Mind your Language!

Do your marketing messages speak to your prospects in the right way, their way?  Or do you have a “one-size fits all” mentality to your emails, direct mail and webpages?

Do you have a structured telesales script that treats all callers the same, no matter what sector or market they are in?

You know as well as I do that buyers always react badly to set-pieces of material that they come into contact with; who of us hasn’t switched off when we listen to the robotic telesales person, failed to read that sales email or direct mail in its totality because it starts to bland and so unrelated to what you need, or ignored that sales webpage, because on scanning it you see absolutely no relevance to your own situation, business or market segment your in.

All messages to your target market needs to be relevant – it doesn’t need to be hugely relevant, but enough to keep me interested in what you have to say, and it isn’t difficult to achieve!

Here are some very approaches for customising your sales and promotional messaging:

  • Only target prospects who look and feel like your best customers – we have worked with so many businesses that talk about “ideal customers” or “best fit prospects”, but very few of them actually do what they preach.

 

  • We all love to hear and see relevant stories to our own, so where you know the sector your customer is in talk about customers you might have that are in the same or similar sector to them!  Use your success with existing customers so prospects can see that they can be successful with you too!

 

  • Use the language that your prospects use; don’t call your products the “Rufferler 2000”, when 99% of your market calls them ‘Widgets’!

If you follow these simple tips, then more of your prospects will convert into customers.

Try testing different sales messages and see which brings the best results for your lead generation activities.
Online? try A/B split testing.

Good Luck

Return on Content (RoC)

This may be a new phrase to a lot of you, but it’s one that we take seriously when either talking to clients or undertaking assignments on the behalf of them.

RoC is simply a measure of the return that you expect from a simple piece of copywriting or a series of copy (articles, webpages etc).

It’s similar to RoI (return on Investment) that many of you will be familiar with.

On a very simple level, website owners and businesses need to think a little more about the quality of the copy that their prospects and/or customers see; every page of copy or letter that is sent out to prospects/customers needs to have a REALISTIC value attached to it.

Let’s take the example of a web landing page that is designed to get your visitors to start a sales process; it’s unfair and UNREALISTIC to suggest that the landing page should be responsible for the full amount of revenue expected from your sales process, but we can attached an assumption (say a conservative 1%); so let’s imagine that the online sales channel is work £5m pa to your business – 1% of £5m is a healthy £50,000.

Let us now say that you paid £250 for that fully SEO’ed landing page copy, that RoC is an amazing 19900%.

I think you’ll agree that that is a very worthwhile investment.

Let copywriters ReadCopy help you and your business.

You need to check your search engine rankings now!

Google changes it algorithm (the way it decides what position in the search engines we all are) over 500 times a year, but its latest change (on 25th February) is causing problems for many websites.

Google is determined to ensure that when a user of its search engine wants to find something on the internet, they only see the best quality and highly relevant sites, this means that if a website has copied content from other websites or uses aggregated content from a ‘content farm’ or has copy that is just lightly spun from ‘content farm’ articles then they will be penalised.

They are also now penalising sites that do not have regular new content added.

Whilst this might be bad news for lots of sites out there, it’s great news for our website and our clients sites; you see as copywriters, we only write fresh, original copy that Google loves, meaning that all of our pages are indexed well for the keywords that search engine users actually use.

So check your ranking now using these easy steps:

1. Think about the keywords/phrases that a real search engine user would use to find your products and services (i.e. if you sell beds, maybe in the manufacturers brand names, or ‘kids beds’, ‘bed frames’, ‘slight beds’, ‘bunk beds’ or even ‘comfortable bed reviews’!).

2. Do your own search on Google to see if you appear; if you don’t appear on the first two pages then give up, 99.9% of users would have given up by now too!

If you don’t rank anywhere but you would like to, then you need to get in touch with ReadCopy (www.readcopy.com), we’re here to help you.

Not again!

Maybe I’m just tuned into this at the moment, but driving into work this morning I saw another “To Let” sign; this was better than the one I saw on Friday, it explained how big the available unit was, how many parking spaces were available and the name of the agent letting the property; but still no contact details!

Maybe there is a new business idea here!

I could drive around the city streets of the UK selling ideas to help business generate more business quicker and letting property in lightening fast speed!

Great signage!

On my way home tonight I spotted a fantastic opportunity for a business.

