VOLUME 23, ISSUE 12 – DECEMBER 2024
THIS MONTH’S MENU:
I. IS YOUR WEBSITE ATTRACTING LEADS?
Veteran Copywriter: 3 Steps to a Harder-Working Site
II. ARE YOU TOO PLEASING? (& OTHER MISTAKES…)
Publishing Guru: 4 Common Copywriting Blunders (& Their Fixes)
III. GOT NEWSLETTERS?
4-Decade Newsletter Pro: How to Write a Great One!
I. IS YOUR WEBSITE ATTRACTING LEADS?
Veteran Copywriter: 3 Steps to a Harder-Working Site
Solid resource from 20+-year CT FLCW (and regular E-PUB contributor), Jennifer Mattern—seasoned PR writer and founder of the acclaimed
All Freelance Writing site.
Is your professional freelance website working hard enough to help you land new clients? If not, consider these three ideas to help you attract more leads and close more sales.
1. Make Generous Use of CTAs: Assign every page on your professional site a goal, then make sure you include an appropriate call-to-action (CTA). This might be an order button, an invitation to contact you, or a subscribe button for your email list.
2. Tailor Every Page to Search Intent: One of the most important elements of search engine optimization (SEO) is understanding search intent and tailoring your copy to it. Search intent is what someone expects to find when they conduct a search.
Are they ready to hire a freelancer? Are they looking for educational information? Make sure your ranking page addresses that need.
3. Make Your Website a Resource: If most of your website visitors come from one-off search traffic, you only have that one opportunity to convert that visitor into a paying client. By turning your professional website into more of a resource, you give visitors a reason to keep coming back.
And when they do return, that gives you repeated opportunities to build trust and convince them to hire you. What kind of resources?
Consider blog posts, reviews, downloadable guides, a newsletter, free reports (i.e., that address a pain point you know they have), tutorials, or any other resources relevant to your specialty.
How do you use your professional website to attract leads and turn them into commercial writing clients?
II. ARE YOU TOO PLEASING? (& OTHER MISTAKES…)
Publishing Guru: 4 Common Copywriting Blunders (& Their Fixes)
Great piece from award-winning author, designer, and publisher Ginger Marks — who provides advice on marketing and writing through her monthly ezine, Words of Wisdom. Subscribe here.
Here, she underscores some marketing/copywriting fundamentals. How often have we all seen these mistakes? Plenty. Thanks, Ginger!
In my career as an entrepreneur, with 45+ years of experience, I’ve had the opportunity and responsibility of teaching new entrepreneurs and authors the subtleties of copywriting.
Here are the three most common copywriting mistakes I’ve seen…
1) Using “please” in your marketing copy: While being polite is generally a good thing, in copywriting, it can come across as begging or subservient.
Lose the “please” and confidently tell them exactly what you want them to do. People respect and respond to confidence.
2) Too many options: Studies show that anxiety increases as choices increase. Overloading customers with options in your marketing copy will make them less likely to take action.
(PB: As the old sales added reminds: “A confused prospect never buys.”)
3) Making it all about you: People don’t care about what you’re selling, only how it will help them. Shift your focus from yourself and your business to their interests.
Explain why your offer is valuable to them, and what beneficial emotional response you expect they’ll have when they take the action you’re prompting.
4) Unrestrained copywriting: A common mistake new business owners make (and, even experienced ones): they want to share too much information in marketing materials, and end up obscuring the key message.
Learn the difference between, “What a client wants to tell a prospect” (i.e., always too much), vs. “What that prospect needs to know” (at that particular stage of the marketing process). Concise copy = impactful message.
III. GOT NEWSLETTERS?
4-Decade Newsletter Pro: How to Write a Great One!
Talk about long shelf-life: Newsletters were popular 40-50+ years ago, and they’re just as pervasive—and effective—today. The format may be digital now, but the benefits live on.
Great primer from financial services copywriter (and long-time newsletter writer/publisher), Don Sadler.
Newsletters are still effective marketing tools, keeping you and your business top-of-mind with customers and prospects and positioning you as an expert in your field.
Not to mention providing steady fresh content you can use in other marketing initiatives, including social media. Gleaned from nearly 40 years of industry experience, here are my:
Top 5 Newsletter-Publishing “Must-Dos”
- Make It About Your Readers: THE biggest newsletter mistake I see? Making it all about you and your business.
News flash: Nobody cares about your business and your “award-winning, state-of-the-art, industry-leading” products and services. They only care how your products are going to solve their problems. Period.
- Publish Value-Added Content:Make your content educational, not promotional—offering value to readers by teaching them things they don’t know based on your expertise.
Follow the 80-20 rule: 80+% of content should be “value-added” and 20% (or less) should be promotional. Make it a relationship-building tool, not a glorified advertisement.
- Publish Consistently:If you can’t commit to a consistent publishing schedule, don’t do it at all. A “hit-or-miss” newsletter can actually do more harm than good.
The ideal frequency? Depends on your industry and resources, could be monthly, weekly or biweekly. Whichever you choose, stick to it.
- Go Beyond Just Information:Thanks to the Internet, information is cheap. Use a newsletter to go beyond just information by sharing analysis and insights people can’t get from Google—especially if it’s a little bit controversial.
Humanize your business, by giving readers a glimpse of the person behind it, by sharing stories and anecdotes that reveal a little bit about yourself.
- Make Sure the Writing Is Top-Notch:The writing must be high-quality—
no typos, misspellings or grammar errors. Anything less is a poor reflection of your business.
Check out the full piece here.