This is it. The start of a new decade bla bla bla…
So, what are you going to do differently this year? Are you going to move your marketing up a level or will you just be plodding along as usual?
With the noughties behind us and the teenies stretching before us, now’s the time to review your marketing messages on your website, brochures, newsletters, emails etc.
Don’t go stale
Picture this: Monday morning, you drag yourself out of bed and stagger down stairs. You open the bread bin only to find a hard, stale piece of bread which is slightly green around the edges.
Do you:
a) stick it in the toaster because no one’s ever died from mouldy, past its best bread (yet)
b) chuck it away and find some fresh bread to eat
I’m guessing you’ve gone for option b).
Why? Because the bread is out of date, stale and lifeless.
So if you thought that was a pretty obvious choice to make, why do you leave your website copy and brochures untouched for months, years and (God forbid) decades?
Keep up with the times
Your marketing message will become just as stale as that piece of bread.
The copywriting in your original message was undoubtedly strong and compelling, but even copywriting can’t stand the test of time. You move on, your customers move on, priorities and products change – so why hasn’t your copy?
If you don’t keep your copy updated and relevant you might as well not bother marketing – and we all know what a pickle that’ll get you in to. I wrote a post a while back called 4 Resons Why Copywriting Services Work in which I used a famous example to illustrate why your marketing should continue:
During the depression of 1929-33(ish) Kelloggs in the USA (whose cornflakes were a health food at the time) continued to promote as heavily with adverts, posters etc as they had been doing before that. By the time the depression was over there were no other breakfast cereals that anyone had heard of and Kelloggs achieved almost instant market domination, a position they’ve held ever since.
Time verses profit
I can hear you all now shouting that you don’t have the time to start reviewing and rewriting all your marketing materials. Well, for starters, you don’t have to do it all in one go. Prioritise – start on your website first if that’s the first contact potential clients have with your company.
If you don’t have time, invest in the services of a freelance copywriter – yes, it will cost you but you’ll save time because a) you don’t have to write it yourself and b) because you won’t have to rewrite it because it will work first time because copywriters know what they’re doing.
Using a professional will help you save money and make money – think of it as an investment. You hire new sales people to generate more leads so why not hire a copywriter to produce copy that will generate leads and convert them into buying customers?
Take a look at your website and borchures – ready for a makeover? Start 2010 the way you mean to go on – lean, mean and ready for action.
I started out as a freelance copywriter nearly three years ago. During that time, not being the greatest face to face networker in the world, I have utilised the power of social media to drive my business forwards. That’s great if you ‘get’ social media but if the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and the myriad other websites leave you cold, it can all seem like a total waste of time.
The down side of social media
If you don’t know what you are doing, social media could quite easily be the death of your business. Sound extreme? Well, it’s true.
You can spend hours playing with your Twitter account, Facebook Fan page and all manner of other forums and networking sites, but if you don’t have a clear strategy you’ll be heading for trouble.
Many people associate being busy with being profitable. But if your ‘busy-ness’ comes from the fact you’re spending hours sending out useless tweets rather than going out meeting and greeting and getting deals signed, you’re going nowhere fast.
Your social networking is there to compliment your traditional face to face networking. They should go hand in hand.
Social media for local business
Because it’s on the world wide web many people see social media as a platform for global networking. Yes, it can be that if you want, helping your company reach parts you never thought possible. But it can also be very effective on a local level too.
Networking events aren’t always the most targeted way of meeting new and valuable contacts or clients. Most of the time you never quite know who you’ll meet. By using the power of online networking you can change all that.
Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
Start a local group online
Use sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook to start local discussion groups. This is a great way to get in touch with other local businesses and share ideas.
Hold a meetup/tweet up
Get together with your online local networking groups. Find tweeters from your area and arrange a Tweetup. This is a great way to firm up those online relationships you’ve already started.
Facebook targeted ads
If you have a Facebook fan page (here’s my freelance copywriting page – feel free to become a fan, it would be great to see you there) use Facebook’s targeted advertising service to get your name in front of local prospects.
Google local 10 box
If you’re not already there, get yourself listed in Google’s local 10 box and get yourself in front of people looking for local businesses like yours.
Above all, if you’re using social media make sure you have a strategy and stick to it. Plus compliment your online activties with going out meeting and greeting.
Your website can be killed or made by its content. Your website copywriting will determine:
how your website is ranked by the search engines
whether people will read your site
how long people remain on your site
whether your traffic is converted into sales
So it’s fair to say it’s pretty important.
As a freelance copywriter, I am frequently asked for tips on website copywriting so I decided to put a short video together to outline the basics that will make your website copywriting work.
It wasn’t that long ago that the staple diet of the professional marketer was newspaper ads and Yellow Pages entries. Today, if you want to be found you have to be on line.
The age of the web has developed the art of copywriting to a new level. Now copywriters have to be able to create compelling copy that convinces people to buy and spiders to rank them within the search engines. The art of the SEO website copywriter is one that is mystical and magical – it is no longer about writing nicely. Today you have to know what keywords to use, where they should be put, how you should link effectively between websites and web pages… they truely are magicians of the modern day.
If you don’t keep up with the changing fortunes of marketing your company will be left high and dry.
Keeping up with the copywriting ‘Jones’s’
Whether your company has its own inhouse copywriter or hires a freelance copywriter – hang on, you do use a copywriter don’t you?
Copywriting is vital for businesses to survive in an increasingly competitive market place. I illustrated this in an earlier post called 4 Reasons Why Copywriting Servcies Work.
In this post I talked about the Kelloggs effect:
During the depression of 1929-33(ish) Kelloggs in the USA (whose cornflakes were a health food at the time) continued to promote as heavily with adverts, posters etc as they had been doing before that. By the time the depression was over there were no other breakfast cereals that anyone had heard of and Kelloggs achieved almost instant market domination, a position they’ve held ever since.
So what are the 4 reasons why copywriting services work?
They keep your product/service visible in the market place and therefore in the forefront of your customers’ mind.
Well written copy will increase your credibility within the market place.
Professionally written persuasive copy will help you by increasing your sales through targeted leads and web traffic.
By hiring a professional to write for you will free up your time to do what you do best.
Therefore it is a no-brainer. To make your company thrive and stand out in the market place you need to invest in professional copywriting services.
For many people social media is a still this mythical creature that soars around cyber space breathing fire on anyone who misueses it.
OK, we all know it doesn’t do that but for many people who just ‘don’t get it’, it might as well.
Many people still see it as a waste of time. They don’t have time to Tweet or Digg, they don’t have time for forums, they don’t have time to blog. But it’s not a waste of time if it’s done right.
Yes, if you don’t have a strategy you can waste a lot of time ‘messing’ around with social media but if you have a clear methodology you’ll win hands down.
It’s just like setting time aside to do your accounts or writing an advert – but I bet time spent building relationships through social media will get you a higher return for your cash than that old fashioned advert will.
As a freelance copywriter most of my clients find me through my social media activities – whether its blogging, facebook or twitter. Engaging with people online is vital to build trust and credibility.
You can buy attention (advertising)
You can beg for attention from the media (PR)
You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales)
Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page.
Don’t go stale
