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!

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

During my re-indoctrination into singlehood, I have met a lot of men. I don’t know why there was the big uproar a few years ago about women over a certain age not being able to marry. As far as I can tell, the world is full of men, both single men and married men wanting to pretend they’re not.

 

No, I’m not digressing. Promise. Hold on…

 

At first, I didn’t know what to expect. And there were a lot of men who were self-centered jerks. I started to think that’s all there was.

 

So then when you meet one of the sweet ones, you really notice. Sad but true. It should be the other way around. It should be that most of the men are sweet and it’s the jerks that stand out. But, no, the jerks seem to outnumber the nice ones.

 

And, oh my, does this apply to marketing!! This totally ties in with my “marketing is like dating” theory!

 

Think how many times you actually welcome a marketing message from a company? Um…never? Well, at least rarely. That’s because the company wants your money but they’ve put that want first, ahead of anything that you might want. And they talk at you, not to you. (Remember my mantra? Talk to the customer, not at them.)

 

So dating the guys who talk about themselves, have little if any interest in you, and want to get straight to you know what, well, they are akin to the marketers who…talk about themselves, have little if any interest in you, and want to get straight to you know what, aka taking your money.

 

Ladies, guys, marketers: I have seen the light. I have recently experienced what it’s like to have someone be nice, caring, sincere and interested in me. Wayne is to his chagrin, a nice guy (he thinks “nice guy” has a negative connotation). A very nice guy, I might add. And marketers could learn loads by his example because:

 

• He’s interested in what I want first
• He asks questions rather than doing all the talking
• He checks in, stays engaged
• He is authentic and real

 

And these are all traits admirable in a marketer too.

 

Oh, did I mention he’s cute and smart and funny and likes my cooking and has really nice arms? OK, marketers don’t have to do or be all that. But you should be using all the other stuff on that list as a checklist for yourself! Like it or not, you are dating that prospect! And they might hand over their number, they might even go to dinner with you, you might get pretty far along. But they might not convert to a customer if you are acting like a self-serving jerk only intent on getting into their—ahem--wallet.

 

You can be the in-your-face, here-for-the-money-then-I’m-gone type marketer who talks at customers, not to them, who gets the one-time sale, not the long-term relationship. That’s easy, that’s what most marketers do.

 

Or you can be something else. You can be successful over the long haul.

 

Marketing is like dating. I guess it boils down to what you’re really after: a one night stand? Go for it. But your success will be fleeting and will require that you oft repeat it, compared to the marketer with the loyal customer base who gains fans for the long haul.

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.

 

When it’s not an email newsletter, of course…

 

This past week I spoke to a prospect with a target demographic of men between 16 and 30 years old who spend a lot of money customizing their cars. They want to stand out and get noticed and are on the lookout for the latest, hottest cool stuff to put on their cars first, before anyone else. These guys are going to be on YouTube, MySpace, etc.

 

Yet on the company’s Web site, they offer an email newsletter signup as part of their small business email marketing efforts.

 

Picture these guys that make up the target market: Do you think they want to sign up for and read an email newsletter? Neither do I.

 

Nor did I think that this company was investing the time and resources into creating content for an email newsletter. So I asked what they really do send out as part of their small business email marketing. The answer: emails about specials and promotions.

 

OK then, that’s what the signup should be selling, “Sign up to get special email specials and promotions.” That’s going to have much more appeal to a teenager than “Sign up for our newsletter.”

 

Lessons here:

 

1. Choose your words carefully. Use customer-centric words. Don’t assume that because you call it an email newsletter but it’s really something else that your customer is going to translate what you really mean. (Again, marketing is like dating: Don’t assume.) This is especially true with small business email marketing when you’ll likely have fewer people coming to your site and fewer people handing over their email addresses. You want to convert as many of those people as possible, so offer them what they really want by using the right words.
2. Wait, that’s lesson two: Offer them what they really want. Yes, you want to use email to market your small business. Good for you! Email can be extremely effective and cost-effective. But first figure out what the prospect wants to get from you.

 

I’m not saying email newsletters are bad. At We Know Words, we love email newsletters because we do the copywriting of them for clients. But we are going to make darn sure that the content is serving the prospect first and the client second.

