Archive for the ‘Copywriting’ Category

quick website thought

July 28th, 2009

You’d be surprised how many times I’m asked to write for a new or semi-new website, and the website owner really doesn’t have a solid grasp on what he or she wants the website to do.

Oh, they know what they want the end result to be (sell products, contact for services, etc.) But they don’t know the really important factors in getting to that point.

A website is like a new business – before going into business, you need to know who your customers are going to be, where they are coming from, etc. With that in mind, here are four questions every website owner should be able to clearly answer:

1) Who will be coming to your site?

2) How/Where did they get your web address?

3) Why did they come to your site?

4) What do you want from them once they get to your site?

It’s the classic “who, what, where, how, why” (just not quite in that order). But being able to answer these four will go a long way towards the success of your website.

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Writing out numbers

July 16th, 2009

Someone asked me about this today, so I thought I’d pass it on:

When you are writing numbers, generally one thru ten are spelled out. The rest aren’t. So we spell “seven”, but not 17.

I break this rule often, though (it’s not really a rule, but more of a handshake agreement.) Why do I break it? Because “we handle any size job, from 3 pages to 300″ catches the eye better than “we handle any size job, from three pages to 300″ (although the second one actually looks more professional when reading – so it’s really about what you are after – scan-ability, or a professional read.)

Anyway, just thought I’d share that.

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Website Landing Pages

July 1st, 2009

Just a quick thought on website landing pages.

I was having a discussion the other day on the Small Business Forum, and the topic was “landing pages”. One member seemed a bit confused as to what a landing page was and why one would need one. I posted the following as a reply, and I think it’s a succinct enough description to include here in the blog (the guy’s name was Fred, which is why it’s addressed to Fred).

*******

Look at it this way, Fred… say you’re a plumber. You have a ten page website. A few of those pages are for individual services (one for water heaters, one for remodels, one for new construction, etc)

Your home page, obviously, gives the birds-eye view of your business. The navigation bar will have links, and maybe the “services” link has a javascript flyout that shows the individual pages, etc. And maybe even your homepage copy has a bulleted list to a few of the services

Fairly normal so far, right? Despite that I used “plumbing” in my example, I’m really describing millions of business websites.

Now, say you run a google ad for water heaters. Instead of sending those clicks to your home page, why not send them to your water heater services page? And tweak the copy ever so slightly to “welcome” people as if this is the first page they are seeing (which to many, it now might be)

THAT’S now considered a “landing page”.

In other words, because you control the google ad and where the click ends up, why not send the people interested in water heaters to a water heaters page, and send the remodel people to the remodel page, etc etc? It falls right into the “solve the problem people came with” quite nicely.

When landing pages are discussed, the conversation is almost always talking about PPC, e-mail, or some other type of “direct” advertising. Because it’s very easy (and fast) to control who clicks. With organic, it’s nowhere near as timely – you might have to wait a year, making it impractical for testing products, strategies, etc. This isn’t to say you can’t tweak pages to welcome organic traffic, but it’s MUCH more scattershot, and usually not implied whenever landing pages are discussed in the context they usually are.

Posted in Copywriting, General Marketing, Home Business / Entrepreneural Stuff, Websites and Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Business relationships ending

June 23rd, 2009

I wrote in Start and Run a Real Home Based Business that almost all business relationships will end sooner or later. That client you have that gives you solid work month after month… guess what? That relationship will eventually end.

Be it change in management, new ownership, fires, floods, locusts eating your client’s crops, recession, falling sales, change of direction, or even “just because we want to look at someone new”, the business relationship will eventually end. And you need to be ready for it (it’s one reason I don’t take on any job that blocks all of my time – I will never give any one client my full attention for more than a few days. Even 300+ page jobs, of which I had 2 last year, were done over a period of time, with outside help.)

I was reminded of ”all business relationships will end” today. When I got fired from my last job (2001), I started freelancing the e-commerce programming I did at that job. This eventually turned into copywriting (which I knew had to happen, as the software I specialized in was being phased out), but even to this day, I still had 2 old e-commerce clients who kept the old software and needed me from time to time. I kept these clients because I enjoy the “logic buzz” that programming gives me – kind of keeps that left brain occupied.

Anyway, one of the “remaining two” was my very first, meaning we had been doing business together since 2001. Well, two years ago, they had major shakeups, new management, etc etc… I sensed the relationship changing. Where it used to be ”just call Dan, tell him what we want, Dan does the work and sends a bill”, it became “send us a complete itemized estimate for this project and we’ll think about it”. Basically, it became very formal and corporate. Which bugged me a little because that’s not me. It also bugged me because I really did exceptional work for them – always on time, always right, I made little modifications for free, etc. But the new people didn’t “know” me. I could just hear them saying “who’s this shorts-clad Night Owl schmuck sitting in some NY basement that we send a grand to every now and then??”

Then, last year, they got to a point where they didn’t pay me for work I did. I had to chase them for payment (and I *detest* that. I hate being bullied by corporate idiots.) I finally got paid when they decided I was too valuable to let get away (I am literally one of a scant handful that works with this particular software). But you know, I can be a formal, unfeeling corporate prick too – after that, I started insisting on prepayment for any job. They whined, but I held firm, and for the past year, they paid prior to me tapping a single key.

