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.
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I'm a freelance copywriter in Sydney, Australia. When I tell new acquaintances what I do they usually ask "What's that?"
I've also found many business owners don't know what a freelance copywriter is or does.
A lot of people think it's to do with copyright law. It's not.
"Copy" refers to the text of a brochure, advertisement, website or other marketing material or promotion. Thus a copywriter is a person who writes copy. In a nutshell, a copywriter is a salesperson in print.
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Recently a client questioned the liberal use of the word "you" in the home page I had written for them.
A central tenet of a successful business website is that it is about and for your customers.
Too many businesses use their websites to talk about themselves: We've been in business since… We offer innovative business solutions… We have the biggest range of… We offer superior customer service…
These messages do not work. The hard truth is customers are not interested in you. They're only interested in themselves and their problems.
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I dug up some old research from my filing cabinet the other day. According to a 2003 study 80% of Consumers Hate Flash Intros. At around the same time this research came out I also discovered a hilarious parody of the odious Flash intro. But despite this public bollocking the Flash intro persists to this day.
At the risk of biting the hand that feeds me I have noticed some of the worst offenders are web designers and developers, interactive agencies and graphic designers. By all means showcase your Flash design prowess on your website. But why not let me actively choose to view it if I’m interested, rather than forcing me to click "skip intro" to get to the content I want to see?
"Skip intro" is an acknowledgement that many people find your Flash intro a waste of time. So what's it doing on your site? There's no need for an intro at all. Just tell me what I need to know on a normal, fast, efficient, well-designed website. If I decide I'd like to spend my time looking at Flash animations, then I will.
Flash is very effective when used properly. It's great for Internet-based applications. But I really think it's time Flash intros went the way of the Betamax video.
PS: Sorry about the pulsing orange button. I know it's annoying, but I think you get the message!
Nothing you can say for yourself is as valuable as what customers have to say about you. That's because people find the endorsements of actual customers more persuasive than the hype of faceless copywriters.
Every marketer has the same problem: overcoming a prospect's fear of making a mistake. Faced with a buying decision prospects will often sit on their hands. They need to "think about it". It's safer to do nothing than risk making the wrong choice. In this situation smart marketers use psychology to overcome the prospect's inertia.
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You'll win much more business if you show your target audience how you can solve their problems.
What is the one thing every person is interested in? The weather? Politics? Health? Sport? Religion? Shopping? Sex? Money? While many people are interested in some of these things, not one of these topics holds universal interest.
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My first job after uni was working at a small publishing company. One of my boss's favourite sayings was, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." It was a reminder to his staff that the first step in any project is to establish what you want to achieve i.e. setting goals or targets.
In my experience few websites have any goals. Often they're built on the reasoning, "We've gotta have a website because everyone else has one." Even now, many people think a website is a kind of marketing panacea. They think that by simply putting a website up they'll be deluged with sales enquiries. Unfortunately it ain't so.
Realistic and achievable goals for a website fall into the following categories:
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Always budget for your web content before you hire a web developer.
I know it seems counter-intuitive; you want to build your house before you decorate it. But, as web usability guru Jakob Neilsen states in Designing Web Usability
, "Ultimately users visit your site for the content. Everything else is just a backdrop."
If your print ad, direct mail piece, press release or home page isn't getting the results you want a weak headline may be to blame.
Research shows that readers respond more to headlines than any other element of a print ad. So no matter how eye-catching the images and design, or compelling the body copy, without a strong headline an ad will most likely be ignored.
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First there was SEO.
Then came PPC.
Now the latest TLA (three-letter-acronym) in search engine marketing is SMO.
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