 

I’m just saying make sure your email newsletter is the right vehicle (pardon the pun) for your email marketing. And although I’ve been talking about small business during this whole blog post, just because it’s top of mind, this applies no matter how large your business. Because I’ve certainly seen plenty of useless email marketing campaigns coming from the bigger businesses too, when they’ve focused on what they want to say, and not on what the prospect wants to hear…

This fits right in with my “marketing is like dating” theory: BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse just took me out to dinner to court me as a customer.

 

Yep. My kids, my best buddy Rico and I got to dine for free as part of the training for a new BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse. They are opening in the Seattle area, in Tukwila, and I had received an invite for a free meal for four during their training time. We all thought it was pretty neat to take part in the training…and get a free meal. OK, three of us. My teenager is too cool to think anything is pretty neat. It’s the first BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse in Washington state, so the newness of that was fun too.

 

We had fun with the casual atmosphere as the servers made occasional mistakes, and we had a great meal and some really good beer. (The highlight for me was when I ordered a “Nitwit” and Rico ordered a “Brewnette” because it sounded like we were talking about each other!)

 

Now you’re wondering what the heck this has to do with marketing…and why I’m saying it’s like dating…and why a Seattle copywriter would even think you care…

 

Because it’s brilliant. Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell talk about “napsterizing” your business, figuring out how you can give away free samples so people can try before you buy. I think the BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse experience is a fantastic example of how to do just that.

 

Not only did we get to sample the food and the beer and the pop (they make their own root beer, cream soda and black cherry soda). We got to experience the atmosphere, what it was like to physically be there. For me, that’s huge because I’m not usually a fan of chain restaurants. But I liked this place and can easily see suggesting to Seattle friends reluctant to drive all the way to Kent (where I am) that we meet there.

 

Did it cost them money? Oh yeah. The restaurant was packed when we were there. BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse was giving away a lot of food! But it was both part of the training and part of the marketing, so therefore money well spent. I’m sure it created buzz: I know I’m telling people about the restaurant! And the best training comes from doing, so that was a smart investment in their staff. The only other cost was in the direct mail invitations that went to people like me, and those were pretty simple. No blogging, no email marketing, just plain old fashioned direct mail.

 

So BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse, kudos to you on several fronts: for good food and beer and atmosphere (at reasonable prices!), and for marketing like dating.

 

Now, what would happen if you took your customers out to dinner? What’s the equivalent for your business? Could you be bold and spring for an investment like that, knowing you’d be getting ROI on that investment for some time?

 

How can you date your customers with your marketing?

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

 

Hold on, let me explain…

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

I’m perfectly content to drive myself to and from SeaTac airport due to SeaTac Park. I chose them originally because their Web site answered all my questions and I loved their branding. The colors are bright and cheerful and the SeaTac Park mascot is a Volkswagen bug. The tone is friendly and helpful and easy. I stick with them because the service is always prompt and the employees always friendly. And I praise them and make referrals to them on a regular basis.

 

So keep in mind my affection for this SeaTac airport parking lot when I pick on them for a minute…

 

Recently SeaTac Park gave me a flyer for a loyalty card. It spells out what I’ll get if I choose to sign up for the SeaTac Park loyalty card with a bulleted list of benefits. I had to laugh when I read it though because one of the benefits involves email marketing:

 

“Be in the system to receive blast emails and special parking offers from SeaTacPark.com”

 

Their branding is straightforward which I admire, but this goes just a little too far or they are simply misusing the word. Because no one wants to receive “blast emails.” Blast emails are the ones that go willy nilly to everyone, by marketers who don’t get email marketing.

 

Email marketing done correctly, even small business email marketing which is what SeaTac Park is doing, should be select, targeted, relevant and useful.

 

Blast emails are unsophisticated email marketing that adds to the clutter in everyone’s inbox. Blast emails make small business email marketing even harder to do well as a result, because of fatigue on the part of the recipient, because it increases the numbers of emails we get and therefore the competition for attention.

 

I hope SeaTac Park isn’t really blasting out their emails. I hope that was just a poor choice of words on their part, by someone who doesn’t know about small business email marketing. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t sign up for the SeaTac Park loyalty card in part because I don’t want to get blast emails, even from a small business I champion.

 

No one does.

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.

Friday morning I was in Denver conducting a copywriting workshop with the copywriters, creative directors, Web site managers and content editors for a national company. I was brought in by the director of marketing to address the messaging in their email marketing specifically, but after reviewing their email examples, it seemed a broader approach was needed.

