Entries Tagged 'freelance copywriter' ↓

Most smart marketers and business owners today know that the internet is the place to be. It offers a platform from which to market your business to the world – literally.

But mention internet marketing to many people and you’re met with blank stares. There seems to be so many different forms of marketing, most with baffling names and what’s more…you have to use a computer!

But if you are willing to spend a bit of time getting to know your way around the internet, it can be very rewarding. I began my freelance copywriting business 3 years ago and have done all my marketing online. Now, all my clients come to me through my website (or via referrals) – no costly adverts and no cold calling.

So how do you get started? What are the key aspects of internet marketing?

The how and why of internet marketing

1. Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation (or SEO for short) is something just about everyone has heard of, but very few understand.

Basically, when you make a search in Google, SEO will determine what results are returned and the order in which they appear. But SEO is changing (and that’s not including Google’s constantly changing algorithm that determine where your website appears in the search results). You may have noticed in searches that now Google also lists videos, images and even Tweets. This opens up new possibilities for internet marketing with more businesses setting up YouTube channels.

SEO is really the way to go for most businesses but it isn’t fast. You have to identify your keywords, produce excellent content that utilises these keywords, work on your site structure and infrastructure to make it SEO friendly. And then you have to build high quality one way links into your site.

It’s not a quick fix and it is a constantly ongoing job but it is ideal for businesses with a limited budget. Plus, the potential ROI is staggering.

2. Pay Per Click

Pay per click (PPC) is basically paid advertising on Google (and the other search engines). When you look at a page of search engine results, the PPC adverts are the top highlighted results and the list that appears down the right hand side.

The main advantage of PPC is that it’s fast. Once you’ve set your advert up it will begin to appear in the results. But, it can be very money hungry. PPC basically works on a bidding system whereby you compete with a number of other businesses all bidding for keywords. The higher the price you pay, the more prominent your advert. That is quite a simplistic way of looking at it as the actual price you pay is also determined by the number of click-throughs you get.

But, at the end of the day, if you don’t have deep pockets PPC probably isn’t for you – certainly not in the long term.

3. Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the best ways to market online. Sending out information and offers to your own in-house list is the perfect way to market to your customers.

So long as you give information as well as just sell, your recipients will be happy.

It is one of the cheapest forms of marketing and it’s so fast. But just be careful you don’t send out unsolicited emails – they are probably not going to be welcomed. The last thing you want is for your business to be labelled as a spammer.

4. Social media

Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay (for the foreseeable future anyway). It can be done cheaply and easily and, if you have a strategy in place, it won’t eat into your time.

But, social media calls for a completely different way of selling. Basically you sell without selling – let me explain. Social media is about building relationships. You have to chat and engage with people; give them information that is useful. Then, occasionally you can add in a sales message.

The main thing to remember is to start a conversation, listen to your followers/readers, answer their questions and give advice and, maybe, in the long run they will turn into clients.

Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon…there are many different forms of social media you can use. But remember, they are called ‘social’ for a reason.

5. Banner ads

Love them or loath them, they exist and are used by many businesses. They may not always give the best ROI and not easily measurable, but they might work for you so don’t immediately discount them.

6. Your website

Whichever route you decide to go down for your internet marketing plan, one thing you can’t overlook is your website.

What’s the point of driving traffic to your site if it isn’t going to convert into sales when it gets there?

The copy on your website has to be conversational, customer orientated and benefits driven. If you manage that, it will engage with your reader and help convert them into a buying customer.

Why am I telling you this?

Internet marketing is a term that is thrown around without many people really understanding what it involves.

If your campaign is going to be successful it will need a combination of the above – which ones you use depends on your business and what you are looking to achieve.

Do you …

You’re in business and therefore everything you do revolves around your customers – right?

Do you know who your customers are and what makes them tick?

Do you know how to solve all their business needs?

Do you constantly think about how you can solve their problems in the fastest most efficient way?

Do you constantly try to think of how you can add extra value to your relationship with them?

Do you think about them all the time?

Successful business are customer centric – urgh! Sorry, I hate that term. It’s just another fancy way of saying your customers are the key to your business. If you don’t put their needs first, they won’t stay customers for long.

But are they your only focus or do you get caught out sometimes when your competitors launch a new product or service? What do you do then?

Follow my leader marketing

Every business keeps one eye focused on what their marketplace is doing. You want to know every move your competitors make. But should you mirror their every move?

I am a freelance copywriter and there are a lot of us out there. Do we all offer the same service?

No.

