Entries from March 2013 ↓

Every company wants to sell more.

As a copywriter you would expect me to harp on about how the copy across all your marketing materials is essential if you want to engage and encourage your customers to buy. Of course that’s true, but this post is going to look more at your company as a whole and how its entire marketing ethos should work.

Engaging with your customers is the key to selling to them. To be really successful this engagement needs to happen on all levels within your company and at all stages of customer contact.

Let me explain.

Your company united

Although you probably have a sales department, boosting your company sales shouldn’t be down to them alone.

Everyone within your business, regardless of department or job title, should always be thinking sales. Any conversation could potentially lead to a sale, so its essential all your staff are switched on and ready to act.

Shh…listen

Meetings with customers are often viewed as opportunities to quickly make the customer aware of your products/services and then sign them up.

But meetings are more effective is you listen more than you speak. Listening to what your customer actually wants will lead to better service in their eyes. Show an interest in what they have to say and don’t be afraid to ask difficult questions such as budget while you have their attention. The more information you can extract from them the better.

Education, education, education

If you want people to buy from you, you have to show them how much they need your product/service. The best way to do that is through education. Blogging, how to posts, videos, eBooks, free demos and free trials are all great ways to get your customers reaching for their credit cards.

Use these marketing materials to show them how buying from you will benefit them. Use case studies to show real life examples so they can get a feel for what you can do. Everyone loves a real life story and they are a great way to demonstrate what you do.

Personality

I know some larger companies tend to use a sales script, especially in telesales departments, but these can sometimes come across as contrived and lifeless. Although you probably want your staff to stick to these scripts, encourage them to inject their own personality into their delivery.

It will boost engagement and make your customers feel as though they are dealing with real people who care, rather than someone reading from a piece of paper.

Act now

One of the greatest ways to get someone to buy is to add a sense of urgency to the deal.

Having a time limited special offer for example will encourage your customers make a decision because they won’t want to lose out. Although nothing new, this method has been a winner for many, many years so use it.

Not at gun point

Have you seen those TV documentaries that unearth rogue companies that encourage their sales team to use heavy-handed sales pitches that badger customers in to signing contracts?

Under no circumstances should any of your staff be forcing a sale through. Many people will simply turn their back on you if you try and certainly will never do business with you again.

By relying on education, case studies and helpful, polite staff your company will enjoy great sales figures.

This is a guest post written by Jenn Greenleaf. The views expressed in this post are entirely the author’s own and may not reflect those of Freelance Copywriter’s Blog. If you are interested in submitting a guest post, please get in touch with your ideas

To some, building an audience is second nature. It seems like no matter what these business owners say or do online, they have a genuine following. How does this happen, you wonder? Before getting into that, let’s talk about why they are so

engaged with their audience. The main reason is business. There’s a secret I’m going to let you in on when it comes to building an audience – your business will grow proportionally in size. Here are some tips about how to build an audience.

Keep your blog updated frequently
(source:www.sxc.hu/photo/1165446)

Deliver Content Consistently

Avoid generalizations when writing on your website; instead write as though you were talking to them directly. Develop content that is specific to your niche, especially if you’re selling a specialized product or providing a particular service. Content can be in a variety of forms including blog posts, articles, newsletters, interviews with other experts in the field, product reviews. Visitors to your website want fresh material delivered regularly covering topics relating to their interests.

Offer Freebies

Everyone loves to get something for free, as long as it has perceived value. It’s a perfect way to gain a following for any blog or business. To maximize your benefit, make sure the recipient provides their email address so you can maintain contact. Provide mechanisms for your audience to share these freebies with their own audience on social media. It can be as simple as placing a request to share on the front cover of an e-book or employing a “pay with a tweet” deal, where the person only get the product if they tweet about it. Ebooks are an obvious candidate for free products, but there are many other possibilities including free Kindle books, White Papers, companion guides and webinars. Offer substantial value in the product and avoid using it as an opportunity to sell.

Your audience should never wonder if they are important enough to talk to
(source:www.sxc.hu/photo/948294)

Stay Engaged

Visitors are discouraged when a business owner spends little time posting quality content and rarely engages with readers. The lack of interaction makes the site feel barren and neglected. Provide an immediate and positive response for every blog comment, Facebook post, or tweet. This attention to detail builds respect and garners trust among your audience. As this trust continues to build so does your reputation and ultimately your business, because everyone like to do business with people they can trust.

The Bottom Line

Whether you use social media, search engine marketing or SEO to attract visitors, be as human as possible. Search engines don’t read your blog, people do. There is a fundamental shift occurring in the online world, away from writing for SEO to creating content for human beings. Building your audience is the best way to build a business and insulate yourself from any changes in the major search engines. Great content inspires people to share and gives your business yet more exposure.

Author: Jenn Greenleaf writes about a number of topics including gardening, parenting, and legal matters. You can find out more on reputation.com

A question about website copywriting was raised recently on a Facebook group that I am part of.

It was more like “I’m writing some copy for my new website, should I write it in the 1^st or 3^rd person?”

My answer was “neither, you should be writing it in the 2^nd person.”

Let me explain.

The 2^nd person builds relationships

Why do you search the Internet?

I’m guessing because you need to research something or have a problem that you’re looking for a solution to.

So, when you land on a website you’ll be looking for one that tells you the answer you’re looking for. Not one that immediately starts:

“We are a well established business based in Norfolk with 25 years experience in our field.”

So what?

That’s not what you want to know, you want to know how they’re going to help you. And that’s why it should be written in the second person.

Let’s say you’re looking for someone to build you a new website because yours just isn’t working because it’s not bringing in the traffic, you have to go through your web designer every time you want to change something and it is generally out of date.

Rather than seeing something like the ‘we-fest’ above, would you react more favourably to something along the lines of?

