15 Punchy Copywriting Tips

March 19, 2009 | 6 Comments

punchy copy

“They were easier to read than ignore” – Victor Schwab

It’s often said that copywriting can’t be too long, just too boring.

And sales writing is often only tolerated at the best of times. So if your copy is to weave its magic it needs to be light, easy to read and captivating.

Here are 15 tips for making your sales writing more punchy and compelling for readers:

1. Aim for an average sentence length of around 16 words.

2. Vary between short and long sentences to give your writing rhythm.

3. Split long sentences into two if they’ll survive on their own. Use connecting words such as ’so’, ‘and’ or ‘because’.

4. Wield an axe to flabby language and unnecessary words. As Anton Chekhov put it, ‘Brevity is the sister of talent.’

5. Sales writing isn’t blessed with a reader’s patience. So ensure every word and sentence means something to the reader and adds to your argument. Don’t waffle or descend into a longwinded diatribe that’s of little interest to anybody but you.

6. Leave long paragraphs to novelists, and limit yours to a single thought. Two or three sentences is adequate.

7. Showy writing isn’t sales writing. Don’t use words just because they sound impressive. And leave jargon and corporate claptrap for the brochure (if you must use them at all).

8. Use positive inspiring language on what the reader ‘can’ achieve and ‘will’ be able to do. Avoid negative terms that might dampen their spirits.

9. Break up up your page with subheads and bullets to aid skim reading.

10. Use power words to charge up your writing’s impact, such as ‘revealed’, ‘proven’, ’scientific’ and ‘breakthrough’.

11. Write in your reader’s language and the style they’re comfortable with. Read your target market’s magazines and newspapers to gauge the pitch.

12. People are hardwired to respond to stories. Use storytelling on how your product has solved someone’s problem to trigger the reader’s imagination and emotions.

13. Use facts or personal history to build rapport, empathy and to show the reader that you feel their pain.

14. Ask the reader a simple question early on they’ll say ‘yes’ to. This will precondition them to be more likely to agree with you and say ‘yes’ to your offer later on.

15. Sales writing is often compared to a conversation with a pal in a bar. So it should be conversational and sound similar to how you’d speak. Read it aloud to hear whether it flows smoothly.

Another tip I’d add is to keep a swipe file of the best sales writing you find. Study it, highlight key phrases and copy it out by hand to gain an understanding of how to write punchy copywriting that generates sales.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Blog, Copywriting, Email marketing, Online-PR, RSS, Search Engine Optimisation 

Has Your Business Learnt that Teaching Sells?

October 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Brian Clark released his ‘Teaching Sells’ report last week on the internet’s potential as a training medium and as a call up for freelance copywriters to think about creating and charging for educational content. No doubt the report will have got entrepreneurial brains racing on how they can build businesses around creating interactive learning environments, and jump on Brian’s approaching gravy train.

However, there’s already a sleeping giant sized market for copywriters to write educational material, and that’s in the world of business.

Knowing that teaching sells shouldn’t be news to any switched on internet marketer. Consumer mindsets are increasingly averse to being sold to, particularly online, which means a more sophisticated approach is needed to persuade them of the benefits of your business.

Selling online also presents unique challenges in building trust and credibility with skeptical visitors. Why should they buy from you rather than the next store down in the search results? What differentiates you from the competition?

You can build trust and differentiate yourself by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise through the provision of educational content. By providing articles that offer a solution to a problem or fresh insight, you can swoop under a visitor’s anti-ad radar and convert them into a prospect before they even know they’re in the sales funnel.

A homepage that confronts visitors with ambiguous claims and overt marketing language wont ingratiate you with people who are already suspicious and don’t appreciate the hard sell. On the other hand, if you offer content that will teach them about which product best meets their requirements or how to use it most efficiently then they might reward you with their email address.

The beauty of the internet is that it’s never been easier or less expensive to start an educational marketing campaign.

You can distribute white papers, ebooks and newsletters to every browser, and start them on their path towards enlightenment and becoming a buyer.

