of you in line at the bank, but they’ll do it on the highway. Do companies want the anonymity so they don’t have to behave as well as they otherwise would?

Being real is something I as a freelance copywriter preach and preach and preach. But just the other day working as a Web site copywriter for a new client, I found myself trying to persuade them to include photos of the founders on the Web site…and they flat out refused. As a copywriter, I see the power in words that are real, whether in blogs as marketing tools, small business marketing, email copywriting, wherever. Words are powerful. But only more so when real.

People, you are missing the boat here. Customers want to do business with, well, people. Not nameless corporations. Being real means making a connection to that customer, developing a relationship with her. One that will deepen her loyalty to your customer and brand.

Think about it: Isn’t there a company you stick with mostly because you like it or them? Like the farrier I had who wasn’t very good but was a delight to visit with while he shod my horse, or the drycleaners that’s a little farther from home but you keep going back because you like the owners, or the coffee shop that charges more but you like the welcome feeling you get when you walk through the door…we all have allegiances that don’t make economic sense, but then we shop with our minds and we buy with our hearts.

So how delighted is my little copywriter heart to have two great examples of being real to share with you.

My first example comes from a company I partner with. I do copywriting for their email marketing clients. They hired a new salesperson, no biggie, but the email this guy sent out to introduce himself to clients was a gem. It wasn’t about all this professional experience; it was about him as a person, a real person, who lives in an interesting town, met his wife via online dating, and has an interesting background, born in Europe and raised on the east coast. The tone was conversational and chatty. It made him real. If I were a customer receiving that email, I’d like that guy right off. And we buy from people we like. With our hearts, remember?

My second example comes from Basecamp, aka 37 Signals, a company I love not just because I love their Web-based project management software which I use for our copywriting projects, but because they excel at being real. Yesterday when I logged onto Basecamp, at the top of my screen it announced “Basecamp's birthday! Basecamp turns five!” and then went on to explain they started on Feb. 4, 2004 with a link to their story. This is brilliant because it’s promotion but sincere. When you read the story, you are that much more attached to this company. And what does that mean? Well, I recommend Basecamp to all the freelance copywriters I know, and to clients as well.

Both of these examples gave this copywriter warm fuzzies. And note that they both achieved their goals with words, nothing fancy, just words, real words.

I’m experimenting this year. No, not with my hair or my clothes or my cooking. With my networking. I’m going to try networking primarily online this year, rather than in person.

I’ve spent the past eight years involved with a variety of networking groups, including BNI, my local chamber, the PSAMA, and particularly the Seattle Direct Marketing Association (SDMA). In fact, I was an SDMA board member for four years and was president two years ago. I love networking, and that’s how I’ve marketed my copywriting business since starting We Know Words back in 2000. I love meeting new people, I love talking to strangers, I love learning about the marketing challenges others face and thinking up ideas for helping them.

But as someone who doubles as a copywriter and a marketing maven, I also have an obligation to my clients to be as up-to-speed on new marketing trends as I possibly can be. And that means not just knowing about them, but using them too.

Clients have moved beyond asking me about copywriting topics like email copywriting and SEO writing. Now they ask me about blogs as marketing tools, Twitter, Facebook, wikis and other Web 2.0 and social networking tools. I’ve dipped my toes into the social media waters, but haven’t plunged in completely. The only way I can do that is to market online vs. in person.

As my friend Joe pointed out yesterday, marketing in person is a lot more fun! Yes, that closet full of Ann Taylor clothes might get a little dusty. But in order to stay useful as a copywriter who is also a resource for her clients, this copywriter is reading up on Twitter, blog carnivals, blog pinging and more. Using blogs as marketing tools also is akin to SEO writing: You have to follow all the same principles of keyword rich content and frequency of updates to make it work.

The irony is, like the We Know Words copywriting Web site, when I get busy with copywriting clients, it’s my Web site, my blog, my marketing that gets pushed to the side. Not this year, however!