A huge sign on the side of what looked to be a warehouse! It must have been 10 foot tall and 18 foot wide; massive red thing it was, with huge bold white text.
It was impressive.

The only problem was the words on it "UNITS FOR RENT". Great, wonderful in fact; it complies with one of the first rules in writing copy - tell your audience simply what you have to offer.
The only small problem is that they forgot the second rule; include a 'call to action'.

It's great knowing that units are available, but how do I enquire about them!
No email address to send a question to, no website with more information to help conversion, not even a telephone number to take my order!

Epic FAIL!

Tone of Voice

How should you talk to prospects and customers in your copy?
Probably without realising it (or maybe you planned it that way!), your business already has a tone of voice!

ReadCopy has!
Ours is direct, straight forward and a little bit cheeky!

It’s the way you currently write for your sales and marketing material; is it formal? Clear and concise? Awkward? Funny?

No matter how it is, it’s portraying your business personality.
What’s more, it’s true that people only buy from people, and potential customers pick up on your personality (tone of voice) very quickly and determine almost instantly whether they want to buy from you or not!

So as you can see, tone of voice is like a nose, and picking the right one is really important!

We have helped businesses understand tone of voice, we have helped them pick the best one for their business, then provided tools and techniques to help them bring their own tone of voice (and personality) out into their writing.

If you want us to help you, then get in touch (hello@readcopy.com)

Cheap!

Cheap is such a bad word to use; it suggests shoddy goods and services, it suggests businesses that you’d really not like to deal with.

You know that when you buy cheap, the item you’ve bought won’t last long, it’ll get you through a short period of time, but then it’ll fail and need replacing quicker than you wanted to.

QUALITY is a better word; you KNOW you’re going to get a better service.
It won’t break, fade or lost its shine quickly, it’ll be there to last as long as you need it.

So why do businesses want cheap goods and services?

We were asked again today how “cheap” our services were!
I quickly explained that we are not ‘cheap’, we provide a great quality service that helps our clients achieve their business goals, we have never written or supplied cheap copy and we never will!

That said, we are not expensive either!
We have no massive building to rent and service, we don’t live and work in London or Manchester, we actually provide a very cost effective writing service that our regular clients appreciate.

If you want cheap copywriters, then carry on looking. If you want a cost effective copywriting services, then give ReadCopy a try (http://www.readcopy.com)

Would you!

Imagine you own a £1m business; would you leave an inexperienced young person in charge of your business?

Would you let them layout the store for you? Decide on what stock to buy? How to manage the business and promote it?

No, we didn’t think so, but you’ll be surprised how many people do!

These inexperienced staff might not be in charge of a physical ‘bricks and mortar’ chain of stores, but we know sizeable online stores that have these people controlling them!

They manage stock, decide how to spend marketing budget, create and write marketing material! We can see, and luckily the owners can see that getting inexperienced staff to run and manage a business isn't always the best idea!

If you own an online store, take a look at who is managing it for you, or at least check the governance in place to ensure that they are managing it as you would want them to.
Ensure you know the key success KPI’s of your business and report on them at least weekly.

TOP Copywriting tip

I have just been asked what my TOP Copywriting tip is!

It was a difficult one to answer because it really does depend on what you are writing, but I was pushed into a single answer!
I had to say that my very top tip would be to understand EXACTLY, why you are writing what you’re writing!

If you are trying to convince someone to buy, click, order etc then it’s vitally important that you understand what their motivation is; what pain have they got that you can help them with!

Everyone is a comedian!

It’s official, everyone thinks that they are a comedian – or at least they believe that their businesses brand personality is comedic!

The research was carried out as part of our usual business processes that we have developed to try to get under the skin of our clients; this enabled us to provide the very best creative copy for them.

Read more here: http://www.readcopy.com/articles/everyone is a comedian.shtml

Writing great SEO copy isn't enough!

Writing great words for your website is essential, adding subtle keywords to help SEO is also vital, both of these activities will get you on Googles radar and help any visitors to become interested in what you have to say or sell and start that conversion process.

But probably even more important is to get that traffic in the first place.

Working with ReadCopy, we can do all the SEO keywords and copy, BUT we can also start to generate links from other related search engines, directories and websites; these links are seen by Google as a positive vote for your website and they will rank you higher.

So when you are ready to rank better on Google – contact us for our help (www.readcopy.com)

What are keywords/phrases and how do you use them!