The challenge for businesses is first appreciating the value of educational marketing over the traditional sales/promotion approach, and then putting a content development strategy in place. Building trust and credibility is an ongoing process and you’ll want to keep your prospects’ hunger for info well fed.

So, don’t dictate. Educate.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Blog, Copywriting, Marketing, RSS 

RSS for Dummies

May 1, 2007 | 1 Comment

More people and more people are becoming familiar with RSS now that it’s integrated into web browsers and featured on mainstream portals such as newspaper websites and Ebay.

For those still unsure of why they should want to use this time saving method for pulling news to you and keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry, here is a brief video I was alerted to by Ponn at EmpowerWomenNow.com created by Commoncraft:

[coolplayer width="480" height="380" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="GBK" download="1" mediatype=""]
RSS in Plain English by Commoncraft
[/coolplayer]

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under RSS 

Why Businesses Aren’t Blogging

April 12, 2007 | 2 Comments

I am a business blogging evangelist. There I’ve said it. I think businesses should be selling their services through education and building trust with information of value. What better way of achieving this than with a relevant and regularly updated blog?

Sometimes I wonder whether I do get carried along with the whole web 2.0 crowd and should stop to see why business blogging hasn’t yet taken off on a larger scale. After all, not everybody thinks there is going to be an imminent revolution in how businesses communicate.

This week I’m going to step down from my pulpit of normal sermons, on the need for businesses to engage with their marketplace, to see what the other side thinks.

Last week’s Blogging4Business conference was an opportunity for those in marketing and PR to listen to blogging’s proponents and decide whether to be afraid or rejoice.

The BBC sent a reporter along so, with their government mandate for objective reporting, I was interested to see what impression was being broadcast to the wider world.

The BBC’s reporter attended a session hosted by Microsoft’s Darren Strange, one of their leading bloggers, who gave a typically browbeating speech:

He delivered an impassioned plea for firms to allow staff free reign to write their own blogs.

“I know it sounds scary that you have hundreds of people writing what they like about the firm, and you having no control over it,” Mr Strange said.

“Yes, things will go wrong, people will say things that perhaps they shouldn’t but the benefits outweigh the downsides.”

The room of PR executives meanwhile had been stunned into silence.

It’s a common theme in the blogosphere that the traditional PR and marketing mindsets are struggling to come to terms with the new attitudes to communication. It would appear that this view is also shared with the wider world and still a reason why business blogging isn’t being pushed along the traditional lines.

People often fear what they don’t understand or think they can’t control. Mainstream exposure of blogging is always beneficial for the movement’s growth, even if it’s just to highlight the gaping void between the traditional mindset and new breed of online proponents.

In my search for people prepared to stand up and challenge the beliefs of the business blogging movement I came across a white paper by Lewis PR. The report is well researched and objective, and does give a clear insight into some of the barriers holding the movement back.

Here are some of its key points:

  • In a survey of 300 companies from 10 countries only 5% had a blog. A stark contrast to the popular and oft quoted Jupiter research report that heralded 35% of companies would be blogging by the end of 2006. The fact is that business blogging hasn’t yet taken off and is still mainly the preserve of individual professionals, marketing and new media agencies.

  • There is uncertainty about the benefits and best practices. More mainstream awareness is needed of case studies and businesses who have gained from blogging.

  • There is less enthusiasm to invest in new technology simply because it is the latest fad. Businesses are no longer going to spend money just trying to be cool. People are keeping their fingers in their pockets after getting them burnt in the last misfired internet explosion.

  • Blogging requires a significant investment of time, skill and knowledge. You can outsource the first two, but will still soak up an employee’s time providing the third.

  • It’s difficult to assess the value of blogging in terms of cost-benefit. We are still missing a recognised set of metrics for measuring engagement, although some would argue that a lot of marketing takes place without robust metrics anyway.

  • It’s difficult to pitch blogging to a CEO. Without quantifiable benefits like bringing in sales leads and reputation enhancement, but with the much publicised risks, it’s a difficult sell. Page 10 of the report does, however, provide a good summary of all the possible benefits for HR, marketing, sales etc.

