Category Archives: Copywriting

Content Marketing: What’s Old is New Again

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marketing-cmyk“Content Marketing is the Only Marketing Left”        Seth Godin

Content marketing is certainly not new. It is generally accepted that one of the first businesses to use content marketing effectively was John Deere in the late 1800s. In 1895 John Deere started publishing the magazine titled The Furrow in order to provide farmers with a resource of practical information that would increase their success. At the same time, it helped establish John Deere as the expert on all things related to farming. The magazine is still printed today in 12 languages and distributed in 40 countries.

For the same reason, companies both large and small are now embracing the concept of content marketing to deliver practical and relevant information to their customers. The emphasis on useful and relevant information means that customers and prospects are becoming increasingly sensitive to bias and deceit, demanding transparency from businesses. Rather than relying on advertising alone, customers are reading reviews and comments of those who have a personal experience of the product, service, or the business itself – often without knowing much about the reviewer.

All this leads to the need for today’s businesses to adopt a new marketing strategy. Content marketing consists of focusing on creating and distributing information that a specific target audience will find pertinent and engaging. Rather than emphasizing the features and benefits of a product or service, content marketing is communicating without direct selling. It is providing information that educates your customers and prospects so they can make better buying decisions. It is giving control to customers rather than businesses.

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Press Releases that Grab Attention

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pressrelease-cmykSuppose that your business or organization has just purchased a new piece of equipment or has just launched a new service, and it’s time to get the word out. A multi-faceted approach usually works best. This might include taking out ads in newspapers or trade journals, sending out a direct-mail package or postcard, or utilizing social media. But one of the most effective methods is sending out a news release. Traditional printed press releases remain one of the best ways to get the news to the right audience, at the right time, very inexpensively.

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Brochure Content & Design Fundamentals

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Reading Medical PamphletA brochure is a descriptive piece of literature used for promoting your business or organization. It is one of the most important and fundamental components of marketing literature for businesses and organizations. Typically the first item produced after the letterhead, envelopes, and business cards, its purpose is to put a targeted message in the hands of prospects that is portable, easy to store, and easily passed on to others.

A printed brochure is an integral part of the sales process. It serves as a leave-behind after a sales call or meeting with prospective customers. It is also used as a way to respond to inquiries or to introduce new products or services when cold calling. As part of a direct mail campaign, it can be sent with a sales letter or used as a self-mailer. And finally, a brochure can be a point-of-purchase display to interest customers in additional products or services or to provide information.

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Writing Ethically in the Digital Age

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writingIn today’s workplace, effective promotional writing is now a necessity. Besides writing copy for printed material such as brochures, product sheets, and visual aids used in sales presentations, companies and organizations now need to produce content for web sites, blog posts, press releases, and social media.

A common way to begin a writing task is to search the internet for ideas and to see what others have written on a particular topic. While this helps stimulate your thinking and expand your knowledge, it also can lead to questionable writing practices such as borrowing heavily from a source without citing it, paraphrasing that remains very close to the original, unconscious plagiarism, and even copyright infringement.

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Engage Your Readers With… Effective Headlines

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HeadlineSMWhen you are writing a marketing communication piece – print ad, sales letter, direct mail piece, brochure, blog entry, press release, newsletter, webinar – where do you start? You may be surprised to learn that experts advise starting at the top by writing the headline.

The headline is your promise to readers, a statement of what they can expect if they continue reading. Promises are first made, and then fulfilled. So make the promise to readers through the headline, and fulfill it in the content.

The importance of headlines is not a new concept. Writing in 1923 in his book Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins said, “We pick out what we wish to read by headlines.” Forty years later, in his 1963 book Confessions of an Advertising Man, advertising legend David Ogilvy wrote “On average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents of your dollar.” Continuing today, busy people decide what to read on web pages, e-mail or blogs based the strength of the headline.

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What Did You Say? Communicating Across Generations

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GenBusinesses and organizations engage in two kinds of communication: internal communications among staff members and external communications between the business and its customers and prospects. Both require selection of a communication style — the specific way the message will be delivered.

Much internal communication is between individuals or small groups in the work place, while external communication is usually to a large audience (though with enough personal data, an external communication can be crafted for a small group or even an individual). Individuals differ in how they receive and share information, shaped by how they prefer to process information — visually (seeing), aurally (hearing), kinesthetically (doing), or a hybrid of reading and writing. Interestingly, an individual’s preference for sharing information may be different than his or her preference for receiving information.

When an individual is in a group (say, a participant in a meeting or part of the intended audience for a marketing message), then the individual’s generation shapes communication preferences. Understanding these generational preferences is the basis of communicating effectively.

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A Guide to… Effective Writing

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200402422-001Have you ever thought about how much of each day you spend writing? Not just writing copy for marketing materials, a newsletter or other business-related activities, but changing text on web sites, sending e-mail, blogging, texting and perhaps even handwriting an old-fashioned thank you note. As much of what used to be oral phone conversation is now written and marketing is done online, the need for more writing is evident.

This has increased the pressure on everyone within an organization to write well, from customer service representatives using e-mail to communicate with customers to marketing executives developing content for printed materials and the company web site. Bad writing calls attention to itself, causing the reader to miss the point of the communication. It also conveys an unflattering picture of the individual and by extension, the business.

Why is it so hard to write well? Because writing requires a coordinated effort involving memory (to correctly apply the rules of spelling, capitalization and punctuation); language ability (grammar, vocabulary, word order and sentence structure); and higher-order cognitive skills (planning, organizing, reasoning, logic, abstract thinking). All three must be developed equally and used simultaneously for good writing to result.

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A Website is Not a Brochure: Why You Need Both

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brochure_web_lrWhen it comes to providing information about your company and its products and services, a good website offers a lot of advantages. It allows prospects to find you, regardless of their geographic proximity. Searching for information is fast and easy. The prospect has complete control, spending as much or as little time as desired on the site.

But all the information gathering can be done anonymously. That means you don’t know the extent of the prospect’s interest – whether an early-stage shopper (slight interest, may not have intention to buy); information seeker (gathering information from more than one source); qualified buyer (has the interest, authority, and budget to make a decision); or someone actually ready to purchase. You can’t answer questions, counter misinterpretations, or offer additional information. In short, you have no control over the sales process.

An effective brochure, on the other hand, returns control to you. It also requires you to think through exactly how to tell a compelling story about your company and its products and services – the basis of any marketing effort, regardless of the strategy used to carry it out.

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The 3 Essential Elements of Direct Mail Marketing

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200394313-001Despite the popularity of e-marketing — e-mail campaigns, SMS messaging, and social media — direct mail is still a proven way to generate new business from existing customers and identify potential new customers from among prospects. Used correctly, direct mail can generate leads, communicate with customers, build name recognition or brand awareness, and build traffic.

A strong direct mail program is built on three essential elements. In this issue of Printips, we’ll explain the importance of each one.

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Engage Your Customers… With Content Marketing

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Customers are rapidly developing a new set of habits to govern their interaction with businesses. In the past, the interaction was described by the push system – the business pushed its products and services at customers and prospects while using focus groups, trend analysis, and other techniques to forecast demand.

In a push system, the business is largely in control of the customer interaction. With the rise of e-commerce, a shift is occurring to a pull system: customers and prospects pull the products and services they require or want from businesses. By changing who controls the interaction (the customer instead of the business), customers are becoming increasingly resistant to interruption marketing (such as television ads, telemarketing, spam, and web pop-up and banner ads) and are seeking useful, relevant information to help them make buying decisions. Social networking sites as well as “comment” and “review” features of e-commerce sites are new ways for customers to seek and receive information.

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