Have you switched from in person to online networking? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Either post a comment here, or email me at sharon@weknowwords.com.

A few months ago, I roughed out the text because I was getting quite a few questions about small business blogging from fellow small business owners. This is by no means a definitive guide, but someone suggested this morning that I post it to my own blog, so here it is:

Why do you want to start small business blogging?

First, be clear on your goals. I hope you are small business blogging for three reasons:

1. Search engine optimization
2. Thought leadership
3. Relating to customers

What will your small business blog be about?

Second, decide what your focus will be. What the heck are you going to blog about? What can you talk about that other people might not be? What topic gets you excited and would be easy for you to write about? For example, my friend with an Indian restaurant wants to blog. Possible “themes” for her blog are: vegetarianism, Indian culture, running a small family-owned business, having an ethnic restaurant in a redneck town, cooking, Indian food, recipes, being a single mom running a restaurant, food allergies, etc.

Another example is my local florist. I’m trying to get her to start small business blogging because she’s very online marketing savvy when it comes to pay-per-click, but less so for SEO. I’m also trying to get her to blog because she’s so knowledgeable and well-respected and she could be even more so. I’d love to see her write a blog as the florist expert, offering advice like when to start choosing the flowers for your wedding, seasonal suggestions for wedding flowers, plants as corporate gifts, catering advice, maybe she talks about her favorite catering venues. She could talk about the price of flowers as impacted by gas prices, how to keep flowers fresh, etc. I see it as “advice” oriented.

Or consider my small business blog: Although I’m primarily a Seattle copywriter, my real passion is marketing, and my beliefs about being customer-centric. (Stated at the top of my blog: helping people talk to customers not at them.) My goal with my small business blogging is to get people thinking a little differently about marketing, while still using keywords that are helping my blog get found for copywriting. In the future, I’ll be doing more consulting and speaking, so my keywords will shift, but the blog’s theme will stay the same. So on the other hand, my goal is also to get people thinking about me in a certain way.

Your small business blog title

Third: Decide on the title of your blog. Make sure it reflects your blog’s focus, but also your keywords if you’re small business blogging for SEO. For example, when I started a blog for an email marketing agency, I chose “Email Marketing ROI” for the title, so the URL included those words. (It now has a different name.) And that was the theme of the blog: improving email marketing ROI by providing useful information.

Set a small business blogging schedule

Fourth, set a schedule for small business blogging and adhere to it. Blog at least two times a week, but if you want search engine results, do it more often. I have a Task in Outlook that pops up a reminder for me every Tuesday and Thursday. In that task list is a running list of topic ideas (more on that later). If you have produced an email newsletter or another publication, you know you have a production calendar to stick with. Think of your blog the same way.

Round up the bloggers

Fifth, consider having more than one person at your company blog. It doesn’t have to be the CEO or the marketer writing the blog. In fact, the best blog content might come from someone who works with customers every day, or on the shop floor. The first person would have insight into customer concerns, and the other into production. Both would produce great blog content that an executive or marketer might not think of.

Be clear on your keywords

Sixth: If you’re blogging for SEO purposes, determine your keywords. Use a free keyword research tool like SEO Book (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/) or Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), or maybe you already know your keywords you want to win? Then look at how competitive the search landscape is for the terms you want to use. Remember, more specific keywords won’t be used by as many people, but they’ll get you found by the smaller group of people who are a more targeted audience for you. The less often you plan on blogging, the fewer keywords you’ll be able to use enough to compete. But come with 4 or so keyword phrases. Long-tail keyword searches seem to do well in blogs. Keep this list in mind every time you blog and use your keywords, in a post title and in the post itself. I usually write a blog post, then go back and sprinkle in a keyword or tool. And I admit it, I don’t focus on the SEO part enough sometimes because I get caught up in the topic. J

Do you want editorial control?

