Brochures are a very popular marketing weapon for SMEs and corporates alike – even in this internet age.
The trouble with brochues is they’re expensive to produce and distribute, go out of date quickly, and are easy to ignore.
Worst of all, they often fail to make an impact on the bottom line. The reasons for this are many and varied, but include:
They’re used for selling rather than supporting the sale.
They’re used as a standalone tactic rather than as part of a complete sales strategy.
The marketing messages are vague and the copy is weak.
There’s no offer or call to action.
The end result is often a carton of dud brochures gathering dust in your storeroom.
To help you avoid this fate I have compiled a list of my favourite brochure copywriting resources from the best brochure copywriters in the business. These tips and tactics will help you create a brochure that not only will your customer will want to read, but will increase sales too:
“Some guy told me I need to put a Google search box on my site and have a 5% keyword density on each page if I want to get on the first page of Google…”
Really? You’ve got to be very careful whose advice you trust when it comes to SEO. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there, much of it highly speculative or woefully out-of-date.
(BTW, my two most trusted and useful sources of SEO information are Dan Thies and Jill Whalen.)
The only people who really know how Google works are the folks at Google, and they ain’t telling.
But the next best source of infomation is SEOmoz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors survey. Every couple of years SEOmoz surveys the world’s top SEO experts to gauge their opinions on what factors are most important in achieving top Google rankings.
So without further ado, here are the Top 5 Ranking Factors from the 2009 survey:
Walk into a retail store and that’s often the first question on the sales assistant’s lips. It’s also the question your website content must answer.
Many businesses make the mistake of presenting their website as a glowing resume, detailing their history, size, mission and achievements. But they forget the most important person: the prospective customer!
In his book Your Marketing Sucks! marketing consultant Mark Stevens states: “If your website is nothing more than an electronic brochure, you are squandering the power of the medium.”
B2B copywriter and consultant Dianna Huff agrees. In her blog post, Your B2B Small Business Website is Not a Brochure she gives five crucial points of difference between small business websites and brochures.
What’s the difference between reading a novel and a website?
When someone reads a novel they start at page 1, then read page 2, and so on, until they get to the end. It’s a linear process.
But most people start reading a website on the page they arrived at from clicking a link on Google. They can then read the web pages in any order. It’s random access.
So many business owners focus solely on increasing website traffic – getting more visitors to their site – to the detriment of improving website conversion – converting more browsers into buyers.
The bottom line is that you’re wasting your money on traffic if your site’s doing a poor job of conversion. It’s like putting a massive ad in the Sunday paper and having hundreds of people visit your store, but not having enough salespeople to serve them. They just leave with a low opinion of your operation.
In his e-book, 7 Secrets of Highly-Successful Copy, B2B copywriter Steve Slaunwhite, states: “Your real challenge, as a copywriter, is to bring the benefits derived from the features to life.”
This TV commercial for Shell petrol, purportedly written by advertising great David Ogilvy, is a great example of how it’s done.
When you sit at your computer to write your next marketing piece you’re faced with a challenge. What exactly do you write to persuade people to buy your product or service?
Novices tend to simply list the features of their business and products or services e.g. We specialise in… We offer a range of…We’ve been in business since… We provide same day service… We’re expert at…
Features are important. But if you want to persuade more prospective clients to whip out their credit cards there’s something else you should be writing about: the benefits of doing business with you.
When I worked at a publishing company my boss always insisted the graphic designer use serif fonts (Times New Roman was one of his favourites) for the body text in all our publications.
Why? Because serif fonts are easier to read on the printed page. But it’s a whole different ballgame online. That’s because computer screens have lower resolution than printed paper, which make serif fonts harder to read.
When marketing savant Perry predicts, I take notice!
He recently blogged his 10 Predictions for 2010-2019.
His prediction about the future of website development was of particular interest. To quote:
The traditional HTML website site hand-crafted by an HTML editor and uploaded via FTP is fast becoming a relic, replaced by Content Management Systems and platforms like WordPress and Joomla.
SEO guru Jill Whalen has answered a selection of newbie questions in a recent edition of her excellent newsletter.
Ever wondered how many links you need to get to #1 in Google? Or, what factors affect my Google ranking? Or, how can I write my website content to get better rankings?
From my experience the most frequently ignored social media reality is that someone has to WRITE all this stuff. And it has to be pretty good. To quote Sonia:
There’s too much good content that you need to compete with. And there’s no magic system that can replace sitting in front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read. (Or partnering with someone who can.)
If you need someone to write your blog posts, Facebook page or Tweets, there’s a… ahem… good copywriter I can recommend.
Old school copywriting is all “Sell, Sell, Sell!” But online, hype is out and “help” is in, according to website content maven Nick Usborne’s article “Help, Help, Help, Sell”.
When it comes to your website visitors he says, “You need to guide them, inform them, direct them. And, of course, at the same time, pre-sell them.”
Just like clothes and hairstyles, website design can go stale. If your website was designed back when Levi’s Engineered Jeans were the freshest thing in fashion, it might be time for a redesign.
But while a site makeover is always a nice ego boost, it may not lead to improved results… unless you look beyond just the look and feel. This short video illustrates why it pays to think about what your customers want from your website before you redesign:
Accountants have tax loopholes. Photographers use PhotoShop to make their portrait sitters look younger. Chefs have recipes passed down from their grandmothers. And successful online marketers also have insider information.
Okay, maybe the four ingredients of a profitable website that I’m about to reveal aren’t exactly secret. They’ve been written about endlessly on the Web and in articles and books. But they may as well be secret for all the attention most website owners pay to them.
Are you keen to leverage the web to promote your business, but only have a minuscule budget for website development? This four-step process shows you how to build an effective small business website on the cheap. Real cheap.
With the economy slowing it’s a great time to rev up your marketing. But you need to get the most bang for your marketing buck. Here are three super-effective and low-cost marketing weapons to help you attract new clients in tough times:
“I hate marketing,” a friend of mine told me recently.
Despite owning two successful businesses my friend has a vehement distaste for marketing. I’ve found this attitude is quite common amongst small business owners. Many of them think marketing is either sleazy and dishonest, or ineffective and a waste of money.
I think these attitudes arise because there’s a misunderstanding of what marketing is. Hopefully this article will help set the record straight.
Here are six inspirational definitions of marketing from some of the world’s foremost experts on the topic:
A friend of mine had a job selling ad space for a local newspaper. He once sold a tiny ad to a delicatessen owner in a suburban shopping mall. The deli man put on extra staff the day the ad came out to cope with all the extra customers… who never showed.
It may have been because the ad was a dud. But it’s more likely that one tiny ad simply isn’t enough to build sales.
The deli man didn’t know what all successful marketers know. As Jay Conrad Levinson so clearly explained in Guerrilla Marketing, “marketing is a process and not an event”.
Many business owners I talk have an “event” mindset when it comes to the web. They believe a website is a marketing silver bullet. They think all they have to do is get the site on the Web and the phone will start ringing and the orders pouring in. Unfortunately that rarely happens.
Every profession has its secrets.
With the economy slowing it’s a great time to rev up your marketing. But you need to get the most bang for your marketing buck. Here are three super-effective and low-cost marketing weapons to help you attract new clients in tough times:
“I hate marketing,” a friend of mine told me recently.
A friend of mine had a job selling ad space for a local newspaper. He once sold a tiny ad to a delicatessen owner in a suburban shopping mall. The deli man put on extra staff the day the ad came out to cope with all the extra customers… who never showed.