  • Marketers and blogging gurus might read a lot of RSS feeds but that doesn’t mean business people do. Will your blog be able to gain their attention with all the emails, industry magazines and sales calls they receive in a day? (Research was, however, published by Edelman showing that blog readership contains a large proportion of influencers: people responsible for buying decisions who want to be up to date on the latest developments. RSS has also only been integrated into browsers for a few months).

  • Your blog has to be able to provide news and information of value to attract readers. If your business isn’t in a fast paced industry then you might struggle to provide enough for the business crowd.

  • Blogs need to be transparent and fit in with the blogging culture, if this doesn’t fit in with your business’ culture then your blog might struggle. Corporate speak doesn’t work online.

  • Your blog might attract negative comments and feedback if you’re in a controversial industry or attract criticism. Animal testing firms should probably think twice.

Lewis PR’s report highlights many of the issues business blogging is facing: lack of awareness, lack of well known case studies and the fear of jumping in before everybody else.

The business blogging movement still continues to gain pace though, with SEO firms now signing up and many PR agencies making hesitant enquiries.

Last year I went to a small business exhibition in Milton Keynes to distribute leaflets on the benefits of blogging in the hope of riding the web 2.0 wave. I’ve still got a pile sat in my drawer. Lewis Global PR’s report shows that it might still be too early to give them another airing just yet.

Business blogging might not be appropriate for every business. But for those wishing to reach a global audience with a niche product, the time is still ripe to start talking about yourself and engaging with your online marketplace. I still know which side I’m on, even if it is just because it’s more interesting.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Copywriting, Marketing, Online-PR, RSS, Search Engine Optimisation, blogging 

“Google is not a search engine. It’s a reputation management system”

April 5, 2007 | 6 Comments

The relationship between copywriting and search marketing has never been closer; I now find myself covering the same stories as eminent SEM pros Lee Odden and Andy Beal. All three of us have recently covered issues highlighted in a Wired article about ‘The See-Through CEO’, a story about how being transparent can enhance your image, and how Google is now your mirror.

The article discusses how a CEO openly talked about his business and reached out to his marketplace. By exposing some of the myths and taking out al the ‘sales baloney’, he was able to build relationships with customers like never before. He also appeared to upset the rest of his industry in the process, but I digress.

In our new connected age it is impossible for businesses to rely on smoke and mirrors to disguise their problems. People can now spread their opinions and experiences faster than a Paris Hilton home video. Companies such as Sony, Walmart, Dell and South West Airlines have all felt the wrath of disgruntled customers, haemorrhaging their reputation with relish.

The powers of a company to control their message are dissipating. People can now block out their overt PR and sales spiel. Transparency now appears to be the language to adopt, spoken with the vocabulary of relevance and value.

The key area of my shared interest with Lee and Andy in the article is the impact of comments and opinions on search results. Google loves regularly updated websites with plenty of back-links. It’s these that are highlighted as the most relevant and pushed onto people’s screens.

When the uproar over Dell’s customer service exploded the first two search results were posts attacking Dell’s reputation. The lesson is that if you don’t talk about yourself than somebody else will, and you might not like what they have to say.

With hindsight, Dell should have simply released an apology and a promise to do better. Customers get angry when they think they aren’t being listened to, but can be forgiving if they feel their problems have at least been acknowledged.

Google is no longer just an online directory, but a reflection of your reputation. Its search results show what is being said and what information has the most influence. Internet marketing is no longer just about getting your website to the top, but also about getting to know the search results around you.

Previously brands would hire a PR agency to push positive stories onto the news channels to influence what people were saying. Now people are creating news channels of their own, free to say whatever they like and with an audience that listens intently.

As the Wired article comments:

“Being transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to directly influence your Googleable reputation. Putting out more evasion or PR puffery won’t work, because people will either ignore it and not link to it – or worse, pick the spin apart and enshrine thosecriticisms high on your Google list of life.”

The same topic was covered by a panel at the Bloggin4Business conference, currently in full swing in London. The panel of experts were discussing the impact of social media on advertising and marketing.

“Marketing needs to completely reinvent itself because the media world has completely changed,” commented Anthony Mayfield from Spannerworks, “Success means earning attention by being useful.”