Seventh, think about editorial control: If more than one person will be small business blogging, do you want administrative control so content is reviewed before it goes live? Will someone be proofreading blog content before it gets posted?

Developing your voice

Eight: When you first start, you don’t necessarily have to post those initial blogs. Just write them in a Word document first, or even on paper. You’ll want to write a few to get your voice, a sense of how you want to come across. But do be yourself, do be natural and a real person.

Coming up with topics

Now the “hard” part (not really): small business blogging!! The biggest hurdle for people seems to be topics. What will we blog about? If after reading this you still don’t know what you’ll blog about, let me know…

Keep a running list of topic ideas. Then when it’s time to blog, use one of the ideas (then make sure you delete it from your list!). If you have a recurring task in Outlook, like I do, you keep your list there. Then when Outlook pings you, you’ve got your idea list right in front of you. But once you start blogging, you’ll start seeing topics all around you. I use one of the topics on my list maybe every 3^rd or 4^th time because something will have happened that prompts a blog post in the mean time.

Look for ideas in the newspaper, trade magazines, in other blog posts. I even get ideas from the radio and from conversations.

I haven’t done this yet, but try and use photos sometimes. Not cheesy ones though, don’t include photos just for the sake of photos. Or clip art, ugh! But real photos of real people, like your staff or your customers. Videos too…

I saw a blog that copied and pasted in press releases verbatim. I wouldn’t recommend this because search engines hate duplicated content. It’s better to blog on the press release and link to it. And if your company creates press releases and posts them online (and you should!), write a summary of the press release in your blog and link to it.

Link to other sources. If you read a blog that makes a good point, write your own blog post with your take on it, and link to the original blog. Ditto for online news articles, video clips, etc. You can link to anything. Consider subscribing to a couple of email newsletters or other blogs just to get your own thought processes going. Your reactions to what you read are also valid blog content.

Link to studies and reports that are released. Some bloggers are the filter for their readers, helping their readers find important information without having to look for it.

Talk about what’s going on with your business: Are you going to be at a tradeshow? Will there be live music at your tavern? Are you moving?

Be creative in thinking about what content will be interesting. Like my business is a copywriting agency, but I don’t tell people how to be copywriters. I try to help people be better marketers. If you owned a coffee shop, you wouldn’t necessarily blog on your coffee shop, that would get boring fast, but you could blog on the coffee industry perhaps, because you could still use your keywords.

Include customer testimonials with an introduction, maybe “We received a great email from Susan Smith about her new vacuum, and just have to share it with you…”

Never forget that small business blogging is about being real. You could even include a recipe! Say you had a staff potluck and Joe’s potato salad was a huge hit. Talk about the party and include Joe’s recipe.

Please don’t post just to post. I have a friend that does that because his only concern is SEO, and that means he’s putting a lot of useless stuff out on the Internet. L I want subscribers to my blog, and if I did that, just posted blogs based on keywords, subscribers wouldn’t stay very long because I wouldn’t be providing useful information!

That’s my start on blogging basics. Please, please let me know if it was helpful or not by commenting!!

Today I got a fun email from a company that normally sends me a fairly dry email newsletter. The timing was perfect. Even though I’m primarily a copywriter, it’s my job to know about many aspects of marketing, especially up and coming trends. I’d been thinking on all the case studies and whitepapers I read about social networking that apply to B2C marketing, but was wondering how well the approach will work for B2B.

Then I get the “Can Water Cut It?” email from Flow International with a link to a video featuring Flow Man and asking the question “Can Water Cut a Titanium Golf Club?” Flow makes industrial strength water jets that can cut anything. See the video at http://www.canwatercutit.com. You can also watch them cut a cell phone and a blender.

The videos are tongue in cheek and deliberately amateurish and the approach works. I just watched them with my 10-year-old and her friend and they were impressed. But more importantly, the manufacturer with extreme cutting needs is going to be blown away watching these! And watch them he or she will because they are fun, not “work.” Compare cutting up a coworker’s annoying cell phone to watching a dry online demo!

