Want to Optimize Your Marketing Copy? Keep It Short and Sweet

I once had a client for whom I'd written a 300-word mini-article ask me, "On second thought, a 600-word article would fit my template better. Can we just pad this piece out to 600 words?"
I also recall my response: "Can we? Yes. Should we? Not necessarily."

If brevity is indeed the soul of wit, then you want your marketing content to be the life of the party -- not the guy reeling off some rambling epic tale with apparent beginning or ending as he blocks your way to the bathroom. Effective, powerful, entertaining writing makes its point and then gets out of the way, instead of monopolizing the reader's time and patience.

Brevity doesn't necessarily entail squishing everything you write down into soundbites, though the runaway success of Twitter has proven that 140 characters can go a long way. But it does mean adopting a "less is more" approach and viewing your writing with a surgeon's eye. Here are some advantages to concise writing:

It's easier on the eye. The eye gets fatigued as it pores over massive blocks of text, and the more text the page contains, the less of it actually seems to matter. Clear, concise writing is easier for the eye and brain to handle, giving you better odds that your reader will actually want to keep reading.

It packs more of a punch. I find that my writing always turns out better when I've overwritten and have to reduce the word count. This kind of forced edit requires me to condense and purify my work, cutting out digressions and extra phrases until the writing becomes airtight. What's left is all muscle -- a lean, mean content machine.

It's more versatile. A 500-word article will prove easier than a thousand-worder to integrate into a variety of situations, formats and templates. A few short paragraphs of website content leave you more room for other page elements than an elephantine chunk of writing that has to hog center stage.

Is there still room for longer-form copy? Absolutely. In fact, your web developer or SEO specialist may advise you to go a thousand words or longer on certain anchor posts, web pages, or other mainstays of your marketing content. But if you're going to write those thousand words, make sure the piece you're writing needs every one of those words to convey its ideas and emotions with maximum impact. In other words, let the length fit the depth and vice-versa.

If your written content feels flabby, fails to hold the attention or just makes your eyes hurt, take out your red editing pen (or hire mine) and start cutting away the fat. You may love what you find underneath!

4 Benefits of Partnership Marketing

Do you sometimes feel as if it's your brand against the world? Marketing your products and services can seem forbidding when you're trying to shine in a galaxy of businesses, whether they compete with you directly or not. If you're tired of going it alone, why not hitch your star to a partner organization?

Partnership marketing is nothing new; you see it all around you in the form of affiliations, co-sponsorships, charitable efforts, and cross-marketed promotions. but have you ever really thought about how this approach might benefit your business? Here are four advantages that may merit your consideration.

1. Visibility Benefits

Two brands working together will naturally make a bigger footprint on the public consciousness than either of those brands working separately. When your visibility increases, so does your perceived success and importance as a brand. There's also the benefit of success by association. If another notable brand clearly thinks highly enough of you to want to cross-market themselves with you, then a bit of their own prestige rubs off on you (and presumably vice-versa).

2. Cross-Audience Benefits

Do see other companies out there whose target market overlaps with yours to some degree? If so, both of you can benefit from partnering up on certain marketing efforts. Sometimes these partnerships make obvious sense. For example, if you've ever noticed the sea of MacBooks at your nearest coffeehouse, you can easily see why Apple and Starbucks had every reason to hook up. But even when the association is relatively subtle, you can still use this strategy to trigger prospective buyers to think of you more frequently.

3. Reputation Benefits

Reputation doesn't just mean size or success -- it can also apply to values and virtues. By partnering with a good cause that naturally aligns with your company's established values or priorities, you can genuinely help individuals or groups in need while also helping your own brand image. Unless you feel strongly about doing all your good deeds anonymously, this form of partnership marketing just makes good sense.

4. Product/Service Collaboration Benefits

You don't have to stop at simply cross-promoting your products or services with those of another business. Why not collaborate with that business to create a cross-branded product or service? This collaboration could range from licensing one part of the product or service to creating a white-label offering or even a full-blown project merger. Now you have something that you can sell with the power of two marketing departments working together.

Of course, you'll have to create new marketing content to support these efforts -- but heck, you can always hire a professional copywriter or other talent to help you with that. It's well worth it if it enables you to explore the full potential of partnership marketing!

