Posts Tagged SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing

Mastering Headlines

Jun 18

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Copywriting, Sales and marketing | No Comments

Headlines, you gotta love ‘em. How many times have you amused yourself or acquired valuable knowledge because of a headline? Put another way, how many times would you have passed a great piece of information by just because the headline didn’t make it sound very enticing.

Well, my friends at Manta, the small business site clearly believe in the importance of headlines. Back in March—where the heck has this year gone, by the way?—they emailed me a nice little tip about using “power words” to make a “hot headline.”

Power words “create an emotional connection with your reader” and help you stand out against all the market noise. They don’t have to be very earth-shaking, either. Words like “announcing,” “sale,” and “innovative” will encourage folks to read your email, blog post, or ad. They are, as I noted in one of my earliest posts, rather like the eyebrows on a face.

My headline for this post is “Mastering Headlines.” I’m thinking that the search engines will pick up headlines, and maybe “mastering” promises that you’ll learn something. But I’d be very interested in your take on how to pep up this headline. That’s your assignment, and I’m interested in hearing from you.

Tags: copywriting, editing, marketing communications, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Writing

Popular Sayings: Where Did These Come From?

Jun 11

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Copywriting, Popular Culture | 1 Comment

I love popular sayings, which are all-too-often disrespected as clichés. And like you (I’m guessing), I’ve often wondered where some of them came from. Check out the Care2 slideshow when you have a minute. In the meantime, here’s a preview from the site:

1. “Motley Crew.”

Meaning: A group of misbehaving ne’er-do-wells.

Background: Motley was once a type of fabric, and, eventually, the type of clothing made from the cloth. The most famous motley wearers in the 16th century were court jesters, and the multi-colored, patchwork fabric eventually became a go-to style for stage performers. Groups of these performers eventually became known as “motley crews.”

2. “Read the Riot Act.”

Meaning: To reprimand and warn those misbehaving.

Background: There actually was a real, actual, written riot act. 18th century English magistrates could read it to any group of more than 12 people that were, well, not behaving so well. If they didn’t disperse within an hour, they would be arrested. Luckily, today reading the “riot act” doesn’t come with the same punishments as it once did!

3. “In a Pickle.”

Meaning: In a difficult situation.

Background: “How camest thou in this pickle?” Yep, none other than William Shakespeare came up with this delightful little phrase! Shakespeare was alluding to the fact that the vegetables in pickles were disoriented and mixed-up, just like it is to be in trouble.

Here’s a question: Have you heard popular sayings or expressions misused or fractured in some odd way? My favorite is “We need to flush this out.” The correct expression, of course, is “flesh this out,” as in adding some meat to the bones of a concept or perhaps creating a document from an outline. A copywriter colleague of mine recently commented that he’d been editing such poorly written stuff that he was tempted to “flush” it.

Tags: copywriting, editing, Popular Culture, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Words

Mastering Headlines

Jun 4

Posted by Susan Monroe in Copywriting, Marketing communications, Sales and marketing, Selling | No Comments

Well, my friends at Manta, the small business site (www.manta.com) clearly believe in the importance of headlines. Back in March—where the heck has this year gone, by the way?—they emailed me a nice little tip about using “power words” to make a “hot headline.”

Tags: copywriting, editing, marketing communications, Selling, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Writing

Integrity in Sales

May 22

Posted by Susan Monroe in Sales and marketing, Selling | No Comments

The first time I saw this little video by Jill Konrath, it hit me right between the eyes. That’s how powerful it was. (By the way, some folks like to hear Kathleen Turner talk. I’m partial to Jill. Her voice gives you a gentle little shake that says, “You need to listen to this!”)

But I digress. What Ms. Konrath says is that there are times you absolutely should not sell something to your client, even though you can. And she cites some real-life examples, like walking away from the sale when it would have gotten her into her company’s President’s Club. Why did she do that? It sounds old-fashioned, but refusing to pursue the sale was, for her, a matter of integrity. As she puts it, “I knew that if they got the lower-priced model, they’d hate me – and it, within months.”