As soon as I got the email, I contacted Doug at Flow. Doug said they started the videos after attending the Online Marketing Summit in Seattle (where I ran into Doug!). And the videos are working. Flow is starting slow with a gradual introduction but they’ve already gotten leads from the videos!

On the site they let people like us submit ideas for things to cut. And people are! Doug says, “We've already received a bundle of interesting ideas on what people would like to see cut (for example, plasma TVs to laptops to boulders to bread).”

Just this morning I read an article about integrating email and social media. Flow’s “Can Water Cut It?” videos are a perfect example of doing just that.

Kudos to Flow for figuring out how to harness social networking and video for marketing an industrial product in a B2B marketplace!

OK, back to copywriting on a rainy Seattle afternoon… 

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.

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?

I found my notes from OMS Seattle!! I had tucked them into the copy of “Groundswell” I got that day. I didn’t win the drawing for the book, as much as I wanted to, but my friend Carmen did, and she kindly gave it to me as she already had a copy. J When I started reading it last night, lo and behold, I found my notes with all my blog topics! So I admit sometimes this Seattle copywriter is a little spacy...

Now, with all these marketing topics to touch on, where to start? How about with this great observation made by Aaron Kahlow, the guy behind the Online Marketing Summit, excuse the paraphrasing: Companies spend a ton of money on lobbies that most prospects and customers will never, ever see. But how many thousands of people will go to their website? And is the same investment made there to make the same great first impression?

Because your website is your first impression, and you only have a few seconds to let the visitor know they’ve arrived at the right place before they click away. Your home page has to clearly and immediately state what people can expect to do/find/buy at your website.

As a website copywriter, it can be a challenge to get clients to look past what they want to say to what the customer wants to hear. Because with only a few seconds to get someone to stick around, your only choice is to talk to customers, not at them! (See my copywriting mantra at the top of this blog.)

And the lobby vs. website analogy is a great one. Imagine an office building with droves of people coming through the door into the lobby, looking around quickly, then marching right back out again. How unnerving for the security guard or receptionist at the front desk! But that’s exactly what happens when your home page fails to communicate right away what you offer and people just click away.

(Makes me wonder if the lobby is really for impressing the potential customers, or more for boosting the egos of the executives? Which some websites seem to be built to do! To boost egos, that is.)

And the really good news is, this is another place where small business marketing plays on a level playing field with big business! It might take tens of thousands of dollars to create a truly impressive lobby. But a truly useful website doesn’t have to cost much at all!  But small business or big, you'll want to invest in a great website copywriter, of course. :-)

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!

I was just on a web page looking up the root of a word and I saw an ad for weight loss. No surprise there. But the ad must have been for surgery because the image in the ad was of internal organs. I assume the stomach, I don’t know the human innards very well. And my reaction? Gross! What in the world are they selling!

Well, they’re not selling what the customer is buying! They are selling weight loss surgery, but the customer is buying weight loss. The best image to have there is one of a skinny person, silly advertiser! Sure, you use surgery to achieve the weight loss, so that’s what you’re selling. But that makes for a bad ad no matter how good your online copywriter.

Think about it…

You are selling mattresses but your customer is buying a good night’s sleep.

You are selling small business blogging software but your customer is buying search engine optimization.

You are selling sports cars but your customer is buying status.

Before you do any copywriting, blogging, small business email marketing, anything, make sure you get out of your head and into your customer’s: What is she really truly buying from you? Sell that!

Right now, answer the question: What is your customer really buying?

And about that word I was researching? Sure enough the words smite and smitten are related. This Seattle copywriter thinks that’s pretty funny!

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.

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.

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!

My corporate and personal taxes are finally done, yay! Thanks, Rick!! And I now have two bills to pay, one for each. Rick is a doll and keeps his costs down for me, but still his rate is $200/hour and he’s worth every penny because I know my taxes will be done right. I’m paying for his time and knowledge, but also his experience…which is hard to price at all!

