Posts Tagged Writing

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

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

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

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

Dumb but Funny User Stories

Apr 9

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Copywriting, Popular Culture | No Comments

Periodically, my wonderful colleague Kay Paumier will post something funny on her blog. One of her most recent posts was entitled “Disorder in the Court” and featured hilarious interchanges between lawyers, witnesses, and the like. (). If your day is not terrific, they are guaranteed to cheer you up.

In the same spirit, I propose that you check out “Clueless users: 10 more tales of the absurd” by Brien Posey. This piece is absolutely worth reading in its entirety. Each petite vignette is a gem, but I’m particularly fond of this one:

7: Bad power strip

I once got a call from a user who said that he thought that either a circuit breaker had been tripped or his power strip had gone bad because neither his computer nor his monitor were receiving any power. This guy was normally pretty sharp, so I assumed that his diagnosis was probably correct.

When I showed up with a new power strip, I began unplugging everything from the old power strip only to discover that the power strip was plugged into itself rather than being plugged into an electrical outlet.

More Madness

Mr. Posey has also written “10 stupid user stories: The madness persists.” Full of guaranteed howlers.

Enjoy.

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

The Danger of Becoming a Household Name

Apr 2

Posted by Susan Monroe in Branding and messaging, Marketing communications, Popular Culture | No Comments

A few months back, I read a great article by brand identity expert Nora D. Richardson. Her thesis was that some brand names are victims of their own success. They become so well known that people use them to describe a product class. Think Aspirin, Xerox, Kleenex, pantyhose, and even Google. (Google is arguable, Ms. Richardson notes, because large numbers of searchers go to Google and nowhere else. Still, Google has publicly discouraged its generic use.)

These brand names are freely and generically used—often by their owners, who should know better. They are verbified and sometimes associated with negatives. Remember political commentators referring to Ronald Reagan as the “Teflon” president, because bad stuff just didn’t seem to stick to him?

Avoiding Genericide

You should avoid genericide like the plague. I used to work in sales for Dictaphone—now a division of Nuance Communications, and that company was famous for taking brand misusers to court in a heartbeat. And I once knew a woman who ran Casini’s, a specialty apparel shop in D.C. Not surprisingly, she received a classic cease-and-desist letter from designer Oleg Cassini’s attorneys, who claimed that she was diluting and therefore damaging his brand.

So, how do you prevent genericide? In my opinion, Ms. Richardson’s two most important tips are 1) never use your brand name generically and 2) follow your brand name with a description of it what it is or does. One thing is for sure, though, you need to be consistent and diligent guarding your brand name use or the courts won’t rule in your favor.

Have you ever worked for a company that had problems protecting its brand? What was its response? And, what examples of brand genericide can you come up with?

Tags: Branding and messaging, copywriting, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Writing

Good Writing: What It Is

Mar 20

Posted by Susan Monroe in Copywriting, Words, Writing | No Comments

My original plan for today’s post was to talk about how important it is for marketing executives—and others, too—to stay “up with the times.” I’ll get around to that at some point.

Anyway, I was getting ready to write when I was ambushed by a section in a style guide from one of my favorite clients. This little gem, nestled at the bottom of a page, leapt out at me, and I quote it in its entirety.

Follow these critical writing tips, courtesy of George Orwell:

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

In just a few words, Mr. Orwell has argued effectively against pomposity, long-windedness, awkwardness, and pretense. What more could a budding or an experienced writer want as a guide?

More about the wonderfulness of style guides at some point too.

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

Unsubscribe Me, Please

Mar 13

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

One of the benefits of writing a blog rather than a newsletter is that one never has to face being unsubscribed. My readers can decide to stop reading or comment negatively on what I’ve written, but they don’t have to formally opt out. All they need to do is fold their tents and silently steal away, as the Longfellow poem goes.

So I read a post from Matt Lawrence of Biznik entitled “You’re killing me with that unsubscribe email confirmation” with interest.

Heaven knows, I’ve unsubscribed from a lot of newsletters. And for the reasons Mr. Lawrence cites. I was interested in a topic at one time but am not now. I’m no longer working on a project that required the information provided by the newsletter. Or I decided to try to deal with email overwhelm.

Mr. Lawrence’s article is short and worth reading. In my opinion, the biggest takeaway is this: Content provided is a service. And we “have an opportunity as service providers to continue that service all the way up to the very end of the experience, even when that action is an unsubscribe from our newsletter.” If we can “delight” our readers—a term that I find slightly annoying, by the way—then they may come back or recommend us to others.

Mr. Lawrence would increase the chance of delight by customizing the canned response to an unsubscribe acknowledgment. He might treat readers as something other than “leads” or “subscribers” by using language that aligns with his brand. In his words, you need to do “something to make the email valuable, and worth their time – remember that you are still communicating with them!”

What would you do?

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

Better Landing Pages

Mar 6

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

Direct response writers like Ivan Levison write a lot of landing pages, so they know what the heck they’re doing. (Actually, they not only write landing pages but also the email copy that prompts you to click through to the website to get to a landing page.)

My experience is that you can write a whole lot of copy and never have to produce a landing page until the day your client says, “Hey, ya know, we’ve got to get them to download our white paper. Can you give us a landing page for that?”

Your answer, of course, is a hearty “yes,” as you scurry off to learn how.

In an August 2012 newsletter, which I recommend marketing communicators read, Mr. Levison offers seven tips for writing a “killer landing page.” They’re all good. My three faves are these:

Don’t ask too much ‒ Capture a name, title, and email. That’s pretty basic, but the more you ask, the more likely your target will abandon the page and possibly your entire site. As Mr. Levison puts it, “Never ask people, at this stage, when they’re planning to make a purchase or what their budget is. Way too pushy!”

Promise privacy ‒ Of course, you want to make sure that you have a decent privacy policy and that you actually stick to it. What a concept.

Keep it short ‒ Don’t blather on. Your target has clicked through, so thank her nicely and let her get to the download, which is the only thing she’s interested in.

Of course, you’re providing information of value (I hope), but the real purpose of a landing page is to get enough information to “begin an ongoing marketing effort.”

Then the real fun begins.

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

Fun with Pronunciation

Feb 26

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

If you’re a non-rhothic speaker, then “better” and “Beretta” rhyme.

Say what?

Yup. And a hearty thanks to Geoffrey K. Pullum, a contributor to Language Log for his amusing observations about linguistics and the recently released “Skyfall,” starring cinema’s sexiest man (or so say the loyal readers of SF Chron movie critic, Mick LaSalle.)

According to Mr. Pullum, a distinctly un-stuffy academic, Skyfall is rich in linguistic “stuff” (his term). One notable example the rhyming of “better” and “Beretta,” which occurs while Mr. Craig is cavorting in the shower with a gorgeous Eurasian woman. He murmurs that he likes her better without her Beretta, “and the rhyme, you see, only works as “in a non-rhotic dialect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rhotic) such as standard Southern British.”

There you have it. I love hearing people speak British English in all its lovely permutations—from annoying upper crust to the squad room accents of Inspector Jane Tennison’s crew to Jimmy Cliff in “The Harder They Come.”

Still can figure out where they come up with “alu-minium,” though.

Tags: SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Words, Writing

Posts Tagged Writing

Mastering Headlines

Mastering Headlines

What Are You Selling?

How Do Buyers Really Buy?

Dumb but Funny User Stories

The Danger of Becoming a Household Name

Good Writing: What It Is

Unsubscribe Me, Please

Better Landing Pages

Fun with Pronunciation

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