 

So the workshop consisted of reviewing what it means to talk to your customer, not at them, to write customer-centric copy that’s about the customer, not about you. The original plan was to critique one email promotion as a group, then have everyone rewrite four more on their own and compare notes. We ran short on time, so instead I put up a few of their emails on the screen and ripped them apart, nicely. I didn’t say anything that surprised or offended.

 

It seems the copywriters and creative’s hands are tied. They’re up against corporate, up against legal, up against people who don’t understand marketing or copywriting or—most importantly—email marketing. These poor folks end up going the safe route, using clichés like “don’t miss” and vague words like “great pricing” or “exceptional pricing.” They end up with meaningless email subject lines. They have to work around the images they’re assigned rather choose an image that fits the message.

 

Yuck.

 

What breaks my heart is that this company is perfectly positioned for messaging that’s emotional and empathetic. Their copywriters and creatives could kick ass if allowed to craft email marketing copy appropriate to the audience, and not to corporate’s preferences and tastes. Lesson here? Let your marketing team do their job! Trust them to know their stuff. They don’t question how the CFO handles the financials or how the CEO handles the board of directors. Why are they hindered?

 

But this company isn’t stuck, they see where they can improve. In the future, they’ll be segmenting their email marketing into targeted demographics, and they’ll be able to do more specific and therefore effective messaging, talking directly to the pain points and concerns of a particular market. I got the sense that their copywriters are chomping at the bit for that day to come!! Then all we discussed that day will come to fruition and their email marketing will work that much harder for them.

 

Despite their challenges and frustrations, running that workshop was a blast. I’m lucky. I love what I do, I love talking about copywriting and messaging, and I love being with people hungry to learn more and improve. And they all loved what I had to say. It sparked much-needed dialog among them, it got them inspired to strive harder for more compelling copy and to stand up to the powers that be that want to water down their copy. What more could this Seattle copywriter ask for?

Jeffrey Rohrs, VP of Marketing at ExactTarget, spoke at an ExactTarget conference in Seattle yesterday with a fabulous presentation called “Subscribers Rule!” He made many great points, above all, that email marketing is different from everything else we do as marketers. Again and again he emphasized that email is a long-term tactic, a marathon not a sprint. Amen to that. Search engine optimization and pay-per-click and blogging are going to get people to your site. Email marketing is how you nurture your relationship with them over time.

 

So how does all of this relate to my world as a Seattle copywriter, and yours as a marketer? The word that popped into my head as he spoke was “respect.” And one way we respect our email subscribers is by giving them the content they want. That doesn’t mean that we offer a newsletter, but bombard them with promos. That means we carefully and slowly build our in-house list, not buy a list and blast a bunch of strangers. It means our email subject lines are carefully crafted to help the customer know what our email offers.

 

It also means having something of real value to offer them in the first place. Which is why I continue to promote email newsletters as an “indirect” marketing tool. Even for small business email marketing, email newsletters make sense.

 

Jeffrey recommended we celebrate, love and protect our subscribers. Investing the time and energy into developing content that is truly useful to them, not us, is key. Think of a subscriber like a friend or a colleague: You’d want it to be a mutually beneficial relationship, right? You wouldn’t constantly be asking your friend or coworker for something, it would be give and take. Same with your subscribers.

 

Are you going to get an immediate payback on taking this long-term, carefully thought out approach to your email marketing program? Probably not. Are you going to cultivate stronger, deeper, longer term relationships with your customers? Probably yes.

 

Which will you choose?

 

This Seattle copywriter is always on the lookout for ways to be a smarter, better marketing writer. But spare me the tomes. I, like so many marketers (people!), have little time for self-improvement, despite the desire. That's why I like email newsletters and short guides. They're easy to read, digest and put into action.

Here's a short guide that I recently downloaded and can recommend: Top 10 Ways to Energize Your Sales and Marketing. In it, Steve MacDonald of StudioHDV has all the text broken into bite-size chunks, and a take away for every "way" he describes. Handy. And re-energizing. Reminders of what we should be doing, and new ideas too. Applicable to small business marketing and big business too!