As I work through my divorce, I am paying my lawyer $175/hour. (Don’t tell the lawyer what the accountant is charging or else his rate will go up to match it!) As my “ex” and I navigate the complications of a “dissolution of marriage” in the county we live in, where people with kids jump through lots of hoops to get divorced, I know my lawyer’s also worth his hourly rate. He knows the system, and he knows how to work with couples who have lots of difficult discussions to work through. Again, I’m paying for time and knowledge, but also 20+ years of experience as a family law attorney.

And that’s what copywriters sell: their time and their knowledge, but ultimately their experience. In a word, their expertise. And the more experienced and knowledgeable the copywriter, the higher the hourly rate should be, whether you’re paying her for email marketing or Web writing, a case study or an online press release.

About half the time we are asked for a copywriting estimate, we don’t get the job because the prospect doesn’t want to pay the price. (Note: We’d prefer to know the budget upfront so we can just tell the prospect what we can do within that budget, but somewhere it is written that budgets are to be guessed at, not disclosed! Silly people.) For me, it’s a filter. If someone doesn’t recognize the value in what we’re selling, I don’t want to do business with them anyway. Every freelance copywriter I’ve ever talked to agrees it’s the clients spending the least money who take up the most time!!

For those businesses who choose to scrimp on the copywriter, and plenty do, the results are typically less than stellar: email newsletters that don’t deliver, Web sites that don’t convert, direct mail goes directly into the recycle bin. That’s because you get what you pay for.

Just like my accountant, lawyer and saddle are all worth the money they cost, so is a great copywriter.

My head is swimming with blog topics this week, all around email. First I went to the StrongMail email marketing conference Monday morning, then yesterday downloaded a fantastic report from MarketingSherpa on common email newsletter mistakes. So bear with me, but there are so many topics to take on…and so many seem like they’d be no brainers but I see our copywriting clients make email mistakes all the time.

Heavy on my mind right now is how many times marketers forget to make use of their non marketing emails. For example, I’ show the Welcome email can be the most often read email. So after someone subscribes to your email newsletter, for example, you’d send them a welcome email. But are you using it to reinforce your voice and brand? To remind them of all the benefits they’re going to get as a subscriber? To confirm for them that they made a smart choice when they handed over their email address? Or is your welcome email (if you’re using one, and you should be) generic and dry and dull?

Another missed opportunity is the transactional email. For example, yesterday I posted a press release (about our upcoming talk on online press releases) at PR Web, and received just a straightforward, boring confirmation that thanks me twice and has the order details in it:

Dear Sharon,

Thank you for your recent order of $80.00 with PRWeb.

Order Summary

Invoice/Tracking Number: xxxxxxxxx

Date Paid: February 05, 2008

Payment type: Credit Card (Visa)

Paid to: PRWeb

Order Details:

- PRWeb Press Release - $80.00

Order Total: $80.00

Again, thank you for your order.

Sincerely,

PRWeb Staff

Excuse me, but that’s it? I just spent 80 bucks on this, and yeah, I want a receipt, but how about something more? Something like:

Dear Sharon,

Thank you for entrusting your news to one of the Internet’s most popular press release distribution sites. After the release date (noted below), be sure to keep an eye on the useful metrics so you can track how well your press release is doing. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at ….

Then give me the order details. (And can we just outlaw the word "sincerely"? There are so many other wonderful ways to sign off!)

That’s not so hard, is it? To be a bit human and to reinforce their marketing message?

Here at the Seattle headquarters of copywriting agency We Know Words, we’ve notice a pervasive problem in the marketing communications of our clients. It’s called…the testimonial.

Huh? Why is a testimonial a problem? Because people (i.e. your customers) hate writing them!

