Clean and fresh!

Google determination to provide better improved and more up to date (or “fresher”) search results is definitely as a result of increased competition from Bing, but also from real-time information networks like Twitter and Facebook.

This competition from social networks cannot be underestimated; Google needs to supply really fresh content to drive its search results to allow it to continue to dominate the search market, if it’s index was out of date, we would all quickly go elsewhere.

The onus is now on us website owners to ensure that we provide clean, new content that Google likes and ranks highly.

But rather than been a chore, this also helps us from a conversion standpoint in that this new content will ultimately help us to have better discussion with our prospects online and help us to convert better.

So our question to you is ... how fresh is your website content?

5 great ways to make your sales letter work better!

  1. Don’t lie
  2. Only use short paragraphs. The maximum paragraph length should be 5-7 lines of copy.
  3. Write your copy in the tone and rhythm of a personal one-on-one conversation.
  4. Underline or bold key phrases and put a few well-chosen words in ALL CAPS for those who will just skim read your letter.
  5. Use lists of features or benefits with bullets points

Thats how we do it, and we get great results for our clients :-)

Why use freelance copywriters?

There are a number of reasons why an agency like ReadCopy can benefit your business; here are just some reasons why you might outsource your copywriting.

We have the time
It’s what we do!  We write fabulous words for you.  You often need to get on with more important areas of your business and know that, whatever happens, your words will be written professionally, when ready when you need them.

You’ll get a fresh perspective
We don’t get bogged down with what you have tried to do before!  We have worked in many different sectors for many different businesses giving us a wider range of experience and knowledge.
We can take a good step or two backwards and look at your project in a slightly different light.
 
Clarity, creativity and clout
This is the best bit, we have some excellent creativity techniques that we can use that means that our words and ideas are always new and fresh.
We always put ourselves in the shoes of your target market and really push ourselves to find the right words to express what you should say to them.

We write interesting, enticing and engaging copy, that is clear, concise and will get the desired action.
 
Words to fit your business
We always adapt our writing style to fit our clients, we have also worked with clients to help them understand what that style should be; so you can rest assured that our words will always fit it with your business.

Dedicated writers deliver on time
Using a freelance copywriter will save you time, and will probably save you lots of money in the long run (we certainly think we can make you more money!).
We are dedicated to writing for you and will write until we are both happy.  You will received your wonderful copy on time, everytime.

 

Ever lied in your copy?

We have just been lied to!  I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but the flyer for this particular business (that shall remain nameless to protect it) advertised a particular offer that wasn't actually as advertised when we got there!

So have you ever lied in your sales and marketing literature?

NEVER do it!  Run your business by the strict rule that you’ll never lie to a prospect or customer and start with your sales and marketing literature.

A lie or an exaggeration stands out like a sore thumb; if you do have an amazing claim, then try to put some proof into your content; use a quote from a customer that backs you up, or link to an article that supports what you are saying.

Always ensure that you can find evidence for everything you write, if you are ever caught by those words “prove it”, then you’ll be able to.

Please listen to Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal

These guys know what they are talking about and will help you get a better ranking in Google search results.

Simply write great, fresh copy for your visitors!

Understand what terms your prospects might use to search for you in search engines and add them once to your page; but that’s all you need to do.

If your copy is fabulous and your page looks great, other related sites will link to you too, before you know it, you're doing great in Google and business is booming.

Cheap Copywriters!

It's nice to get some feedback from prospects/clients; but the feedback we got from one prospects this morning rang a bell, we have heard all this before!

They haven't got much money to spend on redeveloping their website, so they decided to buy cheap and went to a fairly well know 'copywriting' website that offers very cheap copywriting. We are all for cheap writing, but it really is a case of Buyer Beware!

  • First of all he had to pay in advance - a common feature of these cheap copywriters!
  • They accepted his brief without knowing much about the business - depending on the complexity of the work, we talk to you about your business, product/service and what your expectation are; no-one can write about your business without fully understanding what they expect to write about!
  • When he finally started getting his copy back he found several problems with it:
    • It arrived late - albeit by just 2 days, he had chased the copywriters but they never replied to him.
    • It wasn't in particularly good English
    • Punctuation was bad
    • It was for his website and the copy didn't have any keywords in it that he had discussed with them.
    • When he checked the copy in Google he found that it has virtually been copied from another site
    • He tried to cancel the contract and get his money back - but as he put it, it was a cheap copywriter so it didn't mind if he lost that small bit of cash!