Sacrificing long term gains for short term success, pleasure, gain—call it what you will—is all too human. And not a good idea. I still vividly remember selling a microrecorder to a client who really needed a product that would pick up voices in a room. Our competitor sold a cute little number that would do just that and had been eating our lunch with it. We, on the other hand, sold a nice-looking little oral note-taker that just wasn’t up to the job. Displaying a stunning lack of integrity, I plowed ahead and sold it anyway. The client was not happy, and I’m embarrassed to this day.

Tell me about your experience with integrity in sales. I’m curious about how it may have played out when you were under pressure to close a deal.

Tags: copywriting, sales and marketing, Selling, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe

New and Improved

May 14

Posted by Susan Monroe in Copywriting, Sales and marketing, Selling, Writing | No Comments

In a January Marketing Minute entitled “They’ll Buy What?” Marcia Yudkin—who is one of my favorite marketing gurus—talks about exercising creativity in offering personal services. The premise behind her article is that people will purchase services you never imagined they would. The example she provided was of an organizational guru who comes in every month to help comedian Drew Carey deal with his email in-box and to-do list.

That led me to think about unlikely-seeming services that actually make perfect sense. What about, for example, those cheerful-looking little pickup trucks manned by folks who pick up dog poop? Now, I’ve dog sat over the years and have done my share of that. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that dog owners couldn’t perform that task themselves. On the other hand, if you’ve got more than one (big) dog and delicate sensibilities, perhaps hiring someone to do it for you is not such a bad idea.

In my own copywriting business, I’ve helped clients out with website QC. I check spelling, grammar, and whether or not links work. It’s great fill-in work, particularly when the famine part of the freelance feast-or-famine cycle hits. It’s a great way to sharpen my attention to detail and improve my ability to be systematic, and of course it’s a bona fide, legitimate service.

How might you use your business as a springboard for new offerings?

Tags: copywriting, editing, marketing communications, sales and marketing, Selling, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe

What Are You Selling?

May 7

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Copywriting, Sales and marketing, Selling | 1 Comment

A while back, C.J. Hayden, who contributes to Rain Today, wrote a wonderful article entitled “Are You Marketing the Right Stuff?”

Ms. Hayden believes that many struggling business owners may not be selling what people—or at least what their ideal customer—want to buy. She presents the example of a graphic designer who marketed identity packages to small, new businesses but discovered that they weren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate high-quality creative work. They were, instead, in search of the lowest price. When she shifted her focus to offering the types of services that larger, established companies needed—such as annual report design and customer/employee communications —her business grew fast and profitably. She also differentiated herself from her competitors.

In this and two other worth-reading vignettes, Ms. Hayden notes that the business owners who applied this principle successfully continued to use the skills they had developed. They continued to attend the same networking events, continued to meet with the same people for coffee, and in other ways, did pretty much the same things they had been doing. What changed was what they were marketing.

In her words:

“Maybe it’s time to re-examine not how you are marketing, but what you are marketing. Marketing the right stuff can allow you to find better clients with less effort. What’s the stuff that your ideal clients really want to have?”

I leave you with that thought, but I’m really curious to know how you’ve applied this idea to your business.

Tags: copywriting, editing, sales and marketing, Selling, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Writing

Getting Past Marketplace Noise: Try Personas

Apr 30

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Copywriting, Marketing communications, Sales and marketing | No Comments

My colleague Steven Donaldson of Radiant Brands recently wrote a nice post about how even small brands can triumph over marketplace noise and connect with customers.

He talks about a simple four-step process that links a brand with consumers. In his words:

Define what’s uniquely valued in your brand
Define the personas of your customers
Build a strategy for connecting to these personas
Create the channels and stay in touch

This is great advice. Defining personas, in particular, resonates with me. It’s more than a mere marketing nicety to consider who you’re selling to and put some effort into fleshing out a portrait. In fact, creating personas brings the whole concept of marketing segmentation to life.

As a copywriter who specializes in marketing communications, one of my favorite personas is the tired marketer who’s managing a product launch. There she is, at 10 on a winter evening, decked out in her fuzzy robe and bunny slippers. The kids are in bed. Her spouse is headed that way himself. But, lacking sufficient headcount, she’s sitting in front of her PC, trying to write something compelling about the new product. She knows it backwards and forwards, and she’s a brilliant strategist, but writing is not her strong suit. Or at least she doesn’t consider it a good use of her time.