The best endorsement is a third-party endorsement, all copywriters and marcom people know that (or should). But it can also be the hardest to get. That’s because so many people freeze up when asked to write something, even something as simple as a testimonial. It’s so bad, we tell our copywriting clients to offer to write the testimonials themselves (or have us do it) and then just have their customer approve them.

In reality, though, it shouldn’t take but a minute. But people over think it, they try too hard, put too much pressure on themselves, don’t know what to say…OK, I’m guessing here, I don’t actually know what the problem is, but then writing is kinda easy for me.

But I offer up a shining example of how fast and easy and real a testimonial can be…

Here I am raving about 37 Signals being real in communicating to their clientele while suffering downtime, and that same day I get an unsolicited testimonial. And I just laughed because it was real! Yet it still works as a credible testimonial. It tells you about us, that this client is happy with our work, and even what it’s like to work with this crew of copywriters:

"The company I work for has been using Sharon Baerny and her crew for quite a while. I first laid eyes on her as a speaker at one of our Sales and Marketing Roundtables. Man, is she FUUNNNEEEE!!!! But she has some great marketing tips! I signed up for her newsletter. Her style is breezy and concise. And I know she's a witch, because she spreads magic everywhere she goes! You can also tell by the long, red hair thrown over her shoulder! Anyhow, she and her marketing wizards do a GREAT job!"

Thanks, Sam, for making my day and for demonstrating that even a simple testimonial can be real.

Maybe with UGC and the ever-growing number of reviews available online testimonials will get easier to solicit in the B2B world? Or maybe we just call them reviews instead? Maybe a simple name change will generate a whole lot more of those third-party endorsements that work so hard to help us market?

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…?

From where I sit as the copywriter, it seems marketers have a bad reputation because they throw out solutions without knowing problems. We run into this repeatedly: We’re tasked with a copywriting project, but when we ask questions to learn more about the prospects so we can do a better job on the copywriting, we get “we don’t know” as an answer to simple questions like:

• Can you tell us more about person on the receiving end of this email marketing campaign?
• Why will they care about this email?
• Will they even open this email?
• Why do people go to your Web site?
• How do they get there, via search or word of mouth or…?
• What will motivate people to fill out your online form?

We often find if we can talk to a sales person, we’ll get much more useful information than if we talk to the marketing department…but sometimes the marketing department won’t allow it because they have a different idea of what the message should be. They want the message that’s driven from inside the company, not outside. Then guess what? The sales team doesn’t use the brochure or PowerPoint or other sales collateral because it doesn’t convey the right message. And the prospect ignores it when it is used.

Maybe doing the marketing homework means looking outside the company for the answers? Because in the end, you’ll get better results if you’re talking the customer’s talk, not your own.

In my copywriting world, clients are often extremely picky about what a piece of marketing collateral looks like (i.e. the design) and a lot less concerned with how it sounds (i.e. the copywriting). They are much more willing to pay more for the former than the latter as a result, and they often end up with good-looking marketing that performs poorly.

This is a huge mistake. Not that design doesn’t influence buying decisions, it most certainly does. But so does the copywriting. To prove my point, consider the humble radio ad which markets which no design or visuals at all.

Today my husband told me about a soap is dumb radio commercial Nivea is running. I tried to find it online to listen to it with no luck, so this is just my summary of his version of it: Essentially Nivea is marketing a body wash to men using the message soap is dumb. As my husband described the commercial, the soap has a stupid sounding man’s voice and is talking to the intelligent sounding shampoo, which has a woman’s voice. Apparently Soap is too dense to remember what Shampoo is called, and he calls her hair soap. She reminds him that she is shampoo, and he turns it into soap poo.

Even without hearing it, I know this is a brilliant ad that uses the power of words without the listeners even realizing it. Nivea is taking a “feminine” product, body wash, and putting into a commercial with what we called bathroom talk when my kids were little: the word poo. Using the word poo wipes away any hint of girliness or femininity! (Pardon the pun.)