When you search for any information online; whether it be product or services information, or information on a company, you're likely to visit one of the major search engines - Google, Bing or Yahoo! etc.
You will then type in a some words relevant to you completing your search. These words are your keywords!

For instance, if you need somewhere nice to eat in Leeds and simply type in "Restaurant". Ok several million results are too many to go through, plus this will show you results for all over the world!

You might search on "Restaurant Leeds city centre", or a more accurate "Cantonese restaurant Leeds city centre". Your search results are now more manageable!

Focus!
As a business trying to attract web traffic, you need to focus on these more accurate keywords (phrases) and these are the ones likely to be used by potential diners who want to find you!

From a business perspective it is vitally important that you focus on these terms that are actually used; very few website visitors will type your business name into a search engine, they are more likely to type what services you offer and where you are!

Don't ignore your name just include it in the copy once, so for example "A Taste of Cantonese: The finest Cantonese restaurant in Leeds", "Cantonese dining at its best in cosmopolitan Leeds", "Join us in Leeds for exquisite Cantonese dining." Etc

Accurate keyword phrases
A word of warning - never guess the phrases your customers will use to search for your products or services.

Always check that any phrases you come up with are actually being used by real and potential customers searching the web. The very first step is to generate a list of potential keyword phrases.

For instance, for ReadCopy might decide that our keyphrases include: copywriters in Yorkshire copywriting services, uk copywriter, web copywriter, website copywriter uk copywriting, business copywriting, copywriting agency, seo copywriter, yorkshire copywriter, marketing copywriter, web copywriting, online copywriter, advertising copywriter etc etc
We would then ensure that a number of these best keywords were included in the copy on our pages to help bring traffic from the major search engines.

If you need help determining what your keywords/phrases should be and how to put them into your pages then contact us (www.readcopy.com) for your copywriting needs.

Writers Block

I guess is just one of those copywriting secrets! How do you cope with writers block?

ReadCopy has a benefit there in that there are two of us, so creatively we can tend to bounce ideas off each other fairly well, but sometimes that mist falls, and we can both be struck with writers block.

I have run workshops about ‘Creatively ‘ in a previous life, so we can both use some tried and tested techniques to help get us firing on both cylinders again!

One easy techniques that has a high success rate is to leave the copywriting work along for a few hours, sometimes when you’re not thinking about a concept or wording ideas just float into your head and BANG! you’re off again.

When leaving it alone doesn’t work, we can often work in a slightly different location!

Working outside, whilst not only good for getting that fresh air into your lungs, and oxygen to your brain, simply takes you out of your normal working zone and new ideas can be formed.
Working anywhere different or ‘strange’ just gets those creative juices flowing again.

We also try ‘Word Association’ exercises, or backward thinking (trying to think about the complete opposite of what you want to do or achieve) can also bring new and completely fresh ideas to our work.

Professional Copy

Professionally written copy is something that most people ignore, and it’s simply because everyone thinks that they can write effective copy, but this simply isn’t the case!

I had a chat with a potential client recently who wanted some advice on how to improve his website copy and sales letters; he was kind enough to send me a copy of the sales letter that he currently uses!

I have to say that he loves his business to bits, and he knows the industry he is in better than probably anyone, but his grasp of what to say, how to say it and how to put in on paper left a lot to be desired.

He didn’t understand why his letter wasn’t working, so within an hour I quickly rewrote his first few paragraphs – he was blown away by the results!

Where his writing was full on and stuffy, mine was light and so easy to read, where he laboured to get several points across, I simply used effective bullet points, where his main benefits were lost in a sea of words, mine was highlighted and simple to read.

The difference wasn’t that I knew the industry better than him, just that I knew how to present the benefits of using him and his business better than he did!

SEO Copywriting

SEO copywriting is the fine art of writing great webpage copy that it is both appealing to human readers, but also allows you to rank well for specific search terms in search engines.

Search engine technology and algorithms has now become so sophisticated that too few keywords or placed in correctly can mean the difference to been seen in the search engine results or not!

Getting this right is now fundamental, ReadCopy are experts in SEO Copywriting; if you want it doing right, you want ReadCopy!

Copywriting / Copywrite

Copywriting is the most basic element of any sales or marketing effort; it’s both basic and essential.  It’s simply the art of delivering words in front of your target audience in such a way that they feel compelled to take action (buy, click or phone etc).

ReadCopy will copywrite anything that you need writing, whether you want it to educate, entertain, infors, promote or sell.