Well, today we spoke, and I sensed it was the end. There’s a problem that their software can’t handle, why can’t I make it work without more hours, why should they pay for further development (errr, because that’s how it works?) Then I found out they were talking to another company, and would upgrade to newer software, etc etc. Which doesn’t bother me – I kind of expected this two years ago. And I’m pretty busy writing anyway – the EDI (which is the e-commerce stuff I did) is extra lunch and DVD money, really.

But this did make me think a bit – here I’ve been working for them for 8 years. For six of those eight, the relationship was perfect. And for eight of those eight, I did *stellar* work. And it didn’t matter.

Almost all business relationships end, folks. Don’t ever forget that.

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Online, you have to have quality leads

June 19th, 2009

I recall some website writing I did for this one company. They advertised on Google adwords, and had a budget of $2 a day. For their business, that meant 2 clicks. 2 clicks a day, and they were done. And they complained after 3 days that my writing wasn’t bringing in business… well, it’s kinda hard to judge from 6 visits (to be fair, I didn’t know their PPC budget when starting the job – I just assumed they would deliver eyeballs.)

I told them they had to get more interested people to the site. So they changed their keywords, and made it so their $2 budget would bring in 10 people a day. No effect – now the problem was the keywords were awful. Yea, they were cheap keywords… and they were useless. The client actually expected the web copy I wrote him to “make up” for the fact that the leads were lousy. That’s not going to happen.

On the internet, you have to have quality visitors. Period.

You can’t fool around on the fringes with your Pay Per Click keywords. The fringes are great for filling out your marketing, but you cannot expect copy to make up for bad leads. If you are a local carpet cleaner, you need to have “{your city} carpet cleaning” as a keyphrase. I don’t care how much it costs. If you design websites for florists, you need to have “web design for florists” as a keyphrase. You can’t omit these in favor of, say, “flower seller internet design” because the latter is cheaper. You won’t get the same quality visitor.

It’s this simple: No writing, no expensive design, no nothing will help you until your site is visited by people who want/need what you have/do.

Great web copy can work magic with the right visitors. I prove it every single day. Give me people who are interested in your product and service, and I’ll sell them. It’s what I do. But you do have to deliver those eyeballs.

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A dirty little advertising trick

June 1st, 2009

A group of TV advertisers are resorting to pretty slimy form of trickery with their advertising and sales pitch.

The advertisers in question are the slicer / dicer / cleaner / handy dandy gadget type advertisers. They usually have a hype-filled one-minute commercial, and then, at the end say “and you can get yours for only 19.99…. BUT WAIT…. Call now, and we’ll throw in a SECOND one for free. That’s TWO slug trail removers for only $19.99″

Obviously, I made the product up, but my point should be clear. They throw in a second one for free. Ok, that’s not so bad. So what’s the slimy trick?

The trick comes in when you order. A computer recording takes your order, and asks you how many you are ordering… they fail to mention they want to know how many SETS OF TWO you are ordering.

So the commercial says 2 slicer dicers for $19.99. The computer voice asks how many you want. You say “two”, thinking one, plus the free one.

They then send you TWO ORDERS OF TWO.

They basically get a double order from almost everyone. And, it’s such a pain in the ass to send something back via mail, most people say “oh well, I’ll just give one away”.

Pretty slimy, huh?

Anyone need a magic slicer?

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Experimenting again

May 28th, 2009

Last week, I had enough.

I was pretty busy with projects, and must have had ten quote requests in two days. Normally, this is good, but this particular time, eight out of ten were WAAAAAY out of my price range. I mean, MILES away.

Now, I realize not everyone out there is familiar with a copywriting service, and probably doesn’t have the foggiest idea what one costs, but don’t you think that someone like me, with my credentials and professional website, is going to cost more than $10 an hour?

Anyway, since most of the time it averages three back and forth messages before I have enough info to get a price, I just reached my breaking point in chasing business that has no chance of materializing (I would venture each of the eight took 20 min to 1/2 hour total time to converse with.)

So I went and put some basic prices on my quote page.

I’ve done this before, and it stops a lot of people from contacting me, so this time I did it a little different – I put the prices and the “here’s some pricing info” after the form.

See, my thinking here is if one goes to a quote page, and first sees three paragraphs of text explaining price, well, that’s a turnoff… they came to contact me, and now they have to scroll for the form. No good.

So I’m first giving them the form, and the price info is there if they want to read it. Most will, but the perception is a bit different. I’m hoping that doing it this way will keep the “$10 an hour” people at bay, but also encourage those who want to use me (and let’s face it, I’m really not that expensive.)

I’ll revisit this in a few weeks and give you the results, as it’s something maybe we can all learn/benefit from. And please, if you have any ideas, feel free to comment with such.

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THIS is a “thumping?” (word choice)

May 24th, 2009

As a writer, I pay attention to the words people use.