That portrait, in my opinion, is a pretty doggone good persona. It accurately describes a good part of my market. And it’s helped me better focus my promotional efforts.

Have personas helped you? If so, how? If not, why?

Tags: Branding and messaging, copywriting, marketing communications, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing

How Do Buyers Really Buy?

Apr 24

Posted by Susan Monroe in Copywriting, Marketing communications, Selling | No Comments

You might not think that a copywriter would need to know much about what motivates a person or a company to buy. But copywriters and other creatives often run their own businesses and need to know what makes potential customers decide to use their services. And we certainly work for companies who need to make an effective appeal to their markets.

Some of the best insight I’ve recently gotten into what motivates buying comes from Charles Green, a contributing editor to Rain Today. In his article “Pain, Brain, or Reframe: How Do Buyers Really Buy,” he lays out some recent thinking on the topic.

Generally, people buy—or so it is commonly thought:

to fix a negative situation
in response to a clear value proposition
from those who offer a differentiated solution

Simple Models, Complex Situations

Mr. Green refers to these as the Pain, Brain, or Reframe models. The pain model is driven by emotion. The buyer wants to avoid or escape pain and is best sold to by appealing to her pain points or perhaps the prospect of a better outcome. The brain model draws its rationale from economics, which posits that people make decisions based on rational economic choices. (I’m not sure all economists go for this idea.) And finally, reframing draws its power from shaping customer thinking around the belief that your product really does it differently and better than the competition.

A Better Explanation?

What I took away from this excellent article is that one model just won’t do. Mr. Green cites the example of a company who was searching for a speaker for major corporate event. Decision makers came up with a business strategist and an economist and after much debate, decided to engage a hard-charging former football coach. In this case, the brain model was great for analyzing offerings and narrowing them down to a couple of choices. Then emotion entered the picture and drove the decision.

Look at any sales situation. You may start with one model, but you’ll probably end with emotion.

Quoting from Mr. Green:

“We all acknowledge rational analyses as important checks against the mistakes we might make if we rely solely on the emotions. At the same time, it recognizes the powerful role that emotions play in human decision making, of which the buying decision is just one.”

Tags: sales and marketing, Selling, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Writing

Use, Don’t Abuse, Twitter

Apr 16

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Marketing communications, Popular Culture, Social media | No Comments

Twitter just flashes by, doesn’t it? For an introvert, who really likes to take a few minutes to chew on an idea, that can be a touch disconcerting. Still, folks love it, and businesses increasingly see it as a viable tool.

So, in the spirit of disseminating knowledge, I’m posting hints from Ilana Bercovitz on Twitter blunders small businesses make (). She’s come up with 10. I’m going for the five that seem most important to me, though they’re all great.

Shameless self-promotion ‒ What?!! That’s an article of faith in American society. Still, hold back a bit.

Retweeting yourself ‒ No, it’s not efficient. It’s lazy. If you want to tweet about the same content, find another way to say it.

Using multiple hashtags in a tweet ‒ They make your tweet annoyingly unreadable.

Tweets that are too long ‒ Huh? Tweets are short by definition. But leave enough characters to allow people to add commentary, @mentions, etc. when retweeting you.

Irregularity ‒ Tweet every day.

Ms. Bercovitz is not a big fan of robo-tweeting and recommends moderation—believing that followers want to see the real person behind the tweets. I get that, but it’s my way of dealing with a busy schedule and still trying to participate. I’m a big fan of Hootsuite, which makes it possible to queue up tweets promoting my blog and other interesting content and spread them out over a few days. And, the Ragan feed has some great stuff about writing, editing, and PR. So, I plan to continue. There’s enough “human” stuff from me to balance out.

What you do you think?

Tags: marketing communications, Popular Culture, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Social Media

Posts Tagged SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing

Mastering Headlines

Popular Sayings: Where Did These Come From?

Mastering Headlines

Integrity in Sales

New and Improved

What Are You Selling?

Getting Past Marketplace Noise: Try Personas

How Do Buyers Really Buy?

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