This Halloween, Avoid These 4 Scary Marketing Gremlins

Halloween is coming, although 2020 has already given it a tough act to follow. In the spirit of this holiday, let's look at four ghoulish gremlins you want to exorcise from your marketing content and strategies.

The Cobwebbed Website

Countless horror stories and films place a spooky old abandoned house at the center of the proceedings. You've seen the characters shuffling up creaking stairs, pushing cobwebs out of the way with every step. (Who knew spiders could be so industrious?) The house presents a cold, dead, unwelcoming environment. Does your ancient website do the same? Many of the old-school sites built in the days before mobile shopping took over the world can seem as ugly, antiquated, and hard to navigate as any haunted house.

If you have an old static website, you need to get that relic brought up to code, so to speak. Invest in a new responsive design or dedicated mobile site that looks just as good (and works just as well) on small devices as it does on large monitors. At the same, pull up all that creaky old web content and refresh it with new, better-optimized verbiage.

The Ghosts of Content Past

Your website may not be the only part of your marketing array that suffers from a case of the cobwebs. If you haven't updated your LinkedIn bio, company brochure, sales letters, direct mail offers, or other marketing pieces in a while, those pieces could be haunted by the ghosts of long-dead, long-irrelevant features, benefits, and brand messaging. No matter how frequently you issue and reissue this marketing content, it will miss the mark because it represents the past, not the present.

Set a new goal to keep all your marketing tools consistently up to date. Make sure that they all complement each other with relevant, congruent information that supports what you are now, not what you were once upon a time. 

The Invisible Call to Action

Congratulations -- your marketing content has lured your prey into your parlor. As your prospective buyers absorb that print or digital marketing piece, their eyes inevitably reach the point where they're supposed to receive a command to do something: the call to action. But where is it? you've somehow managed to exclude it or make it unclear, leaving your audience adrift and releasing them from the spell you created.

Don't suffer the effects of an invisible call to action. Clothe it in clarity by placing it at the end of your spiel and issuing clear, simple, easily-obeyed instructions to your readers. 

The Blog of the Undead

Legends tell of an ancient blog -- a blog page that once thrived, only to hover lifelessly in an uncertain state today. Is it alive, or is it dead? It still exists on your website, but it hasn't seen any fresh blood (in the form of updates) for months or years. Does this lack of interest and information mean that its owner is equally moribund? Has your brand joined the ranks of the undead?

You know full well how to breathe life back into your blog and other forms of inbound content marketing. Create content. Write articles. Create videos. Post news updates. Do these things on a regular basis so that your clientele can see that your business still has a pulse. If you need help, hire a freelance copywriter or other qualified marketing professional.

Have a happy -- and profitable -- Halloween!

Who Is Your Website?

Whose chocolate-chip cookies would you rather try -- a knight in shining armor's, a brilliant scientist's, a chic supermodel's, a super-handy master carpenter's, or a kindly grandma's? 

All of these archetypes send out positive vibes, but setting aside the question of which person we'd rather have offering us chocolate-chip cookies, most of us would probably assume that among this cast of characters, granny makes the best baked goods. Granny's the one who makes the goodies. We trust Granny with that task. It's a stereotype, but we buy into it, for better or for worse. If we were shopping for the most seductive perfume, on the other hand, it's probably fair to say that even the kindliest grandma will lose ground to the chic supermodel.

What? But you just said we trust Grandma!

Yes, but that was for cookies. This is for sophistication and romance. It's a matter of applying the right persona to the right subject.

If you own a bakery, you might have the fabulous good fortune of a real-life smiling mother or grandmother type handing out lots of sweets to your customers (in exchange for lots of money). If you're a cosmetics store, you may have elegant salespeople gliding from section to section, at least, celebrity models' pictures gazing longingly over the perfume stand or lipstick aisle. But what if your "salesperson" is your website?

Just as your commercial spokesperson, sales rep, or brand icon represents a persona, so must your 24-hour, 365-day virtual storefront. So the question is, who is your website? What persona should it embody?

Think about it from the customer end. If you needed, say, a repair service, who would you choose? A happy-go-lucky guy with a bag of tools? A local pro with a 30-year track record and plenty of advice on how to maintain the stuff once he fixes it? A national corporation with a slick warranty and guaranteed delivery times?