We did sympathise with him, but as a business owner and buyer you guys need to be really carefully before you go to these cheap copywriters and follow some simple rules to protect yourself:

  • NEVER pay the full amount in advance – some good copywriters may ask for 50% in advance, but this is still rare.
  • ALWAYS get a sense that you can work with them from how they conduct themselves.
  • LOOK at examples for their work,
  • TRY not to buy cheap!

Remember! Good copywriters are rarely cheap!

ReadCopy are here and ready to write for you, we are cost effective copywriters and if we can will often suggest more cost effective ways of getting your copy written.  Check us out before you buy cheap!
 

 

 

 

People aren’t buying!|

It happens to the best of businesses; you’ve created a website, you didn’t ask a copywriter to help you but you managed to put the copy together on your pages yourself.

Let’s imagine you sell cars, you did everything you knew you needed to tell your website visitors:

  • You have been in business for 8 years
  • You have a large range of stock
  • Open 7 days a week
  • You’re the best

It looks OK, but what would your customers make of it?

  • You have been in business for 8 years – so what!
  • You have a large range of stock – so do all car lots!
  • Open 7 days a week – so do most car lots!
  • You’re the best – all car salesmen say this!

You haven’t answered any of the questions that your visitors want to know; more importantly, you haven’t answered the single most important question!

Why should they buy from you and not your competitors!

If you had engaged with a good copywriter from the start, they would have worked out this information when they started to work with you, then they could have crafted the best copy that will actually sell your services!

This is your Proposition; and it must be available for people to read on whatever literature you write, it will help people to decide that they should buy from you rather than someone else!


 

The Happy Copywriter

We don’t want to give you the illusion that copywriters are a gloomy lot; in fact most copywriters we know are very happy souls.
The important point is that copy written for either websites, newsletters, sales or marketing literature need to be upbeat and positive.  Writing in a negative viewpoint is a huge ‘turn-off’ for the reader and will mean that you promote yourself, your business, products or services poorly.

You might not mean to write in a negative fashion, but it could accidentally come out in your writing really easily.

Here’s a small series of examples:

Many people write “Don’t forget” in their copy; this is a negative term, its fair better to write “Remember”.
“Don’t delay” is negative.  “Buy now” is positive.
“You’ll get your money back if you’re not satisfied” is negative.  “Your satisfaction is guaranteed with our money back offer.” is positive.

We’re sure you can see from these small examples that positive writing is much better than negative writing.

So how do you write in a happy manner!

Training, knowledge and experience in copywriting helps, you could try to simply put yourself in a happy place before you start to write.
Write with a smile on your face and you are much more likely to write happier, positive copy; which in turn will help you engage with your readers more, helping you sell more!

Be happy, be a happy copywriter.

Working with Web Designers!

We have started to get some ad hoc work with another web designer!

We love working with the technical community and know that together we can provide clients with a great looking website and fantastic search engine optimised copy.

If you’re a web designer and you are looking for a copywriter to work with you, then get in touch with ReadCopy (hello@readcopy.com); we can show you plenty of examples of copy we have written for websites; so you can rest assured that we will write only the best for your clients.

Writing and golf!

I’m reminded of an incident a long time ago when I was a young marketing manager, and we had a client offer to pay for a deluxe golfing trip for us; when I got offered a place I had to explain that I had never swung a golf club and wouldn’t be any use to the party.

My director understood; I didn’t have the skills for the task at hand, so I would be wasting my time and the businesses!

The problem is that many business owners and marketers don’t have much experience in writing or haven’t been formally trained in writing or copywriting, so like my experience with golf – they don’t have the skills needed for the task; but it’s incredible that unlike playing a sport, we are all expected to be able to do it, even if it isn’t the best thing for the business!

Makes you think doesn’t it!

It's all about them!