Plus by making Shampoo (woman) feel disdain for Soap (man), there’s the negative association men will have with soap, that using soap will make women feel disdain for them, or at least question their intelligence.

None of this is obvious, of course. It’s all implied. And effective: My husband rarely remembers what a commercial is selling, but in this case he did. He hasn’t purchased the body wash yet, as far as I know, but he’s aware of it, and awareness is the first step in selling.

People, looks aren’t everything. Whether you're a small business or big, your copywriter is just as important as your designer when it comes to your marketing. Just as important.

From where I sit, as the owner of a copywriting agency dealing with clients on a daily basis, it seems a lot of companies write their own marketing materials for two reasons: to save money, and because they don’t realize the value in really great copy. But as I’ve been pondering this lately, I’ve been thinking maybe it’s an even bigger problem. Maybe it’s not just that they don’t recognize the damage they’re doing by using mediocre marketing. Maybe these marketers lack awareness, not knowledge.

I recently joined the advisory board for the University of Washington marketing certificate program. One of the board’s tasks this year is to help the university plan for a new program specifically for interactive marketing. We had our first meeting on the topic last week and were asked to brainstorm ideas around certain questions to help determine the outcome of the program. In addition to having a blast being in a room full of such incredibly bright and highly regarded marketers, I was intrigued to find out that—at my table at least—we pretty much agreed that it wasn’t that these people had to be taught how to run a pay-per-click campaign, how to use search engine optimization, how to run an A/B test, or any other particular skill, but they do need to learn what is possible. They must be made aware of all the possibilities in the world of online, interactive marketing first and foremost. And then we agreed that they need to recognize the value in outsourcing and to know how to work with vendors.

These certificate programs are for working professionals with marketing experience, not newbies. Still, all the seasoned experts in my group agreed that it’s more important to make these students aware than it is to give them specific skill sets. In the world of marketing, knowing what’s doable is much more important to an organization than being able to actually do it.

Even for small businesses that don’t have dedicated marketers on staff or the budget to outsource, it’s better to turn to resources like our small business marketing ebook than to guess or stay ignorant.

Some of the best marketing around doesn’t come with a big price tag-- just clever thinking. Or, in the case of one Whidbey Island karate school, clever footwork.

Every year my family and I used to snag a place at the curb, plastic flags in hand, to watch the Fourth of July parade in our former hometown of Oak Harbor, Wash. We saw plenty of corny floats, earnest politicians and military color guards in this Navy town. But we also got to see smart marketing in action. The local karate school trotted out with its students kicking, jumping and bowing. And periodically, they would hold out a thick piece of wood and one brave student would cleave it in two with a bare foot. Couldn’t beat that for attention getting public relations. But then they took that piece of showmanship, ahem, a step further.

Once the wood was broken, pieces were handed out to people along the parade route. Ok, that’s an even better marketing move. But the karate school had pre-stamped the wood with their name, address, phone number and the offer of one free karate lesson. What parent was going to say no to that?

It comes down to thinking outside the marketing box—or in the case of the karate school, breaking through that box with a targeted message that’s clever, fun and more effective than all the e-newsletters, advertising copy and public relations they could have paid for.

Which brings up another point. A lot of small businesses don’t have big marketing budgets. But they still need to find a way to grow sales. Turns out, those small business marketing tips can be found online in “Marketing in a Minute.” The recently released e-book by Sharon Baerny, owner and marketing guru of our very own We Know Words marketing agency, hits virtual bookshelves as we speak. This handy marketing book gives small- to medium-size business owners practical tools they need to create buzz for their business without expensive copywriting, advertising and other traditional forms of small business marketing.

Take a peek at www.marketinginaminute.com and see for yourself why sometimes the best marketing, simply means doing things smarter. Hey, if a karate school can kick start business by splitting wood, think what you can do with one of these 104 practical marketing tips!