The notion that online marketing is purely about SEO is dated. It’s now about becoming a relevant and active cornerstone of your marketplace’s community. You need to become an ‘authentic brand ambassador’ and an integrated part of your online ecosystem.

A brand’s internet marketing strategy should be about being as transparent as possible and generous with their news and information. Not burying their heads in the sand and hoping people in the internet bubble will run out of air.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Copywriting, Marketing, Online-PR, RSS, Search Engine Optimisation, blogging 

E-consultancy Roundtable Online-PR report

April 3, 2007 | 3 Comments

Discussion of Online-PR continues unabatted with the ever reliable e-consultancy releasing their report on the status quo.

A few of the key points:

  • There might be widespread use of Online PR for defensive purposes, such as reputation monitoring, but there is still little proactive use for marketing due to lack of experts and PR agency knowledge in the area.
  • Companies need an integrated offline and online approach with activites supported and reflected in both.
  • Uniting online and offline PR is a recent development -“SEO internally is quite easy but persuading the PR team to take online PR seriously is difficult because they don’t understand the value it can bring to the business.”
  • “Traditional PR is about cuttings and circulation. Online is about influence and conversation. What is putting a lot of traditional PRs off is that it’s seen as being about technology. But it’s about relationships and conversations.”
  • There are SEO agencies offering Online PR services, but these agencies may not have the online copywriting skills needed to carry out important aspects of online PR effectively.
  • Bloggers can be particularly powerful in niche areas.
  • “It’s about remembering why people form communities in the first place. It’s got to be relevant otherwise there is no point in being there.”

So far, my attempts to develop Online-PR in Milton Keynes hasn’t met the groundswell of support I had been hoping for. The perception of blogs as a marketing tool is still taking time.

In my experience, whenever you are trying to push something new people need to hear about it from a number of sources before they start to take it in. Now that e-consultancy are on the case they should be hearing a lot more about Online-PR from a lot more people very soon.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Marketing, Online-PR, RSS, Search Engine Optimisation, blogging 

Get Your Pens Ready for the Explosion in Online PR

March 14, 2007 | 2 Comments

The web copywriter’s market is evolving so fast that rarely a week passes without new opportunities appearing on the horizon. The requirements of business websites are developing all the time. Static brochure style sites are dated, portals of news and information is what’s needed.

It would appear that web marketers are now responding to the millions searching the web for info to assist their buying decision. They have realised that they need to be proactively promoting their client’s services to their online marketplace. There is to be an imminent explosion in ‘Online PR’.

In a recent post I picked up a meme from Tom Chandler on the hesitancy of PR agencies to respond to the changes in their industry. The days of sending out press releases to journalists, in the hope of some brief coverage, are long gone. Now anybody with a PC and internet connection has their own printing press and a potential readership of millions. PR agencies need to move with the times and learn how to speak to the online audience if they want to be heard.

Some smart agencies have now developed ‘Online PR’ strategies to bridge the gap with the offline world.

Here is how one describes their service:

“by identifying our clients’ most influential media, companies, networks, associations or individuals and connecting them directly with their greatest potential advocates to build brand reputation. “

Sounds like part of the ethos of business blogging to me.

Online PR uses all the new tools at your fingertips to push out your message and direct more people back to your website.

Using blogs SEO press releases and RSS is like deep sea fishing with a giant fishing net. Trawling the internet to catch info hungry web users, to pull them back in and convert them into hard cash. Static websites are still stuck in port, motionless, without even a net to catch any fish and a crew likely to go hungry.

Online copywriters have been advocating the use of your news and information as a key marketing tool for some time. This concept is now being adopted enthusiastically in online PR, with agencies listing SEO press releases, expert articles, viral seeding and blogging as the new tools in their marketing arsenal.

The philosophy of business blogging and engaging with your marketplace is finally starting to mature. So, if you’re a freelance copywriter you might want to think about adding ‘Online PR’ to your list of services. I think there will soon be plenty of people wanting to know.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Copywriting, Marketing, RSS, blogging 

World’s biggest advertiser announces, “It’s not about telling and selling…It’s about engaging.”