We had a sales letter some though the letterbox yesterday and I just want to point out one major problem with the way that they wrote their letter, this one problem put us off buying from them instantly and will also put off your prospects if you send the same type of thing out!

  • Always ensure that you talk about your prospect more than you talk about yourself or your business!
  • I don’t care how long you have been established, where you’re based, who your directors are, it’s all about YOU!  What about ME?  Your prospect!  Talk about what you can do for me!
  • As a quick rule of thumb, always ensure that you use “You”, “Your” etc more than you use “Us”, “I” and “We”.
  • This will help you write the message that your prospects want to read!
  • If you find this difficult, then do what we do and start with the word “You” and hopefully inspiration will flow.

If you are really struggling writing those sales letters, then get in touch with us and we'll do the hard work for you!

 

Four rules of Copywriting

After talking to absolutely loads of clients since we launch ReadCopy, it’s been interesting to learn what the general view has been of copywriting specifically, but even more important to hear what people generally think about writing, from this we have compiled these FOUR key rules that need to be followed when you write just about anything!

1. Understand what you need to say – OK, you might think that this goes without saying, but tons of ‘writers’ out there still have no idea what they should or want to write about.
Even when they have a topic that they know they should be writing about, they rarely really understand what they need to say.

Understand your topic completely, really get under the skin of what you need to say; EVERY business, product and service reduces a pain that exists within your market somewhere, to promote it successfully you need to completely understand what that pains means to them, understand completely how you can take that pain away from them.
As an example, we obviously offer a copywriting services! But providing great words is only part of the pain a business might have, they also want to be certain that a) we will have a good turnaround on their work, b) it will as they want it first time with little need for rewriting/editing and c) whatever we will write will work!
To this end we are able to show who and what we have done in the past, the clients we have worked with (and continue to) go some way to showing that we fast, reliable and write successful copy!

How do you prove your skills are removing the pain from your prospects?

2. Talk to people, not at them! – interact with your readers, don’t just have a one way interaction with them on the page.

Here’s an example: “How often do you brush your teeth in a day?”
Now whether you wanted to or not, almost all of you would have thought of the answer as you read that question; amazingly through the medium of copy, we are interacting with you and getting you to participate!

We may go one to ask other questions about oral hygiene to get you thinking, and pretty soon you’ll come to realise that brushing at least twice a day is good for you.
That’s a better way to develop your copy and gain acceptance than just stating “Brush at least twice a day.”

3. If you can’t write, hire someone who can – writing is a skill, writing compelling copy is a massive skill.
We can all write, but can we all write exciting, creative and compelling copy that will lead your readers to take the action you want them to take?

The short answer is ‘No’; if you don’t have the skills then hire a copywriters to do your writing for you; copywriting are cost-effective and allow you to get on with managing your business!

4. Find your tone and stick to it – personality is really important when you write, you need to ensure that your copy is written in a consistent manner throughout, if you change your styles several times you’ll confuse your audience and lose your message completely.

Follow these four simple rules to improve your writing.

Don’t shoot the copywriters!

This is just a reminder from all the copywriters out there to remind you of one simple fact: copywriters copy CAN help you generate interest in what you have to sell and actually help the sales process; but often we don’t get involved with the entire sales and marketing process, so our words can only go so far!

What we ask is that you allow us to work with you to help you understand the context of the copy that is been created!

So if for example we create a sales letter for you, think about the response mechanism!

Will you want potential customers to contact you via phone or visit your website?
If it's via phone, who is going to answer the calls? Do they know how to sell, are you confident in their sales skills?
If it’s a website response then is the landing page written in such a way to help your conversion rates?

If we write the landing page for you, what is your sales funnel and checkout process like? We can help you with all this.

Even before you have sent out the sales letter or email, are you sending it to a list of good prospects, are you sending it at the best time for them?

Is your proposition the very best it can be?

Copywriting IS important in the sales process, but so are many other factors; please engage with us and share information with us as early as possible!

As well as great wordsmiths, ReadCopy have some 15 years of experience in sales and marketing – so you know you can trust us to help you make your campaign the very best that it can be.

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.

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)