“Do you want more traffic?

Are you fed up because you can’t update your website whenever you want to?

We’ll help you by creating a modern, flexible website that can be updated easily and that will attract visitors. What’s more, because you’re unique your website will be designed to suit your needs; we won’t shoe horn you into any pre-existing templates

Call us today for a chat.”

It immediately shows you that they understand the issues you face and that they will work with you to resolve them.

The approach is conversational and as no jargon or technical terms have been used it’s easy to understand. The company comes across as being approachable so you’ll probably add them to your shortlist of companies to get quotes from.

Even your About Page should be written in this style – although it will have more information about your company, the second person will still work because you are still selling your company to the reader.

With regards to how you refer to yourself, there was quite a debate on the Facebook discussion about whether it should be “I” or “we”, especially for sole traders. My advice is simple, if you want to create the illusion of your business being larger than it is to attract larger clients, use “we” (also if you’re planning to expand your business in the future). If you work alone, especially if you’re a business consultant or something along those lines and you trade on your reputation, use “I”.

So if you want your web copy to work for you:

• Write in the 2^nd person
• Write in a conversational style
• Avoid jargon and technical terms

Sally Ormond – Copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd

Social media is a wonderful thing…in the right hands.

Those hands must be level headed (is that possible?), never react in anger and should always think before they type.

The immediacy of social platforms make sure knee-jerk reactions hang around to haunt you forever, or at least for a very long time.

Frequently, celebrities are caught up in Twitter spats or put out a not-particularly-well-thought-out tweet, prompting Cosmopolitan to list its top 10 celebrity Twitter blunders of 2012:

1. The infamous Tulisa vs Dappy spat
2. Diana Abbott’s ‘white people love paying divide and rule’ prompted by Bim Adewunmi tweet about the term ‘black community’
3. TOWIE’s Jessica Wright’s ill-judged ‘rest in peace’ tweet in response to the news of the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il
4. Kim Kardashian tweeting a photo of herself holding a cat by the scruff of its neck
5. Ashton Kutcher’s tweets of support for football coach Joe Paterno
6. Russell Bran tweeting a picture of hi ex-wife Katy Perry with no makeup on
7. Piers Morgan revealing Ryan Giggs as the high profile footballer having an affair
8. Charlie Sheen direct messaging his mobile number of Justin Bieber only for it to end up on his timeline
9. Chris Brown reacting to the critics when he picked up a Grammy
10. Rihanna for writing cryptic messages, soon after Chris Brown posted a picture of his new girlfriend, suggesting he was being less than faithful

But one of the more recent examples left Labour MP David Lammy apologising.

What did he do?

Well, following this tweet from BBC News:

David Lammy accused the BBC of being racist claiming the tweet from the BBC was “…crass and unnecessary. Do we really need silly innuendo about the race of the next Pope?”

After it was pointed out to him that black smoke appears from a Vatican chimney when no decision has been made and white smoke when a new Pope has been elected, he realised his mistake and was forced to make the following apology:

“Note to self: do not tweet from the Chamber with only one eye on what you’re reading. Sorry folks, my mistake.”

So there you go, some very good reasons why you should never Tweet in haste or anger.

Before you write your tweet always make sure:

• You have carefully read the tweet you’re responding to
• You’re not responding in anger and the heat of the moment
• Think carefully about what you write and how it will be take by others
• You’re careful about what you send in a direct message

Hands up is you think writing copy is just about collecting a few facts and then writing them in a string of coherent sentences that will hopefully convince readers to buy something?

Wrong.

Being a copywriter is much more than just that.

This isn’t going to be one of those posts that rambles on about the science of writing or anything like that. This one is about how a copywriter gets into the head of his or her client.

Copywriting Craniotomy

If you are slightly squeamish there’s no need to look away, there will be no blood.

Getting into the heads of your clients sounds drastic, but it really is the only way you can understand what they want.

Finding out the nuts and bolts of the copy (benefits, features etc.) is easy, but pinpointing exactly the tone and approach your client wants is a different kettle of fish altogether.

The terms ‘friendly’, ‘informal’, ‘witty’, ‘quirky’, ‘professional’, ‘approachable’ and ‘conversational’ can mean different things to different people.

Let’s be honest, how many times have you been asked to take an ‘approachable and conversational’ approach only to be told ‘no, that’s far too casual, that’s not what I want at all.’

Yes, finding the perfect voice for your clients is tricky. So what can you do to overcome this hurdle?

Ask the right questions

Over the years, I have found the best way (please note even this isn’t fool proof) to get to the bottom of what my clients want comes down to a three-pronged attack:

1. Read

Start off by asking them what style they want and ask them to provide examples. This could be in the form of other websites they like, a writer that adopts the style they want, a marketing brochure; in fact it can be absolutely anything.

Once you have it, read it again and again until you are completely immersed it its style and can replicate it easily.

2. Listen

As you talk to your client listen to what they say and how they say it. Their turn of phrase and choice of vocabulary will help you when it comes to developing a style that they are comfortable with.

3. Read some more

During the project you’ll probably be exchanging a lot of emails. Again, read these carefully and see how your client tends to phrase things and use this within the copy you produce.

Of course, that doesn’t mean to say that everything you write will be perfect first time. There may well be words that you use that they don’t like, but small tweaks like that are to be expected anyway.

Many larger clients will already have a style book to hand they can pass on to you that outlines the dos and don’ts when it comes to writing copy. But this isn’t the norm, so for the majority of writers the 3 tips above should help you create something your clients will be happy with.

Over to you

How do you get over this particular issue?

Leave a comment below and share you ideas on how to create the perfect voice for your clients.

Note: No copywriters or clients were harmed during the writing of this blog post