March 7, 2007 | 2 Comments

I often harp about how, in this age of 24/7 ‘pull’ access to information, businesses need to be providing a steady stream of articles to capture prospects and turn them into customers. The internet is about information, not blatant advertising.

By harnessing your news, and the power of RSS, it’s never been easier to develop long-term customer relationships. Simply hoping to hit a conversion rate of every visitor doesn’t seem like an adequate long-term strategy.

The widespread evolution of websites, into portals of news and information, is still going to take some time. Businesses are dragging their feet, waiting for the metrics to appear to justify the ongoing investment, and for everybody else to test the water first. It’s still not even widely accepted that greater engagement translates into more sales.

So whilst I wait for awareness of the engagement philosophy to spread, it’s always heartening when one of the world’s biggest advertisers seems to agree with its principles.

I was alerted, by The Marketing Blog, to a speech at last week’s 4A conference by Proctor & Gamble’s CMO, Jim Stengal. In a typically headline grabbing oration, he declared that marketing is no longer “about telling and selling…It’s not about new media models or new tools. It’s about engaging with people in a two way relationship.”

It was in 2004 that Stengal first announced that, “The traditional marketing model is obsolete.” His latest speech further builds on this theme. He spoke about how it was not just that the tools that had changed, but also the mindsets that they were trying to penetrate.

The steady bombardment of marketing messages has created a mindset resistant to being sold to. Fifty years of one way advertising has developed a low trust world. Consumers are now demanding honesty and transparency from their brands, and an end to one way sales spiel.

Stengal’s answer to marketing’s quandary is that P&G has to focus on garnering relationships and becoming a ‘generous brand’. He believes it is the generous brands who will be the winners because they win consumers’ trust by offering something of value without demanding immediate payback.

For P&G this has meant creating interactive websites that are entertaining, informative and of value to their audience. By encouraging people to spend more time engaging with their brands, P&G can develop a positive association, and seduce them into buying their products.

Any business can adopt the same philosophy. By providing a downloadable white paper, monthly newsletter or an informative blog, you can become a ‘generous brand’.

“It takes courage. It takes conviction. It takes stepping out of the comfort zone and eliminating barriers with your consumers.” – Stengal, 4A Conf 2007.

When the world’s biggest advertiser announces, “It’s not about telling and selling,” there is an obvious mind shift taking place amongst consumers. In our low trust world, effective marketing is about developing relationships built on trust and confidence. And there is no better way of developing such relationships than by becoming a ‘generous brand’ and showering your prospects with news and information of value.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Marketing, RSS, blogging 

The Future of Blogs, Your Content and Your Business

September 28, 2006 | 1 Comment

Anybody who has seen my main website will know that I might have jumped the gun a bit when I pigeon holed myself as a professional business blogger. It’s been not so much a case of jumping on the blogging bandwagon as jumping too early with nowhere to land.

So whilst I wait for the pro-blogger gravy train to arrive, I thought I might look into my crystal ball and see what other predictions I can try and foresee in the mists of time.

We are still only really at the start of the ambiguous ‘Web 2.0’ with marketers and PR professionals all rushing to find the best ways of utilising the new tools at their disposal. The gold-rush is on to find the best way of gaining exposure and mining the rapidly growing online marketplace.

It has never been easier or cheaper to reach a global audience in a very short space of time.

Web 2.0 has also been synonymous with the growth of the bedroom publisher. Anybody with a PC and Internet connection can now run their own blog or website, and potentially reach millions around the world. This has created a torrent of content flooding onto the Internet on a daily basis.

So much content is being produced that it is virtually impossible to keep track of all the latest updates on all but the smallest of niches. Over 50 million blogs are now being tracked by Technorati with 1.6 million new posts hitting the web everyday! Google and Microsoft are also hell-bent on adding all the greatest literary works known to man by scanning whole libraries onto the Internet. I don’t, however, expect to see Shakespeare or Dickens topping Digg anytime soon.