Get yours at http://www.studiohdv.com/topten_l1.asp.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Okay, not really narrow minded. But narrow…

 

Yesterday at the PSAMA lunch in Seattle, Alan Brown from DNA talked about how you market as a challenger, as opposed to front runner. With great local examples from the MS Society, Boeing Employee Credit Union and Pemco Insurance, he again and again reiterated the importance in having a narrow focus. He didn’t call it that, “narrow” is my word. He pointed out the advantage of taking a position, even though positioning can mean sacrifice.

 

But positioning can get people to listen. If you narrow your marketing scope, your marketing message, your marketing method, you might be heard by fewer people, but you are more likely to be heard.

 

Then later on the phone, a mom friend wanted to talk about her husband’s business and the direction they want to take it. (Yes, I’m the queen of free marketing advice, I swear. The downside of being so nice: even your neighbors hit you up for advice!) So, great—no, brilliant—focus. I loved hearing about it. Then she went on to say “but we also want to offer this service and that service” and she talked about lumping it all under one umbrella with a generic term that no one would know the meaning of.

 

Ugh.

 

I did my best to persuade her otherwise, to go with the one targeted niche idea and market that one narrow business only. We’ll see if they listen. The idea of offering fewer services rather than more does seem to challenge people, whether they have a small business or a big one.

 

If you have a niche, put your resources there. If you can speak more narrowly to a smaller audience, do. Sure, you are sacrificing the “masses,” but guess what? The masses aren’t listening!

 

Last week MarketingSherpa had a great article on email design tips, but what I most enjoyed reading, as a copywriter, was the section on subject lines.

 

When you’re a freelance copywriter, you don’t always get to be as involved with email marketing as you want to be. For me, that means we don’t usually get to play a role in testing. The We Know Words team provides the copywriting then the client moves forward with the email marketing campaign without our involvement. That makes copywriting subject lines a real challenge. And since subject lines are key to getting people to open your email, it’s even more of a challenge.

 

The problem is, there’s no right answer on subject lines. I’ve seen one study that seemed to prove boring subject lines to work better than compelling ones. Yet as a copywriter that’s really hard to believe! Subject line length is another challenge. This MarketingSherpa article proves there’s no right answer, as different lengths have worked for different marketers. The only thing marketers can really do is test, test, test.

 

My takeaway from this? To encourage clients to test. Seriously, I’m going to be more proactive about it, to push them to do it, even though I’m not involved in it. I’m enjoying my current copywriting project, an email marketing campaign, because they were completely willing to test when I suggested it. So for each email I’m copywriting, I’m doing 2 to 3 different subject lines.

 

Now to remind them to do the testing and share the results with me. J

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This morning as I put on my copywriter hat and started on a project for a new client, I first reviewed their brand guidelines…and have been itching to blog about it ever since. In my opinion, your brand is more than your logo. Your brand--your marketing--is everything you say, do, wear. It’s how your employees act, how well your product delivers on your marketing promise…everything.

And as a copywriter, I firmly believe that your words are part of your brand, in all your marketing communications: your email marketing, your web writing, your print collateral. Yet in all the brand guidelines I’ve reviewed in my eight years as a copywriter, only once was voice addressed.

This particular brand guideline even says in there “Our Brand, Our Voice” yet there’s no mention of voice. It offers up 9 pages on the logo, typeface and colors, showing exactly how to use, not to use, going into details of file formats and more. But no examples of messaging or voice other than describing the brand personality with words like “agile” and “synergy” but without any examples of how to do copywriting that fits the brand. Which is akin to telling someone how to bake a cake and telling them to use eggs, flour and sugar…with no more direction than that.

Your logo alone won’t tell your story. You need words that work.

Earlier this week, I attended a stellar WTIA event on Web 2.0. The panelists were entertaining and informative, and the whole dialog around monetizing Web 2.0 fascinating.

But the message that most resonated with me as a copywriter was that content still matters. I don’t mean the user generated content (UGC) that people typically think of when they think Web 2.0. I mean the content that your company and marketing team puts out into the world.

And that’s good news to me, because it means copywriters have a place in making Web 2.0 marketing work!

Done right, the content you generate as email marketing, email newsletters, and blogging can be viral, can start a dialog and engage your customers. So you still need great copywriters, relevant content, and even a strategy.

The best news is that small business marketing can involve Web 2.0 because all of these tools and mediums can be used by small businesses to engage their customers.

Yeah, rest easy, copywriters. Content is still queen. :-)

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!