Yes, we all write, but not necessarily the same type of copy. Some may specialise in web copy, some in reports, some in specific industries, and some (like me) provide copywriting services across the board (any industry any format, and very well even though I do say so myself).

You see we have tailored our services to the needs of our clients – we are giving them what they want.

The danger of follow my leader marketing (i.e. doing whatever your competitors do) is that it may not be what your clients need.

Your competitors are tailoring their services for their clients. But their customers are different to yours.

Be an individual

Of course that doesn’t mean to say you should ignore everything your competitors do.

If they come up with a service you haven’t thought of and you think it may be of interest to your customers, ask them. That is the best way of finding out whether it will work. If you send out a regular newsletter, use that to survey them.

They will be happy to help. Wouldn’t you rather deal with a business that asks your opinion on things rather than imposing things on you? Wouldn’t you be happy to help tailor a service so that it matches your needs precisely?

Exactly, and so will they.

Why do you need to know this?

The only thing that is keeping your business going is your customers. They must always been in the forefront of your mind. You should think about them constantly.

By keeping them at the heart of everything you do will lead to improved service and very happy customers.

I am a search engine optimisation copywriter (that’s just one of the copywriting services I offer) and so have a good idea about what it takes to get your website ranking well in Google. But there’s more to it that a bit of keyword research and great copy.

There are several factors that have to work together if you are going to get great results:

SEO can be a complex subject, especially if you are new to it all. So, I’ve listed below the 5 basics of search engine optimisation.

1. Keyword research

Before you do anything else, research your keywords. These are the terms real people use to search for your product or service. Although you can guess what people use, there’s no substitute for research:

• analyse your own Google analytics (this is especially if you already have a website that you are looking for give an SEO make-over to) to see what terms people are using to find you.
• Do some market research – ask your customers how they found you and if it was through a Google search, what term(s) they used.
• Social networking – see what people are talking about. Engage with them and ask their advice.
• Look at what your competitors are doing and what keywords they’re targeting.
• Don’t overlook local (geographic) terms.

Once you’ve done your research and made a list of primary and secondary keywords, don’t just stop there. You will have to test your keywords constantly to ensure you are targeting the phrases and words that will generate you the most traffic.

2. SEO friendly infrastructure

Before you get to the point of building your website or writing your web copy, you must decide which pages will be used for which keywords. Your Home Page will target your primary words/phrase whereas your sub pages will target your secondary phrases.

3. SEO copy

SEO copy isn’t just the copy that appears on your web pages. You must ensure that your Page title tags use the keywords relevant to that page as identified when looking at your infrastructure.

Then there are your META descriptions. Although these don’t have a direct influence on your SEO, they will have an effect on the number of click-throughs you get. The META description is the text that appears below the page title in your search results page:

By using your keywords within that description, you will show the relevance of your page in relation to the search term and therefore increase your chances of getting that all important click-through. If you don’t add a META description, Google will just take a snippet of text from anywhere on your page. Therefore to ensure its relevance, make sure you provide one.

The next place you need to use your keywords is in your headings – these are the H1 and H2 tags (which go all the way down to H6). Again these are prominent locations which will be picked up by Google. Your primary keywords will go in H1 and your secondary ones will go in H2 onwards. Remember though not to just stuff these areas with keywords. They should be there as part of a meaningful phrase or sentence.

Finally, there’s your website copy itself – if you write naturally the keywords will appear within your text. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to stuff your copy with keywords. The result will be clumsy and unreadable.

4. Build your links

The final aspect of SEO is link building. The more quality and relevant one way links that point to your site, the higher you’ll appear in the search engine results. Building links should be an ongoing process – there is no quick fix for this. You can generate links in a number of ways:

• Write content for other sites and link back through hypertext links (using your keywords)
• List your website in directories
• Comment on blogs in your industry
• Participate in forums (again linking back to your site by using a link in your signature)
• Write guest blog posts for other people

So they are the basics of SEO. Remember you need to look at everything – your website construction and navigation as well as your copy. All elements have to work together if you want to achieve great results. But this isn’t a quick fix. SEO takes time and constant monitoring – but get it right, and the benefits speak for themselves.

Landing pages are used to sell a particular product or service. It is not uncommon to see a company using multiple landing pages that are product specific. Therefore their other marketing efforts (such as email marketing, banner adverts etc.) can be used to target specific people with specific products.

They are highly measurable and can be very effective – when done right.

However, more often  than not, they are not used incorrectly and therefore fail to convert visitors into sales. There are many landing pages out there that are just a single page with a call to action and no persuasive copy. It’s as if people assume that just because they clicked through to your landing page, they’re going to buy.