There is going to have to be a rethink on how we find and distribute content and information. After all, we can’t go on fighting over the top few search engine spots forever!

Once RSS penetrates the mass market, and awareness spreads, people will start using RSS to bookmark their sites of interest. Why waste time trawling through all your browser bookmarks when you can have all the updates delivered straight to your homepage?

But relying on RSS website feeds and topic keyword feeds will only have a limited lifespan. With more and more blogs appearing on every topic under the sun your aggregator will eventually reach saturation point, overloaded with content.
 

 

I already spend most of the morning reading through all my RSS feeds – and I only started using RSS a few months ago! If I don’t want this to creep into my afternoons I’m going to have to sleep less, learn to read quicker or limit my daily intake. As I subscribe to more and more blogs this is going to mean missing potentially mission critical information simply due to the constraints of time.

My prediction is that aggregators are going to have to become a lot smarter in the future. Obediently following your instructions and delivering content from all your subscribed sites will simply lead to info overload. They are going to have to almost develop artificial intelligence and be able to predict what content you want, and the most relevant, on a daily basis.

Aggregators are going to have to behave like researchers and reporters. Assessing what sites and content you read and then going out and to find the latest, best and most relevant info available. Your homepage will be your own fully customised magazine with news, video and audio all handpicked to match your interests.

With the proliferation of laptops, smartphones and electronic paper people will have more devices than ever before for consuming content. Thus feeding the demand for yet more blogs and distributed news catering to the tastes of an increasingly widening cross-section of people.

Being able to get your content delivered to people’s homepage will be critical if you want to sell a product or service. At present a lot of people rely on sites such as dealtime and kelkoo to find the best products and prices. Once they start integrating this with reading blogs you will want to ensure that this starts them on a path to your site.

Once aggregators start analysing what web pages you read they will be able to predict and recommend relevant product sites. Knowing how to get your product and service content distributed around the web, linked to on other blogs and delivered to people’s homepages will be crucial in the future online world.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under RSS, blogging 

What Does RSS Have To Do To Reach The Tipping Point?

September 20, 2006 | 3 Comments

Bloggers and online marketers are forever trumpeting the wonders of blogs as a business and marketing tool. But blogs will only be able to live up to the dreams of its disciples if they start being read by average Joe from the mass market. Some work still needs to be done if RSS and blogs are to be pushed over the tipping point and become the widely used marketing machine that everybody believes/hopes they will be.

RSS is going to need a charm offensive before people in the street even know what it is, let alone start using it. You only have to look at the makeup of the top 50 most popular blogs (mainly about gadgets, politics and marketing) to know that the mass market have yet to start reading blogs in their great numbers. Or maybe there is just a huge gap for blogs on paying your mortgage and cutting your credit card bills that nobody has spotted?

At a recent ‘Beers and Innovation’ event in London the future of RSS and blogging was discussed and it was universally declared, yet again, how fantastic they are. The speakers also all agreed that their growth amongst the non-web savvy would continue to stall until RSS becomes more accessible and easier to use. Hopefully, when Internet Explorer 7 launches later this year it will go some way to correcting this problem.

Even when the hurdle of accessibility is cleared there are still other problems preventing RSS from becoming a business tool that can be effectively managed.

As any marketer will tell you, “You can’t monetise what you can’t measure,” and this is an issue faced by RSS/web feeds. As outlined by Techcrunch’s recent post: it’s virtually impossible to know exactly how many people are subscribed to your feed, let alone how many are actually reading your posts.

There are so many different aggregators and methods of capturing RSS content that there is currently no way of compiling all your data into a central reporting function, as with email. This makes it tricky for marketers arguing their case for the extra funding needed for this radical new marketing tactic. There is simply currently no way of measuring the ROI of blogging in traditional quantifiable terms (other than organic SEO and increased traffic of course).

RSS will soon be far easier to use, which will help it to start reaching out to the non-web savvy. If you can bookmark a site then you will be able to click on a button to save its feed in your browser. But developing a universal standard of tracking your blog’s subscription and readership – with the level of reporting offered by email – might still hold back its tipping point amongst businesses for a while yet.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under RSS 

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