Actually, any one of these three images might work, depending on the nature of the problem (Simple? Complex? Urgent?) and your own personal priorities (Speedy turnaround? Sheer skill? Friendliest folks?). So the ideal persona for your online brand reflects your target audience, which means it's always worthwhile to ask yourself -- if your website were a person selling your stuff to your ideal customer, what type of person would truly dazzle that customer? How would that character look? What would that character say, and in what tone of voice? WHO is your website?

Answer that question for yourself. Express it to your audience. And get ready to sell some cookies.

You, Only Better: Capturing the Right Voice in Your Written Marketing Content

"I want this marketing content to really communicate who I am and how I feel -- only in better words."

I get that all the time, and it's a very smart request. Many a crestfallen business owner has to come to grief trying to reconcile colloquial-sounding speech with written text. That's because written English simply doesn't work the same way spoken English does, which is also why some of the wittiest, most entertaining speakers I know couldn't write their way out the proverbial paper bag. Me, I'm the opposite. I'd much rather write than talk. I'm not the worst speaker in the world, but every time I stand in front of an audience and give a presentation I keep wishing I could just email it in. Writing is my comfort zone. I'm weird that way. Fortunately for my career as a copywriter, I'm not in the majority.

If we were to write the way we express ourselves in everyday speech, the resulting content would stink up the joint. Go ahead, give it a try and see what happens. Expect uncoordinated, stream-of-consciousness banter peppered with pauses, unfinished sentences, "Ums," "Uhs," and other literary gems. Trust me, you probably don't really want to sound like yourself in your writing. You just want to read like yourself.

What does that mean? It means that you have to use words and phrases that read as if you were speaking to us, when in fact the text is much more tightly organized, effectively worded, and compellingly presented than something that just flew out of your mouth on the spur of the moment. You have to conjure the illusion of your voice without actually replicating it. The result? The voice that resounds through the page or monitor evokes your personality, humor, concern, humanity et cetera, but through language that works on the page instead of the stage.

Consider, too, that your brand may have a distinct voice of its own, one that may or may not sound much like yours. Even if your own values, vision, and personality make up a large part of your branding, the brand itself may need to project a somewhat different image than the one you might present when speaking to an in-person audience. You may need to pull off a bit of a ventriloquist act by couching your message in the words and tone of that "character."

Not sure what form this aural illusion would take? Try reverse-engineering it by putting yourself in the place of your ideal buyer. Now picture that finished web page, article, sales letter, or brochure in your mind as clearly as you can. Imagine how you would like your words to read. Is the tone professional or homespun? Is the message concise? Does every word contribute to the cumulative impact of the whole? Ask yourself, "How would I say this if I were the world's greatest marketing writer?" That's you -- only better.

Of course, it's equally possible to err in the other direction. Many business owners focus on making their marketing content sound as slick, sophisticated, or technically savvy as possible because they think their audience expects it. Unfortunately, the final result may convey a great deal of information at the cost of a naturally persuasive tone. You have marketing content that's all content and no marketing.

What's the easiest way to manage this delicate tonal balancing act? Engage a professional marketing content writer who can understand both what you want to say and what your audience wants to hear. Then let that professional bridge the gap with writing that really gets your message across!

Running Low on Blogging Ideas? Turn to These 3 Tried-and-True Categories

It happens to every marketer sooner or later. You sit down to create your latest piece of social media content, only to realize that the well has run completely dry. One of the (many) issues that make small business owners dread blogging is the need to continuously feed the bottomless pit known as the Internet. Better not to start something you can't maintain, right? The thing is, you have to maintain that ongoing marketing push if you want your target audience (and Google) to notice you instead of your competitors.

Fortunately, ideas aren't as hard to find as you might think once you know where to look for them. Sometimes it's just a matter of focusing on a particular type of article. Working within the constraints of a particular form or category can focus your thoughts and allow relevant, compelling topics to jump out at you. Let's look at three examples.

1. Evergreen Anchor Posts

Anchor posts, also known as pillar posts, cover those critical major topics that your target audience is always looking for. These pieces feature overviews of, or introductions to, essential basic areas of what you do and how it relates to what your readers are searching for online. If you repair cars, for instance, you'll want to write several anchor posts about specific automotive components and symptoms, from troubleshooting danger signs to preventative maintenance tips. 