That certainly isn’t the case – you have no idea where they are in buying process; they could be browsing for ideas or just curious. What they will expect is more detailed information to convince them your product is the one to buy.

Therefore when constructing your landing page you must take into consideration the following points:

• What do you want to achieve?

You must decide this before you begin anything. Why do you want to set up a landing page? Are you looking for lead generation, sales, to generate qualified leads for a subscription service or to buy a specific product, or perhaps you’re looking for people to sign up online for a forthcoming event.

• Understand your audience

If you don’t know who you are trying to attract how do you know what needs to go on your landing page?

Think about the type of person you are looking to attract. What makes them buy? Are they ready to buy yet or are they still researching? Who are your competitors that they’ll also be looking at?

Whatever you write on your landing page, make sure you make a connection with your reader. Use the second person (e.g. you and your) to build rapport. And don’t bore them with details about your company, excite them by telling them what your product will do for them.

• Lead generation

You obviously need advertising out there to generate leads to your landing page. Where are they and what form do they take? Are they attracting the right kind of people? Do they motivate people to click through? Is your message strong and clear enough?

• What are you saying?

Is the copy on your landing page saying the right things? Is it benefit lead? Can your reader see in an instant how beneficial your product is to them? Is your call to action strong enough to make them take action there and then?

All of these points are vital if your landing page is going to be successful. But one key thing to remember is to test every aspect of your page. Set up 2 or 3 pages and drive traffic to them. Which one converts the best? Once you’ve seen what’s working refine it again by setting up more test pages. Test headlines, CTAs, copy, images – test every thing!

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

A landing page is often a single page website that concentrates purely on one product or service. Traffic is driven to this page through other marketing means – e.g. banner adverts, email marketing, print ads etc.

There are 4 things that need to be considered when creating your landing page.

You have to look at:

• What your offer is going to be?
• Who will be interested in your offer?
• Why they should take further action (i.e. buy or sign up)?
• How do they take further action?

Landing page elements

There are various elements each landing page should have to help answer the above questions.

1. Logo

Your company logo will be on all your marketing materials so your reader can easily identify you. Therefore it should also appear on your landing page to keep the continuity.

Normally it will appear in the top left or top right corner of that page – somewhere it can be seen without detracting from the mail sales message of your page.

2. Unique value proposition

There is one question that will be in the forefront of your reader’s mind when they reach your landing page – ‘what’s in it for me?’ So you must answer it immediately.

Your unique value proposition will tell them exactly why they should do business with you – this will be a major benefit of your product or service.

3. Headline

Because your reader would have come to your landing page from another piece of marketing (email, postcard, banner advert), you must ensure your headline ties in with the advert that generated the lead in the first place. If you don’t you’ll cause confusion and lose the reader.

4. Offer

Whatever your offer is, it must be clear and concise. It is this that will make them make the buying decision (or not) so it has to be a fantastic deal.

But if you make it too complex they’ll walk away. Make sure you keep it simple.

5. Be interesting

The main body of your landing page (or video) has to be interesting. Make sure it is benefits lead so they are left in doubt about what your product/service will do for them. Always write in the second person (i.e. you and your) to build rapport and talk directly to them.

The format of your copy is also very important. Use short paragraphs and sub headings to break up the text. The use of bulleted lists will also add interest.

6. The use of images

Pictures are fantastic if used well. A poor quality or boring image will do more harm than good. Use one that is of high quality and interesting – something that will make them want it.

7. Call to action

This should be simple and commanding and can appear anywhere within the text. Don’t over use it though, there’s nothing worse than seeing a bold CTA after every paragraph – that makes you look desperate.

If the desired action is to complete an online form, make sure it is simple to complete. If your reader is faced with a long and tedious order process, they won’t bother.

8. Create confidence

You have to get your reader to trust you and have confidence in you and your product. Using testimonials, case studies, and reviews will strengthen your case and give peace of mind to your reader. But make sure they are qualified.

9. Be transparent

Don’t hide behind your landing page. If your contact details aren’t prominently featured your reader will think you have something to hide.

Make sure all your contact details are visible along with you T&Cs, privacy policy and copyright details etc. These can be on other pages, but you must make sure a link to them is clearly visible.

10. Test

OK, strictly speaking this isn’t an element that appears on your landing page, but it is vital in its development.

You will never know how your readers will react until you test your page. Create more than one and direct traffic to each one. Check your conversion rates to determine which was more successful. But don’t stop there. Constant testing is the only way to hone the optimum landing page that will convert consistently.