During a discussion on a forum earlier today, someone mentioned that one soccer team “thumped” another, 2-0. I don’t follow soccer, but I found the word use odd.

2-0? That’s it? Two to nothing is a thumping?

I would figure if a team got “thumped”, they got beat pretty bad. 2-0 isn’t bad. 12-0 is bad.

I would call it a “win”, as in “team A won 2-0″ or even something like “team A outlasted team B 2-0″. You could even use the word “beat”, like ”team A beat team B 2-0″ (but, and I have to be clear, you can’t call it a “beating”.)

I just found “thumped” to be an interesting word choice. But I’ve seen this before in soccer – announcers will talk about how one team dominated another, and the final score was 1-0.

One to nothing. That’s “domination”???

I must say, I disagree. The whole team scored one friggen’ goal. That’s only one more goal than *I* scored, and I don’t even play.

Happy Memorial Day

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More random thoughts on Rates

May 16th, 2009

Some random thoughts this afternoon on rates and such:

Many times, small business owners hit a wall in setting their rates or charging for their services. This is because they are still in that “job” mentality of hourly rates, etc. If you are in business for yourself, you will need to break out of this line of thinking.

If a job pays you $20 an hour, that’s probably only 1/3 of your true cost to them. Because there are taxes, benefits, your office, your computer, your chair, company services, the copier repair guy (who is always there), and 4 billion other things you don’t really know of.

That means if you were in business for yourself performing the same job as the above-mentioned example, to cover everything you probably should be charging $60 per hour. Fair enough?

But let’s take this a step further – that rate makes things equal to a job. Is that really all you want? To be worth only as much as a job would pay you? I gotta tell you – if I’m only going to make what a job would pay me, I’ll just go get a job – it’s 1,000 times easier.

No, to be happy working for yourself, you have to get paid what you are truly worth. And how much is that? Well, there’s no set number, but here are a few things to take into consideration:

Competition – if your competition generally charges about $100 an hour, you need to be somewhere within that rate. It can vary some, but you need to be somewhat competitive.
If the competition is all over the place in price (like in my business), you need to find a number that you are comfortable with and charge that. And make sure you are happy with this rate, not grudgingly accepting it.

Per Project Price

A good way to avoid the whole hourly thing (and I hate hourly, as it feels too much like a job) is to charge a per-project rate. This is what I do 95% of the time: tell me what you want, and I’ll give you a complete price for the job.

Avoid feeling bad about getting paid

This is another roadblock that many entrepreneurs must overcome – the guilt associated with charging a fair rate. Again, the “job” mentality doesn’t help here.

Back when I was doing freelance programming, I had trouble with this – for my first job I charged $60 an hour for (a VERY low rate, but a fortune to me at the time, as I was used to a “job” that paid around $20 per hour). The project was going to be 20 hours, and I was astonished that I’d actually make $1,200 for it. I did the project, and I felt a little apprehension (and a bit of guilt) as I sent the invoice – am I REALLY worth that? (silly question, I know, but I was starting out )

Anyway, my apprehension went away fast – not only did the client happily pay the $1,200 right away, they booked me for several more jobs right then and there. Turns out, I was an outright bargain in their eyes.

So set a fair rate for yourself, and send out those invoices with confidence.

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A little business annoyance

May 5th, 2009

I’m sure I’ve written about this before – maybe here, maybe in an old blog, but it happened again today, so I need to mention it (and I will keep mentioning it until i change the world!) Apologoes in advance – this is a little “rantish”.

I hate it being implied that what I do is easy.

There are two ways this happens. One way is a client will say something like “oh, this should be an easy job for you” or “I’ve got an easy one for you“.

This may seem innocent, but I find it a little annoying. How do they know it’s an easy job? Because it almost always isn’t. Believe me, writing to get someone to click (or react) is hard. Sometimes, I’ve spent half a day on one page. Usually when someone says “this’ll be easy for you”, it’s a setup for “I’m not going to pay a lot for this”.

So please, do me and every other professional you deal with a favor – don’t tell them their job should be “easy”. Let them decide what’s easy, and what isn’t.

The other one that people sometimes use that somewhat discounts what I do is the old “well, I could write this myself, but I don’t have the time”. I hear that one every so often.

Ummm, no Captain Marvelous, you probably couldn’t write this. That’s why you’re coming to me. There’s no shame there – this is what I do.

You can say about your lawn guy “I’d cut it myself, but…” and I’ll believe you. But please, there’s no need to say to me “you know, I’m hiring you simply because I have no time“.

I hire web designers because I can’t make websites. I have Jen do any graphic work for me because I suck at it. I hire a plumber because I have a 50% “it holds” ratio when I solder pipe (and you don’t find out if it holds until you turn on the water… which sucks when you’ve soldered 5 connections.) I don’t tell any of these people that what I need done is “easy”. And I certainly don’t say “I could do it myself, but…”

Anyway, that’s my little rant for today. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about “what part of 14 items or less don’t you understand?”

Posted in Copywriting, Fun Stuff, General Marketing, Home Business / Entrepreneural Stuff, Misc / Personal Stuff, Websites and Web Marketing | 1 Comment »