These articles are evergreen, meaning that they'll never lose their relevance to your audience. (You can always update certain details as needed in the future.) Pay attention to the hottest search queries related to your industry or profession, and write anchor posts that seem to answer those pressing questions and concerns.

2. New Developments

The one constant in life -- and in the business world -- is change. Your target market, brand image, products, services, or economic environment may all shift beneath your feet due to all kinds of circumstances. Some of these surprises may prove cause for celebration, while others may require reassurances and explanations. Either way, you can turn that breaking news into relevant blog content.

Has some headline news made an enormous impact on your industry? Have technological breakthroughs or hot new trends left your customers both excited and confused? Do you have some particular expertise to offer on the subject? This is your chance to create a topical blog article that showcases your knowledge, insights, and individual spin on the situation. You have the answers -- and that's exactly what your target market wants.

3. Case Studies

Nothing sells success quite like a "before and after" story. You've probably seen pictures or read reports of a broken-down home, mud-caked pet, chaotic business department, or wrecked car that appeared utterly hopeless until an expert stepped in -- producing amazing improvements that you never would have dreamed possible. If your business can tell similar success stories, why not tell them on your blog?

Think about a time when your products or services rescued a grateful client from a disastrous situation. If you can tell that story within several hundreds words, you've got yourself a case study. Present the problem, describe how you handled it, and trumpet the positive results. Who wouldn't want to align themselves with a company with a real-life track record of success? 

Need more ways to jog your creative mind -- or need another creative mind to take up the slack? Contact me for writing services that can keep yourself stocked up on blog articles indefinitely!

Want a Strong 4th Quarter? Push These 4 September Marketing Themes

For obvious and understandable reasons, many companies have experienced shaky, unpredictable, or downright rotten business during the first three quarters of 2020. Maybe you've found your own enterprise bumping along on a rickety roller coaster this year. But even in the face of change, certain key elements of life remain, including seasonal milestones. September has always played host to some key themes for sales and marketing campaigns, and there's no reason you can't or shouldn't work these themes as hard as you can to boost your fourth-quarter success. Let's look at four flags worth rallying around.

1. Autumn

Autumn is always, well, autumn. The leaves change color and fall, the temperatures start to drop (even here in Texas), the shadows lengthen, and the world generally takes on a particular flavor and color that puts people into fall-weather mode. In other worlds, everything changes, however slightly. If change is indeed in the air, why not emphasize that point in your September marketing content? Your clients or customers will definitely welcome any shift that gives them reason to feel reassured, energized, and positive. Now is the time to roll out that exciting new product, helpful new service, or stunning new brand.

2. Labor Day

Despite the layoffs and furloughs that have jeopardized so many incomes, people are still working. Sure, many of them are working from home now, and individuals who lost their jobs are either seeking new employment or starting their own businesses. It follows, then, that Labor Day might hold an especially valuable place in your 2020 marketing calendar. People want to work, appreciate the ability to work, and generally think about work with a special intensity right now. Can you create marketing content that addresses their concerns, supports their feelings, and gives them fresh optimism? If so, you've got a message the world wants to hear.

3. Football

What's up with football this September? College conferences have cancelled their entire seasons, while the NFL is prepared to alter its season calendar in the event of coronavirus-based delays. Even so, you'll see football fans raring to talk about their teams, participate in fantasy football, and grab opportunity to enjoy their favorite sport. And when they can't have football, they actively miss football. Give them what they want -- or a whiff of it, anyway -- by creating football-themed content for your fall marketing efforts. You just might win big.

4. The Holiday Season

Yes, the holidays are still coming. Your target audience may have gotten sidetracked from their normal razor-focus on early holiday planning and shopping, but that doesn't mean that they aren't ready to hear about your special offers. It's up to you to turn their attention back toward the approaching end of the year. Holiday-themed marketing offers a comforting sense of familiarity and order that can restore your customers' sanity and prime their enthusiasm to have some fun for a change.

As you can see, September offers loads of marketing opportunities for clever, on-the-ball businesses. If you want to make that list of fourth-quarter success stories, contact your marketing professionals and put them to work right now!